6 ms·

I've been using SRS (anki, ankiweb, ankidroid) for almost four years now. I'm up to 4000 Japanese sentence cards and my amazement is constant. When I started I

by Danieru 13y ago

I've been using SRS (anki, ankiweb, ankidroid) for almost four years now. I'm up to 4000 Japanese sentence cards and my amazement is constant. When I started I thought I was fooling myself, there was no way I'd be able to read real quantities of Japanese. Instead I can now read the manga for the anime I watched as a kid and enjoy the stories I thought had ended. I've gotten into a rhythm, four new sentences per day which at my memorization rate works out to ~60 cards to review a day. Thus 20-30 minutes per day of review. It has become such a part of my day that skipping a day makes the day feel like a massive failure. Its interesting how 4 cards can translate into 60 even with high memorization rates: for every card you add you'll see it again in 2 days, ~4 days, ~8 days, ~2 weeks, ~1 month, ~2 months, ~4 months, ~8 months, ~1 year... A review session is thus made up of multiple standing waves. The effect is noticeable you'll see a workload increase as the next standing wave of review starts. Right now some reviewed cards are getting scheduled next in ~8 years!

jamesaguilar 13y ago
I'm interested that you chose sentences rather than words. That seems super smart now that I think about it because you can pick up idioms and word relationships as well, and it's probably a little less boring too.
- Danieru 13y ago
  You're right, it is much more interesting. A few of my cards are a single word and I've found those hard to remember. Instead sentences also let me remember context. Some cards might be speculation on a video game long since released. Others topical news reports long since over. Others might be internet slang which you would not want to memorize without the context to avoid confusion. I think this is vital since Japanese is so context sensitive.
Sukotto 13y ago
Did you use it for kana too? How did that work for you? I downloaded a nice kana set (with audio) but somehow they just didn't click. Anki eventually classed most of them as leeches and I stopped trying.
- officemonkey 13y ago
  To get over the hump of learning hiragana and katakana, I think you're better off using any mnemonic trick you can find. That's how I learned them as an adult. This site looks like it might be on the right track. http://drmoku.com/hiragana-free/ http://drmoku.com/hiragana-free/
- Danieru 13y ago
  I must admit to not remembering how I handled kana. I know I did not start it until I was a decent way through the heisig book. I only remember even that because my mother was doing a masters in the university's German/Japanese department and one of the Japanese professors mentioned how odd the order was. Don't worry too much about kana. It feels impossible now but it will become second nature. At some point you will hate it when someone uses romaji since kana is so much easier to read. I do remember using the "Remembering the Kana" book: http://www.amazon.co.jp/Remembering-Kana-The-Hiragana-Katakana/dp/4889960724 http://www.amazon.co.jp/Remembering-Kana-The-Hiragana-Kataka... which I can recommend 100%. The 3 hours claim is accurate from what I remember but do follow the book's suggested breaks.
  - goblin89 13y ago
    > At some point you will hate it when someone uses romaji since kana is so much easier to read. I'm currently reading The Structure of the Japanese Language, and that is indeed the case (the book doesn't use kana, maybe it was difficult to typeset at that time). And I'm not at all proficient with the language at this point, nor have I studied kana specifically. I've struggled a lot with it initially, but consistently refused to read or write romaji, which may have helped. (Having just recently returned to the RTK deck after a break, I feel it's not enough and I probably should be working through words or sentences already, maybe in parallel. Thank you for describing the various aspects of your workflow in this thread!)
  - indubitably 13y ago
    I’ll second this vote, this book is very good. When I learned from it there were two separate editions, now they are together, which is great.
jliechti1 13y ago
I have been using SRS to learn Mandarin Chinese for the last 2 years now and I can also verify it is extremely effective when used correctly, and when understanding its' advantages and limitations. I think sentences are also a much better way to learn than learning single vocabulary words, because they show the usage of the word in context. This is very important for speaking naturally and idiomatically. Once you get beyond a beginner level, choosing a direction of study can be a little difficult. My technique is to find sentences or phrases from conversations I have with people, books/articles I read, and from movies/television shows - and then input it into the SRS. Preferably, each sentence has 1 new novel phrase or vocabulary word. Although this can be time consuming it gives a huge benefit. Let me give an example: Question side: “問題是。。。