WaniKani VS Remembering the Kanji (Matt vs Japan VIDEO RESPONSE)
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- čas přidán 28. 02. 2018
- Normally, when I see videos with misinformation in them, I leave them alone... But this guy's video had ME in it! I was involved and now I have to respond, lol.
I hope you enjoy my analysis of Matt vs Japan's analysis. He really is a great, quality CZcamsr, and I respect his opinions, but some of this "facts" aren't so factual... I endeavor to uncover the truth (at least as it relates to WaniKani) in this video!
（注）この動画は全部、英語です。あと、とても長い映画なので、字幕はありません。申し訳ございません。
If you guys have any comments, questions, or suggestions for future videos, please leave them below in the comments section. I try to check and respond to EVERY comment I receive. I also take video suggestions very seriously so if you have a good one, let me know!
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I generally like Matt Vs. Japan's content for its information and his thoughts, but he can come off really arrogant at times. I think it's something that he's been working on, but there's still some improvement to be made there. I actually really appreciated your tone here and in particular your point about nobody having all of the knowledge.
For his video, most of his channel's content generally assumes that you've watched most of his videos. The basic premise being that if you want to do what he did then just watch his videos and do what he says. His Japanese level is absolutely fantastic, but that also means he can get a little bit ahead of himself sometimes.
Anyway, I know I'm a bit late to reply to this video but I wanted to address a few of the points that you both made:
I think that Matt's general point about Wanikani being "out-of-context" was that it meant learning more of your vocabulary out-of-context. In particular, he basis much of his approach on Krashen's research (which is great if you haven't looked into it by the way). The idea being that a word in context needs to have a greater context like a novel, a news article, a movie, etc.; something with a story, narrative, message, or a setting. A simple example sentence is often not going to be enough to count as context in that sense. The reason he prefers RTK (only volume 1) is because you just get the gist and what the character looks like; this is less total information in the out-of-context approach.
However, I disagree with Matt because no matter what you do your first 2000 or so words are *way* easier to learn out-of-context (at the very least out of a Japanese to Japanese setting: full immersion). Learning the vocabulary along with the kanji actually does make sense when you consider that so Wanikani is a more attractive proposal with that in mind.
When I did RTK it took me exactly one year (I did it as a new years resolution), but it absolutely could be done in 3 months (that's how long it took Heisig while he was sorting out the characters; though he had 200 or so fewer at the time). My final month I did about five days at 100 characters per day, and let Anki reviews smooth out any rough acquisitions after that. It should be possible to do 50 characters a day for 44 days (a month and a half), and use Anki reviews to keep things attached. Since the characters build off of each-other it's actually not too hard to learn most of an RTK chapter at once.
Though, perfect retention of all of the characters isn't the point with his approach (AJATT), or mine (what-ever I feel like trying out). I tried Wanikani for about a month and just couldn't get into it, and to get the same kanji coverage would have taken me more than twice as long. Since I can pick up readings as I learn vocabulary I haven't ever worried about learning them explicitely. I will get in-context reminders if I forget a kanji here or there so I don't worry too much about it either.
My RTK coverage was sitting around 70% for a few months after I finished the book, but I stopped doing my Anki reviews for about a year. I've since restarted and I'm sitting around 40%-50%, but that will recover fairly quickly.
I haven't watched any of your other videos yet, but I'll definitely want to take a look at some of your other videos after watching this one. I like looking at what other people have tried to see if I can learn anything that I might be able to use myself. I think the best things I got from Matt's channel were setting up a separate immersion device, and a fantastic approach to switching to a Japanese-to-Japanese dictionary (that made reading books so much easier for me).
Anyway, sorry for my rambly reply and I hope that your Japanese study goes well. I'll check out some of your other videos and hopefully you've got some really good ideas too. At the very least though, this was a great video!
Thank you アメ人さん、I have tried for a year 1/2 to study Japanese, took the JLPTN5 and failed. What you are saying is 100% correct with WaniKani. I just started this program 4/12/2020 with radicals and I'm having a blast with the Space Repetition System. At 49 years of age, it feels like I'm back at school again doing my homework. The WaniKani program is great. Yes you are absolutely correct, every one has their own way of learning.........you said it perfectly. You were brought up well.
I came here after buying book one and getting into it and just feeling lost. Like, wtf? I don't get how this is such an acclaimed tool for learning kanji, but I'll be checking out your recommendations. Thanks, mate.
This video brought up some good points. However the method matt uses does not learn the readings with the kanji, he instead learns the reading of kanji compounds when he comes across them. He uses the Remembering the Kanji as a way of imputing the characters into his mental dictionary, then learning isolated readings from words with the kanji in them. So in matts method he does not need the 2nd book due to the nature of kanji. Some kanji don't follow the basic readings of dictionary and sometimes the kanji is used differently when with a verb compound. This is why he does not use Wani Kani's system to learn kanji.
Thank you very much for the video. I saw the video you're referring (before watching yours) and it almost made me give up WK (I'm level 3 now, almost 4). After watching your video and reflecting a lot (I also did download the RTK to take a peak) decided to stay with WK.
i am just wondering, as a beginner now, how has your progress been?
@@JeremyHansPatrick I gave up learning Japanese, the reason is just that Japanese demand too much time to be properly learned if you're an ocidental. You can't just study 10-20 min every day and casually learn Japanese, trust me, you won't make progress! I realized that I had to spend 1 to 2 hours every day because there's simply too much information that you need to store and remember! In the beginning I had the feeling that I had everything under control, but when I reached level ~20 things start to accumulate quickly and I realized that I was having real trouble remembering things from lower levels and keeping up with new vocabulary. Besides that it wasn't fun anymore, it just felt like a chore more and more.
I remember I read somewhere the average amount of hours a person must dedicate to be modestly fluent on a language; I don't remember the number exactly, but I remembered that to master German (which is considered a very hard language) you had to spend X hours (and X was a large number) and to master Japanese was something like 10X hours. Therefore I asked myself "what I'm doing with my life, better I spend these hours learning more useful and easier languages (like Spanish) and learning to play a musical instrument". So yeah, I gave up learning Japanese, it''s been 2 years since that and I don't regret it and don't plan to study it again in the future unless I have a good reason too.
The main reason Japanese is too dificult for occidentals is that you can't relate to nothing. You have to learn a completely new alphabet, there's something like 2000 main Kanji that you just have to know by heart, you have to learn a complete set of new radicals, etc., and almost nothing relates to your native language. I'm a native Portuguese speaker, therefore I have a brutal advantage when trying to learn other romantic (Latin) languages as French, Spanish or Italian because we share 80% of the same radicals and the grammar is almost equal, in this way it''s a real pleasure to learn those languages for me (I've already learned French and I'm currently learning Spanish) and I can do it in a "casual" way. When you study Japanese it becomes one of the main things you do every day, you can't skip one single day.
Just started using Wanikani, so far it seems like legit way to learn Kanji easily as long as your patient as it seems to start a bit slow.
Oh wow. tyvm for mentioning kaniwani. This will solve my problem of being able to read and recognise it but not recalling when needed
I love that youre here! I hope your learning is going well! Also thank you for your guides!
Was the video he's talking about deleted? It's not showing up in search for me. I'd like to hear both sides of this.
21:34
I just finished level 42 and got 3 new vocab with the newly learned kanji for lawn.
芝 = lawn
芝草 = lawn
芝生 = lawn. Btw the reading for is an exception and was learned at this points for this word alone up to this point.
The context sentences didn't help me with differentiating the different nuances but hopefully that will come later
4th lawn vocab 東芝 = toshiba :p
wtf!!?!?! bro thank you so much for your videos, you were the reason i got my quest cape back when i used to play osrs. legend mate
When you look into the second kanji right next to it can give hints into the subtle differences.
@@shotakonkin2047 For 芝生 this was the example sentence I found on Jisho: 乱交パーティーの中で、めぐみはすっぱだかで芝生を走り回った。 "During the orgy Megumi ran naked round the lawn." Lol
I'm glad I found your video, and your channel. I'm sure RTK is great, but there is as many good methods of learning as there is people. For me, Wanikani (for kanji and vocab) + Assimil's books (for reading) + duolingo and drops on the days I don't have enough time for the rest but still want to learn a little is the perfect method. I don't care about writing (for now) as I will never really have to handwrite. I'm mostly learning for fun and to be able to read japanese books. I will learn writing, but way later. Oh and another good thing about WK is that I use synonyms to write the french translation so it's more natural for me. With RTK, I'd always have English as a wall between Japanese and French.
Thank you. I only just found out about wanikani, and having worked through Genki I without actually bothering to learn the kanji in a way that stuck, I was very interested in the service and it actually sounded like a reasonable system.
