I must not be the only person who gets wildly inspired by other people’s successes with studying Kanji. I’d love this thread to be a collection of positive moments and feelings of success while learning kanji with Wanikani.
Did you recently recognize a word somewhere in the wild?
Are you proud of playing a Japanese video game thanks to this app?
…etc.
No matter how big or small, let’s collect our happy & proud kanji & wanikani moments here.
I recently learned 運がいい from WK and was very excited to see it in the wild in the book I was reading!!
Lately my main breakthrough is that I start being able to read simple Japanese without much effort. For a long time decoding even basic kanji would require a very conscious effort, but now I often find that I can just skim full sentences and extract meaning without requiring full focus.
I saw 耳打ち in a book recently which always entertains me because it’s such an early WK word and sometimes people complain about it being useless. Not useless today!
I’m just having fun with Japanese. I can’t afford any travel plans, I have no need to learn the language. I don’t even consume a huge amount of Japanese TV/movies/etc.
So I got sucked into the free WaniKani in December and I’m only up to level 5 now. Meanwhile, I only really used Duolingo to learn hiragana and katakana. Tried a few lessons and it was dull and quizzed without teaching first. WaniKani is my way of playing a game on my phone to pass time without wasting time and I don’t feel bad about doing it.
So now I’m shocked when I’m realizing that I can understand more and more vocabulary when watching Japanese TV shows. I am also catching up on the Tofugu podcast (currently up to 2020 episodes). And yesterday, I heard and understood 本当 both on a Tofugu podcast episode and the most recent episode of The Hotspot.
With WaniKani as my only primary learning source right now, I actually feel like I’m learning the language and piecing together more and more of what I see and hear.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I never have my sound on and never listen to the sample pronunciations. So I have to do that myself in my head from the readings. I know I miss a lot of nuance and intonation that way, but I feel like the pronunciation sticks faster for me.
I was reading Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Sempai and there were so many times when a word showed up that I had either learned or reviewed recently on WK!
It’s be too many to list, but here are some that I remember:
文字通り
保証
鼻歌
Don’t get me wrong I was reading before WK, and I am also doing things beyond WK, but I am absolutely seeing gains specifically because of this app. Even for things I learned elsewhere in the past, I feel my brain’s connections are stronger because I relearned the kanji and/or vocab here.
That being said, I know some people in other social medias that use WK and say they still struggle or don’t see the stuff they learn show up, but a lot of them don’t read books (they primarily read things like subtitles). I like books, especially novels, so maybe that could be a factor. Or maybe it’s just luck. Either way, works great for me!
One night, I was doing new lessons and learned 西. I was also watching TV. Not ten minutes later, I saw that kanji on a program that was happening in an auditorium.
I didn’t do WK for a couple of weeks, but when I came back, I realized that I was suddenly remembering all kinds of kanji that I had always had problems with. Now I am figuring out a lot of new kanji definitions and pronunciations before I look at them. I feel like I am really learning now!
This thread is a great idea.
I am new to WaniKani so not expecting big results so far, but I think one of the most impressive wins is noticing Kanji and knowing their meaning even if I’m too green to know the reading yet.
I think Wanikani is main reason I could read so much and pass N1 when it came to kanji knowledge.
Even though I don’t really ever study anymore like I used to, kanji is still one of my stronger points thanks to it. Whenever friends ask me how did I study Kanji, I always recommend it.
I just recently played all of Metaphor and finished the Ace Attorney game that takes place in London last year, so if you just stick with it and also study daily vocab/grammar little by little, you’ll be able to enjoy pretty much any popular print media in Japanese I think.
Currently working through Genki II grammar stuff and conjugation is kickin’ my rear. I was talking with some of my teachers at the school I work at, and it was fun to bring up how 活用形 is difficult as heck. They looked at me like “why did you learn this word of all things?” This word comes up pretty early in WK too, around level 7.
It’s funny to bust out these kinda random and rarely-used words to the surprise of people around you hehe.