What are the best supplementary resources for WaniKani? What about after WaniKani?

Japanese Language
#1

First of all, exactly how many kanji are taught in WaniKani? I did a quick count and it looks like a weird number, about 80 or so away from all of the Jouyou kanji. If that’s the case, what resources would be good to utilize to learn the rest? Even if it isn’t the case, what about the Jinmeiyou kanji? Well, anyways, I’m only on level 4, so I’ve got quuuuiiite a ways to go before that’s relevant.

What is immediately important, though, is a different question. What resources should I use to learn Japanese grammar? I’m not worried about supplementary vocabulary, I can learn more of that once I start reading things, and via osmosis from anime and stuff in the meantime, but what about grammar? What are good resources/self-taught approaches for learning grammar?

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#2

I think it’s around 2100. Once you learn those I am positive that learning the rest will be easy, heck even at my level I’m finding it much more common finding vocab I don’t know than kanji. I’d say when you encounter a word that contains kanji you don’t know just memorize the vocab word itself with a flashcard app like Anki or similar. Learning all the kanji from jouyou or jinmeiyou or wherever else isn’t important (unless you’re taking a test which focueses on that category) what’s important is being able to read and so WaniKani teaches those which you are most likely going to encounter.

As for grammar, well that’s a tough one, I don’t think I can really recommend a single place to learn from since my grammar knowledge came from all over the place. Here’s a good place with several grammar resources you can look into.

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#3

2027 kanji are taught in total.

This page shows you exactly which Joyo Kanji are not covered by WaniKani.

#4

There’s no particular reason to want to do exactly the jouyou kanji.

Unless you just want to be able to say that you know things like 蚕 (silkworm), which don’t appear in the top 15,000 most frequently used words in Japanese.

I would say if you complete WK and want more kanji, just consume real content and add new kanji as you encounter them. That will be more productive than just doing a list of name kanji.

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#5

Note that WK includes over 60 Jinmeiyou kanji already.

I wouldn’t worry too much about it if you don’t plan to for example take a test where all Jouyou kanji are expected. The Jouyou list just reflects what a bunch of old guys considered to be important 70 years ago, it sometimes doesn’t coincide with what you would call “frequent use”.

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#6

Yeah, I think people often see N1’s kanji list described as “all jouyou kanji” and worry they haven’t learned all of them, but there are a lot that I would be shocked to ever appear on the test, because they’re obscure cultural things or just barely ever used.

But if you take level 5 of the Kanken, then you should know 蚕, because it has a good chance of appearing.

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#7

Yes, I was wondering about that worry as well. It is extremely unlikely to fail N1 only because you had problems with obscure kanji. It is good to have a look at them of course, but there are more fruitful ways to spend your preparation time. Even the people designing the tests would know it was just malicious to keep asking foreigners stuff you don’t need in daily life.

On the positive side after you reach level 60 (or rather say 30–40) it is easy to learn any missing ones (it’s not a shame to be a completionist). You already know all parts the kanji are constructed of, they are often semantic-phonetic compounds, and they are more regular in that regard. You won’t ask yourself the question “how do I learn the rest?” then, you can just do it.

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#8

Yeah, there are a grand total of 6 questions in the N1 kanji section. They are sure to use them on hard, but not super obscure, kanji.

Everything else that involves reading kanji (like in the reading comprehension section) is going to be influenced by if the words themselves are considered N1 words.

I’m pretty sure if 蚕 appeared it would be one of those things with a note explaining it.

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#9

Silkworm is not a difficult Kanji to learn, and although it may be obscure in print, it is very useful in the primary school classroom…

#10

There’s nothing inherently difficult about the shape of most kanji.

I’m not sure what you mean about primary school expect that that’s when Japanese people learn it.

#11

I quite like Japanese for busy people as a resource for learning grammar and expand vocabulary/listening skills. Having tried Genki as well, I find Japanese for busy people much better for the self learner as it doesn’t assume you’re a teenager in a classroom environment. On top of that I’d suggest Lingodeer, a free app that also helps a lot.

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#12

I also like LingoDeer quite a lot. I’ve heard it doesn’t go that far but it’s effective to teach the content it has however incomplete it may be.

Here are the exact numbers per subject types, extracted using the API :
Radical : 478
Kanji : 2027
Vocabulary : 6301

I think that 2047 is more than you need. The list of joyo kanji includes 2136 kanji but many of them are useless.

I think that from a certain point, you know enough to be able to learn by practice. Just use your Japanese and learn when you encounter new things.

Here is a page linking to everything you could dream of related to learning Japanese : The Ultimate Additional Japanese Resources List! .

#13

Primary School is the first six or seven years of formal schooling and is an age where many children are silkworm obsessed!

#14

I like Japanese from Zero, the YouTube videos are great!

#15

This must be region-based, because I don’t think I (or anyone I ever knew) spent any time in their life caring about silkworms.

#16

I used to keep silk worms, though that was back when I was in kindergarten or first grade. We had a mulberry tree in our back garden.

#17

Do I know you? :wink:

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#18

Japanese are certainly obsessed with bugs, but the craze seem to be these guys:

http://u1.ipernity.com/12/37/49/5833749.e2ea30b7.500.jpg

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#19

Some unconventional aproach to learning grammar could be the one I do. I’m not sure if right away if you don’t have any background, but at least after the most basic of textbooks you should be ok to give it a try.

I do sentence mining using this method with Anki and some plugins.

I keep both the first 2 volumes of the Dicitonary of Japanese Grammar series and Handbook of Japanese Grammar Patterns at hand and resolve doubts as they appear in this terrific reference books.

Japanese the Manga Way serves as a great companion book for having actual samples with the use of those grammar points while explaning nuances in their use. I read it every week, it’s fun and a light reading, yet really clarifying in some aspects.

As far as grammar and learning it, I would limit all the SRS and nice apps to a minimum and just start reading (graded readers for japanese learners, basic japanese tales aimed at children, etc; and move forward as you see possible)
The SRS apps are great for memorizing… yet grammar it’s something your have to experience over and over to come through and get the actual uses for each grammar point.

#20

We all had silkworm farms as kids; the neighbourhood mulberry trees were very popular…

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