To what extent do you learn the vocabulary?
For example, for every verb you come across do you also try memorise whether the verb is ichidan/godan? Transitive or intransitive?
Or do you just memorize the reading and meaning and move on?
It feels like I’m not taking full advantage of the site if I’m not paying attention to these other bits of information about the verbs, but on the other hand it doesn’t seem like ‘core’ information, and so I am hoping it’ll just ‘come to me’ as I immerse myself more.
Any thought/opinions would be greatly appreciated!
2 comments
I didn’t use Wani Kani…. because it didn’t exist at the time… but I used Kanji Damage and RTK, which had much the same principles.
With RTK and Kanji Damage I only learned the meaning of the kanji and moved on.
Honestly I still don’t know if a verb is ichidan or godan… and I don’t know the full list of each Kanji’s Onyomi and Kunyomi. Even if, vocabulary wise, I can read it several ways.
IMO Wanikani, RTK, and Kanji Damage are there as baby-steps into Kanji. They help get your head wrapped around the concept and to jumpstart you into being able to memorize them in some capacity.
When I started I didn’t particularly care if I knew all the details of a kanji when I saw it, I was just desperate to be able to RECOGNIZE it. By the time I was learning Kanji I had already started learning words in romaji. So I was just piecing kanji together with vocab after the fact.
Day = hi
hi = 日
Cat = Neko
Neko = 猫
Son = musuko
Musuko = 息子
But largely anything I specifically learned from WK, RTK, or KD was simply meanings only.
Things like grammar… verb conjugations… (for me it was iru/eru, ru, -u, and hiragana u verbs), transitive and intransitive was a separate study session. Through either Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese or Maggie Sensei.
Vocab gathering was also a separate study session, through Anki, iKnow, Memrise, Duolingo, or with a dictionary.
Don’t overwhelm yourself, it’s OK to strip down whatever you’re learning from to 1 thing you want to acquire. Whatever it is that you find most important.
I did briefly try to learn Onyomi, Kunyomi, meaning, and common compounds as I worked through new Kanji. It was just too much information and didn’t stick. Be aware that sometimes too much is just too much.
I think when learning vocabulary, context is key. A lot of the information you mention is important, but I’m not sure drilling it through any app is the way to learn. For example, you should know if something is transitive or intransitive (Did you open the door, or is the door just open?) but I wouldn’t try to sit and memorize a bunch of different readings, what group a verb is in, etc.
I wish WK would lean more on the example sentences for this. Seems like they’re putting a little more into them as of late, but I highly recommend the [Anime Sentences](https://community.wanikani.com/t/userscript-anime-context-sentences/54003) add-on for WaniKani for this reason. I find seeing a word in context even just once or twice makes a big difference for my memory.