Both your videos were recommended to me when I searched and I clicked yours because it sounded more unbiased (won't bother to check his after this).
Well, you sold me. It's 1am, over here, I should be sleeping, but I WILL sign up to wanikani when I wake up.
Thanks a lot. :)
I came here after watching that other guy's video since I wanted to see both sides of the story. After watching both, I'll probably just stick with wanikani. I've been using wanikani for the past 6 months now, and it's really working for me. Now, I also use satori reader (the free version) for my reading practice and I was really happy when I could actually read the stories because of the vocab I learned from wanikani and it was right at my level too. I considered getting RTK but wanikani offers more in my opinion (kanji + vocab). Like another commenter said, there are as many learning methods as there are people so if RTK works better for someone else, so be it. I really don't get why the other guy was bashing wanikani so much since it's just another learning method.
I haven't used Remembering the Kanji but, from what I understand, the main differences are in two aspects (there are more, as in all the features WK has, but I mean the method in general):
1) The order in which you learn them: RTK orders the kanji based on similar radicals contained in the kanji, going from smaller to bigger (which WK does as well but I get the impression that it doesn't do it as well);
2) RTK does not teach readings, kunyomi nor onyomi.
Honestly, I think both methods are probably equally as good, but I prefer WK because the app is very polished and, though it does give you a lot of information, it is paced. Everyone who advocates for RTK seems to say that you can learn 2000 kanji in just a few months. However, WK advocates, if done consistently, being able to learn 2000 kanji, AND all readings, as well as all important vocab they encompass, in 1 year. Also, as WK teaches you the vocab words that the kanji are found in, you can more closely find the subtle nuanced meanings of kanji, as they almost always have multiple meanings with nuanced differences. For example, 家 in 作家 vs. 家族. If you simply learn 家 as something by itself, you won't really understand the other meanings it can take when in other words, and so on.
I actually have been taking Japanese courses in University, but didn't decide to major in it until my 5th semester. I didn't take it so seriously before then, and before my 6th semester I could read maybe 50 kanji. Very pathetic. I was also working 2 jobs and going to school full time, so it was incredibly difficult for me to put in the time to study. Usually I passed my kanji and vocab quizzes from just 20-30 minutes of studying before the quiz days. >.>
Anyway, my point is that, I felt so, so behind during my 6th semester, and decided in the middle of the 6th semester that I would give WK a try. As some context, we were using the textbook Tobira for this class, and it would continue in the next semester. I basically couldn't read the readings in Tobira at all at this time, let alone get any meaning from them. The summer before my 7th semester, I did WK religiously, going through levels at 7-8 days per level. I made it to level 18. When my 7th semester began, I was so excited to try out what I'd learned in class. I could read 90-95% of the kanji in the readings in Tobira at this point. Unfortunately, I've gone off track with WK as I still work and go to school (though just 1 job now). One summer of WK caught me up from 5-6 semesters of learning almost no kanji. Now, writing them is still a bit of a struggle, but I'm getting there. I'm only on level 18/60, so I really feel that if I finish WK it could truly take me far, as far as reading ability.
The one thing I can kind of agree with is the memory interference thing. Often times WK will give you a new vocab word and be like "oh, you didn't learn that reading when we introduced the kanji, so here's a whole new mnemonic for the same kanji!" Which actually can be seen as an overload of information, but nevertheless I have found the system to be invaluable.
Sorry for such a long response, lol.
Wow, you totally put into words my exact feelings on this topic! Thanks for such a thoughtful comment! :D
I'm consistently glad to see people who use and see the benefits of WaniKani as I have. It just makes the argument for WaniKani stronger and stronger. Keep it up! I encourage you to continue with WaniKani until you reach the very end!!! Learn ALL the kanji! :-)
I learned to speak Japanese by memorizing 20 words a day, a lot of listening input and conversation class. As such, I amassed a pretty high level of listening and speaking while only knowing a pathetic 300 or so Kanji as I focused 2 years of hard focused effort into conversation and interpreter work.
Now, my situation is unique because as I had a pretty decent Japanese base before I began learning Kanji so I tried a variety of sources, Wanikani, Remembering the Kanji, and Kodansha learners course.
Wanikani is hands down the best thing for me. It works and works well. I made it half way through and combining Wanikani with satori reader and reading NHK Japanese news has vastly increased my reading ability. Wanikani is absolutely fantastic.
Oh my gosh! Thank you!!! You said everything I wanted to say. I watched that same video by Matt when it came out and I was like what is he talking about? WaniKani is not out of context and why would you NOT want to learn how to READ the character in vocabulary, that’s the whole point. I’m so glad you made this video and I hope more people watch this.
jdeloach9 Glad I wasn’t the only one who thought these things, lol!
The key thing misunderstood is that sentences made for foreigners aren’t true context. Watch his video “JLPT N/ and still not fluent” first.
WaniKani sentences may seem like context, but they give you a false sense of security in your understanding and then you miss nuances in actual speech by natives. RTK doesn’t teach you the readings because it truly is better to learn through actual native speech context. Associate the readings with actual native context instead of all of one kanji’s readings together and get them mixed up.
Believe me, don’t think Matt doesn’t understand traditional learning materials, because that’s all he did for years and passed JLPT N1 but still couldn’t speak natively because materials for foreigners don’t accurately reflect native talk, they simplify it in the interest of making English > Japanese sentence making simpler.
The fact that he learned traditionally for years and it more or less failed him gives him plenty of credence to speak on the effectiveness of such materials.
Hello again, HyperLuigi.
"The key thing misunderstood is that sentences made for foreigners aren’t true context"
>> WK's team is pretty smart; they actually employ real Japanese people to create real Japanese sentences. Not sure what you're basing this claim off of.
"Watch his video 'JLPT N/ and still not fluent' first"
>> Watched it. Not exactly sure your point here; I didn't see a connection.
"you miss nuances in actual speech by natives"
>> Again, these sentences were created by native speakers. All of the nuances are there.
"RTK doesn’t teach you the readings"
>> Actually, it does. Volume 2. But Matt chooses to ignore that one.
"Associate the readings with actual native context"
>> As I've established, this is possible through WK as well.
"instead of all of one kanji’s readings together and get them mixed up"
>> I believe you're referring to what Matt calls, "memory interference". And this is possibly the best point in his video. I actually agree with him that WK does allow for some memory interference, but it's nothing major and if someone were to use WK the way Matt uses RTK, then that problem is eliminated completely.
"don’t think Matt doesn’t understand traditional learning materials"
>> Not thinking that.
"The fact that he learned traditionally for years and it more or less failed him gives him plenty of credence to speak on the effectiveness of such materials"
>> I disagree. Everyone's learning method is different. For him, the AJATT method is probably the most effective learning method. For someone else, maybe not. We all have preferred styles. To say that this one particular style is the absolute best way for everyone to learn is ludicrous.
@@user-mx8sz5jw7b I don't know how much it applies to language, but Veritasium came out with a video saying that it's a myth everyone has different learning styles. I think it's absolutely possible that there's one method out there that will work best for people on average. Maybe we just don't know what it is for sure.
Matt specifically used to recommend skipping RTK 2 and moving from the first onto the third
I am using Wani Kani for a while now, currently at level 09. I saw Matt's video yesterday, getting worried that I should have used the Heisig method instead. I am very glad you made this video and address these points and removed my concerns. Thank you!
I like that you don't like drama
😂
Greetings from a fellow WK user
🤗
I liked your comparison. The fact that you have tried both approaches seasons your comparison with details that Matt's video does not. I hated WK when I first used it because I found that learning the general number counters and day counters right off the bat was confusing and discouraging as a beginner. I hadn't reached that point in my grammar studies yet, and I was upset that I had to learn so many reading exceptions in the first few levels. I believe Tofugu's guides even said to wait until levels 10-20 to start grammar--which I will openly criticize that advice still to this day. I think I understand why they said that, but there are plenty of resources that can teach you Japanese without having to know kanji first.
I came back around to WK and after learning a good deal of grammar and vocab, and tinkering with the custom synonyms, and I found it really helpful at that point. Maybe Matt didn't know about the custom options. I didn't know about them until later, myself. I'm actually going to start putting in my own mnemonics soon since I have been doing a lot more eye-rolling at my current level's mnemonics.
I still agree with Matt about the out-of-context approach to some degree, because WK's example sentences could be better and they don't circle back to real uses in sentences enough in my opinion. But that's just the nature of the program--it's not meant to be a stand alone Japanese learning resource. I also think a cloze sentence extension app for WK would be brilliant to beef up the context part. I'm not sure how that would look, since it would depend on the user's level of grammar understanding, but that could solve the only real criticism I felt was founded.
