Words of support for a new member..?

WaniKani Requesting Help
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Hi all.

I hope this is the right place to post this… It may be somewhat vent-y, but I am wondering if anyone has anything they might be able to say that could help push/motivate me.

I heard about WaniKani a few weeks ago. I decided to try it out and so far it’s pretty cool. Some of the stories are entirely nonsensical, so I often substitute my own stories which has been a good help.
I have most certainly learnt a fair amount in such a short time, but I am feeling like I may not be learning as much as I should be. Does that even make any sense??

If you were to show me a kanji that a level 1 or 2 member would have to know, chances are I would probably only be able to give you either 1 on’yomi or 1 kun’yomi reading for it despite having seen more readings of it.
At first I was super confused in regards to when you should be using on’yomi or kun’yomu readings, but I understand them a lot more now- so that isn’t so much of an issue. Not for now anyway :slight_smile:

The problem is that I just feel like I’m mapping symbols to sounds… I mean that is technically what WaniKani sort of is, right? But I don’t feel like I’m truly learning. It feels somewhat discouraging.
If I were truly learning I’d be able to fire off all the readings I know for the kanji up to now.
Also, I am still trying to wrap my head around when to use a certain kun’yomi or on’yomi reading. Sometimes certain kanji have more than 1 kun or on reading, how are you even supposed to know when to use that specific kun or on reading??
I still don’t know how you can pick up when a kanji is “stuck” together with another kanji or with hiragana in a sentence either.
And don’t even get me started on 下さい (seriously how does the kanji for ‘below’ suddenly turn into the word “please”!?!?).

I still feel like there is a huge gap of knowledge for the content that I am learning. Is this just the trials and tribulations of a newcomer? I have read some posts where people said “just keep doing it, and it will eventually stick”. Is it true that if I keep at it, it should slowly just come to me??

So many questions and thoughts all over the place… Sorry. I am still going to grab myself a lifetime membership I think. I hope I can eventually really start to wrap my head around kanji and Japanese as a language. I guess I am just wondering if this is normal to feel this way at the beginning of my WaniKani experience.

Either way I’m doing my best not to give up and I’m continuously practicing every day. In the wise words of Dia Kurosawa “If we are going to do it, let’s shoot for a miracle!”

Thank you for reading.

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It’s a metaphorical usage. Since this is honorific language, it is like they are metaphorically above you and lowering the thing in question to you. Similarly, 上げる can mean give.

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I will try to help

Wanikani will let you know when to use what, luckily, so no need to worry about it. If you want to know why you need to use that specific one, you may need to do some searching elsewhere.

Well, not all kanji have one stuck meaning, it can just depend. Like the kanji for music is 曲
(きょく), but when it is used in a verb, it will mean to bend. Sometimes the history behind the word or kanji can help you decipher why it’s like that, and lead to ease on the subject. Like how “buck” is used for the word dollar, which is because at one point deer skins could be used as dollars.

I feel like that might come with time, as well as context. As you learn more grammar you might figure out that that goes there, or there goes here, because the sentence wouldn’t make sense otherwise. I remember being like that earlier on, but the more I practiced and learned, the better it got

Anyway, hope this helps a bit. Wanikani might be confusing at first, but the more you go into it, the easier it gets. Also, sometimes you learn the readings easier once you learn some compound kanji. Like the word 左右, which is “left and right”, helps me to remember the on’yomi for left, and the on’yomi for right.

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Essentially, yes! :smiley:

If this is your first exposure to the Japanese language, then your brain’s working really hard to get used to the 2 new writing systems (kanji and kana) and the WK system (colour coding for rads/kanji/vocab and reading/meaning; as well as just how everything works, how you level up, etc.).

Cut yourself some slack and just know that you will get more comfortable with it all. And welcome!

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I second the above. You’ll know you’re “really learning” when you can recall the meaning and pronunciation after not seeing it for a week, a month, or more. The history behind how a particular word changed in usage, or how many readings something has, isn’t really what’s important for learning to read, write, or speak Japanese as it stands today, you have to start somewhere!

