Anki vs. Wanikani

Bunpro
#12

Personally, I like the structure enforced by WaniKani. I’m still new to Japanese and I appreciate that it’s a tried and true system with a large number of users and a clearly defined path and goal. I think I’ll appreciate integrations with services like Bunpro and Satori Reader as I advance in Japanese. I don’t think it’s perfect, but I was happy to pay for the discounted lifetime membership with the understanding that it’ll take me a few years to get through everything. I’m (gratefully) in a position where paying for WaniKani wasn’t really an issue, but I can understand why others—especially younger folks and students, as well as people living in places with less purchasing power—would look for less expensive alternatives.

I think Anki works well once you know what you’re doing, but beginners would benefit from something a bit more structured. I haven’t seen jpdb before this thread, but it seems promising. It looks like it’s developed by a single person (or perhaps a very small team), though, so I do worry about its longevity and support relative to other options. They seem to make quite a lot through Patreon, though, so perhaps I shouldn’t worry.

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#13

If you want to learn how to learn at the same time as learning, use any one of these self-paced, self-inserted, self-everything tools.

If you’d rather pay someone to do things for you, saving you valuable study time, use WK, Bunpro, etc.

I think people underestimate how much time is wasted learning pedagogy and learning methods rather than learning what you want to learn. Sure eventually you’ll run into 叶う and 凪げ and feel tempted to mine / flashcard them - they’re both JLPT1 after all and not in WK! But…

At the end of the day, by following these programs, by the time you get to the end, you’ll just pick less frequent words up along the way, just like you would English words like festooned, insensate, saponified - all of which I saw in subtitles just last week.

I’m a huge fan of NOT mining sentences. You have enough SRS on your plate, why add Kanji that people who made a career of teaching language decided weren’t important enough to make the top 2000 when it’ll take away valuable time from learning more common ones, grammar, reading another sentence and just guessing what that word meant in context?

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#14

I’m in the boat of staying away from Wanikani. If you are too early on,it won’t teach you any useful kanji (for example, when do they teach 時? probably not until at least a month into study, despite it being a crucial kanji you will literally see every day.) If you aready have a baseline of kanji knowledge, it is far too slow to get back to your level.
Plus at least when I was using it, the vocabulary is so niche, most of the time you will never use the word and they don’t contribute to any actual learning(lookin at you ex-partner) not to mention for lifetime in WK, you can get lifetime renshuu and lifetime bunpro and cover all vocab, kanji, and grammar for the same price.

You are better off going with jpdb or renshuu for kanji study, as they provide kanji much more in context of what you are reading/learning. As far as Anki goes, it’s really versitile. Not much else to say about it. I only have experience on the android app, which feels limited so it doesn’t feel right to say much.

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#15

Anki:
gives you an english keyword and asks you to write the kanji on a seperate paper.
Pros: great for ‘reading’ style reviews, an example sentence with a word underlined. flip it over for meaning and hiragana
Pros: can learn anything with anki. Your student’s names, countries in the EU Japanese prefectures
Pros: supports listening quizes
Pros: Open source
Pros: offline
Pros: cheap/free
Pros: Cards written in CSS. Want to have furigana on click? a stroke order gif? if you know CSS anything is possible, if not you can probably find an ad-on from someone who does.
Con: many people find the settings confusing
Con: only has “reveal and grade” type reviews.
Con: from 2009 and looks it
Con: Cards writen in HTML. “<br”>
Con: ‘Nicer’ grading might give you false confidence
Con: need a seperate paper

Wanikani:
Shows you a kanji, you type in the pronouciation or english word
Pros: intergrates with bunpro
Pros: easier to start
Pros: learn the difference between similar words
Pros: grading is stricter
Pros: has an order to learn and where to start built in
Cons: no example sentences in reviews
Cons: expensive
Cons: fewer settings in the app, have to use add ons
Cons: strict grading can be frustrating is 一 one or ground?
Cons: English meaning and pronouciation lock you in. I knew that 力 is power, but it keeps asking me until I can remember it’s りょく.