Where's the link in the description?
Wani mani is better for people who need a little structure help with studying. You may learn a little slower but you still learn to read the kanji. Working for me and I will probably change my kanji review method after I finish Wani kani.
Wow! I was a WK user without any knowledge of AJATT till now. You gave me direction to a new rabbit hole today, as now I am searching what is AJATT and other allied concepts. I am already WK for life user so I am already biased towards WK, but it is informative reading both perspectives in the comments of this video. Thanks for taking time to create this opinion piece and sharing it with us all.
Thanks for mentioning the sale! I wouldn't have been made aware of otherwise
So, I started with RTK about two and a half years ago. I loved the way I was quickly (relatively speaking) able to wander around Japan guessing a rough meaning of sentences I'd see. I figured that, as a beginner, being able to recognize characters and connect that with some kind of meaning was much more appealing than slowly grinding through all the readings. To that end, I found RTK rather superdooper in the beginning ... but then when I reached the point where I could recognize around 1,000 characters (3 months-ish), I started Wanikani. Now, I've been very slow with Wanikani, but it's like peeling back another depth of my understanding ... it's almost as if RTK gave me a nice little heads up to begin with ... and then Wanikani gave me deeper insight ... and you're right, seeing how the kanji are used in the context of compound words was great in Wanikani ... and it's very nice to see how those words are used in context.
Something I always found a little funny with RTK, was that a character like 的 has the keyword 'bulls-eye' associated with it. Hmmm ... I remember having my little imaginative memory story having the white dog in Oliver Twist, bulls-eye running around with a ladle ... and yep, every time I saw that character, I'd connect with the keyword "bulls-eye". Then of course, with Wanikani, I started understanding how てき kind of adjecitved a noun ... like 伝統的 or 感動的 ... and thus, started seeing deeper into the great jigsaw puzzle of kanji. I think that's one of my favorite things about Wanikani ... slowly making connections that deepen my overall understanding. Granted I never continued with RTK past volume one, so maybe I'd have arrived at making the same connections in the end ... but I don't know ... I seem to think RTK gave me a great insight into the characters, Wanikani built on that ... and then ...
About six months ago, I started learning shodou and also started taking the kanji kentei tests. Certainly, writing out characters seems to be yet another layer of depth ... it was quite funny how a kanji that I might instantly recognize, know how to read would still have me flummoxed on how to write it. I'm not in any particular hurry to learn everything ... in fact, I've been learning kanji for about two and a half years now and I'd say I can read somewhere over a thousand characters and I've passed the kanken levels 10 and 9 (so I know I can write about 240 characters).
There's still many years ahead of me ... but the journey is pretty enjoyable and has just become something I keep plodding away at ... I think I gave up wondering when I'd be able to read this or that quite a while ago ... I just have occasional moments where I'll smile as I can read a whole sentence ... and I know that if I just keep going, I'll eventually be able to read and write Japanese ... and by giving myself the gift of literacy ... I'll be able to read subtitles on movies, TV shows etc ... read newspapers ... and thus, my belief is ... my spoken Japanese is pretty intermediate ... nothing special ... but once I'm literate, I'll be able to give myself a much better chance of being able to speak more eloquently ... eventually, I'd like to sound like I'm at least fairly intellectual :-)
I hope you reqched your goal by now. I am just starting my journey, and going strong
I don't think you grasped what Matt was saying. When he's talking about RTK being the best method, he's referring to only RTK 1, not RTK2. He agrees that RTK is an out of context approach and that's how one should learn to recognize and write kanji and after, one should learn the readings over time using an in context approach. He claims Wanikani isn't an in-context approach because it gives you standalone sentences and words and tries to have you learn too much information at once. He claims that you need to have an attachment to the words in order to anchor down the readings which is what diving into native japanese materials will do. RTK is just about creating the dictionary entry in your brain as quickly as possible so one can attack the native materials. This is all said in the video by the way.
First off, let me thank you for your video view as well as comment. :)
>> "I don't think you grasped what Matt was saying."
Oh, I grasped it. I even took notes! (For video-making purposes, of course!) 😉
>> "When he's talking about RTK being the best method, he's referring to only RTK 1, not RTK2."
This was never made clear in the video--I watched it three times carefully and never once heard him make a distinction.
>> "He agrees that RTK is an out of context approach and that's how one should learn to recognize and write kanji and after, one should learn the readings over time using an in context approach."
Someone else tried to stress this point as well and then deleted their comment after I refuted it. Anyways, I'll say this again for you: he does not specify how one is to "learn the readings over time"... Does he use a dictionary for every word he encounters? Because if he does, gaining native-level proficiency in Japanese could take just as long as WaniKani... It's cumbersome and takes time. He never explained this part, which is why his video failed to convince me and why I don't support his argument.
>> "He claims Wanikani isn't an in-context approach because it gives you standalone sentences and words and tries to have you learn too much information at once."
Actually, he doesn't say that. He literally just calls WaniKani an "out-of-context approach" without any reasons or supporting evidence for that. When he mentions WaniKani giving you "too much" information (when it's really not), he's always referring to "memory interference". That's said in the video, by the way. 😉 And memory interference has nothing to do with being in or out-of-context.
>> "RTK is just about creating the dictionary entry in your brain as quickly as possible so one can attack the native materials."
Yeah, got that. Not arguing this one at all... Kinda confused as to why you added this point.
It seems you missed the point of my video. I wasn't attacking his argument (although I did speckle some counterpoints throughout my video); the main point of my video was to address the falsities regarding WaniKani. Did you watch my video at all? 😕
The thing is that this is just the first step of the AJATT method. In AJATT, you should make a enter in your "mental dictionary" and then using real japanese sentences, learn how to read the words and attach them to the already existing entry of the kanji. I think he just hasn't made it clear that this is next step.
Ah yes, I saw his videos on AJATT. I think you're right--he is referring to the AJATT method in terms of gaining fluency and hasn't made it clear in his video.
And while the primary purpose of my video is not to refute or to make counter-arguments to Matt's video/method, I do have some issues with his method. In his video, he made it seem like you could master kanji and gain near-native Japanese literary fluency just by going through RTK and then in-context learning in a very short period of time. I don't recall him talking too much about /how/ or /how long/ the "in-context learning" after RTK would take or take place... After watching some of his AJATT method videos and seeing him delve deeper into this "in-context" approach he describes, it seems like it would take just as long, if not even longer, than WaniKani. So, to me, WaniKani just consolidates all of that extra study one using the AJATT method would have to go through... 😕 His videos just weren't convincing overall...
"so one can attack the native materials" => Without knowing any readings? With those so mentioned 3 months, one would be able to fully tackle N4 content with WK. RTK takes you right to N5 because you literally know 0 readings.
"learn too much information at once" => Have you ever checked the percentage of correct answers from WK users to affirm this? It's between 80 to 99%, a big part of users being in the 90-95% percentile.
アメ人 No, you’re still misunderstanding him, although I’m going to refer to things not in that video itself.
Matt started off as a traditional language learner. He used all out-of-context approaches that taught basically English-to-Japanese grammar translation algorithms, learning this English sentence > this Japanese sentence, similar to WaniKani, and learned as damn much of it as he could, and passed JLPT N1, but when he actually went to Japan, he found everything he was saying was not necessarily *inocrrect* but were rather just not how native people actually talk, many times he would say something and a Japanese native would take a second to realize what he was actually trying to say and tell him it was said quite a bit different, and that was his basically entire knowledge of Japanese. This is why I see him as qualified to speak on the accuracy of English to Japanese materials such as WaniKani.
He advocates learning how people actually talk through native Japanese media, like anime, podcasts, TV shows, and such because most if not all English to Japanese teaching materials can’t actually accurately teach you how to talk like natives do, and he experienced this firsthand. Which is why Remembering the Kanji is his first pick, because it teaches you the absolute basics of what every kanji is and looks like, and tells you “go see how people actually use this in the real world.”
You asked about what to do when you see a kanji in the wild and need to learn the real meaning: he has talked about how to look up the meaning and then add it to your SRS deck, using at first bilingual dictionaries but then as soon as you can, making the transition to a native Japanese dictionary so you can learn the meaning of words in exactly the native context. Then since you were watching anime or listening to a podcast or something, you can see the hardest and most accurate possible context to the word you heard, more than sentences made to teach you out-of-context.
So, while I understand what you're saying, with regards to in context vs out of context, the only problem is that in languages or any complex system there is always more than one type of context. Layers. For example, we can look at phonetic similarity, etymology, morphology, and then contextual real world language use.
