What is Reddit's opinion of
WaniKani?
From 3.5 billion Reddit comments
100 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
Haaa it's me for the last few months. If you're interested in learning Japanese I'd really recommend WaniKani for learning Kanji, it's super helpful:
Honestly from what you're telling me it sounds like you need to readjust your attitude on learning. It sounds like it isn't something you care about at all. You say you will "need to" learn Japanese "soon." To me there is no goal or will in your attitude, and learning a language takes a lot of effort. You're starting off by asking for help which is good, but honestly the best thing you can do for yourself is to just start. Just like anything else you won't magically get better without trying.
As far as recommendations I think you might really like Textfugu. Not only does it go over the mindset and study habits you will need for learning Japanese, but it is a self paced guide that will give you a good start for learning Japanese. The first chapter is free and you can learn Katakana and Hiragana with that, so at the very least do that.
I also love Wanikani. It is a great way to learn Kanji, and is pretty cheap. There is even a discount code that comes with Textfugu. I also just recently fell in love with this site for listening practice Delvin Language.
This is just how I like to learn, and may not work for you. When I started learning Japanese it was so much fun for me and I literally wrote everything down and had a really good time learning Hiragana and Katakana. I hope that you can feel a want or spark that will get you started like that. From there you just keep doing a little everyday and you will make progress.
If anyone else is looking for some serious kanji-learning tools, the last time a Japanese language learning game got posted I got fired up and started researching learning materials. I ended up getting really into WaniKani, which is a high-quality sort-of-gameified kanji learning website. It's a good "next step" for learning vocab if you are comfortable with hiragana/katakana and orders things in an easy to learn way. It ended up being surprisingly fun and smoothly integrated into my daily routine.
Hmm... In terms of websites/apps, a lot I have seen are just vocabulary learning and do one word at a time. With that being said, there are a few websites I have personally found really useful.
Wanikani is really good for learning kanji. You need to know hiragana and katakana first, but you can learn those pretty easily. Learning radicals is really effective because it can help you guess/intuit the meaning of words you've never seen before.
Shirabe Jisho is a dictionary app I really like. I find it has really good features (quizzes, related words, hand drawn input, etc) and is just overall solid.
I've heard good things about Japanese Pod but have never used it myself. A few of my friends swear by it though.
If you are interested in getting a textbook, Genki is absolutely the way to get. Best introductory and intermediate textbooks imo.
WaniKani. It uses a spaced-repetition system (SRS) to help you learn the building blocks of over 2,000 kanji, and 6,000 vocabulary words, for learners of Japanese. I’m slowly making my way through Level 18 (of 60) at the moment after a year of stop-starts, but it’s changed the way I learned languages.
I used WaniKani to learn 2000 kanji and 6000 words in a year.
It has mnemonics for everything it teaches, which some people find very helpful, but they aren't necessary by any means. I stopped using them after the first month or two.
It's not free, though.
You can create something similar for free with a program called Anki if you'd rather.
I've been in Japan for four years and have done business level presentations in Japanese. I'd advise the following:
- Learn Hiragana and Katakana before you do anything else
- Once you have learned those, sign up for Wanikani and do it seriously to learn how to read
- Use Tae Kim's guide to Japanese to get an understanding of grammar
- Sign up for language classes to supplement the above
Best of luck!
>but I don't know how to PRONOUNCE them.
Kanji are used to spell words— so their pronunciation is going to depend entirely on the word they are spelling. Some kanji are words all by themselves, but many are not.
Since they are confusing to you now, for the time being, don't worry about learning much else (kanji-wise) apart from the words in your textbooks or other study materials. Just pick up new words as you go, whether those words are using kanji or not.
Eventually, kanji start making more sense. You'll begin to prefer sentences that use kanji, because it's fewer characters to read and you get more meaning out of them to boot. Sometimes you might even be frustrated when something chooses not to use kanji, because a jumble of kana can be more confusing than an unmistakable kanji would've been.
As soon as you start to get comfortable with kanji though, look into ways to learn lots of them as you go forward. The sooner you can start, the better off you'll be. Search this subreddit for "SRS" and see what suits you. I used WaniKani, but it's a subscription service that isn't as flexible as something like Anki.
TL;DR kanji won't always be confusing. Don't focus on kanji too much right now, just keep learning words until you get a better feel for them. Once they start making sense, you'll have a better idea for how you'll want to tackle them systematically.
If you're going to avoid kanji, you might as well not learn Japanese at all.
But, if you know some of the kanji in a word, you can search for the word using the known kanji/okurigana and * at jisho.
Take 好奇心 for example. You probably know 好き, and 心. Just type 好*心 into the dictionary to fill in the middle kanji and find 好奇心（こうきしん）means "curiosity." You could also search *奇心, 好奇*, or *奇* if you wanted.
If that's not an option, I prefer using Google Translate's hand-drawing input on desktop. Try to use the correct stroke order if you can manage to guess it to have an easier time using it.
For learning lots of kanji... Look into Kanji/Vocab SRS on this subreddit, or /r/LearnJapanese. I personally used WaniKani.
I HIGHLY recommend WaniKani. The first 2 ( I think it's 2) sets of lessons are free and you can subscribe afterwards if you like it. They have a browser client as well as a mobile app. https://www.wanikani.com/
Everyone else here seems to have it covered, but maybe also consider something like wanikani for Kanji? It has a Duolingo-esque leveling system.
Admittedly, I don't have any experience with it, but I've heard good things (granted that those good things are from complete beginners who probably can't self-evaluate well).
If you're serious about learning, I recommend these resources:
Both of these resources are from the same person and are specifically designed for self-learners. It's not free, but might be a great choice depending on the type of learner you are. You can try out the introductory chapters of textfugu for free to see if it might be something you're interested in.
