It started from level 1. I am a bit pissed off when I am again marked as incorrect when I am answering “ten” for my radical review for 十, where the correct answer should be “cross”. I am still having a hard time to memorize if “tree” or “wood” should be the correct answer for redical 木. And is “shell” that different from “shellfish” that it needed to be marked as incorrect for 貝?
Not sure if I am a bit biased on this as my first language is Cantonese and I have already been writing Chinese character since I was 3, so redical review is completely redundent for me, but is the standard for radical review too strict?
As a component of a kanji, redical’s meaning is made to be twisted by other components of the kanji, so there is no point to remember the exact meaning of it, not to mention that some of the correct answer for radical are just mnemonics. A kanji with 頁 redical would never have a meaning close to “geoduck”, but “page” is marked as a wrong answer for redical review.
By the way, “geoduck” is not a common word to be used in daily or business conversation, so even my English is good enough to write a post to complain and to learn Japanese using English, doing radical review is more like learning English then Japanese (which is okay for me… at least I am learning something). If one’s first language is not Chinese or English, I doubt if a “geoduck” mnemonics is actually helping. And similar situation is happening in neaerly every level, like “narwhal” or “triceratops”
On the other hand, I feel that standard for some vocabulary is too loose. “To wake up” is marked as correct answer to both 起きる and 起こす, but the actual meaning for 起こす is “To Wake Someone Up”. I think it is okay to mark “To Wake Up Someone” as correct, but “to wake up” should really be marked as wrong for “起こす”. (or at the very least, saying it is close and require answering again) This happens on some other pairs, like 温まる vs 温める, or 立つ vs 立てる, to name a few.
And if WaniKani is meant to be so strict like they do in redical, I feel that some review should really requires multiple answers before marking as correct. For example, review for 以上 should have both “more than” and “that’s all” answered before marked as correct, as both meaning are frequenly used (at least from what I see when I am reading some other materials).
For some kanji and vocabulary with multiple pronunciation, like 九 should have both きゅう and く answered before marked as correct. I believe this is actually helping especially for kanji, as it seems that most if not all pronunciations of a kanji are used anyway when the kanji is used to form a word. It may be easier to just memorize all pronunciations before going to the vocabulary.
