Why Does WaniKani Stop at Lvl60?

I think most of them show up in names though, so that’s where it gets tricky. I do get what you’re saying, but I think the argument that Wanikani should stop at 60 for this reason seems moot. Why not offer it and let people choose for themselves whether or not they want to keep learning? No one is making people go to 60 obviously, but some people choose to do it, and I’m sure people would choose to go to 65 or 70 as well if they were implemented.

The other big thing is that WK could go on forever, but you need to leave the SRS nest eventually.

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True but I think all the Joyo kanji seems to be a logical stopping place.

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Ok so we have a cost to implement it vs the chance that someone who has already reached level 60 who doesn’t have a lifetime membership will continue to use WK. Cost vs revenue don’t seem very good here. I’m sure if it was they would have already done it by now.

I find this to be a common mindset amongst beginners.

Picture this:

You spend time learning a kanji in isolation. You spend time reviewing that kanji over a year. You don’t come across that kanji for a year and a half. You could have spent all that time learning other more useful stuff that would have benefitted you throughout the past year

When you finally come across the kanji, you kinda remember it, and you finally learn a word which still requires effort and possibly a reading you didnt learn.

Person B never learned the kanji and comes across that word and just learns the whole word as one thing…They have a slightly harder time but they didn’t spend the past year reviewing the kanji.

At the end of the day, person B was more efficient with their time than you.

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That’s basically it. This isn’t a software you’re learning, its a language you’re adding the building blocks to your memory. It’s impossible to be prepared for every eventuality (= kanji) you will ever encounter. Training wheels have got to come off sometime, might as well be at level 60.

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You can take a look at this thread to see what kind of word are fairly obscure but pop up from time to time and thus would appear in those > 60 levels. Basically tons of words using unique kanji that appear only in a few words.

It would be quite a waste of time to learn them following WK formula, spending time and effort learning several individual kanji and their reading, only to be used in only one word.

Actually, there is already one vocab like this in WK. At some point we learn 挨 “push open” with and 拶 “draw close”, only to learn one single word 挨拶 which mean greeting. It’s arguably an important vocab but by learning it WK style, it means spending lot of effort trying to keep in mind the “push open” or “draw close” meaning, reciting mnemonics, maybe fail those card from time to time etc. All of this quite useless because 挨 and 拶 are never used anywhere else but in 挨拶.

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I think this is pretty irrelevant in the context of wanikani.

Leaving the SRS nest is an inevitability, but its so far down the road that its way beyond level 60. You can do it earlier if you want, but with all the vocab you need to read books and not be looking stuff up, SRS is definitely something to stay for a long time if you so choose.

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I’m a native English speaker, but I don’t know every word in the English language either. I read a book in English a few months ago and had to look up a few words, and that’s okay! Obviously there’s a lot more to learn in Japanese since it’s not your native language (or a language you’ve had years/decades of exposure to), but that doesn’t mean you have to learn everything ahead of time. You say they will come up sooner or later, but that’s not necessarily true. Depending on what you read, it’s likely there are some kanji (even jouyou kanji) that you’ll rarely, if ever, see. After you have a good base, I really don’t see the value in learning kanji out of context, because it becomes increasingly likely that you won’t see those kanji on a regular basis when reading. You’re better off learning these after seeing them a few times in the real world, in the context of the word(s) you saw the them in.

I’ve been thinking the same thing. When I was a low level on WaniKani I also asked why more kanji weren’t covered. Now nearly two years after finishing WaniKani and reading Japanese books regularly, there are still many kanji from the last several levels of WaniKani that I have never seen. Or if I have seen them, I didn’t remember them from WaniKani anyway, and they often used readings different from the one WaniKani taught.

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Yeah its pretty funny how it ends up being the opposite of what you expect.

Not to say you won’t get any benefit out of completing the last 10 or 15 levels of WK, but just in terms of efficiency you definitely start to get a drop that you really don’t become aware of until further down the road.

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Plenty? There are only 155 Joyo kanji not on Wanikani (also Wanikani teaches some Jinmeiyou kanji) and if you want to learn them you could just search around and find some topics with already made mnemonics for them.
I mean do you really want to learn all kanji used for plants, fishes and birds? :smile:

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Cause then you’re learning Chinese instead. (Just kidding! Don’t come at me!)

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Can’t lie, the discussion has made me a bit less eager to spend time completing the final 10 levels :sweat_smile:.
Nonetheless, cake awaits.

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So does the English word “floccinaucinihilipilification”. You’ll probably now look up the definition, attempt to remember it, then forget it later. So, what was the point, since you’re unlikely to come across it again?

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from the top of my head: the action of regarding something as nothing?

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The biggest reason is because only like 1200 people have even gotten to level 60, and most of those are either already lifetime members, stopped using WaniKani, or wouldn’t continue on for further levels.

As others mentioned, it is diminishing rewards as well, though I will point out that you definitely still will see kanji not covered by WK pretty regularly, but what these are will vary wildly based on what sort of things you are reading

I do still maintain though that WK really ought to have some targeted packs to deal with this though. Like a nanori focused pack with names as vocab, an animal kanji pack, a legal kanji pack, etc, so people can choose based on their own specialized interests.

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I find this to be somewhat of an ignorant and condescending thing to say, I am far from a beginner in Japanese. None of your points have addressed the fact that if people want to learn something through Wanikani then it seems silly that the business model doesn’t accommodate for that. You are simply arguing why someone shouldn’t want to do something and claiming that it’s inefficient, but in a later post you admit that people will likely need to continue using SRS well after Wanikani, just like I’m continuing SRS well after graduating from college with a minor in Japanese.

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I think this is by far the most logical response so far. So thank you for that. I had no idea that such a small number of people had gotten to level 60, but I suppose it does make sense as Japanese is a fairly difficult language for english speakers, but yes, I’m sure if they offered sets of the remaining kanji even if it was aside from the regular program that people would be interested.

Ok. Its still a common mindset among beginners. You just happen to share that mindset

The very first thing I said did.

SRS words not kanji.

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I find that the vocabulary is the only valuable aspect of Wanikani. Just to debunk your whole argument I took about five seconds to pick one of the Joyo kanji not covered by Wanikani and find a word that contained it.
苛性-caustic
if you think that there is another synonym that is covered by Wanikani let me know, otherwise I guess I’ve kind of made my point.

Also your first point did not address the issue at all, your first point was that your time on here becomes more and more inefficient. i.e. just a reason why someone shouldn’t want to.

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im in a league game so enjoy this quote

Ok so we have a cost to implement it vs the chance that someone who has already reached level 60 who doesn’t have a lifetime membership will continue to use WK. Cost vs revenue don’t seem very good here. I’m sure if it was they would have already done it by now.