I miss Wanikani in the Kanji list (and the free equivalent Wanikani Anki deck).
The anki deck is broken in the last Anki version, but you can download an older one and it'll work (e.g. Anki 2.1.35).
> Is there a way to skip ahead to more relevant lessons?
No. That's the point of WaniKani, they have their own spaced system.
> Am I missing something?
> before I start actually learning anything new to me.
If you know a lot of kanji already, WK is likely not for you, unless you are willing to spend some time on it until the system reaches your level.
Step 1) Learn katakana and hiragana here: http://www.kongregate.com/games/tukkun/kana-warrior
Step 2) Learn Kanji and vocabulary here: https://www.wanikani.com/
Step 3) Learn grammar here: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar
Step 4) ???
Step 5) Play inexpensive old JRPGs! (and profit)
It'll only take you a few short years of daily dedication!
> although it would be a great task to be able to memorize even one of the alphabets.
Technically they're syllabaries, since they get pieced together into words as whole syllables. The kana aren't a big deal on their own though; you could dedicate a weekend or so and get at least hiragana down well enough to start learning from beginner materials. After that, it'll be endlessly reinforced every time you use the language.
Kanji are a big wall, but aren't impossible. I taught myself the first ~2000 kanji in ~6000 words in a year using WaniKani, and now reading Japanese feels like a superpower lmao. It's extremely satisfying to be able to read most things I look at.
WK ramps up very slowly, but the first 3 levels (of 60 total) are free. ~1 year to complete is unrealistic unless you're willing to spend 1-2 hours a day on it and watch your review schedule like a hawk, but it's absolutely doable if you want it badly enough.
He is alive and well... Though isn't on the Internet much these days. (Or maybe he does so under a pseudonym?)
I think he likely got really busy after the recognition he got for his work on Mystery Dungeon. When that sort of thing happens, it's very easy for your online footprint to disappear.
That said, he has been doing an alphabet soup of music since 2009 for various games, including Smash Bros 4.
Also, on an unrelated note:
If you are looking at learning more Kanji, you should check out Wanikani. It's pretty sick.
Firstly, /r/learnjapanese is a great subreddit for future reference, as a beginner myself I try reading around on there every day to learn small things and get used to the language.
As a basic guide, you basically need to do two things; start learning basic grammar and how the language works, and learning the Kanji/vocabulary so you can actually read stuff.
For grammar, Tae Kim's Guide to Japanese is a great introductory course so I'd recommend starting there, and imabi.net is great as an intermediary/advanced follow-up guide. But if you'd prefer a classic book-based approach, the Genki books are highly acclaimed.
For vocabulary, personally I'm using a website called WaniKani which is very nice and teaches around 2000 Kanji and 6000 vocab/words. Unfortunately it requires a monthly subscription, so an alternative is to use the Anki software (flash cards basically) with some pre-made decks that have all the common Kanji/vocab.
After you know the basics and know some vocab, you can start doing stuff like reading manga or basic visual novels, although you'll need to be prepared to look up words every few minutes since it'll take some time to learn enough to be remotely fluent. But getting into reading real stuff will really boost your learning. Hopefully that helps, let me know if you have any more questions.
>more than 5k+ Kanji
Technically yes, but you mostly only need to know the bit over 2k Jyouyou kanji. If you want to learn to read Japanese, I recommend getting started with them sooner rather than later. My personal recommendation would be to use WaniKani. You can learn Jyouyou kanji in 1-2 years with it
I have been using WaniKani and I like it. I recommend trying the first three levels, which are free, to decide if you are interested. The first level feel really slow or underwhelming, but the later levels can feel really difficult. If you do decide to go with WaniKani make sure to take it at your own pace and try to do at least a little bit every day.
Here is a good review of WaniKani: 7 Reasons to Love WaniKani for Kanji - All About Japan.
Consistency is key. Keep doing your lessons daily.
For some other services that I've found helpful for learning Japanese, I would recommend LingoDeer(phone app) and WaniKani.
LingoDeer is similar to Duolingo, but it also has a system where you can record your pronunciation and people can rate it for you. There is also a set of one hundred kanji that you can practice writing, all with the proper stroke order. You can also customize for difficulty, leaving out romaji(English romanized transliteration) and furigana(hiragana placed above kanji to help pronounce it) if you want. I find that it also teaches grammar more effectively than Duolingo, and it will introduce multiple kanji throughout each lesson at a reasonable pace.
WaniKani is great for learning kanji(in my opinion). The full service requires a membership, but you can go through three levels for free to test it out. It starts by teaching you radicals, or the strokes/pieces that you can use to construct any kanji characters. It gates the amount of material you're able to learn, by first teaching you radicals, then some kanji made using those radicals, and then vocabulary using those kanji. You're not allowed to just breeze through all of the available content. The system is set up so that the more you learn and recognize, the longer in between your reviews for those kanji are. This is all based on the principal the site uses to make you remember Japanese more effectively when you have to recall information over increasing lengths of time.
The ~2000 kanji still aren't impossible, though.
As somebody who only knew English, I used a site called WaniKani to acquire ~2000 kanji with ~6300 vocab words. I got everything unlocked in just a year, and I've been reviewing it ever since (~8 months now).
At this point, I'm able to play FF14 Online entirely in Japanese, and understand a vast majority of what I'm reading in any other game I play in Japanese.
Listening is still hard for me though though. I've kind of been putting it off, thinking that reading comes first and I'll get all the listening I need if/when I land a job in Japan.
