What should my goal be with WaniKani?

WaniKani
#7

Every learning method has their critics, rightly so. Unfortunately the critics you see here largely consist of people who don’t understand the WK system or don’t yet have enough knowledge of Japanese to understand the value of the system.

Only two different things to study? Japanese as a whole is much more difficult than that, you’ll have to study grammar, listening, speaking, writing (up to you on that), vocab, kanji, reading and probably more that I’m not thinking of right now. Every part of it is separate but will feed into each other to create a complete picture.

From WK standpoint, it teaches Kanji (and Vocab but only in relation to Kanji). That Kanji will help you understand how words are formed and therefore pick on patterns, it’ll also help you understand how verbs are conjugated (grammar) and help with acquisition of vocab. You also won’t be able to read much without it and as a result will struggle to find intermediate and advanced study materials.

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#8

I don’t think there is an issue with waiting a little bit with grammar if you know how to make super basic sentences already like 水が好きです。これは私の本です。これから勉強します。Etc.

I mean, starting at lvl 10 as recommended is probably not a bad idea if you feel overwhelmed.
Studying grammar is for sure much more pleasant and exciting when you can focus on grammar instead of kanji interfering every other sentence.

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#9

“Kanji are tough. Kanji are challenging. Kanji are mysterious and fun and maddening. Kanji comprise one of the great stumbling blocks faced by Westerners who want to become literate in Japanese. But kanji have nothing to do with grammar or sentence structure or thought patterns or the Japanese world view, and they are certainly not the Japanese language. They are just part of the world’s most clunky writing system, . . .

To this, I can only add that banana skins provide one of the best surfaces for writing kanji if one is using a ball-point pen. Since this book is intended to help with an understanding of the Japanese language, it will have nothing further to say about kanji.”

-Jay Rubin, Making Sense of Japanese

Wanikani isn’t going to teach you Japanese by itself. You should be doing some intensive grammar study right now to learn the actual language. Plenty of young Japanese children know Japanese quite well but know little to no kanji. Prior to the 20th century most Japanese people were, in fact, illiterate, but I’m told their Japanese was still quite good. There’s plenty of material aimed at younger or general audiences that you can read with only kana knowledge, provided your grammar and vocabulary are strong enough.

should I look at learning Kanji and learning Japanese as two seperate studies?

I would look at them as separate, but related. The more kanji you know the easier it is to find reading material you’re comfortable with and enjoy, which in turn helps you practice grammar and pick up more vocabulary. The more vocabulary you know the easier it is to relate it back to the kanji used to write it and remember those kanji. A language is composed of grammar and vocabulary, so to learn a language you need to study both together. In the context of Japanese vocabulary is probably best studied along with kanji since it’s more efficient, and that’s exactly what Wanikani does.

Is WaniKani even a tool for learning Japanese at all

Sort of. It teaches vocab, but that’s only part of the language. You have to pick up the grammar on your own.

Just keep up with Wanikani and your vocabulary and kanji knowledge will just keep increasing, almost in the background. Start studying grammar alongside it. It’s ok for grammar study to be somewhat inconsistent since once you really grasp something it tends to not leave you, but you really need a structured system if you want to learn kanji effectively and that’s what Wanikani provides.

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#10

I saw that website before! It looks a little intimidating, but I’ll give it a shot. Maybe I’ll like it.

Yeah graded readers seems like just the thing. I had found another one in that resource thread. That’s the reading I was talking about that I failed at… Probably should at least try harder!

#11

Haha :slight_smile: Well, an alternative might be Tae Kim’s grammar guide?

Based on how easy the Level 1 books are, I don’t think you should need too much grammar to tackle the Level 0 books. It would probably help to study a little though, because that will probably naturally expose you to some useful vocab that you’re likely to need, like the common movement verbs and so on.

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#12

Hehe, I could read most of that… Except for the Kanji in the final example.

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#13

Somehow that “writing on banana peel” thing seemed really profound. Like making a strong statement about the disconnect between learning Japanese and just Kanji.What you say about learning grammar is pretty encouraging.

Thanks for the advice guys. I’ll definitely try to pick up some more studies on grammar and vocab on the side, but keep up WaniKani consistently because I’m going to want to be able to read Kanji anyway.