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#16

Mmm I’ll knock out a couple of your Anki cons. I don’t use Anki for kanji specifically, but Vocab which has kanji

You could do it this way. Idk what the premade community decks are, but you could prompt yourself with clonze vocab words and fill in the blank. Or use the keyword and just type/write your answer. (Google handwriting can be really nice for this)

Again, clonze. You can also type in answers and have it highlight correct/wrong parts. Yes, you do grade it yourself but that doesn’t mean you can’t prove your recall before you reveal

This… Is true. The settings are annoying so for the average user it will look like this. But you could find nice preset templates online, one time copy paste done

Not necessarily. Might be easier to use a paper for more space, But Anki has a whiteboard built in you can draw directly on the card, flip, and grade. Or again with Google handwriting in place of keyboard

If you mean the 4 button answer system, you can easily change to just 2. Pass or fail, making it as strict as you want. With answers that you type or draw you easily tell how well you know it and it’s up to you to not cheat yourself

Not saying it’s better than wk because of these, just clarifying objectively for op. I will say if you want a better Anki, it’s definitely more hands on than wk

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#17

I prefer Anki myself and agree with all of your points

This definition of how to study anki is based about ‘RTK style’ kanji decks. This is the predecessor wanikani is based on and the most common type of ‘kanji’ flashcard [as opposed to a vocabulary or sentence card]

#2 Anki is better at reading questions and wanikani is better at input translation Neither of them are as good as bunbro at input cloze. As you mentioned, you can reveal and grade a cloze in Anki.

#4 the update stopped inverting colors in dark mode. And my kanji deck is now black text on a black background. Please help! I deleted “font-color: black;” from the css tab and I still can’t see anything

#5 wanikani is a stricter grader, and anki is a nicer grader. I listed ‘wanikani is stricter’ as a con for wanikani and ‘anki is nicer’ as a con for anki because it’s a major difference I think you need to know going into these apps.

#6 I use whiteboard on mobile too.

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#18

What works at the beggining of studying Janapese may not work in the later stages…

There is something simple and elegant about WaniKani: “Just do it.” Everything is already set up and its just about execution and doing the reviews everyday. I feel like if somebody is starting out with Japanese and wants to build up knowledge, it can get the job done.

Persnally I think that Renshuu.org pro (or lifetime where everything is available ) is probably a better choice (at least for me). When I started studying I would print out Kanji / Vocab practice sheets from there. Now there are schedules and other tools which make it possible to use Renshuu like WaniKani.

Anki is amazing. Amazingly complex and amazingly great haha. Personally I think its a great choice when other tools start to not work as efficiently. But it does requite I think some HTML / CSS / programming knowledge to get the most out of it. I have set up the questions and the cards in a way that makes sense to me and I experimented for like 2 months before starting to add more vocab / kanji to make sure its right for me (the UI, question types, what I need to add). I constantly use the whiteboard to just scribble on the cards when making tests. I only study on Anki on my phone and only add new stuff on my laptop haha

#19

I would say that Anki is a companion, not an or. No matter the system you choose, there is always a use for Anki. You’ll notice that more when you advance, for example, you’ll need to remember a specific book’s vocabulary or kanji, Anki will help you to remember best that information. And about WankiKani, there are many alternatives, personally never liked it, but if you finish the trial chapters, the system might be useful for you.

Other options not mentioned here:

https://www.kanshudo.com which has an option to add cloze to the flashcards.

https://kitsun.io includes some Wanikani-like decks if I remember correctly.

https://www.coscom.co.jp which includes a lot of skills, grammar, verbs, conversation, news articles, and kanji (including workbooks) from beginners to intermediate.

For iOS
Kanji Toon
Now Production app to learn Kanji 漢字練習
Some already mentions Jitaku app.

Andriod
Japanese Kanji Study

There are a other options I haven’t mention here… It is worth a search to find what would suit you, unless you are dead set on these two options. Best of luck in your studies!

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#20

Does wanikani teach all the radicals or just some before a pay wall?

#21

WaniKani has just some of them before level 3, the free limit point if I remember correctly

#22

Try adding a font color back, white or whatever #hex code number. Directly after it and one space add !important

This won’t help with inverting, but should force that color no matter the platform/mode

#23

In case you aren’t aware Wanikani “radicals” are mostly made up by Wanikani to work with their mnemonic system. The same thing goes for RTK primitives. Actual radicals refer to a single part of the kanji which is used to classify it and can be used for dictionary lookups in a paper dictionary. Kanji can also be broken down into components (which is what Wanikani is actually mimicing with their “radicals”) and for the vast majority of kanji there is a meaning component and a sound component. In order for their mnemonic system to work Wanikani does not break down kanji into these components. There is a userscript that shows you them though, I think.

Anyway, the point is that you don’t need to learn Wanikani “radicals” unless you are using the Wanikani system and, in themselves, they will not make you better at reading kanji. Some system like KKLC or Kanji in Context actually attempts to teach you kanji somewhat in the order of introducing new components in a sensible way (it is impossible to do perfectly but they both do an okay job) but Wanikani is explicitly not doing that. If you really want you can easily find a list of all the Wanikani radicals online - there are also Anki decks floating around which have all Wanikani content in so you can check those as well if you like. You can also find lists of actual components and the official radical list online easily as well.

