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I had issues with Wanikani in that the memory associations are arbitrary and unrelated to the meanings. Not an issue for most radicals, but it felt like I was m
by ehnto 4y ago
I had issues with Wanikani in that the memory associations are arbitrary and unrelated to the meanings. Not an issue for most radicals, but it felt like I was making all theses conceptual connections that didn't actually exist. I would see a radical and my brain would go "Pitchfork! War radical!" When the kanji had no relationship with war at all.
For me I had a much less confusing time with rote memorization of the kanji, and then getting familiar with the conjugation as early as possible so I could read quickly. In that way, learning one kanji was like learning ten words, and you also now have the real meaning of the kanji which often does translate across multiple kanji words. Now you are getting lots of meaningful associations which ultimate make up the web of understanding required to put it all together.
- mkenny 4y agoRegarding the Wanikani memory associations, I feel similarly about this. I speak Chinese and learned characters without any of these mnemonic devices. Not being a Japanese learner, I am only roughly familiar with Wanikani through market research I did while developing my app for learning Chinese. But I would think that the promise of mnemonics usually sounds great but, even if very effective, I imagine that it's harder to get users who are at any level other than beginner because I would think anyone who already knows even just a few hundred characters or so would feel the urge to skip past assigning radicals with arbitrary mnemonics. And from what I can tell, you have to build a users foundation with these required mnemonic building blocks before they can do anything meaningful with the product.