There is a context to every one of these concepts, wherein, the attentive human brain is able to interlock these concepts, so that whilst browsing an article in real time, one is able to notice connections between that which they are currently assimilating, and that which they have already assimilated.
The problem with character based languages, is that they feature an etymological system completely apart from that of the phonetic spoken system of said language. Therein lies an inexorable problem, in the form of interlocking systems creating a level of complexity that would distract even the most attentive of minds from the task of creating complex connections in order to expedite vocabulary aquisition. For example, even in a purely phonetic language, we are already faced with the challenge of assimilating a new piece of vocabulary, noticing the etymological connections within said language, noting how they differ from those found within our own language, and finally, uncovering the intrinsic logic behind the etymological connection (i.e. in german, the word "wischen" means "swipe" and "erwischen" means "catch." If one imagines a bear "swiping" at something in order to strike it, one can visualise an extremely similar motion with regards to "catching."
With the complexity we see in this case, and the inexorablilty of vocabulary aquisition, it seems logical to assume, that the ability of the human brain to notice and connect all of these things is an incredible gift, and not to be taken lightly. As such, it seems rational to assume that adding the complexity of a character system as complex as that of japanese or chinese on top of that would only serve to exacerbate the already difficult problem.
Matt even mentions in his video the fact that japanese children have already, prior to learning kanji, assimilated a massive portion of the japanese language, giving them an advantage in the form of an existing framework to which they can relate that which they learn.
This means, that the entire process of learning characters before reaching fluency in the language is completely unnatural. Does unnatural in this case necessarily equal innefective however? I would argue no. I believe that a strong foundation in characters is of absolute necessity to the learner who wishes to gain expedience in their learning process. The reason for this, is that the quickest and most surefire way to gain an understanding of the scope and meaning of a word, is to combine an in context experience of the word with the use of a good translation app. Sure, in some cases, particular apps allow the learner to look things up using romanization alone, however, there will always be a significant number of times, when it is simply faster, due to the presence of characters in subtitles, to be able to quickly delineate what one is looking at through character reading, in order to figure out what they need to focus on. Also, there should be no need for me to mention the fact that, when watching something for the first time, the fastest way to gain full listening comprehension on the topic is probably to read subtitles in tandem. This can be extremely expedient in cases in which one is already familiar with the vocabulary that is used therein, however lacks exposure to the particular accent or dialect that is being spoken.
So, basicallly, the exposure of onesself to a purely context based approach, rooted solely in etymology, can greatly expedite the ability of the learner to elucidate the patterns of meaning within characters quickly, in order to get them to the point of being able to do the same for the great inexorable complexity of the spoken language.
Hell, I would even be in favour of this type of approach being taught ubiquitously, say for etymology in phonetic languages. It may be somewhat less effective, as etymological morphology is more present in characters than in the vocabulary systems of many languages, but it would still work incredibly to introduce learners to the concept of etymology and mnemonic connections, rather them being required to figure it out alone.
In conclusion, while the etymological approach can also feel inexorable, and laborious, even a partial completion of such a methodology will yield great expedience in the aquisition of characters. I personally found kanji koohii, which employs a similar approach, to be an extremely benal experience in many ways, however, it did grant me an incredible understanding of the morphology and etymology present in chinese characters, and allowed me to assimilate massive quantities of
characters extremely quickly and easily. This expedited the beginning stages of my chinese study greatly, and I am now looking into heisig for chinese, which I will combine with my continued immersion based approach.
Just to clarify, I do believe that people should clarify this sort of stuff with regards to calling something out of context learning. What he may mean in terms of out of context, could be that neither the sentences nor the characters bear any relation to one another, in the grand scheme of things, as they don't fit into an overarching narrative/etymological family. This couldn't be further from the truth in the case of heisig's method, as everything one learns contains elements of that which one has already aquired. This is pure postulation in my case however, as I personally have never used wanikani.
Also, being that wanikani presents sentences, it would be obviously superior to LTK in terms of the aquisition of sentence structures. But, that is not necessarily everyone's goal, and could also serve to disperse focus too greatly from the task of understanding kanji etymology and meanings.
Most people that did AJATT/MIA got through RTK in 3 months or less. For me I started with 30 a day then went to 60 a day so it took me just over a month. I was reviewing about 250+ cards every day on top of learning new ones so it took about 3 hours. I agree with most of your other points though
At the end of the day, it's all personal preference. It's not one size fits all. For me I prefer RTK, because it segments the learning process into clear chunks. You learn the Kanji and the main English definition for that singular kanji --> you learn Japanese Listening, reading, writing and speaking at once. And while you are learning the actual language (words/grammer patterns), you start to make connections based on your knowledge in kanji. Is this the right way to do it? no. But for me personally, I am more comfortable with it than learning kanji with different readings context, because it's too much all at once.
He has a habit of using content without permission, the guy who made the music in his video called him out also.
He said thanks btw
It sounds like you have a problem with copyright issues instead of Japanese related topics. Is ur comment just you hating Matt bc ur on someone’s else channel?
Well id say it is clearly a case of fair use, so its a non issue. It is polite to ask though.
It’s fair use. Not sure what your going on about
My case of autism spectrum disorder has no linguistic deficits besides the social meanings of words, like in my native language socializations aren't particularly natural however just like with my native language I can at least fake these social structures by being taught the subtle nuances.
Besides all of that I have found wanikani to be useful I just haven't spent a while with it enough, I tried it for a month or two then stopped for awhile and just went on doing language immersion without it, now I am considering going back to Wanikani now.
why are there so many dislikes? 😱 it is a wonderful, well argued, informative, respectfully worded video 🙌 💯/💯
I bought RTK in 2021 and I've barely used it since then... I found it really hard to motivate myself to sit down and read through the book. Then I shipped out to boot camp in 2022. Now it's 2023, I have time to study Japanese again and I still have the RTK but wanikani just looks more appealing to me lol.. I'll probably just use RTK as a supplemental resource when I don't have my computer and just have time to waste.
What branch are you in?
@@iluvuvibez6644 Marine Corps
Still recommend wanikani?
John Doe Yup! What I recommend doing is the free trial first just to see if it seems like a useful tool for you and your learning style.
I thank you for that counter to Matt as i am a user of WK and absolutely love it. I actually like RTK too but as a book, it does not come with all the little services that WK does bring on the table. Especially SRS and modularity (you can choose your own inputs and create them as well). Very good point. Meanwhile Matt preach Anki but has to do every card himself. Great if you have his ambitions, but if you don't have the time and ambition for this, WK is just the killer assistant you need.
On that note, to me RTK and WK are absolutely identical in their "empowering" programs. They both teach you to use mnemonics and encourages you to do so ultimately on your own.
The thing is, you pointed out that they both have a very different goal but never clarified it on the video. So let me do just that here.
WK is made to help you read and ONLY read (though you can use it to write as well and learn the old fashion way and go much faster than the imposed pace).
It's in their pitch to get you to subscribe, "drop the writting and embrace reading only to go faster because in the modern world, you only type, wich only requires you to know how to read, not to write anymore".
And it works, i can read way better now. Even type anything in japanese on my phone or keyboard. But i can't write jack squat beyond the kanji i already knew from school if it's not through a keyboard lol.
The thing is that it is just absolutely what a majority of new learners wants because it's f**king empowering to be enabled to read your favourite japanese books and novels and type straight in japanese to your japanese friends or collegues and being able to read their answer without looking at a dictionary all the time.
For a good speaker like me, it's just the skill i wanted, no need to hassle with the writting yet. And many polyglots learn to speak before writting, just like kids, so reading is way better than writting for us specifically.
In that regard RTK turn the wheel the other way. It wants you to read AND write. That is what Matt wants as he is aiming for true proficiency and so does a good portion of japanese learners, for very different reasons and goals maybee, but still honorable choices.
Ultimately i think they and Matt are right, you can't achieve true proficiency unless you can write too.
But i completely disagree on the fact that it is a necessary skill as of today, even if you live and work in japan. While reading and typing is absolutely necessary.
If it is your goal to write and of course grasp the kanji and vocabulary much better, then i would still recommand WK over RTK because you can just look at every kanji before hand and learn to write them while letting WK becoming your SRS and enforce your learning through reading practice.
Wich is what i do nowadays because i wanna evolve academically. And it even have audio readings, wich is now a must have for any method even book like and especially the AJATT method.
You also don't have to go look for vocabulary and spending hours deciding wich meaning is the most important to learn first. WK does all that for you or hints to wich is the best to retain first.
