I absolutely love learning kanji with WaniKani, but I was wondering if there is a similar tool (or a way to import my own vocab to WaniKani) that I can use to learn the kana words. I’ve tried memrise and anki, and I don’t like either. I like having to type in my answer and the gamification of wanikani.
2 Likes
From my time durtling I’ve encountered the following possible solutions…
1 Like
Or maybe look at marumori (same people as kitsun)?
1 Like
I use KameSame for vocab that is not in WK
3 Likes
Along with extensive amounts of Grammatical content, Bunpro has 5 seperate (N5-N1 level) vocab decks that each contain dictionary-level information, give example sentences, etc. There are also tons of user-made decks to go even beyond that and/or tailor your content in a more specific field (something like “foods” or the language used in a specific Japanese film)
Bunpro operates on a SRS system very much like WK, and it allows you to manually type answers (or do an Anki-style click approval). You can also content-sync with WK so any vocab mastered here will not be repeated on BP
I similarly dislike Anki but Bunpro is my go-to for all the blindspots of WK vocab, and since it has a less rigid structure compared to WK you can also manually search/insert words into your lineup that you encounter in native material which I love
Its worth it just for the grammar, in my opinion, but taking vocab into account it’s an incredible resource
2 Likes
I would advise against using Bunpro for vocab, at least unless you’re hand-picking what vocabulary to learn. They have something called the “A” deck with definitions from JMdict, but then there is another deck called the “E” deck with markedly lower quality. 斗 | Bunpro as an example, or 納める | Bunpro which is missing the main meaning on WaniKani. (I’ve submitted feedback already.) It seems to be luck of the draw which deck the WaniKani integration will pull from. (Perhaps not an issue for someone who doesn’t have a sunken cost in WaniKani yet. 
)
jpdb has a lot of community-created decks, but it’s sadly lacking when it comes to dealing with multiple decks. It will only pull from the top one and reordering decks is an exercise in frustration. It might be good enough if you’re only ever learning one deck at a time, but that’s not me. 
I’m tinkering on some tooling for myself that will get closer to what I want from these tools. Lookup counter would be an amazing feature for whichever dictionary you’re using. Next on top of that, supporting pre-learning like “you’re planning to read these five books and play these three games over the next year, here is a dynamically created ‘deck’ to pull in new cards from in priority order – without repeating all the words you know already.” Combine these two to get a firehose of actually useful vocabulary in front of you…
(Won’t even matter if you never get to the bottom; those single instance words are probably always going to be something you’re looking up as you go.)
3 Likes
There’s config settings to do things like “pull from all decks in frequency order within all your decks” or “all decks by frequency across corpus”. I have 42 decks, though admittedly most of them are just sitting low on the list because I’ve read that book. I hop around what deck is topmost and what settings I’m using from time to time to switch things up or depending on what I’m doing, though mostly I like to focus on one deck for at least a few weeks at a time.
jpdb doesn’t meet either the “type answer” or “gamification” criteria, though.
2 Likes
You can definitely configure Anki to require typed in answers (on the iOS app anyway, just tried it). And it does provide a lot of metrics, which is a type of gamification.
2 Likes
There is a Userscript that helps you do that: WaniKani Custom SRS - WIP
You can import your own Racials / Kanji / Vocab / Kana Vocab that are not on WaniKani and have them integrated into your normal WaniKani reviews. I personally use the script in combination with an LLM to quickly create flashcards with mnemonics to import them into WaniKani whenever I find a new unknown word during immersion.
1 Like
bunpro for sure! its great for vocab, ist srs, has community page and is simple to use !
but, keep in mind, bunpro doesnt have POLL thread!! lol
The E-deck words are going to be removed, according to the staff.
From a conversation I had with Bunpro staff about A vs E lists: “The entry in E1 is actually an older version that will soon be removed from the site. In general, if you come across any words marked as part of an E-list, please note that they are incorrect.”. Quote is from Chihiro at Bunpro.
So she said it would soon be removed but that was said 5 months ago, and it still hasn’t happened.
2 Likes
You can choose to learn the core10k vocabulary deck, or by N-level, with/without WaniKani vocabulary