I haven’t read everything in this thread closely but I just want to point out that you don’t need to do dedicated kanji study at all (I didn’t) and it may be worth trying just learning kanji in the context of words first and only if that fails then go with a dedicated kanji learning system. Just a suggestion, at least.

Anyway, good luck!

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#24

Screenshot 2024-03-04 at 9.48.31 PM

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#25

2 things:
1 learning radicals/primitives in Anki or Wanikani is for people that want to learn reading comprehension of nouns first. If this isn’t your priority, you can learn something else instead.

2 against radicals are not real: RTK back in the 80s noticed that japanese linguists knew about all 200+ radicals, but all textbooks and most native speakers only used them for dictionary look ups, as you said. Kanshudo and Wikitionary have entmology information with their radicals if radicals being ‘real’ is imporant to you.

2.5 For radicals not being real: radicals are a tool to learn kanji faster. Once you have a handle on learning kanji 状況 will look like 状況 not “icicle dog, water bro”

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#26

I’ve never heard this theory before - why would learning radicals help with nouns specifically?

I think you are confusing components and radicals here a little bit. The point I was making is that what Wanikani calls “radicals” are largely not radicals and, further, regardless of what term is used they are generally not related to the actual structure of the kanji (entomology is the study of insects - I think you meant to say etymology). Wanikani uses false components (“radicals”) to build their mnemonics and are limited by the mnemonic system and by the order they teach in. Knowing “real” components is important if you aspire to a certain level as they indicate the meaning and the reading of the kanji in many cases and it is also the way in which natives understand kanji. Being “good at kanji” would presumably also include having a native-like understanding of them for most people. Native sources obviously provide real component breakdowns and there is a plethora of online and physical resources dedicated to this, including extensive histories and debates.

Not disagreeing with that. In fact I pointed out that is exactly why Wanikani created its own fake “radical” system. It is also possible to learn in an order that tries to preserve actual components instead of fictional ones made for learners, as I mentioned.

Sorry if the tone of this comment is a bit curt but it kind of feels like you didn’t actually read what I originally wrote.

General comment, no longer replying to nox: This conversation happens in perpetuity online and it is always people who are still learning basic vocabulary and kanji that are most adamant about the effectiveness of these systems which is a symptom of the fact that these systems are only good for complete beginners. Having to decode kanji and words part by part is a crutch and in fact means you cannot read yet. I normally hold back about my full opinion on this because I’m aware it is a little hard line but Japanese is a very difficult language for native Indo-European language speakers in general and to get good I think sometimes you do have to be a little hard line about these things. Wanikani will make you better at Japanese and probably make some people feel good but it definitely will not make you good at Japanese. It’s the equivalent of Japanese students cramming thousands of words with their 単語帳. Okay, cool, you know the word “guzzle” but can you in fact tell me what you did last weekend without making basic grammatical or word choice errors?

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#27

Honestly, I don’t use international English textbooks dedicated to the Japanese language. I’ve been doing Wanikani for something around 7 months and I’m currently at the level 11. I sometimes don’t have as much time as I wish I had, but generally, I think that Wanikani is a great software. Without it, I would throw the Japanese language into the mental junkbox. Now, however, it is one of my greatest passions that still keep me alive. So yes, Wanikani is worth the money it costs. On your place, I would buy the forever-trial immediately.

On the other hand, I don’t see anything wrong in traditional textbooks, except the fact that in the era of the Internet, they sometimes can also come out to be inconvenient and old-school somehow. Anyways, I recommend Wanikani from the deepest area of my heart. If you use the Wanikani-Bunpro combo and use these 1-2 hours a day for them, you shall become fluent in 2,5~~3,5 years.

Have a nice day,

Bunpro Community User

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#28

WaniKani is what leveraged my Japanese level by x100, kanji stopped being a problem at all (unlike for the rest of my classmates) and after achieving lvl 60 all I needed was to learn grammar and practice my speaking skills (that’s how I ended up in bunpro). However I still feel WK’s gamification to be much more appealing and addicting than bunpro’s, would :100:% recommend it better than Anki or any other system!

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#29

I love Wanikani, I highly recommend it. I use Anki for vocabulary, but Wanikani makes things very simple.

My gripe with Wanikani is the lack of content update. It has a few updates every few weeks, mainly updating the example sentences, reordering the kanji, or changing the accepted answer etc. but no meaningful no added features.

