There are definitely items that are useless to be reviewing though. Useful words to learn include words that fit any of the categories below. bonus points if it hits multiple:
- they’re VERY common, and you are likely to hear them
- you can’t figure out what they mean close enough to be useful just based on the kanji they’re composed of
- they have rendaku or have some exceptional readings and you’ve not seen reading/rendaku patterns like that before.
the highlighted words are great examples of words I don’t need to learn: on a single glance, I can tell you what they mean, and how they’re read without needing to check.
we’ve got “nenpai”, which I already learned months ago, but is now showing up in my lessons for some reason(likely cause it was moved to a lower level recently).
we’ve got “goji”, which is very likely to mean something like “mistaken/incorrect kanji”.
we’ve got “goyou”, which is very likely to mean “misused”(and the context is likely with words being misused).
we’ve got “donnburi”, which is a big bowl of rice topped with beef which I’ve had at a japanese restaurant near me.
there’s “tategaki”, which I guessed at the reading for and got completely correct, it just means vertical writing. I knew this one because I’d seen “tategatahaishin” before when watching noel shirogane.
There’s “seichi”, which is obviously “holy grounds”
There’s “nattou”, which is a gross fermented bean in japan that fuwawa the hololive vtuber hates eating. fair enough that there’s a weird reading for the first kanji, but as soon as I saw the kanji for beans was “tou”, and the kanji for supply this level also had a listed reading of “naxtu”, it was simple to put 2 and 2 together. I already know this word, effectively.
there’s “oozonn”, which does have rendaku, but I guessed the reading of this one correctly first try(and the meaning is very obvious, as always), so I don’t really see any reason to review it. “heavens”(oozora) has the same sort of rendaku to it, so knowing that word already taught me this one’s readings as well.
if I’ve got 15 of those that are useless per level(it’s usually about that, if not more. you could also lump one of the 2 trans/intrans pairs in there, especially if they have the same meanings for both. there’s a bunch of that per level that just waste my time), then suddenly that’s 900 extra flashcards of uselessness. time is better spent elsewhere, like reading native material, listening to native material, or doing almost anything else, really.
If there’s going to be 10 different vocab words per kanji, I’d rather they fit one of the 3 bullet points above, instead of being dead weight, but that’s a different topic, and I’ve ranted enough on this at length already.
I understand that burning items might not be as simple as I thought, but doesn’t have to be burnt: I just need them to not show up in my reviews and I want to keep my lessons screen full of lessons I actually plan on learning, that’s good enough for me. I’ll check out that filter plugin you linked, it’s description seems promising. Big 'prec.