I don’t understand the point of radicals. They seem to just make things more confusing and contribute nothing. Just an extra thing I have to memorise for no reason.
Sometimes the radical meaning matches the kanji meaning. This seems like a complete waste of time as I could just have learned it once instead of twice.
Sometimes the radical is the same as a kanji but the meaning is different. This seems like it’s only there to be confusing. Truly a mystery to me. Like, why call 十 “cross” when you’re about to turn around and tell me it actually means “ten”?
Sometimes the radical is just part of a kanji and I have no idea what it’s for. Like the one called “hair” which is not the kanji that means hair (or a kanji at all) it’s just an extra shape to learn.
Often when I am presented with a new kanji it says “here are the radicals, can you see how they fit together?” and the answer is no, either because they’re overlapping so much that I have difficulty picking them apart - and I don’t know why I would want to or what value there would be in recognising them anyway - or because it actually isn’t there, it’s just the same number of lines in a sort of similar configuration but not actually matching.
So what am I missing? What am I supposed to be getting out of learning these things? What are they for?
My experience, learning radicals helps when looking up words. Knowing what makes up the kanji has been a huge help. Like knowing what the word starts with or how it’s kind of spelled to look it up in a dictionary.
The intention is pretty solid- learning 2000+ Kanji with no real rhyme or reason is a daunting task, but learning ~1/10th of that quantity in digestible single-word fragments is considerably more approachable. With that continually established basis, you could then mentally assemble them like Lego pieces for visual recognition and create more controlled mnemonics for the Kanji themselves, ultimately aiding learning and reinforcing memorization in the long run
For WK as a brand, the idea of showcasing a practical way to lower the barrier of entry on a monumental task like learning Kanji entices people to give it a shot- and thus it is the format here, and for many it earnestly does work (at least until they can get in the rhythm of learning enough to not rely on them)
Unfortunately though, learning is a very individually-varying experience for anything, especially something as complex and long-term as this- and if that system doesn’t click, it really does feel like nothing but an unnecessary deadweight of mental energy and space. I likewise don’t get anything out of radicals as a learning aid, nor do I pay any mind towards WK mnemonics aside from them sometimes being silly
That said, if you are finding yourself able to function fine without them- I, other users here, and probably even the WK staff would encourage you just to not pay mind to them and continue working in a way that suits you more than the site. If you can- maybe find an Anki mode extension or use an app like Tsurukame for your reviews and just do a quick “yes, next” rather than remembering and manually typing them each time
the only reason (within WK) for the radicals is to provide little characters or props for the meaning + reading mnemonic stories.
as a bonus outside of WK, if you can recognize the “radicals,” you have a huge leg up in writing by hand, since most of the radicals have a consistent stroke pattern in every occurrence. even if most of your japanese output is typing, this is also helpful when looking up a kanji by drawing it, because getting the stroke order right is information that helps the OCR algorithm
I started WK with maybe 100, 200 kanji that I already knew, and for me the radicals were pretty weird at first, especially 十, which you pointed out too.
now that we’re for the most part well past those kanji, in the early stages of learning a kanji card on WK, I do actually find that looking to and naming the different radicals often helps jog my memory for the little mnemonic story to get either the meaning or the reading, which then often helps me get the other one too.
that’s a pretty unfamiliar pattern of recall for me, so it takes some conscious effort to try it. and then later on in the SRS process, i just “know” the card and the mnemonic can fall away.
Radicals are for being able to memorize kanji using words.
For example, 浮 – how would you transfer it into words without radicals?
That… erm… line with two lines above then another line sort of going up right… Then three weird… short lines… then the line that goes right than down left than down… then… erm…
That part just can’t be helped. It’s frustrating, yes. I, as a user who did WK back in 2019-2021, don’t remember the names or meanings of the radicals that don’t have a kanji equivalent or any other meaning or lore/etymology of some kind.
Benefits of learning radicals:
Because it’s visually easier to remember kanji by their building blocks rather than all their single strokes: 髪 = 長 + 彡 + 友 instead of 14 strokes
Makes it easier to tell similar kanji from each other: 待 vs 持. 緑 vs 縁
Some radicals have their own meaning:
– E.g. the 月 in 腕 (arm) or 胴 (torso) is associated with the meaning “meat”. It’s actually from the 肉 (meat) kanji even if it looks like 月 when on the left side as a radical.
– E.g. ネ “spirit” which is found in lots of spiritually related kanji like 神 (god), 禅 (zen), 祈 (pray), etc.
If you don’t like mnemonics, then it might feel like busywork… but then, why choose WaniKani where the primary content you’re paying for is the thousands of mnemonics.
If you don’t like the radicals, you can ignore them. Just get an addon/client so you can mark as correct. And/or add the kanji meaning as a synonym.
That’s what I did. Not because I didn’t find value in radicals, but because I didn’t like what WK called them. I also didn’t care about the mnemonics for like 99.999% of items.
“But why use WK then”
Honestly…
the level gating, while frustrating, also ensured I didn’t take on too much (something I would definitely do)
The fact is, kanji are made up of building blocks that are often referred to as radicals, primitives, or components. As has been noted above, knowing these components can help the learner more easily digest and differentiate different kanji, and can help the learner with stroke order. That’s because, when writing a kanji, each component is written in order; one complete component is written before moving on to the next. So if you know how to write each component, then the stroke order of the whole kanji is usually trivial.
“Remembering the Kanji”, by Heisig, popularized the approach of learning the meanings and writings of kanji by assigning a fixed meaning to each component and then building mnemonic stories that use the component meanings as anchoring images in each story. The great popularity of RTK suggests that many people have found that approach to be very effective for what it’s trying to achieve. The problem with RTK is that it doesn’t address the readings of the kanji (at least, not in volume 1), and doesn’t teach vocab. WK’s use of vocab to reinforce the kanji is a huge benefit.
WK presents a similar mnemonic approach, but with some notable differences to how radicals are introduced and treated. There are aspects of WK’s approach to radicals that I don’t love. (I ranted a bit about this here: Venting about WK’s 中途半端 commitment to radicals.) I definitely agree with some of the complaints in the OP. But overall, many people have found the approach helpful to the learning process. I wouldn’t know how to approach learning 2,000+ kanji without using some form of building-block approach.
Lots of good advice above from other responders - use the radicals if they’re useful to you, and otherwise use an add-on to ignore them.
If you don’t use radicals, what do you use to remember and learn new Kanji? Stroke orders? Why would learning 15 strokes be easier than learning an easy mnemonic that consists of 3-4 radicals? Sorry to be so direct, but I’m a little baffled by this question because the main selling point of WK is mnemonics- and those mnemonics rely 100% on radicals.
When you get to the higher levels you’ll realize that many kanji are words and the radicals are the “letters” and it ends up just being spelling after all. (At least in terms of how you memorize them)
In addition many kanji use one radical to give meaning and one to give the sound. Having all the radicals memorized makes this so much easier.
