Learn Japanese Kanji
WaniKani
Source: WaniKani Website
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Background and Links


Further Notes
  1. I actually started the (free) lessons on Thursday 08 July 2021. We’ll see how it goes.
  2. The second ‘Community’ link gives guidance for how to rush through the system as quickly as possible: basically, to pick up items in your learning and revision queues efficiently. I’m not too fussed about this, as I don’t have enough time to devote to it all.
  3. I completed Level 1 – at least to the extent of “levelling up” to Level 2 – on Sunday 18th July 2021, ie. 10 days after starting. However, I didn’t feel that I was fully conversant with what I’d learnt, and didn’t want to be overwhelmed by a load of new material straight away until I’d had time to think about what I’d been doing hitherto.
  4. Learning the first bunch of radicals has been no use at all, as the Kanji presented in the early lessons aren’t complex enough to need the storyboarding techniques to remember their structure in terms of constituent radicals.
  5. I originally despised the storyboarding technique for learning the On’yomi and Kun’yomi readings and vocabulary meanings of the Kanji. But this was a mistake, in that I’m finding that the data doesn’t ‘stay put’ after days or weeks without use, except where there’s an associative story. However, some of the suggested stories are so absurd or arbitrary that they don’t stick either. Also, some of them rely on unusual or ambiguous sound-readings. For instance, “to enter” is “Hairu”, and you’re to imagine saying “Hi”; but that keeps tempting me to write “Hiaru”.
  6. Maybe things improve as you go through the course, but there doesn’t seem any point learning all this stuff – even assuming you can – without frequent usage in a linguistic (as distinct from flash-card) context.

Comment:

See WaniKani: Knowledge Guide.

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  1. Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2023



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