And yes, ultimately WK cost more than RTK, but so is a personal assistant you summon to help you achieve your goals with whom you can talk(or listen to at least) and change routines if it is getting too much compared to reading just books, working through their exercices and dropping everything when things get too tough or boring.
So finally it all falls down to your own decision and goal. What do "you" want and more importantly, what do "you" truly need today ?
I like your comment, "you can't achieve true proficiency unless you can write too".
For me, I make up for this by using an Kanji deck in Anki. I write kanji every day! It's really good practice. WK for reading, Anki for writing. :-)
Thanks.
You're right to do so. I don't worry about you achieving true proficiency because you have the right attitude toward learning the language. That is the most important on the long run.
I am currently creating a method using mnemonics as well to learn writting. So i do practice it every day as well, just differently.
No, Matt doesn't want you to read, since he recommends not learning the kanji readings for the first months. And you could practice handwriting separately from WK. WK isn't stopping you from doing that.
"Meanwhile Matt preach Anki but has to do every card himself"
Making your own cards is very helpful and pretty rewarding if you take the time to do it.
Personalized cards always seem to work much better for myself at least
People like Matt are so motivated that they would probably learn kanji anyway anyhow. lol Also is true for those people that go through Wanikani in just a year. スゴイ
I use Anki, but that´s harder, it depends entirely on the user
RTK requeres you to do 20 - 25 kanji a day with an Anki deck. Its not that difficult. RTK2 is not needed, you learn the pronunciation trought inmersion (audio + subtitles).
For last RTK digital is free.
Writing by hand each kanji is inefficient unless you're going to live in japan, most people type. Wanikani is much more efficient in terms of my use of time, the system allows you to pinpoint and review certain vocab and kanji that is difficult to memorize. RTK doesn't remind you which kanji's you are in the process of forgetting = why I bought the WaniKani lifetime membership.
Hey there. I liked your video, just as much as I like Matt’s videos. Having different perspectives on kanji learning offerings is a good thing so people can choose their first or second or even third option with more opinionated information (I mean that in the good sense, not negative).
The reason RTK is the program it is, (recalling the kanji from the English keyword), is when you begin to immerse the recall in the opposite direction is instant. You don’t need to actively recall the meaning of the kanji, because it’s just there.
Additionally, the reason why RTK gives you one kanji for one English word is to create a catalog entry for the kanji. When you begin reading sentences, the context has a great deal more importance than the individual character’s meaning. Heisig and Matt both say that sometimes the chosen index word for a kanji isn’t the most correct, but that’s not important. It’s an index word to catalog the kanji in your memory. Changing those words out can and does lead to collisions in the future and you have a harder time remembering which primitive or radical is needed because you now have two kanji meaning the same thing.
For pronunciation, it’s best to hear a native speaker say it, hopefully one right next to you so they can correct your pronunciation on the spot, otherwise you develop bad habits that are hard to break. Best to learn exactly correct pronunciations from the first time you try to say them so you don’t have to fix them later after you have already developed that incorrect muscle memory.
That’s all for now, I hope to continue to hear good stuff from you. I just wanted to clarify that what you call shortcomings are actually intentional and are assets to better swifter and more correct learning.
Thank you for the level-headed comment! Pretty rare for controversial videos like these. :-)
I understand everything you've stated. Matt made all of it pretty clear in his video. But thank you for the re-statement. 👍🏻
I wish I had never seen Matt vs Japan's video on wanikani. It was a major setback for me learning kanji. The more I watched of Matt's videos the more i find him to be arrogant and giving bad advice. He makes some good points but i think he can make learning more difficult than it should be especially for beginners.
Thanks for the video by the way
@@andrewshee5746 Matt doesn't even agree with that video anymore.
@@DANGJOS So, he still made the video didn't he? Doesn't change the fact that he is arrogant and thinks only his way works.
@@RIAN10287 I think that's a pretty good encapsulation of what Matt is doing here. I'm actually disappointed that Matt hasn't fully addressed why he no longer agrees with RTK in his Refold video. It does seem like he's appealing to a broader audience. He explains that the patreon Anki deck can do well for memorizing common words, but doesn't expound upon how it addresses efficiently learning all of the Kanji and their radicals, like RTK does. Now I'm still on the fence on whether to try RTK or not.
RTK in under three months is not a stretch. I did it in 59 days. Granted, it took 2-4 hours a day to read, write, produce stories, memorize, and review flash cards, but I did it.
P.S. it doesn't take an amazing memory. The stories and SRS both enhance your memory. That's the point
Not saying it's not doable, just stating that such a feat is very difficult for most average human beings. 😉
Seriously, why isn't your channel bigger? You should have thousands of subscribers. I love how thoughtful you are when you explain things. Very good content!
Wow, what a comment! Possibly the best I've had yet! :D
You are very welcome to share the crap out of my channel on social media and stuff, haha. If you also like Japanese lessons, I'm planning a series for Beginners (and eventually higher levels) that will eventually be opened to the public. Thanks for the support!
The only thing I wish WaniKani had is teaching the stroke order if you want to learn how to write it with a pen.
you can install a script that displays stroke order, then write the kanji every time you learn or review it.
Or do what I do, and have another tab open with Jisho. Copy the kanji there and it shows you how to draw it.
Tofugu says writing will slow down the learning process which makes sense because people who learn languages in school progress slower than self-motivated learners
@@kokonut5498 yeah it could slow down the learning a little but if the option is there but they don't force you to learn it, it wouldn't affect learning speed.
Also schools have set amounts they teach each weak and they have to make sure everybody is understanding the lessons, so it slows down for other reasons, not just because they learn how to write.
Yes it provides you words that use the kanji but unless you've heard of that word it won't really work. Plus of the learning process is tedious you'll just stop learning.
Clarifications about his video here
czcams.com/video/aA12D91dpD4/video.html
This. This is exactly what he needed.
I like the video, but I also think that he could've explained more and that he's still a little off when it comes to WK comments. But I really appreciate his clarification. ☺️
Using a few seconds of clipping is considered fair use I believe. I gotta check again.
it is, and as explained at the end of this video (26:15), Amejin doesn't say that it's wrong, but that it would be common courtesy to ask to use it or at least notify, and i agree.
Did Matt ever respond to this video?
Hi -- I agree with the other comment that this channel REALLY should have more subs. Hope that comes to pass. A few reactions - sorry to ramble.
1) I think you nailed the fundamental issue -- this is the case of a written approach vs an on-line approach. The intent of each learning system is different, so I'm not sure you can make a direct comparison. If I like studying with a book, like RTK or KFZ, then it's likely to be a more effective method for me.
2) I think I agree that WaniKani IS an out-of-context application. It's not a book, a magazine, a manga, a cultural resource or any other daily context for learning. I don't think sentences are really context, although they DO show you which readings are more common and better to commit to memory. So it's context, but limited.
3) I take issue with your comments around the 12:00 mark that WK ALSO breaks down characters into their component parts. For each level, you learn the radical, and then, much later, you get the kanji and the vocabulary, right? Not as integrated an experience as you'd get with a book.
4) Stroke count? I've read the WK FAQ on why this isn't important, but it's another argument for the written learning methods. For a true language learning, writing (even in the digital age) is a critical part of the process.
4) KNEEmonic
Great video.... thanks!
Lol, I like your comments! And I respect that we share different views on certain parts.
Regarding WaniKani's method, kanji utilizing radicals taught are presented immediately AFTER you master each radical (there is no waiting). Hope that clears some things up. 😊
Thanks again for your support!
i agree that Wanikani example sentences is only limited context.
For one, the sentences themselves don't have context (is it said by a man or woman? are they angry? what was said before and after?).
Also, the third sentence is usually a joke sentence like "my dog loves selling hats" or something.
But i disagree with your 4). There's a stroke order script for WK, so you can learn stroke order and writing with WK by writing alongside each review, if you want.
What is the writing part of RTK, really? It's giving stroke order and telling you to write. It's not a big feature. It's easily added to any other method.
under 3 months is really easy if you make an anki deck and learn 25 new kanji a day with the heisig method and do your reviews.
bjni While it you may be exposing yourself to the characters, it takes much longer to actually learn them and get them in your head to a point where you can just write them from memory. Assuming you’re using Anki, at that rate, it could take a year (accounting for human error and re-memorizing characters) or more.
Unless you’re a savant, “memorizing” that many characters in 3 months is not possible.
You would have roughly half of them thoroughly memorized (mature cards) by the end, and the others would not be at that level yet, but you just continue to do reviews and the rest become mature cards, too.
At the 3 month or 4.5 month point (depending on 2k vs 3k), you'll have about half of the cards mature and then you can continue to do reviews as you start sentences.