你不覺得這樣，很。。。虛偽嗎？" Answer side: 虛偽 (xūwěi - hypocritical, artificial) So, in this case the second last two characters made up the word that I was unfamiliar with, so I put that on the answer side. The huge benefit is that I found this sentence in a book I am reading - so every time it comes up in the SRS, I not only recall the sentence, I recall the context of the story (in this case a dialogue between two characters), and this has a double reinforcing effect. In the same way, that if a TV or movie character says a sentence over and over again in a video, it will cause you to remember the scene of the sentence, and at which part of the story the movie was in at the time. The contrast of this method would be to find "pre-made" decks of cards for sentences in the language you are learning, but I find that it is harder to remember the items when the sentences are not as meaningful to you. A key point for using SRS effectively is to use to review material already learned, not to learn new never before seen material. The article itself even mentions this. (Also, Mnemosyne is my SRS of choice http://mnemosyne-proj.org/ http://mnemosyne-proj.org/, but Anki is a good choice too.)
- riggins 13y ago
  I'd like to learn Mandarin. Can you give details on how you're doing this? Like what you use for initially learning the material and what you use for SRS?
  - jliechti1 13y ago
    Definitely - contact me at the email in my profile and I can tell you more about my specific approach for Mandarin. (Don't want to sidetrack the thread too much.)
Osmium 13y ago
I've previously had good experiences with ProVoc (and now iVocabulary, a fork of ProVoc) but stopped using it and instead use Duolingo now because I lacked a good flashcard resource. I didn't have the time to think up new flashcards and learn them on a regular basis. Where do you get your sentences from for Anki? Is there a good repository online that you'd recommend (preferably with some kind of community review)?
- Danieru 13y ago
  I recommend creating your own cards, they just feel more weighty. I did jump start my sentence deck with the 500 card starter deck from AllJapaneseAllTheTime (http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/my-first-sentence-pack-is-here-huzzah http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/my-first-sentence-...). Yet those cards feel different. If I were to redo things I would start from zero and build cards as you go. My process is to add 4 cards everyday. These sentences come from posts in my RSS feed. Over the years I found websites that interest me. Take for instance http://blog.esuteru.com/ http://blog.esuteru.com/ which has a very 2ch style of news, not safe for work but often interesting. Or I'll stumble upon people's blogs. For example "KEN's": http://qoqpop.blog123.fc2.com/ http://qoqpop.blog123.fc2.com/ He is a phone "otaku" who often travels to china and Mexico for business trips. I found his blog in a N900 related search. The open source community also has plenty of japanese bloggers. For instance http://d.hatena.ne.jp/naruoga/ http://d.hatena.ne.jp/naruoga/ is the blog of a Debian translator and a journalist who I found through the OpenPrinting working group.
  - Danieru 13y ago
    Oh I forgot to mention another benefit of self deck creation: it grows with you. Some words are so well known that new cards do not contain their pronunciation. A new card may have 7 kanji words but only the hiragana for only 2 of those words. Likewise a card may only contain translation for one or two words. As time goes on I also select more difficult sentences. In both cases a premade deck cannot match your learning curve like self-made decks can. I must also give credit for AllJapaneseAllTheTime for getting me excited about learning and for how to use SRS. A typical card of mine might be: Front: エナメル質は歯の歯冠の最表層にある、 Back: 質＝しつ//quality 歯＝は//tooth 歯冠＝しかん//tooth crown 最＝さい//most 表層＝ひょうそう//surface That example has every pronunciation and translation. A real card would not have 歯 at all since I know it by heart. 質 and 最 would not have translations. Also notice how this is not a full sentence. Japanese often features many run-on sentences so I split them. Also notice there is no sentence scope translation. AllJapaneseAllTheTime now suggests a newer format which features partial-ization of compound words which should work better for new decks: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/10000-sentences-is-dead-long-live-mcds http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/10000-sentences-is...
riggins 13y ago
did you make your own cards? or are pre-made cards available?
- Danieru 13y ago
  Just wanted to reply to you so you'll see it: I mentioned my card creation algo in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6462709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6462709
  - riggins 13y ago
    Cool. Thanks so much.

