{"id":170,"date":"2026-01-24T14:55:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-24T19:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/learnwithpatrick.casa\/?p=170"},"modified":"2026-01-24T14:55:00","modified_gmt":"2026-01-24T19:55:00","slug":"enriching-wanikani-dictionaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/learnwithpatrick.casa\/?p=170","title":{"rendered":"Enriching WaniKani Dictionaries"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sometimes a short project hits you like a bolt of divine inspiration, and sometimes it hits you because you’re frustrated at your own failings and think there must<\/em> be a programmatic fix for them. I started this as the latter, but I’ve since found peace with my failings since this didn’t really help it at all. In spite of that, I still feel this was a cool and useful project for other reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WaniKani<\/em> is a flashcard\/spaced repetition system for learning Japanese. It builds from radicals, to kanji, to vocabulary. When a “card” comes up, you get prompted to either type in how the characters or word is pronounced, or its meaning\/mnemonic. If you get a term correct, it will take longer for it to pop up in your reviews again, hence the “spaced repetition system”. If you get it incorrect, the timer restarts for that term. Once you’ve gotten a term correct a certain amount of times in a row you’re considered a “guru” – guru enough terms and you unlock the next level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Screenshot of WaniKani<\/em> in action<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

My frustration stemmed specifically from the vocabulary terms. I’ve been consuming Japanese pop culture for, well, a long time, and I have a decent handle on the language to start with, but reading has always been my weak point. In spite of that additional baggage<\/s> knowledge, I found myself getting things wrong that I definitely knew, my definition was just slightly different from the way that WaniKani<\/em> specifically wanted. They plan for this, though, and have a field where you can add your own synonyms!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I grumbled a bit every time this happened, but if I got the same term “wrong” multiple times, I’d add my own synonymical definition. As the vocabulary piled up, it went from a minor annoyance to upsetting me an embarrassing amount. So I did what anyone would do – I tried to think of a way to make it easier instead of just getting better!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Concepts of a Script<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

WaniKani<\/em> famously does not have any official apps. Tofugu, the parent company, consists of two people, so they have chosen to focus on their learning content and web application (which works just fine on mobile browsers). To offset this, they provide an API and blanket permission for anyone who wants to make an app, provided that they respect the paid subscription limitations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My problem was primarily with vocabulary terms and not the radicals or kanji – obviously it doesn’t make sense to go through the nearly 7000 vocabulary that I couldn’t already read to determine if I needed to add synonyms. So instead, the plan was to use a JP -> EN dictionary to look up the terms and programmatically add dictionary definitions to the user synonyms section. It should be a pretty simple script:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

get terms from wanikani API -> look up definitions from dictionary API -> compare definitions -> push new definitions to wanikani api<\/code><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finding a Dictionary<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There are a ton of nerds out there learning Japanese, which means a ton of tools have been created to help with the language learning journey. And yet, no simple JP -> EN dictionary API! My JP dictionary of choice for the last decade+ has been Jisho.org<\/a>, and while they do technically have an API, it is “not very good” by their own admission<\/a>, and the only docs available are from that same thread (that hasn’t been updated in years). I did find a python package that scrapes Jisho and works as a de facto API, but there had to be a better way for this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As it turns out, Jisho itself is primarily built on an open source dictionary named JMDICT<\/em><\/a>. JMDICT is widely available as an XML document with some custom fields, but luckily for my own sanity, someone regularly parses the XML and repackages it as JSON on GitHub<\/a>. With a dictionary sourced and downloaded, the next step was to grab the information I needed from it to build a lookup map. The JSON itself is just over 214k entries, weighing in around 100MB – large, but not too large to scan and build an index consisting of only term:[definitions] from to save to a pickle, or so I thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n