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I have used Anki a lot to learn Japanese. I think that the principle is not that great for languages. It helped me to remember the vocabulary and the kanji, but

by Kankuro 12y ago

I have used Anki a lot to learn Japanese. I think that the principle is not that great for languages. It helped me to remember the vocabulary and the kanji, but it only help me to acquire visual memory. When I hear Japanese, I am way too slow to make the relationship between the Japanese word and the associated concept. What comes to my mind first is the French word (my native language) and now I feel like I am learning the same vocabulary again (and the fact that Japanese has a lot of homophones does not help). Having sentences cards and audio cards helped, but that is barely enough. My advice would be not to rely too much on Anki. I considered it as a silver bullet because it was so much better that using a notebook (like I did in my childhood), that was a mistake. Find other way to practice. Take lessons (maybe one day I'll try these Skype conversion offers), read articles, watch tv show with subtitles, find people you cant talk to…

Blahah 12y ago
Did you use audio cards? My Japanese listening is pretty good as a result of learning all my vocab through anki with separate image, kanji and audio cards.
- Kankuro 12y ago
  I did, but only recently. My listening is improving, but until that Japanese was for me only a written language. Also, it's easy to create cards from a dictionary, but it is more complicated to find audio resources for specific vocabulary (maybe it is possible to get them from sites like forvo.com). I wish I had taken a more diversified approach earlier. The first months/years, I almost only used Anki and a grammar book. A better approach maybe would have been to start from simple texts or dialogues.
Larrikin 12y ago
Anki is not a substitute for a class or a textbook. Its power comes from using it with those tools. I always struggle to memorize a word or kanji if the first time I see a word or kanji is in the program. It just isn't the right tool for that. But when I make cram decks for whatever chapter I'm studying at the moment, it becomes extremely easy to memorize that information. In college I always did ok my vocabulary and kanji test but I was always spending hours doing it and it wasn't fun. When I got higher up and setup Anki to review only words from the current chapter I never really had to worry anymore about my quizzes because the information was already in my head. My scores consistently stayed high on those quizzes ever since. Once the current chapter was over I would add the information to the much larger deck of what I've studied already and exam season wasn't bad either because I never had a chance to forget any words.
nandemo 12y ago
In my opinion, Japanese homophones only become a significant in problem in fairly advanced Japanese, when the proportion of Sino-Japanese words (as opposed to yamatokotoba, "native" Japanese) increases. In conversational Japanese it's rarely an issue. Don't sweat it. Just avoid learning 2 homophones at the same day/week so that you don't get confused.

by Kankuro 12y ago

Blahah 12y ago

Did you use audio cards? My Japanese listening is pretty good as a result of learning all my vocab through anki with separate image, kanji and audio cards.

Kankuro 12y ago
I did, but only recently. My listening is improving, but until that Japanese was for me only a written language. Also, it's easy to create cards from a dictionary, but it is more complicated to find audio resources for specific vocabulary (maybe it is possible to get them from sites like forvo.com). I wish I had taken a more diversified approach earlier. The first months/years, I almost only used Anki and a grammar book. A better approach maybe would have been to start from simple texts or dialogues.

Larrikin 12y ago

Anki is not a substitute for a class or a textbook. Its power comes from using it with those tools. I always struggle to memorize a word or kanji if the first time I see a word or kanji is in the program. It just isn't the right tool for that. But when I make cram decks for whatever chapter I'm studying at the moment, it becomes extremely easy to memorize that information. In college I always did ok my vocabulary and kanji test but I was always spending hours doing it and it wasn't fun. When I got higher up and setup Anki to review only words from the current chapter I never really had to worry anymore about my quizzes because the information was already in my head. My scores consistently stayed high on those quizzes ever since. Once the current chapter was over I would add the information to the much larger deck of what I've studied already and exam season wasn't bad either because I never had a chance to forget any words.

nandemo 12y ago

In my opinion, Japanese homophones only become a significant in problem in fairly advanced Japanese, when the proportion of Sino-Japanese words (as opposed to yamatokotoba, "native" Japanese) increases. In conversational Japanese it's rarely an issue. Don't sweat it. Just avoid learning 2 homophones at the same day/week so that you don't get confused.