干 (kanji) is on level 17, while 干 (radical) is level 2!
Also, it means dry.
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What do you mean? Isn’t that the meaning given?
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Because there will be a lot of kanji using the dry radical, a lot of which more useful than dry. This happens in a lot of cases, the stool radical is on level 2, while the kanji “again”, which is the exact same shape “recently” got moved to 51
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How is “more useful” defined within WaniKani? I presume incidence of occurrence within some corpus of text?
It seems that introducing the kanji alongside the radical when they share a name/meaning, regardless of how often it occurs, would be useful in reinforcing both for little additional cognitive cost.
But I’m just some dude on the internet struggling to memorize ideograms, so my opinion on the topic doesn’t carry much weight. 
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Partly that, and partly to illustrate readings even if the word isn’t very common, but also a big dash of compromise in keeping the number of items per level as low as possible while at the same time ensuring that the order is relatively consistent.
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Damn son, you’ve been really going through the levels and evaluating the Kanji / Descriptions recently huh?
You also posted about the bug with the “On’yomi” text right?
Keep it up, you’re doing a good job!
As for your question, not a clue, but at least we’ll be prepared when we eventually hit level 17 
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Yes, I did!
Also, it always helps to do some “pre-research”! 
51?! That’s… absurd.
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If you’re planning on making your own app, and that’s what the pre-research is for, you should be careful not to do anything that would infringe on WK’s copyright.
I’m sure you already know that though - if that was what you’re doing.
Or maybe you’re making a user script 
or just doing research to better prepare for your journey to level 60.
Regardless, hopefully, it all works out.
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Don’t worry! I’m not planning on making my own apps or anything!
…foreshadowing…
That’s what it’s for. Glad you asked!
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Not really, some kanji you just don’t really meet in the wild, just think about how in English even, you have words you only ever see, when someone points out how rare they are.
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Like antiestablishmentarianism.
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That I feel I’ve met before as a real word, so can’t be that rare. Defenestration probably is a contender. you only hear that when someone tells you what it means.
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The only time I actually hear antiestablishmentarianism in a real conversaion is when people are trying to come up with a “long” word, since generally me and my friends avoid political chats.
I do see your point though, I would still call it rare though I bet most non-native speakers have rarely heard of it.
Your word is even rarer though because I’m british and have never heard of it, what does it mean? it sounds like a combination of defense and demonstration, so if I had to take a guess I would say “demonstrating ones defensive capabilities” lmfao. Probably way off though 
.
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It comes from the latin word “fenestra”, which is window. Literally means “throwing someone out the window”.
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that’s actually pretty funny, I’m going to try and remember that thanks, anyway we should probably stop derailing the thread :d. Appreciate the info though!
edit: idk if it counts as derailing actually since they’re examples of why in a language it might be at lvl 51 vs lvl 5 or whatever.
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干 is number 1349 by frequency and an N2 level kanji. That’s probably why it’s taught later.
Rhetorical question, why is 私 a sixth grade kanji?
“Foreshadowing” is actually a good name for an app to practice shadowing (language speaking exercise)
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RE: 又
I think it makes sense. The radical is used in 40 kanji that wanikani teaches us, but the kanji for ‘stool radical’ which is ‘again’, is unusual. While again, ‘mada’ is a very common word, is usually writing in kana only. The kanji is N1 level and junior high level, there’s no need for someone just starting out to even know it exists.
The wanikani order seems to be a mix of, Japanese grade school levels, JLPT levels, and things they want to teach earlier in order to teach the things they want to teach later more easily. Construction in level 1 is a N4 and grade 2 kanji but they bring it out at the very start I assume because it pairs well with a lot of words they want to teach that use the other kanji they are introducing. Most courses you’d get 150 other kanji before that one.
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Many people here have already answered this quite well, but essentially, the order in which kanji are taught in WaniKani is based on the following characteristics:
- Simplicity of the kanji (number of strokes)
- JLPT level and/or Jouyou grade
- Frequency of appearance in the language (books, articles etc…)
If a kanji is simple, usually taught in a lower grade and appears frequently, the more likely it will be in the lower levels. Sometimes though, like with 干, the radical is taught early on as it will be found in kanji that are more complex but appear far more frequently than the kanji that is essentially just the radical itself.
As some users pointed out, we try to limit the number of kanji per level, which sometimes means the radical and the kanji will be far apart, especially if a word is more frequently seen in kana.
The order is a little unusual compared to other kanji-teaching methods, and as such we still sometimes make some alterations, but we believe it to be the most effective.
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Just FYI, 又 the kanji AND 又 the vocab used to be level 2 items. In 2018, before I completely stopped doing WK at level 9, I managed to get them to enlightened.
Sometime since then, they got moved to 51.
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