Also, I pushed WaniKani as fast as I could for a whole year, I guess average completion time is more like 1.5-2 years. Still, if you want it badly enough, it is doable.
Wanikani is probably the most popular site that teaches kanji by component. (To be clear, it uses the term "radical", but they're really WK's own handpicked parts rather than the traditional radicals that kanji dictionaries use.) Also note that it's a pay site, although you can try the first three levels for free to see whether you find it helpful.
If you're okay with a paper book, there's the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course, which also uses components (it tends to prefer the term "graphemes" for these).
Both WK and KKLC also teach vocabulary to reinforce the readings. WK's vocab tends to be somewhat more immediately useful at beginner levels, while KKLC's vocab is more erudite. WK does force you to learn the basic meaning of a kanji and one of its readings before introducing vocab, whereas I find it more useful to learn readings through vocabulary.
I highly recommend checking out WaniKani. This is the best experience I've had learning Kanji so far, they provide a wonderful web app, pre-written mneomincs for 2000+ Kanji, example sentences, multiple readings, vocab, etc. Can't recommend it enough.
Sounds about right.
>4 Start learning Kanji as I go learning words. (Or would it be better to try take an extended period of time learning all 2136 Kanji before going on to conversation and learning words? LOL idk)
There's a couple of schools of thought here. I think you ought to start kanji as soon as you're done with hiragana, and keep doing it concurrent with everything else you mentioned. Look into WaniKani or the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Course for learning kanji.
Here's what I did:
- Learn Hiragana
- Learn Katakana
- Start Grammar from Genki/Kanji from Wanikani
Once you learn hiragana and katakana you can jump right into lesson one of Genki. Since there's so many kanji to learn, it's not really worth waiting on that to start grammar - just learn kanji while you do grammar lessons.
If you're looking for kanji learning resources, two commonly recommended ones around here are KanjiDamage and Wanikani.
I started doing wanikani to learn kanji after learning the kana and am also working through genki 1 at the same time.
Check it out if you're interested. Personally I love it. Might also want to check out the faq
It's a paid service so keep that in mind, but the first two levels are free to let you see if the service works for you.
Memrise is the only language learning program I've ever stuck with. It makes learning languages fun and easy. After using it a while, it's hard to try anything else now. If anybody wants a site that teaches you how to memorize kanji characters easily, you should check out https://www.wanikani.com/. Unfortunately it's not free($20 a month I believe), but the first 2 lessons are free.
I use Japanese and Wanikani. Japanese is a great dictionary with both keyboard and handwritten entry. As for Wanikani, it's a great place to learn kanji and vocabulary. It's USD$8 per month, but totally worth it. I didn't start until about 3 years into my Japanese study, but it's helped me solidify many kanji I already knew, learn new vocab with those characters, and now breaking into new material and being able to retain the material easily. It also has a mobile app so you can review when you're not at your computer.
To learn them. For Japanese, this is great and widely considered one of the best ways to learn the kanji (and some vocab along the way); for Chinese, this (Traditional) and this (Simplified) are two of your options. Another is to just learn them out of whichever textbook you get and while studying vocabulary separatedly. There are probably some other hanzi books too; you might wanna have a look over in /r/chineselanguage for that sort of thing.
However, I suggest getting a good base in one of the two character sets (Japanese or Chinese) before you start with the other, to minimise any confusion. I knew probably 1.3k kanji (as in, I could recognise them and sort of figure out the meaning; I couldn't pronounce all of them) when I tried learning Chinese as well, so I didn't have any problems with that.
Sub to /r/JapanTravel and have your wife use WaniKani for learning Kanji.
When Japan reopens, stay in Shinjuku area. Busiest station in the world but centralized in Tokyo so you can go anywhere.
I'm currently learning, and would recommend Tofugu's guide on how to learn. I found it's a decent first step: https://www.tofugu.com/learn-japanese/
Also, WaniKani is a great resource for Kanji: https://www.wanikani.com/
And I'm in the same boat as you. I'm not quite a weeb, but I do like some of the most mainstream anime. I have my personal reasons for wanting to learn Japanese
Se te la senti di studiare i kanji dall'inglese, c'è WaniKani che è un ottimo corso online/programma di studio. In pratica ti insegna i trucchi per memorizzare i kanji e include un sistema di flashcards da usare periodicamente per testare quanto ti ricordi.
Dopo un certo livello diventa a pagamento ma i primi sono gratis e ne vale la pena secondo me.
Japan Airlines creates new low-cost airline
Japan Airlines has decided to create a new airline with cheap ticket prices. Until 2020 the new airline will fly between Narita and Asian countries. After that, they are considering flights to Europe and America too.
ANA Holdings Inc owns two low-cost airlines, and have plans to merge the companies by March 2020, and fly to more locations.
The number of people who use cheap airlines are increasing, and it seems that the competition between the airlines is getting more intense.
| Expression | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 航空[こうくう] | aviation |
| 日本航空 | Japan Airlines |
| 成田空港 | Narita airport |
| 激しい[はげしい] | intense, steep |
| ＡＮＡ | All Nippon Airways |
Not reading material but a way to study kanji's is "WaniKani" (https://www.wanikani.com/dashboard) I've been using it side by side with Genki.
Additionally, there is also an app called "TangoRisto" which gives you news articles based on your level and you can click on the kanjis to see a translation, definition and hiragana.
Actually the vocab says way or direction. But if you look at the site you will see that the example sentences use the person meaning as one of them is "この方は、山田さんです。" - which simply put is "This person is Yamada"
Yeah, I understand. WK is really time dependent and getting buried is a huge problem. Anki is definitely the better option since it doesn't force you to go through readings (but I do find it helps me with memorizing it as I can't continue without getting it right)
Anyway, for chrome/firefox these are the two that you shouldn't go without.
