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I love JPDB, it's cool to randomly see you in the wild! I can't personally use JPDB (due to my own niche learning strategy, not a flaw in JPDB), but I desperat

I love JPDB, it's cool to randomly see you in the wild! I can't personally use JPDB (due to my own niche learning strategy, not a flaw in JPDB), but I desperately want to be able to consume the underlying data. It's just that good -- the data that you've curated is unbeatable. If you ever provide a public API, I'll join your Patreon in a heartbeat.

adaszko 5y ago
It's astounding how much quality material and tools exist for learning Japanese, compared to eg Chinese. JPDB looks fantastic.
- CorrectHorseBat 5y ago
  On the other hand, I've never seen something like Pleco for Japanese.
- kouteiheika 5y ago
  I've thought about potentially tackling other languages in the future, and I think that would be fun to work on too, but alas, at this point I don't really have the resources to even be able to work on it as-is (since this is currently purely a spare time project, and my TODO list is already hundreds of items long), so I'd be just spreading myself way too thin.
kouteiheika 5y ago
> If you ever provide a public API Yes, an API will be coming in the future! (: > due to my own niche learning strategy, not a flaw in JPDB Just for curiosity's sake - what kind of strategy is it, if I may ask? I have a very ambitious plans for the future, so depending on what exactly it is it might be possible someday.
- chaorace 5y ago
  That's exciting to hear! I'm following an eclectic strategy where I isolate and separately learn spoken and written Japanese. The process looks a little like this: 1. I start with a deck of Anki vocabularly notes that I want to acquire 2. Study begins with "Speech" Anki cards from these notes (The card front is audio-only, including a clip of the word and a clip of an example sentence. The back has the English definition & a helper image). I only consider a card as being "Good" once I am able to recall & replicate the pitch accent with a steady rythm (I pipe back delayed audio from my microphone while I practice with a metronome running) 3. In parallel, I also do Kanji isolation study using KKLC 4. Each week, I manually enable new "Writing" Anki cards that come from the same set of notes (The writing is on the front. Only the word audio is on the back). I only enable a "Writing" Anki card if I have previously learned BOTH the component Kanji and the spoken word 5. I study my enabled "Writing" Anki cards in parallel with the other two tracks I like this approach because I effectively have three separate learning tracks that I can switch between -- the variety keeps me motivated. It also helps train your ear to be able to distinguish homophones by pitch and leads you to think of 同訓異字 writings as variations of a spoken word, rather than as true homophones.
  - kouteiheika 5y ago
    Wow, that's indeed a very niche learning strategy. (: I like it though! I'd definitely like to expand the configurability of jpdb up to a point where you'll actually be able to do something like this in the future. Unfortunately that's not going to be anytime soon, so you're definitely better off with sticking with what you have now. (The most immediate feature that I have planned soon-ish are pure kanji decks; the necessary customizability for the rest will come much later.)
- zwayhowder 5y ago
  I know I gave jpdb a try a while ago and found that while the dataset is incredible (and like others I'd pay just for it) but the built in tool doesn't work the way I need. I have always had the most success with Anki and Wanikani when it comes to Japanese. Trying to add in yet another paradigm for learning is frustrating. I appreciate you've put a lot of effort into helping people move from those tools, but I don't want to. The single biggest reason is offline access. Anki works on my phone on an airplane or in an area with no mobile service. (In Australia there are lots of those). I only started using WK seriously when I discovered the Android apps that let me do my reviews offline. If you had a Patreon tier that allowed for Anki exports of your lists I'd sign up in a heartbeat even if it only allowed 1 download per month of something similar. I mean lets be honest what possible valid need could I have for downloading the whole data set in one go... Compared to the time it would take me to use Subs2srs across a season of a show I'd rather just give my money to you.
  - kouteiheika 5y ago
    Well, there's nothing wrong with using Anki if it works for you! I know that a lot of folks need offline access and/or other features which Anki provides which I don't have, and that's totally fine. I always ask this not because I necessarily want to convert people to use my thing, but because I always love to hear what features people need and what I can improve. In case of offline access it is something that's technically on my tentative roadmap, but very far off into the future, so indeed for anyone who needs that Anki's the better choice. > allowed for Anki exports That's something that I'm planning to add very soon actually! Well, maybe not exactly Anki exports (I haven't yet researched as to what that would entail), but just generic functionality to be able to export the built-in decks as a .csv (which I'll be happy to tweak/improve to make it easier to import).

adaszko 5y ago

It's astounding how much quality material and tools exist for learning Japanese, compared to eg Chinese. JPDB looks fantastic.

