We’ve just upped a bunch of word and sentence fixed to the database based on use feedback from the “report inaccuracies” feature. Thanks to everyone who sent some in! We’re surprised how well this feature is working, better than expected even! From just basic reports, we can see exactly which areas are confusing people and how to make the app better.
One example is that we realized that many users are having trouble with kanjis of multiple readings, like 毎月. As of right now, the system holds two separate words for 毎月, one with the reading まいつき and one with the reading まいげつ. Why? Well, in the beginning, the idea was that we thought it’d be beneficial for the user to learn all the different readings for a kanji, but we realized from many user reports that this ultimately confusing, and makes the quiz unnecessarily hard (and annoying in case you just happen to type the wrong one in).
We decided to try to get together a small point release in the meantime to allow one word to accept multiple readings, and get rid of these duplicate words.
Another point is that many people seem to put all of their focus on just the big kanji in red, but not it’s context in the sentence (including myself when practicing). This tends to lead to some errors though. A great example of this is kanji 四 where the readings are not interchangeable. Take the following sentences：
- 四月一日です。 It’s April 1st.
- 私の父は四年前に死にました。My father died four years ago.
In the first case, 四 must be read as し to make しがつ (四月) for “April.” It cannot be よん as there is no word よんがつ in standard hyojungo Japanese.
Same idea in the second case as well. Here 四 must be よん to make よんねん (四年) or “four years,” as it would be very strange to say しねん.
However, if a user focused just on the big red kanji, or in fact had turned off the japanese sentences, there is really no way to know which reading the system is asking for. So lately we’ve just been wondering if in fact the big red kanji has any real purpose.
To any users out there reading this, do you think it would be better to remove the big red kanji and just display the sentence in a bigger font size with the kanji highlighted? Ideally readthekanji is about trying to read kanji in context, not just doing a quiz, so we think this would be a step in the right direction, but we’d love to hear any user feedback about it if you have an opinion.
And don’t stop using the “report inaccuracies” button, your reports are really a big help for us!
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