Wanikani memes

cries in 材木… or was it 木材

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oooh those two words pissed me off on kaniwani. I wonder why it does not have synonym system like kamesame does

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That one too

I still don’t think I remember which is which ><


they can be fun

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well, WK has “lumber/wood” for both of them, but iirc one of them is unprocessed lumber and the other one lumber that has been transformed, like into planks.

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I think even 大辞林 treats them as synonyms. If I had to force a distinction based on the order of the kanji, I would say 材木 is wood that is suitable for use as construction material, whereas 木材 is material that is wooden. What comes before modifies what comes after, and thus, what comes after is usually the ‘main character’. That’s a general rule of how kanji work in Mandarin and in Japanese.

I know this is a meme thread, but seriously speaking, 栄光 has to be glory, while 光栄 is far more likely to be honour. It’s in the kanji, and you just need to apply the same rule: what comes before modifies what comes after, and the second kanji is the main noun. 栄 on its own (in both Japanese and Chinese, I believe) refers to ‘honour’, ‘good repute’ and ‘fame’, and can of course also be linked to ‘glory’. However, it’s basically some sort of thing that allows its possessor to hold his/her head up high. As such, 栄光 is an ‘honourable light’, and well, only glory carries that sort of radiance. On the other hand, a ‘shining good reputation’ (光栄) is honourable above all, and not necessarily glorious.

Here’s an old post in which I did a full analysis to differentiate them.

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This is the kind of info I really wish WK would share with us. Thank you.

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Happy to help. I learnt Chinese as a child, so kanji usually isn’t much of an issue for me. Actually though, you can kind of infer this rule

from how Japanese arranges words around the possessive/descriptive の particle. It’s just that only experience will allow you to affirm that such a hunch is correct.

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^Yes, thank you ^^
I’ll look through your post later (*bookmarks*) when I have more time, but it looks very helpful

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WaniKani doesn’t even bother to research the etymology of 交番 or the transitivity of 続く/続ける. Why would they do anything so useful as help us tell extremely similar vocabulary items apart?

Though, I struggle to distinguish 日本 from 本日 at the best of times, so perhaps I’m not one to talk. :stuck_out_tongue:

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(this says これは平気, which means this is fine)

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Just happened to me, with like 10 items

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Actually I think they did update 交番 recently to include etymology. I restarted after level 10 so I saw that it had been changed to include information about the word’s origins.

But yes, in general I know how you feel. There is a lot of focus on silly mnemonics and not enough emphasis on how different kana change the meaning of words. If I could change one thing, that would be it.

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Because of Sajang93’s meme, I was just alerted to existence of KaniWani at Level 11. At least I wasn’t at 60 but oh my god did I still fuck myself over, lol. I don’t know how to do anything but read!!!

oh boy this meme saved my life lol
484qxx

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doing both WK and KW at once can become very tough though.

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(I’d rather do WK and Bunpro (grammar) at the same time, and right now i can only manage WK.
but wrong thread i guess)

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Oh! Glad I could help! :o Good thing you didn’t get any further. lol

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Oh, it’s like magic.

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Don’t forget your daily dose of durtles

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And you should also use Japanese keyboard on kaniwani so not only will you recall readings but kanjis as well :slight_smile:

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Imma need the sauce for this pic, cause uh, all I can think abt is an anime adaption of Terminator.
(pls tell me I’m right. Pls make my dreams come tru)

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