It was wondering if there is a Wanikani-like app for Korean or if there is potential for one to be created. Not kitsune or anki. I understand Wanikani was made for people having difficulties with Kanji. But for myself, I like to think of it as a way to pick up vocabulary. There are plenty of times when I’m conversing and can’t find the words I’d like to use. Regardless of whether the language is written in pinyin, Hangul or Kanji, I find myself falling short in that realm. Wanikani has helped me develop my vocabulary, recognizing kanji comes second (I fluently speak Cantonese). Yes, we can all read Hangul pretty well in probably at most 2 days, but how quickly can we pick up vocabulary? Those SRS apps help, but they don’t scaffold, stage and game-fy the process the way Wanikani does. The way Wanikani does this makes it so much easier than to create or borrow our own decks, sort out relevant/used vocabulary and introduce it in such a way that it builds up.
There seems to be quite some offerings for Korean on Memrise.
Of course not quite as rigid as WK, since it lets you do however many lessons you please at any given time, but it’s SRS, with gamification aspects of XP points and streaks. And free, so it can’t hurt to give it a go.
And unlike WK, you can skip whatever you already know, so you won’t have to double up on things.
Memrise actually has some good resources for Japanese too, when I was studying Tobira for N3, the vocab was a lot for me to memorize just off the word list, with most words not being used in the chapter readings. Someone made a memrise course for Tobira’s vocab which I used gratefully. I think there were the same sorts of lists for Genki, and also Core _k decks as well. Plus I believe its free so theres that too!
I mainly recommend TTMIK for Korean, especially these books: My Weekly Korean Vocabulary, books 1 and 2 (with lots of sample sentences) The Korean Verbs Guide, books 1 and 2, which will help you learn verbs and used them in sentence My First Hanja Guide, which is not as great as WaniKani, but it can help. (this will build on your Cantonese understanding) Handbook of Korean Vocabulary, which is not from TTMIK but is a solid reference for vocabulary. (this organizes vocabulary by Sino-Koran words in the first major section)
You can always look on Anki, which I used for a spell for Korean.
memrise is better than people give it credit for. you can customize the behavior of courses, and creating your own via copy & paste from lists is easy going. the fact that it’s free makes it the best free option for vocab for me (anki might be the most customizable, but i can’t stand it’s looks).
best paid option would be iknow, but no idea if there’s a korean version.
As far as I know, Kitsun has as much gamification as Wanikani (and stats will be added soon). The founder is also wanting to add a Korean dictionary to the platform (so u can make flashcards of vocab in seconds) and a Korean keyboard (much like you don’t need to change keyboards to do WK reviews). There’s also some Korean decks available there, tho I’m not sure about the quality as I haven’t used them. If being a paid platform (with 14 days of free trial) isn’t a no for you, I’m recommend staying alert