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that’s a difference between kanji and vocab. Just the same as in english, where just because you know what “a” and “r” and “t” are doesn’t mean you know how to read “tar rat art” unless you know the words “tar”, “rat” and “art” as their individual ideas
(then there’s the whole other problem of, what exactly is “tar rat art”?).
So don’t worry that even though you’ve started looking at some kanji flashcards that you don’t know how to “use” the kanji yet.

There are some general “rules”, but just like English, there are exceptions everywhere. You’ll get better at it with more experience.

Can’t read the sample sentences? Totally normal, Wanikani doesn’t teach everything you need to read, and compounds that with example sentences that don’t match exactly what they’ve already taught you (there’s actually a pattern to their example sentences, have you noticed it?).

On a related note, are you using any other resources for Japanese study?

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I had a similar thought before but in retrospect, the stories being absolutely nonsensical is what helps remember them. I barely remember any stories I made up, but the mnemonics I still remember from first levels are the nonsensical ones.

Not to brag but at level almost-21 I am unaware of most “alternative readings”, maybe except 日’s じつ, and still have no idea when to use what readings. I know that you’re supposed to use one of them when it’s just kanji and the other when there’s hiragana sticking out but I couldn’t tell you which is which.

You’re mapping symbols to sounds and meanings. That, essentially, means learning the language.

Don’t worry about those exceptions; just memorize them with the help of SRS and eventually it will feel natural.

From what I can see of your woes, yes to all. My first feeling of “knowledge” came around level 10, when I came across a random sentence in Japanese and knew what it meant.

So yeah, keep on keeping on, good luck!

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I’ll respond to this part since no one has yet. This is the difference between recognition and recall. It’s natural to be able to recognize more than you can recall off the top of your head. This is the same as you experience even in your native language. Most people can recognize thousands of words more than they actually are capable of using in conversation themselves. It’s no different with learning readings and words in Japanese. You’ll be able to recognize much more than you’ll be able to recall, especially early on and especially if you only use resources that train recognition like WaniKani. WaniKani is a great resource for improving recognition of kanji and words, but you’ll need to do more if you want to improve recall as well.

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Perhaps to make more sense of what seemed like (for now) memorizing nonsensical stories with symbols, you can check some historical context of Kanji via Chinese Etymology website. Just input any single Kanji learned in your current level, then you’ll get too see its origins and how the current Kanji evolve from the recorded pictographs. Hope this could help too :smiley:

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I’m not sure which wanikani member said this… but I saw it on the forums.

As long as we all get there, then I’m cool.

For some reason, just remembering this keeps me motivated. It’s not about speed, but about learning. Also for the Kun’yomi vs On’yomi readings, I read this article.

Onyomi vs. Kunyomi: What's the Difference?

It’s helpful, and gives the history too!

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chances are I would probably only be able to give you either 1 on’yomi or 1 kun’yomi reading for it despite having seen more readings of it.

For me, what helps is to repeat in my head both the on and kun readings even if wanikani asks for one (pink kanji or purple vocab). You can also try to link the readings to vocabulary you might already know. For example, thursday in Japanese is 木(tree)曜日、which reads as mokuyoubi. Because of this, you know that one of the readings for tree is もく.

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I still haven’t fully mastered this, but believe me when I tell you that this becomes more intuitive as the levels progress. That’s the best part of the WK experience for me… the fact that I am forced to get these into my brain… It doesn’t feel like learning… because it feels like failing and/or barely succeeding…

but then… after a few more weeks/months, I look back and realize that what was once a struggle for me is now much more instinctive and feels natural

(As far as the mnemonics, I’ve mostly abandoned 80% of WK’s mnemonics beyond the first few levels, but I’ve found my own, and every once in a while the site offers something that I find really helps me.)

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I’d like to add to this that KaniWani is great for recall as a resource to use alongside WaniKani. instead of showing you the Japanese translation it shows you the English version, thus making you recall the Japanese reading. It also only gives you words you’ve learnt from WaniKani so there shouldn’t be anything unfamiliar. Overall personally I’ve found it works well for solidifying what I learn on WaniKani.