WK Override - the ignore button when you know the answer, but simply made a typo
WK Reorder Ultimate - this is so you can order your reviews however you like. I find this is my favorite extension as you can choose what to do (Kanji first, maybe vocab, and do it by SRS level too if you're inclined). I use this to maximize my leveling up process since I'm using the timed subscription, but it's still a great tool to have.
I'd strongly recommend WaniKani. They don't emphasize writing kanji, but have a superb program for having you learn kanji quickly. I've memorized hundreds of words very quickly through their system.
PS: One of the reasons I'm posting this here (besides sharing it with you guys) is because it is an indie project and the owner seems to be needing some help, and because japanese learners would benefit a lot from the growth of a site like this.
EDIT 1: other users have recommended https://www.wanikani.com and http://www.kanjidamage.com/ as resources for kanji.
EDIT 2: /u/ZeusAllMighty11 found a malware on the site, but since my own firewall (kaspersky) did not, I'll sustain the thread. Just be warned.
My news: Today is "Trip to Melbourne" day. Everything is booked and ready, with the train leaving in less than 12 hours. Sadly, that means I miss out on Origin 3, unless the train has internet. Fuuuuuck. Also getting some new art done for my social media thanks to artist connections. I've had the same avatar since I got my hair shaved, and I'm welcoming a change through drawings.
In other news, shameless plugs; for Wanikani, a Japanese kanji-learning site and a friend of mine called Jay releasing a couple of new singles from his upcoming album, which you can listen to here. Also another friend made this YTMND thing for an entirely different Jay. It's unbelievably beautiful.
Personally I find that the idea behind the game is a much better one than the game itself. While learning is hard work one or the other way, there is really no need to disguise it as a game than does not really have any game-like aspects. If you play around with it for a while you might learn a little bit of vocabulary, but it's more likely faster (and often cheaper) to just learn it straight away.
I'm also not sure how much it would help you in general. You've said you've been learning for 4 years, so there really shouldn't be anything new for you anyway.
In the case that you don't know what to study, and consequently haven't been able to really get deep, then I would suggest trying out the usual learning resources. For learning Kanji and vocab I would recommend WaniKani. It's not free by far, but in my opinion the most sure-fire way to hammer Kanji into your brain. The free alternative is downloading Anki and getting yourself a core 2k deck with the most important vocab. Any of those two resources will get you trough vocab and Kanji faster and better than the game. For grammar there's TaeKims Guide (Free), and lot's of others.
If you've got trouble with anything in specific, feel free to PM me. I might be able to help more if I knew your exact circumstances.
Good luck with your studies!
今週はとても忙しいでしたよ。僕は家を買うのを探すんです。
I've been really busy this week, because I'm starting to buy a house, working on pre-approval stuff, should start looking soon.
Also, my PSU died on my main desktop over last weekend, I had to order a new one and couldn't really use my computer until Wednesday.
This week:
- Kept up on WaniKani, despite being really busy this week I was able to do ~30 lessons.
- Still need to catch up on Anki, hoping to do that today
- Haven't had time to do any grammar study
- I only wrote one entry on Lang-8
Next week:
- Keep doing WK as usual
- Catch up on Anki and keep making progress
- Do at least one grammar lesson
- I'm going to be skyping with a Japanese friend tomorrow again. I should think of some topics to discuss before that, any suggestions?
I posted it on the WK forums too, but I fixed the WaniKani Override script to work with Greasemonkey since it's no longer supported and I just switched from Chrome.
I'm looking forward to when I find a house and get all moved in so I can spend more time on studying, it's going to be slow progress until then I suspect.
Everyone told me just to immerse until I ran across familiar kanji and I'd just memorize it like that.
That ABSOLUTELY did not work for me.
What did work was learning the kanji breaking them down in radicals (the visuals being broken down into individual components) and readings, then learning them through mnemonics.
Wanikani does that and it's easily the best resource to learn kanji IF you can handle flashcard learning.
https://www.wanikani.com/level/1
You don't have to pay if you just use the Anki deck based on WaniKani.
Hey, have you heard of Wanikani?
It's a website that uses a 'spaced repition system' (SRS) to teach kanji and vocab (it essentially uses flashcards).
I've been using it for a total of about 4 months and I couldn't recommend it more.
My reading skill has come along a lot in a short time and I'm really happy.
https://www.wanikani.com/
Keep in mind that it is pretty much only useful for reading/recognising kanji/vocab
The number Three confuses me.
https://www.wanikani.com/vocabulary/%E4%B8%89%E3%81%A4
https://www.wanikani.com/vocabulary/%E4%B8%89%E4%BA%BA
Unlike other numbers, why does the spelling seem to change drastically?
If I want to say 「一つ」"one thing" and 「一人」"alone" I just have to use 「ひと」for the first part and 「つ」「り」for the second part. Unlike Three, I don't need to use its on'yomi spelling 「いち」.
Why do the rules seem to be different for the Three Kanji?
I think that's a good place to start. You could check out Tae Kim's grammar guide for an introduction to grammar; it's free and easy to understand. It's a much better way to learn the fundamentals than Duolingo is, but you can still do Duolingo to practice using the lanugage.
Cure Dolly on youtube also has a good and very in-depth grammar series, but the videos are a bit weird and quite aesthetically displeasing so I wouldn't be surprised if you don't like them. The information is great though.
You can also do 4 levels of Wanikani for free to learn some simple Kanji. I found it to be a big motivation boost in the beginning when I was sometimes able to recognize kanji and decode sentences with the basic grammar i knew.