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#14

Good luck! You can do it! :sparkles::crabigator::sparkles:

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#15

Think of kanji as a boost. You’ll be learning vocab that uses kanji. Knowing the kanji makes memorizing the word a lot easier. Same with grammar (because it involves reading example sentences, for example). You’ll also be able to increase your reading speed because kanji won’t be a problem. If you increase your reading speed, you’ll learn more. It’s pretty much a domino effect.

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#16

I think the Iknow! core 6000 set is quite good for vocab and comes with example sentences and full audio.
There are some Anki decks which are essentially rips of the entire thing, but the Iknow! site itself has each vocab split into 1000 and each 1000 split into 100, ordered by regularity of usage.

It starts off pretty simple with stuff like “please” and “thank you” and “you”, “this”, “that” and works up to stuff like “import”, “export” by about 3000.
I would recommend doing the first 2000 for a good core set of vocab.

You have to pay for it, but they have a couple of sample sessions too.
I think as exposure to the language, it will be a good start; only problem is all the vocab uses kanji; but this is not bad in and of itself as exposure breeds familiarity.

I would also say, despite what others have said, for me learning kanji seriously has made learning Japanese a lot easier. After a certain point trying to disconnect vocab and kanji and just learn one or the other is self defeating.

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#17

There, I clarified your sentence for you.

Jokes aside, I second iKnow’s Core 6000. The variety of ways it asks questions is nice, and they recently added hundreds of new example sentences. Besides, it’s good to support the actual content creator so they can continue to improve their content for current and future Japanese learners.

#18

Is there a good way to search the site for specific vocab?

#19

Not that I know of. It’s my biggest complaint about the website. Though now that you mention it, I think I’ll submit a ticket suggesting that.

#20

I didn’t know you could do that; I’m just used to devs being none existent.
Maybe I’ll do the same.

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#21

https://iknow.jp/zendesk or click the gear icon and then “Help”.

#22

I was one of those people mentioned earlier who enthusiastically took to WaniKani because while I had studied Japanese for years, I had a kanji-sized hole in my learning which was really starting to hold me back.

All that to say that you could definitely progress for a while in Japanese with very little kanji, but I think for the time WaniKani takes, it’s definitely worth it even for a beginner. After all people who speak Chinese natively usually do quite well in Japanese because while the speech and grammar systems are quite different, they already can understand (most of) the kanji. So getting a good grounding in kanji from the outset would give anyone a leg up.

Another good grammar tool that I’ll put in a good word for is Human Japanese. I went through the free levels because I thought they were interesting. I didn’t buy the whole app because I think it’s pretty redundant for my purposes (I’m already in a Japanese class that meets weekly). But it’s very affordable, and I think very well written and organized. Check out at least the free chapters:
http://www.humanjapanese.com/home

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#23

Oooh, Iknow! looks really cool. I’ll bookmark that for now, definitely giving it a shot later.

Speaking for devs everywhere: “We’re trying our bests, okay? :cry:”

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#24

I disagree. I hate looking at a wall of hiragana because I can’t tell where words start and end. Kanji is actually incredibly useful in keeping a sentence readable, and an integral part of written sentence structure. And, I believe that kanji absolutely affects the Japanese worldview, and vice-versa. It’s subtle, and not something people (other than sociolinguists, I suppose) think about very much, but the fact that Japan once considered scrapping kanji altogether and adopting English as their national language, then didn’t, speaks volumes about the Japanese identity. He is right that kanji is not the entirety of the Japanese language, but, duh? Grammar isn’t language. Writing isn’t language. Culture isn’t language. All these things, and more, together, make a language what it is. And kanji is a part of Japanese.

Sure, if you are not studying effectively, like, maybe with Wanikani…

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#25

It’s a curious passage in a useful book. I think you’re right, that the usage of kanji does certainly affect Japanese culture.

Jay Rubin understands way more Japanese than I ever will. He certainly knows his way around kanji (I mean, he translates Haruki Murakami), yet the book is written entirely using romaji to represent the Japanese in the examples he gives. I conclude that he feels the meaning and sound of the language are more important (for him) than how it is represented on paper.

#26

This is wisdom.