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Oh I totally hear and feel your frustration! :confused: Someone else asked something similar, but is this your first foray into learning Japanese or is WK supplementing other forms of Japanese language learning for you? If it’s the former, then I can completely understand how it feels overwhelming and that you’re not getting anywhere. I do think it’s important to keep in mind that WK and learning kanji is just one aspect of learning Japanese, and it really helps having other supporting pieces that help with listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Sometimes it’s when you’re learning one of those other aspects that what you’ve been exposed to in WK clicks. If you are using other language learning tools and you’re still feeling frustrated (which is totally normal!), then I would say that time and practice really is the key. Eventually, you’ll come across a kanji you’re familiar with from your WK or other language learning travels, and then you’ll realize that you are learning :grinning:

One thing that has really helped me when learning Japanese is to be very intentional about not comparing it to English or a language similar to English. If you try to “logic” or “make sense” of how/why a kanji or reading is an exception to the rule or doesn’t follow a predictable pattern, then you’ll end up feeling pretty frustrated. Sometimes there just isn’t a great reason why (or a reason that makes sense to you). I found this reminder to be especially important for me when learning Japanese grammar. I would get frustrated because I’d find myself subconsciously comparing it to English syntax. I have to continually remind myself that Japanese, just like many other languages (I’m looking at you, English), is going to have exceptions to rules, readings/pronunciations that don’t make sense, and other oddities for which there are no satisfactory explanations :sweat_smile:

Good luck and hang in there! It’ll start feeling worth it soon!

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What i realised through out my wanikani journey (which could not be 100% right but…) kanji meaning is only used to as a hint to guess the vocabulary (especially if the kanji doesn’t have standalone vocab) the hint doesn’t always make sense which is the exception you might be talking about.

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Hi. After finishing the first two levels I felt like my head was all over the place with the radicals and the kanji and the vocab. It felt like everything had multiple answers. I wasn’t feeling confident with the answers I gave even if it was correct, it felt like I was just guessing.
Learning the following made things clearer for me. (Maybe they are obvious but I learnt this a little late):

  • Radicals only have a name. No readings.
  • Kanji can have several readings. And they have meanings.
  • Vocabulary only has one correct reading.

I would suggest not worrying too much about whether a reading is kun’yomi or on’yomi. I found that generalizations such as “If kanji is alone without okurigana it’s usually the kun’yomi reading” make things more confusing for me. Because then I have to remember which reading was what and there are exceptions to these “rules”.

I wrote every item(with their readings and meanings) down before moving on to level 3. At WaniKani reviews you see every item in isolation. It’s nice to seem them all together on paper. Especially the similar items- the vocabulary that is the same as the kanji for example.

I started grammar now at level 3 and seeing some of the vocabulary in context also helps them stick.
Bottom line is, it’s certainly normal to feel that way. I think you’re learning more than you think you are.

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@kdasai

I wrote every item(with their readings and meanings) down before moving on to level 3. At WaniKani reviews you see every item in isolation. It’s nice to seem them all together on paper.

Something to keep in mind; you can always see all the items that are part of a level from the “Levels” menu on the main page (select a level and it’ll show all the radicals, the kanji, and the vocab that are part of the level.) That’s only if you wrote them all down from not being aware of that menu. If you wrote them down to help remember, definitely continue doing that. :slight_smile:

@tomie98
My quick take.

Also, I am still trying to wrap my head around when to use a certain kun’yomi or on’yomi reading. Sometimes certain kanji have more than 1 kun or on reading, how are you even supposed to know when to use that specific kun or on reading??

I wouldn’t bother trying to learn all the readings at once. When you first get introduced to a kanji, learn the very first reading, whether it’s the On’yomi or Kun’yomi reading. Worry about the other readings when it’s time to do so. The reason for this is most kanji do have multiple readings, and readings manifest based on the word the Kanji is part of. Some Kanji also have a ton of readings.

