Why is the music radical in Level 10 when the music kanji is in level 6

[mgrice]

Yeah, that dawned on me as I got to the end.

[TreyE]

@mgrice

Granted, 蔵 as a kanji could have been taught as using three smaller radicals (in fact that is how the radical is described) and then introduced as a radical coming from the kanji which was learned (the same as the case for 曲). When/how it is applied does seem to be arbitrary perhaps?

A one-kun’yomi-vocabulary → one kanji → one radical example like 蔵 is not the prototype to be basing any analysis around. It literally doesn’t make one whit of difference. It’s the examples where a radical maps to lots of kanji that are important.

I realize my earlier post was very long, but I did explain the two cases of kanji/radical matching (kanji before radical, or radical before kanji), why they both exist, and why neither is strictly “better” than the other.

If you start with the radical list — not the kanji — and start looking at how the ones where the radical maps to many kanji fit together, it makes total sense in terms of:

1. keeping the total number of review items you must deal with to a minimum, and
2. keeping the number of radicals needed to “tell a unique story about” a kanji’s shape manageable, but without
3. introducing tons of obscure lower-stroke-count kanji early just because their shapes are common to other higher-stroke-count kanji.

Are there other possible orders that could be just as efficient? Yes. Are there cases where you could have swapped the lessons they appeared in with no other effect? Yes.

But is there a clear-cut problem across the board? No. And would WaniKani’s always introducing the radical before the kanji improve things? No; it would result, by my quick count, in at least 30 near-useless kanji in the first 20 lessons (and bumping more useful kanji—and the radicals they’re made of—to later and later lessons).

[varmapranay]

Thanks for taking the time to write a detailed response, TreyE! You have made some cogent arguments in favor of the current scheme. Since I haven’t gone through the higher levels yet, I cannot say for sure if I will end up having the same feeling as you. Perhaps I would. I will leave it at that.

I understand your arguments related to mnemonics. So far I have ignored a few radicals that are made up because I look at glyph origin as well as my own mnemonics. Since I am tested on the radicals, I do have to remember the radicals. So nothing lost so far

[TreyE]

@varmapranay

I understand your arguments related to mnemonics. So far I have ignored a few radicals that are made up because I look at glyph origin as well as my own mnemonics. Since I am tested on the radicals, I do have to remember the radicals. So nothing lost so far

Thanks… but if I’m not misunderstanding you, it sounds like you’re using WaniKani primarily as an SRS flashcard program that’s pre-loaded with kanji and vocabulary?

Respectfully, that’s not WaniKani’s value proposition. You can get Anki decks for free that serve the same purpose, and come up with whatever mnemonics you like. (Plus, have reverse English-to-Japanese and kanji-shape-recall cards, all in the same app.)

WaniKani’s secret sauce is the mnemonics. (Plus the curation of specific kanji compounds and affixes that are linguistically “productive”—ones that will lead to being able to read and understand more vocabulary that you haven’t studied. But, again, you can get curated lists elsewhere.)

And more importantly than any single mnemonic—which, let’s face it, are frequently cheesy at best—how they work together as interlocking units to leverage knowledge of a few items into knowledge of many more.

If you don’t like WaniKani’s mnemonics, you’re just going to fight it the whole way through, and I’d recommend trying something else.

[varmapranay]

I did decide to use wanikani mostly for its mnemonics for sound/ pronunciation. I have tended to ignore its mnemonics for kanji so far since I have other ways of remembering them. I may need to use them in the future. I don’t know. I understand the points being made though.

Also, the rigor of reviews reinforces the memory of both the kanji/kana and the pronunciation. On one’s own, that rigor is difficult. What would definitely help is the reverse - given the English word/phrase, provide the kana(pronunciation in English) for it.

[pembo]

@TreyE

The one thing they don’t do, though, is introduce a radical without also introducing a kanji containing it (even if it isn’t the kanji matching it). It’s not just free radicals floating around; they’re always motivated.

I’m not convinced this is correct

[TreyE]

@pembo

I’m not convinced this is correct

It’s not true in the first few lessons, when you need to build a “library” of radicals that can fully describe full levels’ worth of kanji. But I haven’t noticed a case recently where a radical isn’t used in either that lesson or the next one.

[WeebPotato]

@TreyE

But I haven’t noticed a case recently where a radical isn’t used in either that lesson or the next one.

There is a couple of cases like at higher levels. Granted, it’s less than a handful.

[Honumael]

I wouldn’t want to have the music kanji introduced on the same level as the music radical. It would make it harder to remember the components of the music kanji (that being the radicals “mouth” + “twenty”). I like that it’s introduced just before you learn a kanji that uses music as component.