What this means is that you won't have any trouble learning how to write/recall what any kanji you come across look like by as early as 3-6 months.
by the way, what Matt might have meant with the multiple readings is that in WaniKani you are expected to know one onyomi and one kunyomi and as far as I can remember (since I havent used WaniKani for years now), when you are doing the testing session, the only difference is the colour or something and I remember often times writing the kunyomi instead of the onyomi or the vice versa... now, maybe this was my own problem but I think it would be better if WaniKani asked you for the reading of a kanji attached to a meaning and so you could easily know that 時 is read as じ when it means o'clock or hour and とき when it means time without caring to remember which one was the kunyomi and which one - the onyomi
and just as a side note, not here to protect Matt or anything, I did have this video pop up on my youtube recommendations but I only watched your video because I can't be bothered lol and it really seems that he hasn't used WaniKani as much as you have
christotaku B. The way WaniKani works presently is that only one reading (usually the onyomi) is attributed to a kanji character and the other readings aren’t presented at all. The only time you really see kunyomi readings in WaniKani are when the single-word usages are presented.
As a kanji character, 時 is only presented with the reading of じ and, as a single vocabulary term, it’s presented as とき. Hope that helps!
I don't memorize readings by on nor kunyomi and I still know which one they're asking me. That problem never happens after a while.
Indeed
Been studying Japanese for years, and have always had specific trouble with kanji and vocab. Got the first Heisig book about a year ago and started to study it. Noticed recently that the method really didn't help me retain information much at all. I tried WaniKani recently and I feel like the system is actually much better at explaining what the kanji is and how it's actually used in the language.
To me it feels quite the opposite: RtK is so separated from the language and it focuses on teaching you only two things (for the first book) a single rough definition and how to write the kanji. While writing the kanji is much more familiar to me now, I would hardly say it's a useful skill. WK literally does so much of a better job of contextualizing kanji. It makes me think that the OP was really criticizing RtK, because he lists all the complaints I have with that system that I believe WaniKani does much better.
I respectfully disagree, RTK isn’t supposed to be the end all be all for Kanji learning, giving you a rough conceptual idea of the meaning as well as how to write it is precisely the point of RTK.
I’ve used it in combination with Minna No Nihongo and it made learning vocabulary a breeze. I went from barely being able to differentiate the characters to recognising them immediately. RTK is just one piece of the puzzle, but it makes learning the actual words with their Kanji in context much more bearable.
I'd love a kanji book that would tell me the story behind the constructing of the kanjis in China. Those would be stories I'd love to learn, as they are also linked to the Chinese culture. Made up western-based stories never interest me.....
Would also make it easier to remember them as it would explain why they look the way they do
a kanji book that i used to have a few years back showed you the picture that the kanji was derived from back then. however it wasn’t that useful since with the centuries the kanji changed and right now most of them don’t resemble the original pictures at all. not to say that the more complicated kanji aren’t even derived from pictures but simply they are put together from a few other kanji and radicals that together make the meaning of the new one. this sounds helpful to remember it but it isn’t, again because the exact same components are used in so many different kanji, just in different order and they mean completely different things so good luck remembering them from that lol. making up your own creative stories or at least using good already made ones is the best method for now and wanikani is built on this exact logic
@@bonkadoom The original pictures are mostly useful for basic kanjis, and can help remember the shape. What I meant I want is a book that would explain the reason why particular combinations of kanjis were chosen to build a new one. Since the writing system is pictorial, the combination had to mean something to those creating it, aka the Chinese for most of the kanjis, and that interests me.
Like the little story the Japanese teacher I had years ago once told in class about the kanji for marriage (婚), which is composed of the elements woman + dark/nightfall/.. Not a combination one would expect for marriage. But according to said teacher, the combination refers to the tradition of bridegrooms whose suit was refused by their chosen bride's parents coming back at night to abduct said bride and thus gaining the in-laws' "approval" after the fact.
That's the kind of information I want.
I think Matt Vs. Japan fell into a trope that many fluent or nearly fluent learners fall into when they teach someone the way they learned Japanese. They get too far ahead and they expect people to know where they are coming from. This is why it's hard for me to trust just any CZcamsr that says, "This is the way to learn Japanese" many people like that skip lots of steps.
I've been through some of RTK and I'm only level 15 in WK but I have tried both. RTK will teach you the Kanji faster but WK teaches you the Kanji, then vocab all with SRS. Both are good. RTK didn't work for me but I know many others like it. RTK just has too many things that it expects you to do imo where WK does it all on it's own.
I think the best piece of advice to anyone getting started in learning Japanese after learning Hiragana and Katakana is to stick with a good system. whether that be WK, RTK, JPDB/Anki, or something like LingoDeer or Memrise. You just have to be consistent in everything you do.
I took a break from WK and it's been the worst learning decision I've made in Japanese thus far. I thought I'd try other approaches to learn the kanji and Vocab but I ended up learning less because I was trying too many things. If I stuck with WK I would be several levels ahead now.
I know this is a ramble but in the end what I'm trying to say is be careful with the learning strategies people push, everyone has their own way. The most important point is to stick with whatever that is and don't switch unless it just isn't working. It's normal to have times where you are learning slower or don't feel like you're progressing you just have to push through that wall.
Sorry for my rant. I just had to get that off my chest lol.
It's cool to hear both sides, still I don't think he should have used your footage without asking! Thanks for taking the time to carefully explain your thoughts! I learned new stuff about WaniKani! :D
Bruh, I don't get this now and I probably wouldn't have gotten it in 2018 either...Just use Kanji Koohii...Like I did:
Free RTK + SRS = I did all the 2200 Kanji in 2.5 months...It's not superpowers
2200 kanji in 2.5 months?
How 🤔
Sometimes people who are really advanced in a language are, well... out of touch with how beginners learn. Or dare I say, how OTHERS learn. I think someone like Matt has a bad case of that, frankly. He's been speaking Japanese for over 10 years now. That sort of thing is pretty much why I started my channel.
I agree with the idea of learning some vocab out of context to get you started. Sometimes it's fun (which is perfectly valid) but you also need to start somewhere. Being able to pick out particularly common/useful kanji is helpful for once you actually dive into texts. I think Matt forgets how difficult it is to start out as a beginner. That's why so many people give up on Japanese.
But if I've learned anything about learning languages, it is that people have their own unique ways. Yes, some methods are based on hard research and others not, but people find something that works for them even if some people consider it "inefficient" (I say this even as a scientist; language learning is largely about motivation and effort). I have a video on my channel where I talk about 3 months of German learning progress mostly through listening and watching Pokemon (over 1,000 episodes so I recommend for any language learner, especially Sun and Moon). In doing that I didn't learn words that are typical for language proficiency exams (e.g., restaurant vocabulary), so to anyone who judges progress off of that, it might look like I didn't learn much. But I actually learned a ton of useful words and phrases and even improved my speaking.
Do what works for you! And also, Matt should have at least credited you in his video. Lame. When I reference other people in a video I do a screen capture of the video page for the footage so you can see the title, channel, etc. and then explicitly link them in the description. He doesn't get a free pass just because he has a bigger following.
Matt actually made a response video at that time czcams.com/video/aA12D91dpD4/video.html
Hi アメ人, I think that you definitely touched on some of the nice features of WaniKani. This video was actually a great introduction to the tool and how it works (something I'm interested in for research reasons). I have a feeling that WaniKani gains some influence from RTK and another platform called iKnow.
One tiny tiny nit-pick I have is that your pronunciation of 'mnemonics' sounds a bit off to me. Dictionary.com has audio clips if you want to double-check your pronunciation of the word: www.dictionary.com/browse/mnemonics?s=t
Sorry to be that guy who picks on your speech. At any rate, good video; I think your argument is well thought out.
My criticism for Matt would be to make sure to mention in his video that he means RTK + AJATT and not simply RTK. RTK is definitely out-of-context, and it most certainly has memory interference. Although, it's different in that users of it report that they mix characters with similar meanings or stories rather than characters with similar forms. It is possible to remedy this interference by going back and looking at the way one has encoded it in one's memory (i.e., putting the two stories and keywords side-by-side and seeing why there is interference). Once you do this kind of analysis, you can tweak your mnemonic for either character or for both characters as necessary.
Additionally, (and I think this is Matt's argument) it's after RTK, as one experiences real written Japanese (which is part of what AJATT prescribes) that this interference goes away naturally because you learn readings in the context of sentences, paragraphs, scenes, and experiences.
Good luck on your studies!
Thank you for your comment; your correction of my pronunciation made me laugh out loud! 😆 Must be a regional dialect. Maybe my upbringing..
Thanks for your support! 😊
I appreciate the mature and positive reaction (which also is present in your video here). I feel like some people on the internet would get defensive.