For learning kanji I highly recommend trying WaniKani. It's a paid service but the first few levels are free. You can then start reading graded materials (maybe using Satori) and then native content.
Also consider finding an online professional tutor from sites like iTalki. As you know there's a big difference between casual conversations and formal Japanese, and having an experienced teacher/tutor who can diagnose your current skills and guide you can make a big difference.
It would be great if you can come to Japan for a Business Japanese course or something. A (Canadian) friend who was in a similar situation ended up coming to Japan for a couple of semesters during her undergrad and that worked out great for her.
For starters, the Basic Hiragana pack. I suggest reading Genki I in tandem with using Anki. Once you've memorized a lot of characters you can modify the deck to include the characters with diacriticals(like が or で) and Katakana(this also has characters with diacriticals, and is used for English loanwords like テレビ) or you can just make a new deck for those new characters(I did this because it's much less cluttered IMO). For Kanji(Chinese characters that were borrowed a long time ago so Japanese can have a writing system), I haven't actually started learning it yet so you should ask other people that have so you can get the best deck for learning. Then again there is WaniKani which a lot of people use and recommend.
Haha I feel like a lot of the time it's "day to day" or generic. You would see an Old Bird every day and a lot of what it does is generally what you need to live. That's probably why it feels a bit all over as well! It's worth noting I've learned it as Turkey, which are essentially just livestock and very boring / normal animals.
Some times it's individual or "birdy" things while sometimes it's something more generic for a crowd, "flock", or average Joe living their life https://www.wanikani.com/radicals/turkey
WaniKani is a Kanji learning app. It takes a little bit of getting used to as it can seem slow but it’s actually really good! As for reading I personally like manga and novels so I use those. In children or teen manga and novels they put kana next to Kanji in small print so that’s really helpful.
(Edit: link/grammar. I just looked this up now so I don’t know if this website is official but as an example: Manga Raw)
God Bless!
Just click on the kanji and you'll see both おんな and じょ. You'll find good explanations about what are kun'yomi and on'yomi anywhere.
Wanikani probably takes the first kun'yomi reading for the kanji list...
I used WaniKani for the first ~2000 kanji, because it teaches common readings/usages through ~6000 actual vocab words. The vocabulary really helped all the kanji (along with their various readings) sink in.
I liked the platform because of the way it's structured; with everything already laid out and set up, all I had to do was show up every day for lessons/reviews.
There are also tons of userscripts made by the community (the vast majority of which are fully functional simply by downloading them). There's a long list of them compiled here if you want to have a look (scroll down to the "Reviews & Lessons" section for all the ones that can actually aid the learning process. Links with numbers next to them show how many times they've been clicked, so you can see which are the most popular).
This approach gave me a super well-rounded kanji knowledge base to build off of. Now, I just fill in the occasional gap as I come across new kanji whenever I read anything in Japanese.
Edit:
An example of something I was able to comfortably read thanks to everything I learned from WK (I currently have a job teaching English in Japan right now, and got this paper outlining how I'd be able to work from home while the schools are closed). The title of the paper is: 新型コロナウイルス感染拡大防止に係る◯◯市立小・中学校臨時休業期間中における外国語指導助手在宅勤務実施要領
WK doesn’t have an app, as far as I know. I just use it in my browser. It has a mobile web page so it works pretty well as far as I’m concerned. Same for Bunpro. As far as I know, the only thing I mentioned with a mobile app is Anki. I could be entirely wrong on this, but the mobile pages for WK and Bunpro work perfectly for me.
Here’s WaniKani.
Here’s Bunpro.
Both have a free trial, you don’t even need to put in a credit card for either one. Should work just fine on your phone regardless though.
Ah yeah, that does make sense I suppose. If you ever try going back to Japanese, the website I use is $9 / £7 / 9€, but works wonders for Kanji I personally think. While it isn't the fastest, it really does hammer in Kanji readings, radicals and vocabulary too. https://www.wanikani.com/
I know about 200 at this point over 4 months. If you haven't heard of it, theres a subscription service online called WaniKani which is fantastic at teaching you kun and on readings of kanji, and all sorts of jukugo words too. $12 is a lot for me (student), but it's totally worth it. Extensive kanji studies makes me fall behind on learning grammar, and I still don't fully know katakana but honestly, it's going good!
First 4 levels of WaniKani are free, so try it out!
The best method is going to be whatever you can do routinely on a daily basis without stopping— so, do the one that seems most appealing.
The worst method would be to decide on the ideal approach, and then be too intimidated to actually do anything so you give up and do nothing.
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I used WaniKani to learn an average of 5 kanji & 16 vocab per day for a year until I finished it. That was a pretty intense pace though; I reached the end in July, but I'm still averaging ~200 reviews every day. It's also a subscription service whose selling point is its mnemonics, which I stopped using after a month or two, but overall I've been incredibly satisfied with it.
Nope, it literally says it means grave. Says nothing about dirt or soil at all. The meaning says "grave", and here is the mnemonic part:
"There's a cross in the ground, which makes this a grave. Now, later on you'll learn a really similar radical with a cross that's wider than the ground. Just remember, this is a regular ol' grave, where the cross is not as wide as the ground."
The one with cross wider than ground is "warrior, samurai" from what the dictionary says. I am confused.
Here's the link: https://www.wanikani.com/radicals/grave
for kanji readings, meanings and other vocabulary -
https://www.wanikani.com/
for kanji writing -
https://community.wanikani.com/t/version-105-2016-01-31-anki-deck-for-kanji-writing-practice/11840
I've found that learning the kanji on Wanikani (readings and meanings) before learning to write them on Anki has made it a lot easier.
also, i've found physically writing out the kanji, and not just writing them on a screen, really helps it stick.
good luck
I personally use WaniKani. It's a paid service but you can try the first ~2 weeks for free.