Take 下 for example. It can potentially be pronounced か, ぐ, した, しも, もと, くだ, etc. It depends on the word it’s a part of. Do you really want to memorize all of these at once? Learn whichever one WaniKani introduces with the Kanji card, and then learn the words as a whole when you see the vocab. The vocab are used to help solidify all the readings over time. Eventually, you’ll be able to make educated guesses as you come across words in your Japanese study.

And don’t even get me started on 下さい (seriously how does the kanji for ‘below’ suddenly turn into the word “please”!?!?).

You have to just accept that it’s a very different language and both the way things are written and the way things are said are going to be different. Why does この先 (このさき) mean “straight ahead” when この means “this” and さき means “previous”? Why does 前 (ぜん) mean both front/before and 後 (ご) mean both behind/after?

It’s not just Japanese; all languages have things in them that are weird. I mean look at English alphabet.

(Warning: Lots of cursing, so NSFW if you aren’t using headphones)

I love the first takeaway of the letter “C” being a useless letter, cause it really is. Another is silent letters (Why is the “n” in knowledge silent?). Something I recently noticed; some words end in “e” just to change the pronunciation of other letters without actually pronouncing the “e” at the end (“din” vs “dine”, “car” vs “care”, etc). For Japanese people learning English, these things certainly can’t make sense coming from a language where every kana is pronounced exactly 1 way, 100% of the time.

The tl;dr is the sooner you accept and acknowledge that the language is different, the easier it’ll be to acquire the language!

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@nko12

Something to keep in mind; you can always see all the items that are part of a level from the “Levels” menu on the main page (select a level and it’ll show all the radicals, the kanji, and the vocab that are part of the level.) That’s only if you wrote them all down from not being aware of that menu. If you wrote them down to help remember, definitely continue doing that. :slight_smile:

Yes, I used that menu as reference. I only looked at one or two items again afterwards, but just the act of taking the time to write them down and going over everything as I do was helpful I think.

That’s a funny video, I forgot that channel existed.

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Like others already said, this knowledge comes with experience. The reason for this is that the readings are not randomly applied to the kanji; for each “use case” (aka vocabulary word) there is basically one valid reading for the kanji. So the readings basically only make sense in the context of a word.
As this would be a bit overwhelming for a language learner, WaniKani takes the intermediate step of teaching the kanji readings and meanings in isolation, but this is nothing more than an intermediate step, because in order to know which reading to apply, you have to know the vocab words. (Of course there are some general rules, but of course there are also exceptions to those rules.)

To give you an example, you maybe have learned the kanji 出 (it’s on level 2 but I don’t know how far you’ve got yet). WaniKani says that the on’yomi is しゅつ and the kun’yomi are で and だ. But what does that really mean? You may come across these three words:
外出 The first kanji means “outside” so altogether this means “going out, leaving”. The reading is がいしゅつ.
出る Here we have the kanji together with the hiragana る. This is read でる and means “to leave; to come out”.
出す Looks almost identical to the first one, no? But the trailing hiragana is す in this case. This means the whole word is read だす and means “to put out; to show”.

There is no way in mixing these up, they need to have exactly those readings in those words. There is no です or だる or がいで or anything. Therefore, I think it’s an important first step to learn one of the readings with the kanji (i.e. the pink cards), but after that, subsequent readings will usually be learned through the vocab words. So I think there is no need to stress out too much on the different readings in the beginning as you will learn more and more of them the more vocab words you get to know.

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Wow! I did NOT expect to get the volume of replies that I did. I want to thank everyone for their insight, advice, explanations and kind words.
I definitely feel more motivated knowing that it is pretty normal to feel the way that I currently do.

A couple people asked if this was my first dive into Japanese and if I am using any other resources. This is technically my first dive- but I did do some researching on grammar and particles beforehand. I know my hiragana and my katakana (of course tsu and shi still trip me up sometimes…) but when I was looking into the grammatical side of things I felt like I would benefit more if I knew some kanji. This way when I go back and start learning again, I can really see the fruits of my labor.
There was an excellent site I was looking at… 8020 Japanese. I may consider buying the authors book as a means to really study the grammatical side of things.

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