Why did the meaning of the kanji 想 change? I remember learning it as “concept” and now it says it says that it means “imagine”. I looked it up on Jisho.org, and it says that it means “concept, think, idea, or thought”.
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Many users (myself included) had problems with the nuance of the vocabs containing 想.
I wish they’ve made that change before I got to level 13. It still accepts concept though.
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Thank you 
The word concept is stuck in my head. I think of “imagine” as a creative process and “concept” as an idea that you have to understand. I suppose you might have to imagine a concept, though 
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Though I’ve completed this long ago so I probably learnt it as concept, for some reason my first thought when I saw the title was “Imagination”
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Lmao thought I was going crazy hahaha. Literally only ‘learned’ this kanji a couple days ago, so when I saw it in the word '想定’ today, the mnemonic referencing it as ‘imagination’, thought I was letting my own imagination take over. What a concept. Thanks for inquiring and not just accepting as I did haha!
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You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one
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I thought I was hallucinating! I studied this kanji as “concept”, 4 days later I learned a word whose mnemonic used it as “imagine”, went back to the kanji and found that its meaning is “imagine”, so I didn’t understand how come my answer “concept” was accepted throughout the apprentice levels! Now I understand.
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This kanji haunts me in my nightmares
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It’s easy if you try
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looool Izabelle’s post already had that song starting to play in the back of my mind, love seeing that “I’m not the only one” haha
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It was bugging me because I finally remembered them all, and then they went and changed it 
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I was going to ask about this and found this thread. Thanks for your thorough response!
But I’m having trouble imagining why WK would contemplate excluding concept from their definitions (even if they still allow it in your answers). Jisho list 想 to mean ‘concept…’ but when I look up ‘imagine’ in Jisho it ONLY uses 想 as part of other kanji/kana to expand on the word ‘imagine!’
For example, 想像しにくい means ‘hard to imagine.’ But no where does it list 想 as ‘imagine!’
So why wouldn’t WK simply keep ‘concept’ as part of the definition, instead of just accepting it as a correct answer? My imagination is running wild contemplating this concept 
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Hey @mods would you be so kind and explain what was the reason of ditching concept, idea and thought all together?
My take on it is something like this:
When you search online all the dictionaries, reference and kanji sites use concept as the first meaning. But let’s take a look at the vocabs 想 builds on wanikani -
Assumption 想定
Expectation 予想
Ideology 思想
Impressions 感想
Reminiscence 回想
To imagine 想像する
Fantasy 幻想
Pitiful 可哀想
Delusion 妄想
None of these words use the word concept in their english definition, not even one.
So why does all the sources use concept as the first go to option? My guess - most sites/apps just use the same resource as is. Jisho is not the origin of it’s content.
I think WaniKani stands in a unique position here, where they actually have enough data to support deviation from what those replicated sources suggest (iirc they also rely on the same resource for their source material)They also had to reevaluate it for themselves when they wrote the information. The fact that their content became so dynamic is quite admirable, because it means they understand that language is a living thing and translations are not set in stone.
This is so meta since kanji represent a concept not a word, that’s why it has so many meanings and guess which kanji doesn’t participate in 概念 ? 想 so much so that if you go to the wiki page of 概念 想 appears once and not in the explanation parts but in the related items as part of 発想 .
Also I bet when it comes to concept as a word, it is probably used as the loan word コンセプト more than any of it’s Japanese counterparts since it is such a specific word. I try to imagine what would you use it for beyond asking - what is the concept behind x,y,z or talking about conceptual art. Even when you talk about a concept you’re most likely start your explanation by saying - I imagined/ I thought about/ I was contemplating the. I conceptualized it as? Not likely, that’s part of the reason the use of concept as the main hook didn’t stick for the idea behind 想.
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Hey! Yes, I can give you a breakdown of our thought process here.
It looks like a learner suggested we add “thought” to the our allow list since it’s used in the mnemonic for 回想, and this sparked a conversation about the meanings of 想.
Because 考え is a definition/synonym for 想 in some dictionaries, we considered “thought” to be a good choice to add to the kanji’s meanings. However, 想 is more associated with the words “imagine” or “think,” and “concept” didn’t stand out as much when we reevaluated 想. Also, only the subject 回想 uses “thought” in the mnemonic. Since we didn’t have any other kanji that use “imagine” as a primary meaning, we thought “imagine” could be a good candidate.
So in the end we chose to add “imagine” as the primary meaning, “contemplate” as the alternate meaning, and moved “concept" to the allow list, along with “imagining,” “think,” “thinking,” “thought,” and “contemplation."
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本当にありがと @RachelG
This really supports the idea of gently starting to move from English-Japanese-English dictionaries to Japanese-Japanese ones.
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