It will introduce you to kanji parts, then kanji that are made of those parts, and then finally real words made using those kanji. It has mnemonics for everything it teaches, which is something that works for a lot of people but isn't strictly necessary.
I myself don't use the mnemonics, and I feel it's not necessary to gate progress based on performance at your current level, so I force correct answers on all radicals and current-level kanji reviews to make it go fast. Using the system this way takes roughly 1 year to complete.
At the end of it, you should have a good idea of how to read all the kanji in a variety of ways and be able to expect how to read new words you come across with minimal difficulty. Learning new words becomes much faster when you can think "Ah, <known kanji 1> + <known kanji 2> = this. Got it."
As for Kana: I used this: http://realkana.com/hiragana/ It's good because you can start learning just a few at a time.
When I got everything right all the time I basically just wrote them on paper over and over again, looking them up in case I forgot one.
Eventually you can start learning Kanji, I've tried a lot of things for that (books, websites etc.) and the only thing that worked reliably for me was WaniKani (https://www.wanikani.com)
Good luck.
To anyone using WK that wants to learn additional vocab, I suggest checking hinekidori's 10k WK Breakdown anki deck that he made which introduces kanji vocab based on the kanji order that WK uses. If you're interested, I highly recommend you check it out first here as it's a pretty big download.
https://www.wanikani.com/chat/api-and-third-party-apps/7895
That has most of the scripts. The ones I personally use are:
Dashboard Progress Plus - Breaks down when and what the next reviews are.
Wanikani Override - Gives option to ignore wrong answers (I only use the option when I fat finger an answer. Don't cheat)
Review Order - Reviews go radical -> kanji -> vocab instead of random. Vocab is not required for unlocking new lessons, the other two are. This should let you level up faster, but don't neglect the vocab reviews.
Stroke Order Diagram - shows a stroke order diagram for the kanji
Wanikani Sentences - gives more example sentences for your vocab (not perfect, but more context for vocab is good)
And because I don't like white backgrounds I use this to change the style of the site.
Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey are all you need to run these.
Definitely use other study methods in addition to Wanikani though, because it's not going to teach you grammar or sentence structure.
For god's sake and your own, don't post this question to the WK forums (they get the question a lot and will likely tease and/or eviscerate you). The answer is, as stated by u/DenizenPrime, that you have to wait.
Here's how it goes:
| Current Stage | Wait | Then, if Correct |
|---|---|---|
| Lesson Complete | 4 hours | Apprentice A |
| Apprentice A | 8 hours | Apprentice B |
| Apprentice B | 24 hours | Apprentice C |
| Apprentice C | 3 days | Apprentice D |
| Apprentice D | 1 week | Guru |
| Guru | 2 weeks | Master |
| Master | 1 month | Enlightened |
| Enlightened | 4 months | Burned |
Once 90% or more of your kanji in your current level are "Guru" or higher, you will advance to the next level.
Please see the WK Guide for more info.
I used https://www.wanikani.com/ for a while, it's pretty good for learning Kanji (though I only got about halfway through before quitting, I should get back into that at some point). I can't read everything, but things like medal conditions and ability/relic descriptions are usually easy enough to understand.
>Do you think it would be beneficial to take a step back and learn the radicals (meaning, stroke order) before going back to tackle the kanji? It would be nice if someone could come up with a list that shows a beneficial order to learn them in, so that you can build on what you've already learned.
You're in luck, someone's done exactly that. It's called WaniKani, and I highly recommend it. It's what I've been using to learn kanji and vocab and I think it works great.
Here's a chart of the SRS levels and how long until you reach each one: https://cdn.wanikani.com/assets/guide/srs-visualization-4580afac174836361bdc3d3758bd6c7f.png
The first 3 are Apprentice, the 4th one (3 days) is Guru.
You will get new kanji lessons once you get the current level radicals to Guru level, so starting with the first time you learn the item in a lesson, it will take 4H + 8H + 24H + 3D until you can get it to Guru (assuming you do your reviews immediately when they're available), so the soonest is about 4.5 days
Also read the FAQ and Guide sections, they will answer a shit ton of questions:
Yeah, the first reviews after doing lessons are usually not so good for me either, but then again, I'm often surprised by how much I remember. For kanji, after finishing my lessons, I always write them down on a piece of paper along with their reading and meaning. This helps me a lot, or that's my impression, at least.
In the beginning I used to spend quite some time on the lessons too, but I found that to be tiresome after a while, so I started “rushing” them, and honestly, I didn't notice much difference when doing the reviews afterwards.
There is a Manga Recommendation List on WaniKani you might wanna have a look at.
It's a language, you don't ever finish :p. Also, 3 alphabets (Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji). If you need a kanji learning resource, wanikani is pretty good. First 3 levels are free but it runs through things in a way that helps you recall them over time rather than just for a couple of days :)
Burned:
What does it do? See https://www.wanikani.com/faq
When does it happen? See https://www.wanikani.com/guide
What if you want to revise? You shouldn't really need any revision other than maybe looking back at the list, so you can just do that.
Critical:
This become obvious through use, they're simply ones you've done not well at. Once you get better at them they lose their critical status. It doesn't change how any of the review works which is why it isn't mentioned.
- See /u/luke_c's answer.
I absolutely agree with your comments about the time commitment and that WaniKani should not and really cannot be your only studying method. A about two and a half years ago I started TextFugu and shortly after started using WaniKani and it basically consumed all of my study time until I eventually burned out at around Level 44.