by Danieru 13y ago

jamesaguilar 13y ago

I'm interested that you chose sentences rather than words. That seems super smart now that I think about it because you can pick up idioms and word relationships as well, and it's probably a little less boring too.

Danieru 13y ago
You're right, it is much more interesting. A few of my cards are a single word and I've found those hard to remember. Instead sentences also let me remember context. Some cards might be speculation on a video game long since released. Others topical news reports long since over. Others might be internet slang which you would not want to memorize without the context to avoid confusion. I think this is vital since Japanese is so context sensitive.

Sukotto 13y ago

Did you use it for kana too? How did that work for you? I downloaded a nice kana set (with audio) but somehow they just didn't click. Anki eventually classed most of them as leeches and I stopped trying.

officemonkey 13y ago
To get over the hump of learning hiragana and katakana, I think you're better off using any mnemonic trick you can find. That's how I learned them as an adult. This site looks like it might be on the right track. http://drmoku.com/hiragana-free/ http://drmoku.com/hiragana-free/
Danieru 13y ago
I must admit to not remembering how I handled kana. I know I did not start it until I was a decent way through the heisig book. I only remember even that because my mother was doing a masters in the university's German/Japanese department and one of the Japanese professors mentioned how odd the order was. Don't worry too much about kana. It feels impossible now but it will become second nature. At some point you will hate it when someone uses romaji since kana is so much easier to read. I do remember using the "Remembering the Kana" book: http://www.amazon.co.jp/Remembering-Kana-The-Hiragana-Katakana/dp/4889960724 http://www.amazon.co.jp/Remembering-Kana-The-Hiragana-Kataka... which I can recommend 100%. The 3 hours claim is accurate from what I remember but do follow the book's suggested breaks.
- goblin89 13y ago
  > At some point you will hate it when someone uses romaji since kana is so much easier to read. I'm currently reading The Structure of the Japanese Language, and that is indeed the case (the book doesn't use kana, maybe it was difficult to typeset at that time). And I'm not at all proficient with the language at this point, nor have I studied kana specifically. I've struggled a lot with it initially, but consistently refused to read or write romaji, which may have helped. (Having just recently returned to the RTK deck after a break, I feel it's not enough and I probably should be working through words or sentences already, maybe in parallel. Thank you for describing the various aspects of your workflow in this thread!)
- indubitably 13y ago
  I’ll second this vote, this book is very good. When I learned from it there were two separate editions, now they are together, which is great.

jliechti1 13y ago

I have been using SRS to learn Mandarin Chinese for the last 2 years now and I can also verify it is extremely effective when used correctly, and when understanding its' advantages and limitations. I think sentences are also a much better way to learn than learning single vocabulary words, because they show the usage of the word in context. This is very important for speaking naturally and idiomatically. Once you get beyond a beginner level, choosing a direction of study can be a little difficult. My technique is to find sentences or phrases from conversations I have with people, books/articles I read, and from movies/television shows - and then input it into the SRS. Preferably, each sentence has 1 new novel phrase or vocabulary word. Although this can be time consuming it gives a huge benefit. Let me give an example: Question side: “問題是。。。你不覺得這樣，很。。。虛偽嗎？" Answer side: 虛偽 (xūwěi - hypocritical, artificial) So, in this case the second last two characters made up the word that I was unfamiliar with, so I put that on the answer side. The huge benefit is that I found this sentence in a book I am reading - so every time it comes up in the SRS, I not only recall the sentence, I recall the context of the story (in this case a dialogue between two characters), and this has a double reinforcing effect. In the same way, that if a TV or movie character says a sentence over and over again in a video, it will cause you to remember the scene of the sentence, and at which part of the story the movie was in at the time. The contrast of this method would be to find "pre-made" decks of cards for sentences in the language you are learning, but I find that it is harder to remember the items when the sentences are not as meaningful to you. A key point for using SRS effectively is to use to review material already learned, not to learn new never before seen material. The article itself even mentions this. (Also, Mnemosyne is my SRS of choice http://mnemosyne-proj.org/ http://mnemosyne-proj.org/, but Anki is a good choice too.)