I have to agree with you on that one! Lol
I always try to be open and positive in all of my statements. ☺️👍🏻
Too many people make the mistake of investing in a programme, course etc. and expecting it to do the work for them. They'll help you mount the bike, but you have to do the pedalling. As Michael Erard says in his book "Babel No More", the golden rule of language learning is: whatever the method is, stick to the method.
3 months is not that fast in my opinion.
I'm 1 month in now and I'm at kanji #900. At this pace I should be done in about 2 months and 13 days.
Yes, I know that I haven't fully, perfectly memorized how to write every single kanji from memory without using the mnemonics, and I know that I can't perfectly list all the readings and common words for each kanji. But that's not the point. At the end of those ~73 days, I'll be able to recognize 2200 kanji and I'll be able to write all of them if you just give me the keyword. That is a great foundation to have, and it makes learning vocabulary, and thus readings, a lot easier. Remember, the mental dictionary.
To each their own~
I think Matt had a lot of great points, but it’s all about preference. I don’t think WaniKani is worth the redicilous price though.
Ye I rather learn readings/grammer/vocabs after learning the meanings first as quickly as possible.I guess after learning thru RTK's method is when we are forced into the "immersion" phase. So I dont see the point of wanikani having a "context" section. Also pretty UI/interface doesn't mean effectiveness but most people think it of that. And even though RTK's keyword for 月 is"fesh"obviously can be change in settings of Anki. Besides, over a year to learn Jouyou kanjis is insane compare to 3 months with RTK.
Matt never said anything about book two because the second book is not usefull, only the first and third (I made this asumptions basing in his method and what the creator says about those books)
Ok just watched Matt’s video and I came back to give a response.
You claim that Matt says RTK is in context approach and Wanikani is out of context approach.
Matt says that RTK is a hybrid approach of having both and specifically just to help create a mental dictionary entry (in linguistics this is called a idiolect lexeme (making up the full idiolect lexicon)) this goes back to Stephen Krashen, Noam Chomsky, as well as other applied linguists thoughts, not Matt vs Japan’s thoughts. Matt is just parroting them. Once the mental dictionary entry is created then you will be paying attention in real world situations (a text book sentence or a single or even 10 example sentences still lacks the context of a sentence from a tv show or real world experience) for when this mental dictionary entry is used then your brain will start adding more information to your mental dictionary entry.
Matt also argues that Wanikani and the other learning course that starts with a K, that these are similar to RTK meaning they are both hybrid systems as well. He also explains in the video that all of these methods have flaws and the main benefit of RTK is how quickly you can do it so you can get on to actually acquiring the language (as compared to actively studying and he brings up Stephen krashens distribution between language acquisition and language learning as well)
I think the issue you are having with his video is 3 fold:
1. You were irritated that he is talking by negatively about something you like. I can see that you are trying to not be emotionally biased on this but the video comes across in the same way as “butt hurt”.
2. Matt seems to assume all viewing this video will have back ground knowledge of Stephen krashen’s methods of language acquisition. I have found most language learners have never heard of Stephen krashen and typically only people who study in language teaching like a TESOL program will have heard of him. Without having this background knowledge some of the sentences Matt says are lacking context (see this is an example where I can give you example sentences but they are out of context still because there is greater background knowledge that is lacking. )
3. Matt vs Japan seems to assume that everyone watching his videos are very familiar with the AJATT method. If you have knowledge on the AJATT method then you should know what is an actual in context sentence versus a textbook style example sentence because AJATT method mentioned this in almost every article he wrote about example sentences.
What did you say Guru with a Japanese accent?
dude comes off as so arrogant and patronizing
I have to disagree with you on some points you make in this video. You claim that WK is in-context because it provides you with example words and sentences for each kanji. By that logic though, pretty much every kanji learning resource would suddenly be in-context. I'd argue that dumping bazillion random sentences and list upon lists of words is not providing a context, it's just the exact kind of information dumping Matt was criticising in his video. As a little disclaimer here, I've never tried RTK, so I'm not saying it's an all-superior god-sent kanji learning resource, but I have used WK for just over two years and I'd definitely say it falls under out-of-context learning by any reasonable definition. As for RTK, the way I understood how it works from Matt's video, the idea seems to be to create a unique mapping between glyphs (new information) and meanings (something you already know) in order to make learning all the other stuff much easier when you encounter the kanji in some actual real text, like a book or an online article.
It’s very difficult to pretend that wanikani isn’t a product that is made worse by its business model. Rtk is a book. The more effectively it works the more people buy the book. Wanikani is a subscription service. It actually works better for them if people don’t progress too quickly. It is ludicrously inefficienct and time consuming. Rtk should take you 3 months of brand new. That many kanji takes years in wanikani. Readings are useless. People don’t decide to learn the kanji to know their readings. They just wanna understand Japanese. You get this from vocabulary exposure and in context is far superior in this regard (sentence mining) giant dumps of random words don’t work anywhere near as well. So you use rtk to make the random squiggles look like things you can actually discern. Then sentence mine to build memories that actually attach to things. 6 months in you have thousands of words and you recognise all the kanji. 6 months of wanikani you’re poorer and know far fewer kanji along with an inability to apply the words you’ve learnt to any actual Japanese you may consume. If wanikani was actually proud of their resource they’d let you move through it at your own pace
A person with an average memory doesn't really have that much working memory, nor does that even account for memorizing readings along with the characters.
Matt's point is that a) learning vocabulary have to be in-context/intuitive. b) you can use Remembering the Kanji to out-of-context learn just the meaning of every kanji. That will be faster than Wanikani and more effective since you are FORCED to create your own mnemonics story. You could use Anki for that and that would be even better.
But after this small "3 month" step you would have to go through the jungle and start real world reading everything and learning the vocabulary in context. That is scary. He says in the long run that will be more effective. I don't think he recommends using the book 2 of RTK though.
But I don't know how that would be helpful for learning vocab. Example, after all that trouble you would come accross a word like plane 飛行機 (hikouki) and you'd associate that with fly-go-machine and maybe that works. But how about 行う(okonau) that means perform? How would you associate "GO" in there? I think WK it's much more honest in teaching you ONE basic reading with each kanji and preparing you for the real world by slowly teaching you new vocabulary that most of the time has but sometimes doesn't have this initial reading. At least that's what I like about it. That doesn't mean when you go reading real stuff that you will not find new readings and meanings that you didn't even learn in Wanikani. But his point about confusing readings like 人数 and 人材 was hurtful in a sensitive spot lol.
I'm in level 21 at Wanikani now and my only fear is if it will be worthy in the end and allow me to read stuff in real word. If I have a lot of trouble anyway maybe his point is right in a sense. What do you think?
Attaching that is not hard. For words like okonau you'd just create another story with "go" and "perform". The mnemonic system still applies here.
His point is not to use RTK to learn just the meaning of every kanji. His point is to make a mental entry for each kanji so that when you later encounter the kanji in-context, you can remember the word easy because you don't have to learn the kanji used in the word on top of what the word is. Learning a keyword for each kanji is just probably the leanest way for creating those mental entries. Also the keywords oftentimes happen to help you understand a word that you never encountered like your example of 飛行機 but that is a secondary benefit for Matt's way of learning RTK.
toally agree with pretty much everything, from what i have seen from matt i think he takes this journey of learning japanese too seriously, like everyone need to be an expert and there is only 1 way to do everything to learn japanese, keep it up broski
Thanks for your comment! I'm all for his passion and enthusiasm, but to assume that only one way is the most efficient learning style for every individual is just crazy! Lol!! Glad I'm not the only one who thinks so. 😊
He seems to make a few of his videos bashing other CZcamsrs and making fun of their learning styles/habits... To me, this is kind of unprofessional and childish. I don't want to say too much more though... I don't want to turn into the very thing I'm talking about. 😕
Wonderful insight. Thank you for your comment. Glad he's not bashing others anymore. It's always nice to concretely see someone 成長. ☺️
Retticur That being said there is too much elitism and condescension coming from Matt. Bashing the average Japanese learner and calling them "ants" as well as being so hard about other methods are inferior. I don't think Matt understands that other 24 year olds want to bang chicks, go to medical/law school, and have a social life. Not everyone has the time to locl themselves up in a room and do AJATT for 6 years, nor wants to.
Retticur really well put
Wtf, how could you have worked on RTK for months and only got to level 10...
I'm working full time and I live alone meaning I have to do all my own shopping, cooking, cleaning, whatever, I also do 1 hour of exercise every day and I still found time to memorise 25 kanji every day.