Another thing is to not rush too much in your early levels. WaniKani starts off pretty slow but it picks up pace very quickly and after a while I was frequently getting days with 200+ reviews which usually took thirty minutes to an hour to finish depending on how many I got wrong. Prior to Level 44 I was averaging 10-12 Days/Level. Part of the reason I burned out was because I accidentally missed a few days while studying for some university exams. After a few days I had accumulated several hundred reviews and while I was able to finish them it kind of stopped being fun after the first hour. If I hadn't rushed the previous levels my reviews wouldn't have accumulated so quickly.
As effective as it is I probably would have gotten a lot more out of WaniKani if I had gone slower and maintained my grammar studying in parallel.
Unless they've released one recently the apps are not official, they use the API to view your data and then embed the webpage to do reviews and lessons. They also integrate a few of the many userscripts that are available for greasemonkey/tampermonkey like the override button.
I use WaniKani it's my personal favorite. I think that the way they use mnemonics and break up the kanji into radicals helps quite a bit. My retention on vocab I've learned from Wanikani is quite a bit higher from vocab I've learned elsewhere. Plus I find their system eases the learning process, it's much less of pure memorization which I find to be more of a brute force method.
Once you get an alright grasp on kana which you probably do already, check out wanikani.
This should help you understand how it works.
Although it's a paid service, the first two levels are free to see if you like it/if it will work for you.
I use wanikani for vocab building and am going through genki at the same time just like you are.
Hmm. I do suggest you take a look at WaniKani, then. It's a paid service, but it's structured, paced, and you can take it as slow or quick as you'd like (and have time for). Every vocabulary item has some (usually) weird context sentence, so you'll be able to practice your grammar, too.
Im using WaniKani.
Its an SRS program that teaches you kanji and vocab connected to the kanji through mnemonics and radicals.
First 2 levels are free (1st level is really slow but hang in there, it gets much faster later on) 50 levels in total, teaching you almost all the joyo kanji and around 5k vocab in a year and a half/two years.
Heres FAQ and Guide.
Edit: wanikani saved my life tbh.
and if you want to practice handwriting them, a user has made pdfs based on WK levels, and if you want English -> Japanese too, a few users have made a program like that; tell me if youre interested and i'll link them (too lazy and on mobile right now sorry)
I am personally using wanikani. The first two levels are free and should give you an idea if the site is for you or not. The opinion around here about how it teaches you seems to vary but I for one really like it. I have been using the site for a little more than a month now and am level 5. Also when you start out its reeeeally slow, so keep that in mind.
Personally, I found Genkis Kanji was not 'for me' (Im self-studying), it took long and I didnt benefit much, however their exercises and reading passages in the Kanji section are perfect!
Im currently using WaniKani for Kanji. Its like an SRS program, teaches you about 30kanji per 'level', aims to teach you almost all joyo kanji in a year or two depending on your pace (excluding level 1 and probably 2, not sure).
If youre interested heres the link to the guide (must read or you will be confused) and the FAQ.
Try out https://www.wanikani.com/
It does exactly what you describe.
First it teaches you some radicals, then it teaches you some Kanji built with those radicals, and then it teaches you vocabulary built with those Kanji. It doesn't quiz you on all the forms of each character, instead it builds you up to memorize what is important, the vocabulary.
It gives you two free levels, and the rest is paid. The free levels are really slow, but each level builds on each other, so it picks up really fast.
I also want to mention that the app you are using is somewhat not under development anymore. There is a new one, with most of the important scripts implemented in the internal browser (I believe). The new creator got help from the old one.
The only real feature the new one is lacking are the notifications, imho. Link to app
There's a kanji section at the back of the Genki books that goes over the kanji introduced in each chapter. If you want more, WaniKani and Kanji Damage are farily popular resources. I would recommend Heisig's RTK, but as a native Chinese speaker, you probably wouldn't find it particularly useful.
Knowing traditional Chinese is certainly a benefit since you already have the ability to distinguish kanji and recognise/understand a great number of words.
I'm writing this a little ironically but I think that it counts as an incremental game in a way. Perhaps this interpretation of it as an incremental will inspire developers to create a new genre of educational incremental games.
I'm playing Wanikani. It's a Japanese language learning incremental that trains you to read kanji. It comprises of 60 levels of learning around 'radicals' the repeating shapes you see throughout various kanji. Which if you remember them 4 times in a row correctly over the course of a week unlocks 'kanji' the composite letters made up of the radicals you have learned so far that are more like pictograph word concepts that aren't necessarily words in themselves. Which if you remember correctly unlocks 'vocabulary' that uses combinations of those kanji that are actual words in Japanese.
This progressive unlocking of new words in a flash card style spaced repetition system system feels extremely incremental. I'd recommend trying it out to get an understanding of what I mean. The first 4 levels are free and will take you a month or two to get through.
Okay I'm tracking with you. There are apparently some people who can very easily memorize kanji just from looking at them. But I personally think that studying the Core 2K with no prior kanji knowledge would be brutally difficult.
Most people like to learn Kanji by breaking them down into their component parts, along with little stories that are used as memorization aids (called mnemonics).
A very popular tool for this is WaniKani. I really like it:
Another popular tool is a book called Remembering the Kanji (RTK). Some people have made Anki decks based on this book.
> So when would i read it as ちから and when does it read as りょく or りき
I think it's usually read as ちから when it's standalone (like in 力を出す, and as りょく or りき when it's in a compound with other kanji. If you look at the words at the bottom of its page on WaniKani, all of them are either りょく or りき.
Once you get starter, You might want to check this website to help you learn kanjis. My GF (and a few other people I know) uses it and really likes it.
