Which portion of lessons do you like the most/memorize the fastest?

I’d divide the lessons into:

  1. Radicals
  2. Kanji unlocked alongside radicals (those which are made from previous levels’ radicals)
  3. Kanji unlocked after Guru-ing radicals
  4. Vocab unlocked after Guri-ing kanji (unlocked alongside next level radicals)

Personally I like 4 the most. It feels good to learn vocab made of Kanji you just learnt before unlocking. I learn/memorize them the fastest as well.

For me, worst is 1 and 3. Since apart from the Kanji which takes after the meaning of identical radical counterparts, all of them require lots of logic and forcing you to recognize their meaning through mnemonics. 2 is better than these but suffers from the same problem as 3.

There is also 5. Radicals derived from a previous level Kanji, but they are probably the easiest out of the lot so I omitted them.

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My least favorite are kunyomi vocab when the original kanji reading is onyomi. Those have to be 75% of the mistakes I make during reviews.

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Same here. 1, 2 and 3 are quite easy to memorize due to the mnemonics, but I struggle with a lot of vocab items. Their mnemoics are subpar compared to their kanji counterparts and often don’t make any sense (to me at least), that’s why they cause the most trouble for me.

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I find kanji hardest to learn, especially the readings. There are some which I just get right away because of the mnemonics and then there are some where the mnemonic doesn’t stick or it’s a complicated-looking kanji so I have to spend a while figuring it out, and so on. (And I’m only Level 6…) For instance, there are baseball-based mnemonics which don’t help me at all because I’m not American and I just ??? scratch my head.

I’d say vocab is easiest/my favourite part. Then because I’ve got the kanji down I can try and guess the readings of words before I look at the reading section. There’s often exceptions which I generally like the challenge of learning and I like seeing how the kanji I know forms words. But then there’s always some random or just difficult vocabulary word - whether because it’s irregular, or the meaning is harder to deduce from the kanji because it’s not a literal translation, etc. They tend to appear when I’ve just levelled up and they’re the last batch of vocab from the previous level.

As for radicals, honestly I try and whiz through those as fast as possible. I’d say I spend most time learning the kanji, and then the vocab tends to slot in after that.

Vocab is the easiest.
Radicals are also easy.
Kanji are difficult for me however.

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What I find the hardest so far is remembering the different readings of kanji and vocab, when it’s actually the same kanji. UGH.

Kanji, without a doubt, is the hardest to me. I spend quite some time in those lessons.

I memorize vocabulary the fastest because we already learned the kanji for them so it’s just a matter of putting them together. Radicals are also generally easy.
My biggest issue is that I’ve been studying Japanese for three years so I sometimes go too fast and put in the reading I already know instead of the reading wanikani wants me to learn. I’m sure that’ll stop happening once I get through the first few levels and I start coming across kanji I haven’t seen before.
I also trip up on putting the onyomi for a kanji by itself. Like if I see 水、my gut instinct is to put みず instead of すい but in the kanji section, wanikani is asking for すい and in the vocab section it’s asking for みず.

If you’ve put in a correct reading, it should just shake and ask you for the ‘other reading’…? You shouldn’t ever get a kanji wrong from putting in a different but correct reading. The other possibility is that you’re getting muddled up with vocabulary items - it will only accept the actual reading of the word, so watch out for whether it’s a vocabulary or a kanji item.

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By far, the hardest thing for me to remember is kun’yomi vocab readings and also vocab like 都合 where the meaning is like “…wha-?”
Kanji and radicals come pretty easy to me at this point, but once in a while a tough kanji pops up.

Vocabulary is the easiest and most fun for me. Kanji is the most difficult, and keeps getting more difficult.

Seeing radical lessons come up that are already-learned kanji gets me feeling like

image

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For me, radicals are super-easy.
Kanji are also easy most of the time because of the (mostly) great mnemonics.

What really annoys me, though, is if I am taught a kun reading with the kanji itself. This messes with my internal system so badly. I really don’t know why they are doing this. (Yes, I know, the official reason is that it’s the more familiar reading, and sometimes that is true, but sooner or later the other reading shows up anyway, so where’s the point. And recently I had a kanji with kun reading, followed by a bunch of vocab that utilized the on reading - thanks for that…)
I’d rather learn an on reading that is rarely used, when “in exchange” I could rely on the fact that the reading I learn with the kanji is always the on reading.

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I feel ya.
Every time this happens it feels like I slip on a rock during the run.

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Kanji is super easy for me somehow. I just remember it all, and often end up memorizing both on yomi and kun yomi readings after glancing at the example vocab provided. Most kanji go straight to burned with not a single mistake. And like 90% of the few mistakes I make on kanji is when I read too fast and think it’s showing another kanji entirely with similar radicals. The rest are when offer up a synonym of the meaning that’s not included by default…or honest typos.
Radicals? Ehhh. If I make a mistake on one, I’ll just add the mistaken answer into the possible answers, on the basis that if I thought of it once I’m likely to think of it again. Most of them are just made up things anyway and after learning to recognize the real radicals on sight I don’t really need to know more. I get most of them right regardless.

Vocab? Everything is fine as long as it’s standard. But once they start mixing up on and kun readings or adding rendaku or going fancy with them combinations that have no logical relation to the meaning of the word (like the aforementioned 都合)… yeah. Not so great with that…

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Honestly the early radicals were pretty hard, as I knew most of the actual names for them, I had to add synonyms like crazy. I really didn’t see a point to trying to memorize them with weird meaning all over again. It’s a bit easier now that I’m getting more into ‘fake’ radicals as one cannot have prior knowledge about them.

Kanji and vocab are about the same, most at this point are being applied to words that I already know, but the strange ones that seem all over the place screw me up all the time.

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Yeah it’s the vocab that I’m getting muddled up with. I’m getting used to paying attention to whether or not it’s a vocab or a kanji item a lot better. I guess missing a few words that I should have known was punishment enough for me to start being more careful :stuck_out_tongue:

Hehe, glad to hear it :slight_smile: It certainly took me a few levels to get used to it, but surprisingly you really do. The kanji also tend to be more ‘zoomed in’, and of course the text says ‘vocabulary reading’ and whatnot. Good luck!

Pardon my digression but where did you get that profile picture.

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I can’t remember if it was in Genki 1 or 2 but I can remember everyone in class losing our minds when we found out Mary-san smokes.

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