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+--- Thread: Anki – confusing synonyms/homonyms (/thread-6092.html)
Anki – confusing synonyms/homonyms - Akalabeth - 2010-07-27
This is kind of technical-ish, but I hope it still qualifies as 'learning with Anki'. I've recently made a plugin for Anki that I think might be helpful for other people, and I'm wondering if anyone would be interested in trying it out. It requires a small amount of explanation for how it works.
What it does:
Searches through your Anki deck to find all homographs (same spelling), homophones (same pronunciation), and synonyms for your cards, and then displays them when you are reviewing to help you compare similar facts and make sure you don't confuse them.
How to use it:
Put __homographs__ in the model definition, and it will get replaced with a list of the word's homographs when the card is reviewed.
Put __homophones__ in the model definition, and it will get replaced with a list of the word's homophones when the card is reviewed.
For synonyms, put #some_text# in the 'Synonyms' field for the card, and when reviewing it will get replaced with a list of all the words that also have #some_text# in one of the fields. Whatever is between the # signs can't contain any spaces.
In order for the plugin to work you have to go to "Tools → Build Dictionary" after you open your Anki deck, so it can search through all your cards for homophones/homographs/synonyms. This can take a while for large decks (my Core2k/6k deck takes about 15 minutes), but you only *need* to do it once. Best to run it the first time when you aren't actually reviewing, and let it search in the background. A message box will appear when it finishes.
How it works:
It searches through all cards with the model name 'Vocabulary', and then looks in the 'Kana' field to find homophones, the 'Kanji' field to find homographs, and the 'Synonyms' field to find synonyms. If you have one field containing the kanji/furigana together (in the 働[はたら]く format) it can parse the field to get both the homophones/homographs at once. Then it looks for the 'Furigana' and 'Meaning' fields, and will display the homophones/homographs/synonyms like 'furigana1 – meaning1; furigana2 – meaning2; etc.' All the names can be changed easily to fit how your Anki deck is set up.
For example, if you had the following three cards:
Kanji: 変える
Furigana: 変[か]える
Kana: かえる
Meaning: change
Synonyms:
Kanji: 帰る
Furigana: 帰[かえ]る
Kana: かえる
Meaning: return, go back
Synonyms: #return#
Kanji: 戻る
Furigana: 戻[もど]る
Kana: もどる
Meaning: return, turn back
Synonyms: #return#
Then by default, when you review the 変える card if you had __homophones__ in the model definition it would get replaced with "帰[かえ]る – return, go back". Likewise, when you review the 戻る card if you had %(Synonyms)s in the model definition then #return# would get replaced with "戻[もど]る – return, turn back". When it does the replacements it doesn't show the current card in the list of homophones/homonyms/synonyms, so you can show this information in the question side of your cards to see words that aren't the answer, without actually giving away the answer.
Because it can take so long for the plugin to search through all your cards, making changes to the deck could be annoying. However, if you just made changes to a single card, you can go "Tools → Update Dictionary" to only update from the current card. If you change multiple cards, in the card browser "Actions → Update Dictionary" will update only from the selected cards. This is much faster.
Stuff to know:
* When you use "Tools → Update Dictionary" it won't update the card until the next time you see it. You can click 'Edit Current' and then 'Continue Reviewing' to refresh the card if you need to.
* Only developed for the desktop client, no idea if it will work elsewhere, but doubt it
The plugin is called "Find homonyms/synonyms".
EDIT: Bah, I think there's a bug in the version I uploaded... trying to fix it now.
EDIT2: Fixed.