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Life & fun · June 18, 2018

WaniKani

Web application for learning Japanese kanji and vocabulary.

WaniKani launched on June 18, 2018 with 4 votes. The site was still online in September 2026, 8 years on.

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What it does

WaniKani is a web application for learning Japanese kanji and vocabulary with the goal of teaching you around 1,700 kanji and 5,000 vocabulary words in about a one to two years. "What? That's impossible!" you scream. "Okay, tell me more," you continue after calming down.

WaniKani is a Japanese radicals, kanji, and vocabulary learning web app that uses mnemonics and SRS to make kanji learning simple.

I first studied Japanese in college, and although I was pretty good at grammar, kanji was my weak point. I stayed up all night cramming before the final, and forgot all the kanji again right after I took it. WaniKani teaches kanji with mnemonics to help remember and make sense of them, and reinforces the lessons with periodic reviews to make sure they stick. And knowing kanji helped me to make the jump from reading textbooks to reading native material — the books, video games, and manga I’d always wanted to read. My job requires me to work with a number of Japanese companies. Reports in English usually lag a day or so behind, whereas Japanese ones are available instantly. I once tried to…from wanikani.com

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