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.
Yes, this is the real reason, but you probably knew that all along.
lmao bro its a quote from me
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thank you a ton for your insight on that one. I was about to start a memrise deck that includes the missing jouyou kanji and now i feel like that would be a terrible idea.
I recently had a lot less motivation to do my reviews (especially the 10k vocab deck) because i could just spend that time on reading instead. SRS just felt like it became more and more inefficient, and your statement perfectly summed up why it started to feel like that for me.
I suppose i will keep doing the remaining reviews, but refrain from adding any more SRS into the mix.
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My suggestion is basically the same as @Vanilla’s. What I did for about a year or so after finishing WK was to just add kanji that I ran into from reading into Anki.
I’d exclude ones used in names though.
Also, regarding the original question. The WK kanji will get you to a point where you can read something like 99% of all kanji you run into.
You might then think why not just learn that remaining percent while you’re at it, but the problem is that it consists of many thousands of additional kanji, many used in just one or two words each. Worse, which of these you’ll actually need will depend largely on what you read.
Anecdotally, before I stopped learning kanji with Anki I’d probably learned an additional 1000 or so, and I still run into never before seen kanji every time I read a new book.
So basically, like @Vanilla said. Learning all the kanji you’re likely to encounter beforehand becomes increasingly unreasonable.
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Yeah, I think the jouyou list creates a misconception that all of the kanji in the list are worth studying in advance because of how much you’ll encounter them. The reality is, there are jouyou kanji I have still never encountered in the wild during my time studying Japanese, but because I’m a kanji maniac I’ve been studying them. I can’t recommend that people be like me. I enjoy just knowing more kanji, regardless of how useful any individual one is.
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There used to be 50 levels, I think. And I also believe that 50 is just an arbitrary number.
Is 50-60 too many? IMO, it’s maybe just right or too few; because you have to divide Kanji (and vocabularies) by level; and they can’t be too many.
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Right, and I think the misconception a lot of beginners have comes from the fact that they hear “common use kanji” and (reasonably) assume all of them are going to be popping up here and there.
Yeah, some kanji are pretty context dependent. Still havent seen 輸 but id imagine if I watched the news I might.
Yeah, as you read harder and harder stuff you may want to srs words you come across since theres a lot of words that will appear pretty often. Like maybe 15000 or so in my experience.
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I’ve heard that WK used to only have 50 Levels. They added another 10 later.
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I usually add most of the unknown words i see, though i sometimes am a bit lazy with that.
Exceptions are unknown words that happen to mean what one might have guessed by the kanji (like 流れ星) or words that seem somewhat situational (like 醍醐味).
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True… That was probably too strong a claim for me to make for this context. I’ve been avoiding committing to building up a new deck, but I will probably have to considering the massive number of new words I’m seeing reading my first light novel
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Funny enough I’ve seen this one a couple times and its in my srs list. Theres some words you would swear you’ll never see again but are surprisingly common. 魑魅魍魎 is a popular example I think.
The new words you come across drops pretty significantly after your first light novel as you probably guessed (I added like 1200 words from my first one and that wasn’t even close to all of the unknown words I came across) and the next book in that series had like 75% less words for me to learn. So really, even if you end up making a deck for your first book, you may decide not to for your second book.
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Probably but I think at that point you wouldn’t be learning Kanji to read Japanese, you’d just be learning Kanji for its own sake or for some kind of exam.
Once you get close to the end of WK you already have a strong foundation to continue reading.
Examples:
Easy to guess the reading. Just need to remember the meaning but it should be relatively clear from context. The number of vocab on WK that use 性 is a big help.
That’s a fun one. lol
If you only look at the top-right portions of each Kanji, it’s pretty easy to remember the reading and the meaning is cool enough to be memorable.
In each case I’d have to look up something, but I’m not starting from scratch either.
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