Wanikani has so much more potential:

  • it should have curated reading materials that is appropriate for your level (1-10, 11-20, etc…)
  • it should give us the ability to add our own kanji/words
  • it should just give us the remaining N1 kanji. They claim it’s kanji you wouldn’t really need in the wild. Let me make that decision. If I want to study them, just offer them to me
  • it could offer a browser extension that identifies the Wanikani kanji and tells me if I already learned it (if I did, and I can’t read it, give me the option to put it back into the queue, if I didn’t, let me know which level I will encounter it)

I understand that a lot of these things are/could be offered by third party apps made by the community, but many people don’t feel like installing third party apps that won’t be maintained by the creator a few months down the line. Looking on Linkedin, there are about 3-4 engineers working at Tofugu, but I couldn’t tell you what they are working on.

#30

Slightly off topic, but for some reason the “primitives” in RTK always bothered me. For some reason, the altered meanings for radicals in Wanikani don’t. Maybe it’s because they don’t try to pass them off as something thats of Japanese or Chinese origin like in Heisig.

Anyway, been using Wanikani for about a month. My situation is a bit different since I already know plenty of Kanji, but want to fill in gaps and further solidify my understanding of Kanji. I’ve pretty much only learned Kanji through vocabulary over the past couple years, but thats not really cutting it for me anymore. Going back to build a sold Kanji foundation to make reading easier. So far I do like it and there are plenty of good example sentences.

Right now it’s just review for me and it probably will be for a while, but having proper tracking and being given only a certain amount of Kanji at first is very beneficial for beginners I’m sure. I would try one of the Wanikani Anki decks, then go from there.

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#31

It’s been said before but it’s not necessarily a matter of “Anki or Wanikani”, but rather “Anki or Wanikani or both or …” because there’s various platforms you could use and you could easily benefit from a very individual combination of any of the existing platforms and materials.

I think it’s a good idea to give the platforms & methods you consider an option a genuine try to see how they work out for you and based on that decide which you’ll keep around and which you might adapt, drop or replace. That’s what I did and as much as it feels like wasting time, I think in the long run it helped me to find what works for me first and then focus on that.

Personal experience:
As for Anki and Wanikani specifically, I used both of them. WaniKani for over half a year, I think? I believe I got to level 24 or so before I ended up quitting. As for Anki, I used that one for about two months.

With Wanikani, minor inconveniences just kept piling up until I really just dreaded using it, so I ended up quitting. I grew more and more frustrated with Wanikani practically dictating your pace instead of letting you freely decide (and adapt) it as it suits you.

With Anki, I really liked it (I’m a sucker for extremely simple things that aren’t too bloated with features I don’t really care about - like gamification, long-winded animations, etc. - Anki leaves me alone with all of that) but I didn’t really find decks that I was really happy with and didn’t want to put effort into making my own. Partially because I’m lazy, but mostly it’s because I only really want to spend as much time “studying” vocabulary as I really need to anyway. Once I reach a point at which I can understand most of the stuff I read, figure out unknown words by mere context, only having to look up things very occasionally, I’ll quit actively studying. I’m not exactly close to that point yet for the most part, so it’s best I still hammer some more useful vocab into my head - is what I think, anyway. So with that in mind, I don’t really want to put effort into setting things up that would be worth it for longterm, when I don’t really expect myself to stick to them for that long anyway, and when there’s other options I could use instead.

For example, I’m currently using JPDB and I think it’s my favourite so far. I wouldn’t say I’m 100% happy with it either, but it’s decent enough to keep me going. For Kanji I use the Kanji Study! app on android, though and that’s honestly the one thing I think I could say I’m pretty much completely satisfied with.

I also tried Renshuu and in terms of content I liked it, but it fell into the category of seeming too bloated with stuff I don’t want nor care about and I don’t really want to have to navigate through all that stuff, see which things I want to keep up with, which don’t matter to me, how to get them out of my sight, etc.
I took a look at Kanshudo as well, but it was pretty much the same there.

I’m also using Japanese.io on the side as a “reading assistant”, which is quite nice.

As for grammar, I use Bunpro (obviously, given that I’m here lol) and Tae Kim’s Guide. I’m reading that one completely separately from Bunpro, not following the guide’s path in Bunpro or anything like that, though.

It’s kinda obvious that for me personally, I prefer using multiple rather specialised platforms for each’s specific purpose rather than having an all-in-one solution. But that doesn’t apply to everyone, and all-in-one solutions absolutely have their fans, and rightfully so.

Either way, no matter which path(s) you take to learn kanji/vocab, actually consuming Japanese media to encounter the stuff you learn in a natural way is the core part to get better, I think, so any way that enables you to do just that works, so try ones that seem interesting and see what works for you :slight_smile:

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