riggins 13y ago
I'd like to learn Mandarin. Can you give details on how you're doing this? Like what you use for initially learning the material and what you use for SRS?
- jliechti1 13y ago
  Definitely - contact me at the email in my profile and I can tell you more about my specific approach for Mandarin. (Don't want to sidetrack the thread too much.)

Osmium 13y ago

I've previously had good experiences with ProVoc (and now iVocabulary, a fork of ProVoc) but stopped using it and instead use Duolingo now because I lacked a good flashcard resource. I didn't have the time to think up new flashcards and learn them on a regular basis. Where do you get your sentences from for Anki? Is there a good repository online that you'd recommend (preferably with some kind of community review)?

Danieru 13y ago
I recommend creating your own cards, they just feel more weighty. I did jump start my sentence deck with the 500 card starter deck from AllJapaneseAllTheTime (http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/my-first-sentence-pack-is-here-huzzah http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/my-first-sentence-...). Yet those cards feel different. If I were to redo things I would start from zero and build cards as you go. My process is to add 4 cards everyday. These sentences come from posts in my RSS feed. Over the years I found websites that interest me. Take for instance http://blog.esuteru.com/ http://blog.esuteru.com/ which has a very 2ch style of news, not safe for work but often interesting. Or I'll stumble upon people's blogs. For example "KEN's": http://qoqpop.blog123.fc2.com/ http://qoqpop.blog123.fc2.com/ He is a phone "otaku" who often travels to china and Mexico for business trips. I found his blog in a N900 related search. The open source community also has plenty of japanese bloggers. For instance http://d.hatena.ne.jp/naruoga/ http://d.hatena.ne.jp/naruoga/ is the blog of a Debian translator and a journalist who I found through the OpenPrinting working group.
- Danieru 13y ago
  Oh I forgot to mention another benefit of self deck creation: it grows with you. Some words are so well known that new cards do not contain their pronunciation. A new card may have 7 kanji words but only the hiragana for only 2 of those words. Likewise a card may only contain translation for one or two words. As time goes on I also select more difficult sentences. In both cases a premade deck cannot match your learning curve like self-made decks can. I must also give credit for AllJapaneseAllTheTime for getting me excited about learning and for how to use SRS. A typical card of mine might be: Front: エナメル質は歯の歯冠の最表層にある、 Back: 質＝しつ//quality 歯＝は//tooth 歯冠＝しかん//tooth crown 最＝さい//most 表層＝ひょうそう//surface That example has every pronunciation and translation. A real card would not have 歯 at all since I know it by heart. 質 and 最 would not have translations. Also notice how this is not a full sentence. Japanese often features many run-on sentences so I split them. Also notice there is no sentence scope translation. AllJapaneseAllTheTime now suggests a newer format which features partial-ization of compound words which should work better for new decks: http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/10000-sentences-is-dead-long-live-mcds http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/10000-sentences-is...

riggins 13y ago

did you make your own cards? or are pre-made cards available?

Danieru 13y ago
Just wanted to reply to you so you'll see it: I mentioned my card creation algo in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6462709 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6462709
- riggins 13y ago
  Cool. Thanks so much.