Considering getting Wanikani. Would like some insight

Japanese
#21

Going by the metric of 2k Kanji in 4 years given by @hisashib00ty , it will take 2 or 3 years to learn the 1000 ~ 1500 kanjis you have missing, which is $324 ~ $216 by montly or $267 ~ $178 by anual subscriptions. Lifetime is $300, and $200 during sales.

You can try to rush it and do everything in 1 or 2 years, but Wanikani will not help you with that, with a locked order and pacing, and it looks pretty hard to do.

Well, it depends from person to person, but for me, this is absolutely overpriced. Bunpro is basically half the price of that, and it has grammar, vocab, reading practices and has been actively improved significantly for years. But well, great companies like Bunpro are pretty rare, unfortunately.

The others gave a lot of alternatives that are both cheaper or free, and more efficient as well. If you already tried all/most of them, and you absolutely want to do kanji study like this (and at this price), then that’s the way. Even though there’s all that, if it didn’t work, it wouldn’t be that famous after all.

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#22

That’s a good point but also WK hinders process by teaching you dubiously useful kanji and vocab, especially in higher levels. It’s frustrating spending time drilling words and kanji you don’t really care about. For instance right now at level 51 it teaches me the kanji 淀 with one unique vocabulary entry, 淀川 (the name of the river). It’s cute and all, but not my highest priority at the moment, I can think of hundreds of kanji that would be more useful to me at the moment.

At this point in my studies I want to drive my learning from the stuff I read. Bunpro and Anki let me do this, WK doesn’t. That’s the big issue for me.

What makes WaniKani a good resources for beginners turns into a disadvantage later on.

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#23

Honestly if somebody takes over 4 years to learn the kanji on WK I think that’s on them, not WaniKani. At a fairly casual 10 lessons/day pace it would take you about 2 and a half years to go over the entirety of WK (9226 items right now).

Some people just Do It Wrong IMO, they focus too much on kanji and not enough on grammar/vocab, they lose motivation and take 6-months hiatuses, then they get overwhelmed with reviews and reset a bunch of times (almost invariably a bad idea IMO) etc…

In my personal experience, WK brought me from zero around 1000k kanji in less than 8 months, at which point my knowledge was sufficient to tackle most intermediate-level Japanese with about 90 to 95% kanji coverage, and I think that’s a very decent pace. It’s only at this point that I think WaniKani starts to become problematic with its inflexibility and sometimes strange kanji/vocabulary choices.

I know that some people claim to power through like 2000 kanji in three months with Anki but I just call bullshit on that. 99% of people can’t reasonably learn 2k kanji and their various readings in less than a year, especially if they also need to practice the rest of the language on the side.

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#24

i think when a lot of people talk about learning a ton of kanji in a short amount of time, they dont bother with the readings during dedicated kanji study. When i “studied kanji” it was before i studied any vocab or grammar (questionable decision). I downloaded the kanjidamage anki deck, said “Im only gonna learn to associate the keyword with the kanji itself, not learn readings”, then powered through about 20 a day(ish), and was “done with kanji” in about 3 months.

I didnt have any vocab, grammar, or reading knowledge though. I think when a lot of people talk about “finishing kanji in three months” theyre like me. It gave me the tools i needed to do pretty well in the core2k deck and made it so much easier. I would recommend kanjidamage to people who are interested in dedicated study as its free on anki and self paced. My one piece of advice is not to learn the readings through the kanji study, just during learning vocab

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#25

Wow, people have some pretty strong feelings about this. Thanks to everybody for the feedback.

The biggest takeaways I got were is that it seemed to help those who only viewed it as a kanji learning program, rather than a Japanese learning platform which is what I plan on using it for.

Price, hindered progress and forced order of Kanji seem to be a point of contention. Some people suggested I try to use Anki decks or just learn it through reading, but I’ve already tried those things, and I do read consistently. Some Kanji just don’t stick.

Based on this information I have started a free trial and do like it so far. If I continue I’ll get a 1 year sub instead of jumping into lifetime. If in a year I feel I still need it, I’ll get a lifetime on discount. It would come out to the same price if I got the lifetime now. Thanks to everybody who provided feedback, I’ll try it out and see if it’s for me.

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#26

IMO it’s terrible as a Japanese learning platform. It’s only useful as a kanji learning program.

