Is wanikani a good first step for someone wanting to learn japanese?

13 comments

1. It would depend if you want to pay for it

2. what in the starter’s guide is outdated or unavailable?

3. Yeah, you can at least do the free levels to get a feel for what kanji is like.

4. This is a good guide: https://www.tofugu.com/learn-japanese/

   Wanikani is a great tool for learning kanji, but it’s not the only tool you should use as a beginner and it’s not the very first thing you should start with (learn hiragana, katakana, and pronunciation first)

5. Personally, I like it. There are things that I do like but don’t use it as your only source. It’s a great way to learn kanji but you actually need to try and read and what you learn, otherwise you’ll spin your wheels. One of the main cons is that sometimes I don’t like how many reviews it give you at one time and it’s easy to fall behind. This at one point, around level 8 became an issue for me as it just got overwhelming. I’ve mitigated this by only doing a few of the lessons at a time when I level up, and putting them into anki as well with sample sentences. This has been great for my learning. If you can afford it, go for the lifetime membership. I would recommend trying the free version first, then if you like it then buy it around Christmas when it’s on sale. I should mention, I’m a working professional so it may be something that is negligible for me from a financial standpoint. If you’re in highschool or a young twenty something living paycheck to paycheck, then I would say just hold off. That’s my $0.02.

6. It’s a great first step specifically for learning kanji but keep in mind it doesn’t teach you grammar at all, and the vocabulary it teaches you is based off of how well the word will help you recognize the kanji, not how useful the word itself is.

7. I tend to recommend it just as a means of automating a process that most beginners seem to have trouble with figuring out how to tackle. If you can afford the overpriced subscription fee then it’s a convenient way to lower one of the higher barriers to entry in learning the language.

8. Radicals are just the building blocks of kanji, they help you find it in dictionaries. As a beginner I used it to learn vocabulary. You do learn vocabulary with it. I got lifetime only once I had extra spending money years ago. I think it also comes with access to more than just Wanikani, but wanikani is all I use.

   The first level starts out reeeeeeaaaaallly slow but the momentum grows because it takes a long time to ‘burn’. I got to where I just put in a custom entry for radicals so I can type the same answer for them just to get them out of the way.

9. I’m only 2 months in and Hiragana and Katakana is the what you want to focus on. Take a while, a month say and do nothing but look at Kana and maybe some basic basic grammar on an app like Duolingo or Hello Japan!

   After that month you should be able to memorize those at the same time and the real learning begins. I’ve been going with Genki 3rd edition for now.

10. Everyone here is giving the good same advice, so I’ll summarise and expand on it in the shortest way possible:
    If you’re a complete complete beginner, the crucial first step is hiragana and katakana. Kanji (and thus WaniKani) should only come after that.
    Once the first 2 scripts are learnt, understand how and why Kanji is used, then dive into it.
    Grammar and a start in immersion should ideally complement this step.

    For WaniKani as a site in general, I absolutely love it. Its my main source of Kanji learning, and im noticing progress in my Japanese comprehension very frequently (e.g suddenly being able to understand song lyrics and text).

    The adventure in learning Japanese won’t be an easy one, but it will be rewarding. Good luck!

11. I tried it at the start of my studies, but it didn’t click for me. Then I tried it after a year of study, but I think I had learned too much for it to be effective for where I was. I recommend you try it early on for it to be effective, although it was not my cup of tea.

12. Just use Anki mate, paying for SRS is a waste of money

    There’s even a WaniKani deck: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/266084933

13. I can appreciate the discussion around efficacy and value relative to free tools like Anki, but there’s something to be said for Wanikani’s presentation, especially when paired with 3rd party user scripts.

    Speaking anecdotally, I would likely have given up by now were it not for Wanikani. Something about it just hits all the right switches in my brain and keeps me on track with reviews. I’m now in a steady flow for lessons where I’ll do 10 a day for radicals, 5 for Kanji, and 20 for vocab. As I approach level 10 I’m folding in additional vocab through Anki, grammar through BunPro, and reading one NHK Easy article a day.

    It my not be the most efficient method, and it may take me a bit longer, but the alternative for me would have been falling out of the habit months ago.