I’m on level 9 and suddenly I’m seeing new radical lessons for things like “machine”, “correct”, and “anti” — all which were learned as kanji and vocab many times over in previous lessons. What’s the point in reintroducing them as radicals?
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Simple Kanji become radicals in gradually more complex kanji. It keeps the number of radicals that you need to build a mnenomic for to a sensible level of three of four per kanji, rather than saying ‘there’s a slide, a grave, two grounds. a life at a left hand corner…etc’
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I think I understand that concept, but I have a much easier time drilling radicals than Kanji. I thought it was jarring as well when I saw Correct and Fault suddenly appear as radicals recently.
Simple Kanji become radicals in gradually more complex kanji. It keeps the number of radicals that you need to build a mnenomic for to a sensible level of three of four per kanji, rather than saying ‘there’s a slide, a grave, two grounds. a life at a left hand corner…etc’
Right, but there’s literally nothing new. It’s presenting 正=‘correct’ as a radical when I already know it as the kanji meaning from many levels ago. I don’t understand the advantage of giving me the exact same symbol and exact same definition again, but calling it a “radical” instead of just referencing the kanji?
That’s because you can’t unlock the kanji without unlocking all its components as radicals. That is just how this website works.
It does seem rather bizarre to get Correct (正) as a kanji and vocab at level 2 and then get the radical at level 9. Likewise machine (台) appears as a kanji and vocab at level 3, but the radical appears at level 9 as well.
Given that kanji are made up from the radicals, it seems strange to learn the radical after the kanji.
I understand why they do not appear until level 9, because that is when you start to see kanji that make use of that radical: 正 is a radical in 定 (Determine) at level 9, and 台 is a radical in 始 (Begin) at level 10. It just makes my tidy ordered brain hurt 
I’d say it’s likely a technical limitation. Right now, you can only build kanji from radicals on WaniKani, so they have to create additional radicals from kanji. Hopefully they eventually just build kanji from other kanji to save the extra step.
Right. And tbh, I feel like there’s no “urgent” need to “fix” this. If they were to remove these radicals, they would increase the number of fast levels even more (the overhaul unlocked 3/4 extra fast levels).
I know some people want it faster, but this wouldn’t be a solution for them. I can see more users getting hurt than the opposite.
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If it’s being presented to you as a radical, doesn’t that mean you’re learning that you should expect to see this kanji as a component of a more complex kanji? That doesn’t seem pointless to me!
Also, wanikani is hard enough sometimes. I’ll take having an easy radical.
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My explanation would be because kanji aren’t made up of other kanji. They are made up of radicals. I guess they technically are referencing the kanji by calling it a radical. 
If you know the kanji, learning it again as a radical shouldn’t be an issue anyway. If you don’t know the kanji, then learning it as a radical would sort of be extra practice. Either way, not a big deal in my opinion. 
Also this :
Well said. 
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Thank you that makes perfect sense
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