The reason it doesn’t work outside of kanji is because their approach to selecting and ordering the vocab they teach is fundamentally based on kanji difficulty based on how it’s drawn.

As such you miss a ton of very useful kanji and vocab early on, and at the same time the program teaches you not-so-useful kanji and especially vocab to support them.

This all makes sense for a kanji learning program, but it’s terrible for everything else. It doesn’t teach you a lick of grammar for instance.

They kind of tried to improve on this by adding kana-only-vocab last year but given how inflexible the system is it was a dud. People like me who use it to study kanji and have third party resources for the rest didn’t want to be forced to repeat もっと and また 5 times a week.

If you want a more holistic approach I would vastly recommend bunpro over wanikani. It doesn’t have kanji-specific courses but you can just go over their vocab decks and learn the kanji as it comes.

JPDB might be worth looking into as well. I never used it so I can’t quite recommend it, but what little of it I’ve seen seems really interesting. If I was relearning Japanese from scratch today, I think I’d give JPDB a go before returning to WaniKani.

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#27

Personally, I have found WaniKani very helpful. From your description, I believe that it might also be helpful for you. In particular, the whole package of so-called ‘Radicals’ (similar but distinctly different from traditional ‘radicals’) and their pre-made mnemonics (for ‘Radicals’, Kanji, and Vocabs) which all build upon each other. And the graded/gradual levelling system, etc.

In other words, it’s a pre-made system for learning kanji. It helps you build up your knowledge of Kanji and kanji-related elements (aka ‘Radicals’) from the ground up, building on itself. Thus, it’s pretty efficient. Instead of learning a plethora of seemingly unrelated things, you learn the basics first and then use those basics to learn all the related things from there on. Also pretty memorable (compared to trying to learn the same kanji without such break-downs).

Using the system (which can be tweaked easily to adapt your own mnemonics, for example) has also helped me to learn how to learn new kanji, even if they aren’t in WaniKani. Example: recognize known Radicals, build my own mnemonics, learn supporting kanji/radicals if I don’t already know them, use vocab to support the learning of kanji, etc. That’s basically what the WK team has done to develop their system, and there’s nothing stopping one from extending the method to one’s own desired kanji.

That being said (about learning kanji outside WK), WK does already cover:

  • All of JLPT N5 through N2 and about 80% of N1.
  • All of Joyo (常用漢字) Grades 1 through 6 and 87% of Grade 9.
  • All of the top 1000 (based on some frequency usage stats; maybe newspapers?), and cumulatively 81% of the top 2500.
  • Scores over 98% on many top lists (NHK Easy, Online news, Twitter, Wikipedia) and just below 94% on Aozora Books list.

So, coverage is very solid from a beginner to intermediate to early-advanced progression. And by that point you will be able to use that foundation to pick up the rest on your own if and when you need them.

Thus, for catching any beginner/intermediate kanji that have currently ‘slipped through the cracks’ in your learning, I’d say it would be an ideal choice.

And, if you already know a bunch of kanji, it’s still not a waste of time to ‘have to’ go through the initial levels, most of which you’ll probably already know. The thing is, if it’s easy, it’s easy, and you just zoom through them. That’s the power of SRS. It’s only the ones you don’t know that you’ll spend any mental effort on.

There have been several posts in the WaniKani community forums over the years of people asking whether they should bother with WK after they already know a bunch of kanji. And there’s almost always responses from people who have started WK from level 1, even though they knew a bunch of kanji, and at the end of the day they don’t regret it – again, largely because: if it’s easy, it’s easy and you just zoom through it.

That’s not to say there aren’t any people who didn’t regret it (or, more accurately, didn’t find WK useful and so didn’t end up using it). There are folks like that also. So, ultimately it’s a judgment call on your part.

And, all of this is assuming that you’re okay paying for it. Sadly, you will have missed the Christmas season holiday discount by just a couple of weeks, so if you’re looking for the cheapest-cheapest deal, you’ll have to wait a year :grimacing:.

But if money’s not a big issue, lifetime subscription is still a good deal (IMHO). Or, if you have a lot of time on your hands, you can do the ‘Speed Run’ paying monthly (or yearly?) and it’s a little bit cheaper. But I wouldn’t recommend that, as it takes a lot of concentrated effort and lots of people end up getting burned out going that route.