CorrectHorseBat 5y ago
On the other hand, I've never seen something like Pleco for Japanese.
kouteiheika 5y ago
I've thought about potentially tackling other languages in the future, and I think that would be fun to work on too, but alas, at this point I don't really have the resources to even be able to work on it as-is (since this is currently purely a spare time project, and my TODO list is already hundreds of items long), so I'd be just spreading myself way too thin.

kouteiheika 5y ago

> If you ever provide a public API Yes, an API will be coming in the future! (: > due to my own niche learning strategy, not a flaw in JPDB Just for curiosity's sake - what kind of strategy is it, if I may ask? I have a very ambitious plans for the future, so depending on what exactly it is it might be possible someday.

chaorace 5y ago
That's exciting to hear! I'm following an eclectic strategy where I isolate and separately learn spoken and written Japanese. The process looks a little like this: 1. I start with a deck of Anki vocabularly notes that I want to acquire 2. Study begins with "Speech" Anki cards from these notes (The card front is audio-only, including a clip of the word and a clip of an example sentence. The back has the English definition & a helper image). I only consider a card as being "Good" once I am able to recall & replicate the pitch accent with a steady rythm (I pipe back delayed audio from my microphone while I practice with a metronome running) 3. In parallel, I also do Kanji isolation study using KKLC 4. Each week, I manually enable new "Writing" Anki cards that come from the same set of notes (The writing is on the front. Only the word audio is on the back). I only enable a "Writing" Anki card if I have previously learned BOTH the component Kanji and the spoken word 5. I study my enabled "Writing" Anki cards in parallel with the other two tracks I like this approach because I effectively have three separate learning tracks that I can switch between -- the variety keeps me motivated. It also helps train your ear to be able to distinguish homophones by pitch and leads you to think of 同訓異字 writings as variations of a spoken word, rather than as true homophones.
- kouteiheika 5y ago
  Wow, that's indeed a very niche learning strategy. (: I like it though! I'd definitely like to expand the configurability of jpdb up to a point where you'll actually be able to do something like this in the future. Unfortunately that's not going to be anytime soon, so you're definitely better off with sticking with what you have now. (The most immediate feature that I have planned soon-ish are pure kanji decks; the necessary customizability for the rest will come much later.)
zwayhowder 5y ago
I know I gave jpdb a try a while ago and found that while the dataset is incredible (and like others I'd pay just for it) but the built in tool doesn't work the way I need. I have always had the most success with Anki and Wanikani when it comes to Japanese. Trying to add in yet another paradigm for learning is frustrating. I appreciate you've put a lot of effort into helping people move from those tools, but I don't want to. The single biggest reason is offline access. Anki works on my phone on an airplane or in an area with no mobile service. (In Australia there are lots of those). I only started using WK seriously when I discovered the Android apps that let me do my reviews offline. If you had a Patreon tier that allowed for Anki exports of your lists I'd sign up in a heartbeat even if it only allowed 1 download per month of something similar. I mean lets be honest what possible valid need could I have for downloading the whole data set in one go... Compared to the time it would take me to use Subs2srs across a season of a show I'd rather just give my money to you.
- kouteiheika 5y ago
  Well, there's nothing wrong with using Anki if it works for you! I know that a lot of folks need offline access and/or other features which Anki provides which I don't have, and that's totally fine. I always ask this not because I necessarily want to convert people to use my thing, but because I always love to hear what features people need and what I can improve. In case of offline access it is something that's technically on my tentative roadmap, but very far off into the future, so indeed for anyone who needs that Anki's the better choice. > allowed for Anki exports That's something that I'm planning to add very soon actually! Well, maybe not exactly Anki exports (I haven't yet researched as to what that would entail), but just generic functionality to be able to export the built-in decks as a .csv (which I'll be happy to tweak/improve to make it easier to import).