Hey there! I’m pretty new here and had a few questions.
So reading around, this place seems like a amazing community and place to learn from. But I’ve also read a lot about how WaniKani is mostly a place for learning kanji and not much else. Is that ture? Also I’m new to Japanese learning as well. I’ve learned hirigata and katakana and barely know any kanji, which this site should help with, but besides that I feel like there is still a lot I’m missing out on.
So basically my question is, is their anything else this site doesn’t offer that is a must to learn, that’s very important to speaking/reading Japanese?
Thanks for reading and I hope this can be helpful for other beginners too.
Kanji is the roadblock of most Japanese learners. Grammar can be grinded, listening can slowly improve over time with Japanese friends and, if you get the chance to, living in Japan. However after a while most learners get to this stage where they can speak pretty decently, understand more than they can say, but they cant read a menu, they have issues with writing simple Japanese sentances and pretty much have the Kanji ability equal to or lower than an elementary school student.
From me, WK is one of the best places to learn Kanji and in conjunction to that you also can learn vocabulary and it provides numerous sentances and examples for new words which in turn helps with grammer.
If your a new learner, definately grab some textbooks that work for you also, Genki 1, Minna no nihongo,…etc (find what you like) and weave WK into those studies.
On the contrary, I’d say learning 6,300 words counts as quite a whole lot of “else.”
If you want to become genuinely literate in Japanese, this is easily one of the best approaches that exist. You could, alternatively, learn to merely recognize all ~2000 of the general use kanji by themselves, which will subsequently speed up your learning compared to someone who doesn’t know the kanji at all, but you’d still have to eventually teach yourself their words and readings. Wanikani takes care of almost all of that for you, as long as you show up consistently.
is their anything else this site doesn’t offer that is a must to learn, that’s very important to speaking/reading Japanese?
This site won’t teach you any grammar, and there are tons of words that don’t exist as kanji.
It can be a minor issue for people who use WK as their sole source of vocab, yeah. But the whole purpose of WK is just to become literate. Once someone can actually read Japanese, they can learn the usages and nuances of words as they use the language.
Which isn’t a knock against WK at all–I think it’s amazing. It’s just targeting a single, specific part of Japanese-learning, and doing it really well. I’ve never found a more effective resource for reading kanji, and the doors that opens for all other areas of study are enormous.
But you’ll need other resources for grammar and vocab. (WK gives you vocab to support its readings, and it’s not for nothing, but you won’t always learn how to differentiate usages, it won’t always offer the most commonly used words for things since it’s ordered around kanji difficulty and obviously filled with jukugo words, being a kanji site, and you won’t get non-kanji words at all. So I feel it’s best used alongside dedicated vocab resources–or just the vocab provided in elementary textbooks at lower levels.)
Wanikani didn’t teach me how to do taxes, which I really need to know
Ok sorry for that I just wanted to make a funny Serious-ish answer:
Wanikani will teach you mainly kanji. After all, that’s what the main point of the site is.
However you will learn other stuff as well!
For example, you’ll learn 6000+ vocab.
You can learn pitch accent from listening to word pronunciation
You’ll get to practice reading Japanese with all the example sentences
You’ll learn a couple phrases as well (Such as いい加減にしろ) Although I’m not sure if “Phrase” is the right word
If you’re looking for something to learn grammar with though I suggest Bunpro.jp It’s basically Wanikani for grammar
I don’t think so ^^
Furigana is available so you don’t need to know kanji, really.
However vocabulary might be a problem. I think in the user guide Wanikani says at around level 5-10 you should be good for learning grammar
I have read from a few other posts that you should have an easier time with textbooks once you reach about level 10 in WK? Correct me if I’m wrong veteran WKers. But anyway, I bought Genki 1 before finding WK, but I’m holding off on it for a little while. It’s taken me a whole year to get to level 5 but I really slacked off when I was pregnant and had my baby this past year. Trying to be more consistent and want to put my textbook to good use soon!
I never bothered marking them down or reporting them. There were definitely a handful that I encountered that didn’t match the pitch accent from Weblio. I guess that means I’m assuming Weblio is right, but that’s what I based my assertion on. There was also a conversation within the last few months about the exact same audio file being used for two words that had the same reading but different pitch accents.
It’s basically Wanikani for grammar