Your average person with average memory cannot adequately memorize 25 kanji every day, at least not well enough for long-term knowledge.
@@calebm9000 For recognition RTK you use SRS and Memonics and you only memorise one meaning for each kanji, not every meaning and every reading, so it's doable even by people who don't have a good memory. I do not have a good memory at all. It's doable because of the techniques. I'm glad I did it at the beginning and then just learned all my vocab in kanji after that from the start. Over time I could subconsciously pick up the readings and other meanings of each kanji just through learning vocabulary. Because of that I never needed to go back and relearn words in kanji or memorise readings for kanji in isolation etc.
Matt wasn't saying RTK was in-context. Also, your implication that Wani Kani is in-context misses the point of the "in-context" label, as "in-context" means learning kanji in the context of learning words. If you are just drilling kanji, you are not learning in-context. Wani Kani is drilling kanji. The fact that it lists a bunch of words or sentences is not particularly relevant.
Also, it is fundamentally different from seeing a word, looking up the kanji, and remembering it. The experiences are not similar at all. The point is that a kanji can have words you are not interested in knowing or have no need to know, and you will guaranteed not remember most of the words you see.
RTK's usefulness is you learn kanji as unique elements which allows you to comprehend their parts naturally.
*Wani Kani is drilling kanji. The fact that it lists a bunch of words or sentences is not particularly relevant.*
Have you used WK? You do learn the kanji in the context of learning words. In each level of WK you are shown the kanji first, yes, but then immediately after that you are taught words which use the kanji you've just learned. You're mostly drilling words, not kanji.
If you are drilling anything, it's not in-context.
TheIncognitusMe Well, that's not necessary true - cloze exercises, for instance, are very much in context, and I find them to be superior to other forms of drilling. Of course, that's sort of beside the point - wanikani does not use close exercises. It does, however, teach kanji in the context of words meaning that while the words you learn are not in context, the kanji are. At the end of the day, some amount of no-context learning has to happen so that learners have enough of a base to actually immerse themselves. What works about ajatt is massive amounts of comprehensible input, but the idea that it does anything before the input is actually comprehensible is nonsense.
> Well, that's not necessary true - cloze exercises, for instance, are very much in context, and I find them to be superior to other forms of drilling.
In-context learning, going off the definition Matt vs. Japan gave, would be finding a kanji in the wild and looking it up. Atleast that was my interpretation of it. Therefore, anything you have to manually generate to show you the word would be immediately disqualified. But it's kind of a fuzzy distinction at that point.
> At the end of the day, some amount of no-context learning has to happen so that learners have enough of a base to actually immerse themselves.
Agreed. My personal opinion is if you learn RTK first, you will spend the least amount of time learning to distinguish kanji from each other naturally. Then once you're done, every single second you spend drilling new words from say the 1000 most common words will be 100x more useful, cause you will memorize the kanji for each word in less than half the time.
If you learn words while learning kanji, you'll be spending time learning words *before* you've mastered distinguishing all the kanji. That adds a fuckload of overhead to each kanji, because now every time you do your daily drills, not only do you have to expend time learning words you probably don't give a shit about and will be naturally inclined to forget right away, you have to do it while also not being a pro at memorizing kanji, which means you'll be seeing those words more often than you'd like.
*not only do you have to expend time learning words you probably don't give a shit about and will be naturally inclined to forget right away, you have to do it while also not being a pro at memorizing kanji, which means you'll be seeing those words more often than you'd like.*
Possibly! I'm personally finding that they actually reinforce one another about 90% of the time. I think the issue is that once you've learned a language one way, it's hard to really say which way would have been better to learn since you can't go back and redo it with a different method. The only real way to test it would be to do something like learn middle egyptian hieroglyphics, which function quite similarly to kanji, and then see which method was more efficient xP.
Wanikani is so slow dude
Lol, there a lot of people who think so. The pacing was designed for best retention practices based on research. It does have a reason for being so slow, but I understand everyone is different. Maybe your pacing is faster than another person's, but I think they're just covering their bases by doing what's best for the average human being.
@@user-mx8sz5jw7b Well the issue then would be why are people forced to conform to one pre-set model. Why can't people tweak the settings to make it more personalized? It's an extremely draconian and outdated approach that should only be used by physical textbooks not digital media.
@@Liliquan It works that way because it's a SRS dumbass. Making it faster and customizable will make it not work.
I think it’s better if it’s slow because then you’re really getting the readings and meanings down. Why would you wanna rush through 2K+ kanji rather than take it slow and solidify them??
A BIG minus is that WaniKani cost money for ever!
Having a job with an income, I am able to pay for the lifetime membership. That way, I only pay once, and I can have this wonderful resource for forever. :-)
I'm not surprised they're charging actually. It's so much work put in for such a useful resource.
I hope you don't plan on using it forever. I'm buying two Yearly subscriptions, then I'm done. I just bought my first yearly subscription at the beginning of the Month.
On one hand I think WaniKani is solid and reasonably well-built. Probably my biggest complaint regarding its user interface are the low-effort and meaningless stories. The crowdsourced stories on Kanji Koohii are far better, in my opinion. Otherwise my main complaint is that it is far too slow and inflexible, and I feel it is done this way to draw out the subscription model. WaniKani claims it'll take "just over a year" but if you look at the fine print they'll admit that's an optimistic estimate and they'll want you invested longer. The point of such systems is to engage in out-of-context memorization out of necessity with the goal of engaging in actual reading as soon as possible, at which point you'll pick up words much faster. WaniKani seems to want to make itself a home base, which makes sense if you consider the "software as a service" business model. It's like the Adobe Creative Cloud of kanji memorization systems.
WaniKani delivers to you per week the number of Kanji you should be absorbing per day. A common sales pitch is "You think it's slow at first but just wait until the reviews pile up!" That's true, but it's a lot busy work that I think is meant to seem more productive than it really is. You get the radical, the kanji based on the radical, the vocab word that is based on the kanji, variations of the vocab word, and all this is spaced out over a week or so. You're just reviewing slightly different forms of the same thing over and over again in a stretched out fashion. I also highly question the value of memorizing the made-up names they give some of the radicals, like "narwhal", "triceratops", and "poop". I mean, come on.
WaniKani's forums are solid if you know where to look, and they don't require a subscription to access. There are classroom-like reader threads aimed at various levels of proficiency. There are also a lot of time waster in-joke threads and "what are you doing this weekend" type stuff so it's not a good place to go for those suffering from social media type distractions.
I think you have your point, and it is fair your respond to Matt, but... I can think in a few different ways to make a video like this without letting you looking bad, but it was your choice.
IMO both are junk lol I got to where I am now.. between N3 and N2 by reading and listening to real Japanese media (anime, news, kids shows, 3DS games, you name it lol) I look up everything until I don’t have to look it up anymore. I learn the readings of the kanji within that vocab word within the sentence it came from. Can I write the characters? No...but I don’t need to. I write on Lang-8 and speak sometimes as well and that’s good enough to show my progress besides taking the J-Cat (and eventually the JLPT)
I Heart Nihon And that’s a perfectly legitimate method! I do some of that too on top of my WaniKani studies. Glad you found a way that works best for you-that’s really all that matters! 😊
I agree. There is too much emphasis on kanji.
Listening and speaking are more important.
immersion real or forced both help learning languages easier
for reading, i think visual novels are a great way to learn kanji reading. then try novels etc
Immersion is the best! 😄 (In my humble opinion)
Remembering the Kanji is kinda a crap meme book tbh, it doesn't teach you to fully read until you complete the whole series and even then like you stated it barely teaches it to you. What is the point of learning something if you don't even know what it says, I never understand why people keep pushing that book. Wanikani is 100% better but it still has its issues, from my personal experience the best way is to just study Kanji write them out and readings multiple times, just like Japanese children learn. IF thats how the native speakers learn it then that is most likely the best way.
In-context doesn't mean to have sentences in the system, it means that you just get the sentences from a real TV show in Japanese. A single sentence CAN NOT be in context, it must come from a real life situation.
Sorry dude, you have good arguments but no one can’t compete against Matt
you have to pay for wanikani, anki is free.
why is this even an argument ? wtf i legit dont understand
bjni And Anki lacks all of the features I listed in the video... making it free.
（＾ω＾）
Anki lacks the features because those features are part of the decks. You can find decks that contain everything you listed for free, native pronunciation and all. That's the beauty of Anki. It's flexible like that. It's just a matter of if you think the time it takes to scoure through decks or make your own are worth it. Also Anki can be used for other languages and subjects. Anything where SRS makes sense.
Anki is not free on iOS
@@user-mx8sz5jw7b No, Anki doesn't lack the features you listed in the video lol...