But what I dislike it that a new radical based on previous kanji doesn’t have a reference to the kanji it’s made up of. So if you want to see which kanji use the “twenty” radical, I wouldn’t find “豊”. There’s no association between the music radical and the music kanji (like there is for kanji to vocab or radical to kanji)

[TreyE]

@WeebPotato

There is a couple of cases like at higher levels. Granted, it’s less than a handful.

I’d report them—I’d bet they’re cases of a re-slotted kanji where the radical wasn’t moved to follow.

Like, there are cases where vocabulary exclusively using older kanji pop up, and in most cases it’s because it’s a word that pairs with a new one, like as antonyms or coördinate terms. But when that’s not true it’s usually involving a kanji that’s been moved.

[WeebPotato]

@TreyE

I’d report them—I’d bet they’re cases of a re-slotted kanji where the radical wasn’t moved to follow.

No, these are cases were the radical exists, but it has no corresponding kanji. I mean, feel free to report them if you like.

[TreyE]

@WeebPotato

No, these are cases were the radical exists, but it has no corresponding kanji. I mean, feel free to report them if you like.

I think I’m just super confused… could you link to one?

From the tone of “feel free to report them if you like”, I take it this is something there’s a feeling the WK team won’t take action on? I’ve only reported something once, but it was fixed within a week, so I may have an misplaced sense of their responsiveness.

[WeebPotato]

@TreyE

From the tone of “feel free to report them if you like”, I take it this is something there’s a feeling the WK team won’t take action on? I’ve only reported something once, but it was fixed within a week, so I may have an misplaced sense of their responsiveness.

Apologies for my tone, but after interacting with WK for a couple of years I’m just kind of disillusioned when it comes to all of the content changes across levels, because they are often poorly handled and require user reports to get cleaned up

Example - someone decides to move a kanji from level A to level B, but doesn’t do a full sanity check

• what about the radicals used in the kanji? do they still align?
• if the kanji is also a radical, are changes needed there?
• are changes to the mnemonics needed to reflect the level changes?
• etc.

[TreyE]

For identification that would be useful, too—for instance, if you saw the Stool radical but it was actually part of Branch.

This kind of thing was a lot more important even 5 years ago, though (when I think learning SKIP, not radicals, was actually the best way to find kanji by appearance) — now plenty of apps including ones built-in to operating systems can find kanji by appearance using AI.

A hierarchical radicals feature would still be nice for things like seeing the pattern of sounds across all kanji that have a certain radical, though.

[TreyE]

Could you link to one of these radicals that have no kanji? I’m just curious what that even looks like. Creating content for no purpose but to add a meaningless flashcard seems very weird to me, and yes, I’ll report it and let you know what happens.

[ray99t]

@Vanilla

The only difference is now the kanji is gated behind an extra radical and we have to guru the meaning “music” via the radical before we are allowed to learn the kanji/reading.

That’s really only an issue if the music radical and the music kanji are introduced in the same level. If they teach the music radical and the farming kanji in one level, then teach the music kanji a couple of levels later (which they do for all sorts of kanji), then the extra step won’t even be noticed.

[TreyE]

I’m not sure what level you’re at, but once you have clusters of kanji that differ by more and more minute qualities (say, 結, 絡, 経) or are extremely dense (i.e. high-stroke-count, like 農, 濃, 義, 務) I suspect you’ll better appreciate this building-block approach. It’s especially good, for instance, in making it so two kanji that differ only by the layout/ordering of the same simple radicals (like 結・絡・経) can be more easily “read” as composed of more complex, distinct, unique radicals.

[Edit: In fact, I just now noticed that many—maybe most—of the otherwise-seemingly-weird cases of single-kanji radicals — why do they even exist?!? — are cases where the kanji’s breakdown into existing radicals is ambiguous. The special radical forces you to learn the particular kanji’s look as a separate, arbitrary thing, one you have to put special mental effort into remembering.]

As mentioned by several of us earlier in the thread, if we had hierarchical radicals so that Music 曲 and its kanji linked to Mouth 口 and Twenty 廾, it would be much easier to see why things are organized in this order. There are many judgment calls—and the WK team move kanji (and, less-frequently, radicals) around a few times a year based on learner statistics if their judgment seems off.

But a rule that all kanji that are eventually useful as radicals must be gated behind that radical would be unworkable. The situation you dislike is going to happen more and more as you progress, and WaniKani isn’t going to reorder the whole course to match a rule that sounds good. If you can’t make peace with that, you may need to consider another tool that follows your opinions instead.

But please, just scan the radicals list and follow the “story” of some of the radicals with matching kanji—specifically ones where the kanji is both made up of common radicals, and then its radical is turned around and is used in many kanji.