Hence, my recommendation is, if you’re serious about learning as much kanji from WK as you can (or want to), using SRS specifically, then the least-stressful, best-deal is the lifetime sub. Even if you already know 600 kanji and familiar with 1000 in total, if you’re serious about learning kanji (via SRS, as opposed to some other way), then it’s worth it (IMHO) to go lifetime. I’m sure there are cases to be made for monthly/yearly, but someone else can help with those cases.

Just my 2￥. :sweat_smile:

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#28

Well, technically it’s not really for learning Vocab either. Its main purpose is for learning Kanji. The use of Vocab is primarily to reinforce/practice the Kanji, and also to introduce additional readings from the initial reading learned with the Kanji itself. Picking up actual ‘useful’ vocab is just a side-benefit of the system.

I only bring this up because it’s somewhat common for some folks to think that WK’s purpose is to teach Vocab, and then they are disappointed/confused when they’re not learning the ‘most useful’ or ‘most common’ Vocabs. Instead, WK is using Vocabs to help with teaching the most useful/common Kanji (and their various readings.

So, it’s best to realize this early on, so as not to be disappointed/confused later on.

For learning actual vocab in a good priority/order, I’m finding BunPro’s own Vocab feature quite suitable for my needs. There are lots of other Vocab tools out there as well, and I’m not saying Bunpro’s is the best. But if you’re already using Bunpro for grammar, it might be worthwhile trying out their vocab features as well.

[P.S. It’s still currently in Beta development, so if you want to try it you just have to go into your Bunpro account settings and ‘opt-in’ to the Beta features.]

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#29

I think I’m at a similar place as you in that I started with Heisig’s RTK. Eventually burned out of that and switched to the RRTK Anki deck (I think from AJATT, don’t remember who made it,) and stopped using that too at some point.

I probably know a similar amount of kanji as well.

However, I’m done with individual kanji study. I don’t ever plan on being able to write by hand, and so all that matters to me is being able to read vocab (and type). At the level of kanji that I reached, I can for the most part recognize the subtle differences between two characters without much issue, and I don’t struggle too much with remembering vocab because of the kanji.

I don’t think individual kanji study has any benefit for my own goals.

I’ve never used WK though, so can’t say anything about it as a product.

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#30

Dubiously useful Vocab? Sure, I’d agree with that. But dubiously useful Kanji?

Well, I guess it depends on what you mean by ‘useful’, but if you go by the info available on WKStats, then there are only 46 kanji out of a total of 2079 on WK that are not within the top 2500 by frequency.

Also, and there is some overlap here (between the categories) that has to be considered, there are only 144 of 2079 kanji on WK that are not in the Joyo kanji (常用漢字) up to grade 9.

And there are only 125 of 2079 kanji on WK that are not in the JLPT levels N5 to N1.

If you consider those meagre 46 that are not in the top 2500, then I imagine that nearly all of them (if not all) are present because they are either Joyo (but not in the top 2500) or JLPT (but not in top 2500), or both.

So, there are actually very few kanji (at max, 46 / 2079 = 2.2%, though probably even fewer than that) on WK that are not ‘useful’ by some reasonable definition(s) of the word. Just sayin’.

As for Vocab, yeah, well sure, point taken. (But gotta learn those extra readings somehow … :sweat_smile: .) Only talking about Kanji here.

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#31

My take on wanikani : fantastic tool that works perfectly for me - both in terms of mnemotechnics and pacing. Since I started it in September I am almost 1/3rd through and it brought me further than all my previous attempts combined.

However:

  1. It heavily relies on scripts and/or third party Apps for a decent experience (cheating/reordering/finding leeches)
  2. for someone that has already such a strong foundation in kanjis, you might find the first levels excruciatingly slow/boring as you can’t skip ahead.
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#32

Sorry, I must have incorrectly phrased that sentence. I was out and didn’t proofread. I only plan on using Wanikani for Kanji.

I use Bunpro for grammar, Anki for vocab, and immerse daily.

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#33

Fair enough, I took a bit of a shortcut, it’s true that there are only a handful of kanji that I would genuinely deem dubiously useful overall. What I had in mind is that the kanji that you learn don’t necessarily line up with the type of kanji that will be useful for you at the level you learn them, depending on what kind of contents you consume.