Nice! I've been learning for about a year now - it definitely feels like a grind at times, but it's been super rewarding! I'd highly recommend WaniKani if you like the vocab side of things and DuoLingo ever feels like it's not cutting it, I've learned a few hundred kanji and 2-3x the amount of vocab over the last year with it.
For syntax/grammar/speaking, I'd recommend joining a class from your local Japanese society if there is one or joining some type of online class. You can learn a lot of vocab and reading on your own, but the grammar and speaking didn't click for me until I talked with other folks.
(Also very much not a comment I'd expect to write on /r/baseball , but I'm not complaining lol)
If you want to give Japanese another go, I'd recommend WaniKani. It makes learning kanji into basically a game and it can turn out surprisingly effective if you stick with it past the rough patches. I started with it immediately after I learned the two sets of kana as a beginner, now I've got about 2500 kanji with readings I can recognise perfectly and about a 1000 more I sometimes get.
According to this link, the original sentence should be トーフグはユニークな日本語学習教材～, so why did you change Tofugu (a teaching platform) to 私? You just made yourself the platform instead.
Hey, good find! Interestingly it says those requirements are per their terms, but I can't find anything in the terms that mentions subscription limitations or not developing for profit.
​
Another question I have is if a anki deck is considered a "tool" by them or not. If not, then I'd suspect that counts as fair use for learning on your own. If so, then maybe I'm all wrong about that.
I'd say that it's good to define your goals first because it could impact which resource will work for you. Asking yourself the following questions may help you.
- Is writing important to you?
- how much time and energy are you willing to invest in learning kanji?
- are you studying for an exam (JLPT) or for more practical reasons like reading manga, books or other media?
- Are you willing to spend money and if so what's your budget?
- Are you tech savvy?
I'd encourage you to think of the answers and then read my suggestions. I'm sure I'll miss a few great resources but atleast I hope that the answers can help you find what you're looking for.
If you don't particularly care about writing, are willing to spend money and prefer to take it (relatively slow) then you could use https://www.wanikani.com/ If you're tech savvy then instead you could use a flash card app (Anki for example) and download prebuilt decks which is gratis.
If you don't particularly care about reading but instead want to focus on recognition, remembering and writing then you could buy the Remembering the kanji book from Heisig. You may want to use a flash card app or https://kanji.koohii.com/
If you're studying kanji in order to consume media then you may like https://jpdb.io/ . It has a built-in flashcard system that teaches words and kanji through media that you may be interested in. Fair warning that this website is still a work in progress and not all kanji have keywords.
Lastly, considering I'm only one silly person, you may want to check out the sidebar of this sub to get more information. I wish you good luck on your journey and please don't let yourself be intimidated by others who flex about their journey. I think learning Japanese is akin to a marathon not a sprint
I'd say start at something like duolingo (which is common in any language learning.) When you get to kanji 感じ, chinese characters, seek out a good study app. I'd recommend WaniKani. Make sure to take the opportunity to learn the hiragana syllabary.
Now it's just up to you to choose how you want to learn. I'd recommend flashcards with WaniKani. Do or do not, there is no try Duolingo. I'm seeing if it's best to do duo later after learning the kanji to both refresh learning and learn grammar of Japanese.
The rule of thumb here is, learn as much as you can handle, and go slow and steady, to win the race, or at least how I was taught by others. Idk experiment yourself and find out
There are lots of paths to success, but there's no single "holy grail," so to speak. You can find a lot of frequently recommended learning resources in the subreddit's Starter's Guide here.
The most effective path is, in a sense, the path of least resistance, so I'd recommend trying out a few of the resources, and discovering which ones you do and don't like. In the end, I personally settled for WaniKani to tackle kanji, since I liked that it had everything already set up for me, and all I had to do was show up and knock it out every single day until I was "done" with it. Kanji are actually my forte in Japanese, now :)
Lots of people like Anki, though. It gives you a lot more control (and is free!), but I just always had a hard time getting into it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Unless something has changed recently, Wanikani doesn't even teach actual radicals and the "meanings" they use are made up for the sake of their mnemonic system—no, there is not a Kangxi radical which means "triceratops"
It's easier to learn Kanji in pieces alongside vocab/grammar because you'll have context that makes it easier to remember what the Kanji means. Otherwise you'll just be jamming a bunch of symbols in your head that won't stick with you unless you're dedicated and super consistent.
That said, you can use tools like WaniKani or Anki. They both kinda do the same thing, but Anki is free, versatile, and annoying to set up. Wanikani costs money after the free trial but is structured for you. But you should be learning vocab/grammar too.
Once you feel more or less comfortable with hiragana (which should probably only take about a week or so), you could maybe get your feet wet with kanji, so that when you do start the first lessons of Genki (or whatever you choose), you'll be able to focus more on the actual grammar/sentence structures instead of the written characters themselves.
You could try WaniKani for this, especially since its first 3 levels (which account for 86 kanji and 185 vocab words) are totally free. It also starts off very slowly, since its workload gradually accumulates over time as you make progress, so it should be a fairly light/slow-paced workload during the trial period :)
Las' ca vezi distractie cand incepi kanji. Si nu, nu poti scapa - o sa-ti trebuiasca mai devreme sau mai tarziu (de fapt, mai devreme).
Ti-as recomanda site-ul asta https://www.wanikani.com/ care merge foarte bine ca sa inveti kanji, daca te tii de el.
My regimen consists of Wanikani and Ringotan, which has been working well for me lately.
Full disclaimer - I am the author of that second one. I made it for myself originally, exactly because I was having such a hard time remembering Kanji, even with Wanikani. Being able to write the kanji makes it way easier to read them.