Why only 2000 kanji?

[Saroosh]

It is a great way to teach all kanji and vocabularies why only 2000 kanji exist and not all of them? i think they are like 3000?? Hope They put it all here I wanna know it all.

[ctmf]

A lot of people say that, but it turns out by 2000 most people are ready for the training wheels to come off and are learning just by reading. To some extent, WK teaches you some kanji, but also how to learn kanji.

[gojarappe]

Good luck in your kanji learning journey. Here’s the stuff outside of WaniKani that may prove useful once you burn all 60 levels.

Kanji beyond WaniKani (esp. 常用 and 人名用) plus more [Spreadsheet, Anki and Memrise]

You might also see Kanji-in-the-wild learning pattern (outside WaniKani) Memrise is Kanji course only. Please study vocab yourself. So, I made 20 more levels for Kanji I planned to learn after WaniKani level 60. It is just that I like Kanji learning and can do it well… unlike grammar. Furthermore, I can learn vocab better when I learn it along with Kanji. Also, drawing Kanji keeps me awake. ###Kanji lists (updated 13/6/2017), with personally chosen EMPHASIS Level 61-69: 常用漢字 and Kanji in…

[Whologist]

Kanji are Chinese characters, hence the name 漢字 (漢 ➞ China、字 ➞ Character/letter = Chinese character)
Technically there are over 85,000 characters. However, there are about ~2100 actually taught in Japanese school, so it is roughly how much a native would know. There are more kanji natives probably know, however they probably couldn’t tell you the on’yomi and kun’yomi, they would just know what words they are in

[acm2010]

You can start knowing them all by learning the first 2000 first.

[heisamaniac]

All I know is that around lvl 55, I was desperately reaching for lvl 60 so I could leave this hell hole and adventure fully on my own. With 2000 Kanji under your belt, learning the rest through reading stuff you are interested in is not difficult at all.

[Leebo]

@Saroosh

It is a great way to teach all kanji and vocabularies why only 2000 kanji exist and not all of them?

Because I’d like to finish before I’m 150. Ain’t no one got time for 50,000 kanji.

[sornvru]

As our resident expert, I’m sure you could do it. You never know until you try.

[durtle]

I hope they do add 10 more levels, at least enough to cover all of N1’s kanji. They’ll probably do it after they’re done with EtoEto, so. . . . . . . . . . . . . . never : (

[Leebo]

@durtle

I hope they do add 10 more levels, at least enough to cover all of N1’s kanji. They’ll probably do it after they’re done with EtoEto, so. . . . . . . . . . . . . . never : (

There’s not really that many more kanji that would ever appear on N1 that aren’t part of WK. Not enough for 10 levels, anyway.

People often erroneously use the number of joyo kanji as the number of kanji that could appear on N1, but I don’t think there’s any direct evidence for that. It’s just an easy number to point to.

I’d prefer they add more vocab for the kanji that are already on the site. It’s quite often that I find myself unable to read verbs with kanji I learned here. I’ve had to pick up 催す, 抱える, 図る, 強いる, 率いる, 教わる, 満たす etc. from other sources.

[Whologist]

For some reason this got me curious and I did the math nobody was asking for.
50,000/30 (Probably the average for Wanikani) means it would take and extra 1667 levels to complete
If you finished a level a week, it would take 11669 days to complete
This means technically you could learn this in roughly 31-32 years
I guess they better get studying

[KinokoNeko]

Lol there are tens of thousands of kanji, many of which you will literally never encounter unless you’re reading some like 13th century poetry or something. There’s far better uses for your time than continuing to learn extremely uncommon kanji. As others have said, once you get to the higher levels you can just start reading native material and self-learn any kanji not on WaniKani that DO come up.

[seanblue]

@Leebo

There’s not really that many more kanji that would ever appear on N1 that aren’t part of WK. Not enough for 10 levels, anyway.

CyrusS recently said that if they did add more kanji they’d more likely put them into existing levels than add new levels. If they fleshed out each level with a few more kanji, they’d likely end up with something like 100-200 more kanji, if that. It definitely gives them a lot more flexibility than trying to figure out how to get ~350 more kanji for 10 new levels.

[jprspereira]

@seanblue

CyrusS recently said that if they did add more kanji they’d more likely put them into existing levels than add new levels. If they fleshed out each level with a few more kanji, they’d likely end up with something like 100-200 more kanji, if that. It definitely gives them a lot more flexibility than trying to figure out how to get ~350 more kanji for 10 new levels.

Yeah, I agree. Plus, I don’t think the fast levels should exist. Sure, they’re cool for those that do them fast, but in the whole scheme of things, it doesn’t make sense having these many fast levels.

Plus, they should do something with the kanji without vocab, even if that means removing them… It just doesn’t make sense to learn kanji without vocab on wk…

[Abstormal]

They could always break their system and have to guru the first set of kanjis, instead of radicals, in the levels with too few radicals. Release half the kani at level up, and have to guru 90% of them to open the rest.
But probably will stick to letting us decide to self regulate this.

[jprspereira]

@Abstormal

They could always break their system and have to guru the first set of kanjis, instead of radicals, in the levels with too few radicals. Release half the kani at level up, and have to guru 90% of them to open the rest.
But probably will stick to letting us decide to self regulate this.

Yeah, I don’t know. Thinking of solutions when the update for the radicals isn’t ready/released yet might be a waste of time tbh

[jprspereira]

@gojarappe

Here’s the stuff outside of WaniKani that may prove useful once you burn all 60 levels.

Adding to Goja’s suggestion:

Another cool deck is @hinekidori ‘s deck “Beyond WK Kanji” that is available on the Community decks’ section on Kitsun. @Naphthalene is owning it

[Naphthalene]

About that deck: it’s not very beginner friendly, though, so I wouldn’t recommend trying it before having a fairly high level on WK (and for most people there’s just no reason to use it before level 60 anyway).