Music 曲 isn’t the best example, but it’s not a bad one either—you learn the story of Music via Twenty Mouths, you learn five vocab items with it so you can recognize it as a distinct shape so you’re ready when it appears in a more complex kanji, and then you get the radical and its first introduction in 農 (which is Music + Landslide), which would otherwise be too complex to grok.

At Lesson 6, Music is visually distinct, so it could have been just memorized as a thing to itself—a radical—sure. But at level 15, or 25, too much is going on all at once—you need lots of mental toeholds to slot the 1500-plus kanji you’re working on into, and the radicals system does that. Sometimes it works better for the radical to come first, sometimes it works better for the radical to come later. Sometimes it’s a judgment call. But a hard-and-fast rule would help no one except those who value fastidiousness for its own sake.

[TreyE]

@TreyE

Music 曲 isn’t the best example, but it’s not a bad one either—you learn the story of Music via Twenty Mouths, you learn five vocab items with it so you can recognize it as a distinct shape so you’re ready when it appears in a more complex kanji, and then you get the radical and its first introduction in 農 (which is Music + Landslide), which would otherwise be two complex to grok.

Actually, sorry to quote myself, but I just realized there’s a mechanism here that may be missed by some: radicals that exactly match a kanji are usually¹ spaced enough lessons apart from the kanji so that you already have the kanji Mastered (and often Enlightened or Burned depending on your pace) when you encounter it as a radical.² This is important.

So, when you see a radical like Surplus 余 in Level 27, matching Level 20’s 余 surplus, you’re already in a place where you can read 余 cold, and not confuse it with 茶 or 金 or 命. At that point you’re ready for it to be part of 途 and 除, etc. and can read it all at once.

(You’re going from Lesson 6 to Lesson 10 much faster then you’ll go from, say, Lesson 26 to Lesson 30. So this effect is less pronounced—and so less useful—early on.)

OTOH, the radicals that get introduced before an exactly-matching kanji are usually simpler, more visually distinct, and — I think most-importantly — rarer than other more-complex kanji containing that radical. (There are tons and tons of name-only kanji that you’ll be surprised to see alone, because you thought they were only radicals.)

---

¹ You must get beyond level 10, at least, before you start making statistical assertions like this. The time separation of kanji to radical is not as true earlier on—because it can’t be. They let you speed through the first few lessons, but that can’t keep up as the gush of new items continues apace.

² Unlike the other order, where a kanji matching a previously-learned radical might appear soon thereafter, or might appear later. Sometimes much, much later—see Stool 又 in Level 2 and 又 again in Level 51.

[ray99t]

@TreyE

[Edit: In fact, I just now noticed that many—maybe most—of the otherwise-seemingly-weird cases of single-kanji radicals — why do they even exist?!? — are cases where the kanji’s breakdown into existing radicals is ambiguous. The special radical forces you to learn the particular kanji’s look as a separate, arbitrary thing, one you have to put special mental effort into remembering.]

OK, but why can’t they do that for learning a radical?

@TreyE

But a hard-and-fast rule would help no one except those who value fastidiousness for its own sake.

Not entirely true. It would help those who look to see what kanji use a particular radical and don’t find all of them because the kanji was taught first.

[TreyE]

@ray99t

@TreyE

[Edit: In fact, I just now noticed that many—maybe most—of the otherwise-seemingly-weird cases of single-kanji radicals — why do they even exist?!? — are cases where the kanji’s breakdown into existing radicals is ambiguous. The special radical forces you to learn the particular kanji’s look as a separate, arbitrary thing, one you have to put special mental effort into remembering.]

OK, but why can’t they do that for learning a radical?

Do what? I don’t understand. Put a preparatory radical that looks just like the radical before the real radical? Have a new item type one layer higher than “radical” that unlocks radicals? I don’t understand what you’re proposing.

@ray99t

@TreyE

But a hard-and-fast rule would help no one except those who value fastidiousness for its own sake.

Not entirely true. It would help those who look to see what kanji use a particular radical and don’t find all of them because the kanji was taught first.

What is the utility of that in general, and how would it be greater than hierarchical radicals with no change in ordering, as was discussed before? The only time I’m ever motivated to look at a radical’s children is when I’m checking about a vague recollection of a character or I’m wondering about a phonetic pattern I see (radicals can sometimes carry hints of sound information).

But, let me turn it around… right now, you can find 曲 music under Mouth 口 and Twenty 廾.

Following your suggestion, you’d instead find 曲 under Music 曲, right? The only difference would be whether 曲 is found in one place (Music 曲) or two (Mouth 口 and Twenty 廾). Why is the former more useful than the latter?