Anki vs. Wanikani

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

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

This wonā€™t help with inverting, but should force that color no matter the platform/mode

In case you arenā€™t aware Wanikani ā€œradicalsā€ 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 ā€œradicalsā€) 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 donā€™t need to learn Wanikani ā€œradicalsā€ 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 havenā€™t read everything in this thread closely but I just want to point out that you donā€™t need to do dedicated kanji study at all (I didnā€™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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Screenshot 2024-03-04 at 9.48.31 PM

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2 things:
1 learning radicals/primitives in Anki or Wanikani is for people that want to learn reading comprehension of nouns first. If this isnā€™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 ā€˜realā€™ 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 ēŠ¶ę³ will look like ēŠ¶ę³ not ā€œicicle dog, water broā€

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Iā€™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 ā€œradicalsā€ 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 (ā€œradicalsā€) to build their mnemonics and are limited by the mnemonic system and by the order they teach in. Knowing ā€œrealā€ 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 ā€œgood at kanjiā€ 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 ā€œradicalā€ 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 didnā€™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 Iā€™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. Itā€™s the equivalent of Japanese students cramming thousands of words with their 単čŖžåø³. Okay, cool, you know the word ā€œguzzleā€ but can you in fact tell me what you did last weekend without making basic grammatical or word choice errors?

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Honestly, I donā€™t use international English textbooks dedicated to the Japanese language. Iā€™ve been doing Wanikani for something around 7 months and Iā€™m currently at the level 11. I sometimes donā€™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 donā€™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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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 (thatā€™s how I ended up in bunpro). However I still feel WKā€™s gamification to be much more appealing and addicting than bunproā€™s, would :100:% recommend it better than Anki or any other system!

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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, etcā€¦)
  • it should give us the ability to add our own kanji/words
  • it should just give us the remaining N1 kanji. They claim itā€™s kanji you wouldnā€™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 canā€™t read it, give me the option to put it back into the queue, if I didnā€™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 donā€™t feel like installing third party apps that wonā€™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 couldnā€™t tell you what they are working on.

Slightly off topic, but for some reason the ā€œprimitivesā€ in RTK always bothered me. For some reason, the altered meanings for radicals in Wanikani donā€™t. Maybe itā€™s because they donā€™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. Iā€™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 itā€™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 Iā€™m sure. I would try one of the Wanikani Anki decks, then go from there.

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Itā€™s been said before but itā€™s not necessarily a matter of ā€œAnki or Wanikaniā€, but rather ā€œAnki or Wanikani or both or ā€¦ā€ because thereā€™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 itā€™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 youā€™ll keep around and which you might adapt, drop or replace. Thatā€™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 (Iā€™m a sucker for extremely simple things that arenā€™t too bloated with features I donā€™t really care about - like gamification, long-winded animations, etc. - Anki leaves me alone with all of that) but I didnā€™t really find decks that I was really happy with and didnā€™t want to put effort into making my own. Partially because Iā€™m lazy, but mostly itā€™s because I only really want to spend as much time ā€œstudyingā€ 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, Iā€™ll quit actively studying. Iā€™m not exactly close to that point yet for the most part, so itā€™s best I still hammer some more useful vocab into my head - is what I think, anyway. So with that in mind, I donā€™t really want to put effort into setting things up that would be worth it for longterm, when I donā€™t really expect myself to stick to them for that long anyway, and when thereā€™s other options I could use instead.

For example, Iā€™m currently using JPDB and I think itā€™s my favourite so far. I wouldnā€™t say Iā€™m 100% happy with it either, but itā€™s decent enough to keep me going. For Kanji I use the Kanji Study! app on android, though and thatā€™s honestly the one thing I think I could say Iā€™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 donā€™t want nor care about and I donā€™t really want to have to navigate through all that stuff, see which things I want to keep up with, which donā€™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.

Iā€™m also using Japanese.io on the side as a ā€œreading assistantā€, which is quite nice.

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

Itā€™s kinda obvious that for me personally, I prefer using multiple rather specialised platforms for eachā€™s specific purpose rather than having an all-in-one solution. But that doesnā€™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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