If you use WaniKani to bootstrap your Japanese early on without any prior knowledge, it doesn’t really matter. But if you already know a bunch of Japanese not being able to choose the kanji that actually matter for the content you care about is going to be a source of frustration.

In that regard JPDB seems a lot more interesting, but again I haven’t actually tried to use it.

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#34

For me, knowing the individual meanings of Kanji has helped in understanding unknown vocabulary when immersing and while in Japan. I’ve been using the learn as you go approach for a while when it comes to Kanji, but I think solidifying my foundation will only help me moving forward. We’ll see though.

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#35

I will echo the more negative sentiments in this thread. If you absolutely cannot get your head around kanji then perhaps learning a few hundred using wanikani would be worth trying however if you’ve already got the absolute basics down then I’d suggest just engaging with written Japanese more and try writing them out (with or without SRS) if they’re still not sticking. Purely anecdotal but I’ve never met someone who’s good at Japanese and used wanikani. Also many users seem to let it take over their studies and end up not progressing (go read some level 60 posts, many mention that they’re around N4-N3 which feels insane to me). Also I personally think kanji focused learning is a bit putting the cart before the horse - vocab is far more important and at intermediate level and beyond a far far bigger roadblock than kanji. If you focus on kanji but not reading then you’ll get good at recognising kanji but probably barely any better at reading. Kanji study should be about making it easier to learn words and spending an hour a day just reviewing kanji related stuff (I believe that’s how much time it takes on max speed) is stealing an hour of time that could be used for reading. In most situations the answer to the problem is use Japanese more, not do more SRS.

Edit: Also 10/10 spicy topic - people can get very heated about wanikani 笑

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#36

Imo the main downside to Wanikani is that the return on time investment is low. It is mostly dependent on repitition and the resultant depth of understanding remains shallow.

If it suits a specific role in your toolkit, then you’ll probably be satisfied with it.

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#37

A proper N3 at the end of WaniKani seems reasonable to me, assuming that it took you something like a year and a half to finish. I mean, that’s pretty much where I am right now.

I see what you mean in general though, I’ve seen a few level 60 posts where the person would say something like “now I’m not sure what I’ll do, maybe start Genki I”. But frankly is it fair to blame WaniKani for this?

At the risk of repeating myself I think WaniKani does only one thing well, but it does it decently well: get complete newbies started on kanji quickly. You can get through the first 30 levels and ~1k kanji and thousand of words in about 8 months. That’s decent.

Is it worth the entry price? Probably not, but if you have the disposable income and it works for you, who cares.

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#38

Wanikani is a flashcard app. Definitely try out the free trial before paying for it. I think Wanikani is worse for intermediate learners because you have to learn in Wanikani’s order. You can get held back by radicals that are useful when you are learning, but not so as an intermediate. Do turn off furigana on bunpro to practice reading.

I learned kanji first, and then vocab. As an intermediate, I would always pass the radical cards (as in things that aren’t kanji like 歹). You could write the kanji of all of your reviews (in both anki and bunpro) on paper (or with the anki white board).

I like this blog post about different ways to learn kanji
https://japaneselevelup.com/learning-kanji-meaning-separately-readings/

I set up my kanjidamage deck with two sides

Agricultural breeding reproduction [meaning], shoku[onyomi] → 殖[kanji] 歹、直[components] 生殖する[jukugo]
Trees木 are plants植物, but people 人buy them for a price 値段。SHH 歹 I can’t tell you how people reproduce 生殖 [look a likes]

For this card, given the English meaning and reading I try to write it. (or write it 10 times if you are asher).

養 → cultivate, rear[meaning] 羊(same on) 食[components]やしな*う foster, raise, breed, cultivate used for animals and orphans [kunyomi]
栄養えいよう nutrition [jukugo]
For this one, If I’m able to remember the Japanese vocab or English meaning, I count it as a win

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#39

Everyone has basically said what I think of WK too, one thing I’ve not seen though and think you should be aware of is it frequently teaches you vocabulary that is either very rarely used (will have a more commonly used synonym) or it’s a word that is only found in writing and not in conversation.

Examples of this are when you learn 里心 when Japanese people more commonly use ホームシック. It’s happened so many times where I’ve used a word in conversation only to be met with confusion of both how I know the word and why I used it!

By all means learn how to read kanji with WK but using manga, books, news etc to learn the actual contexts is needed too

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#40

激辛、激辛！

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