I SRS sentences in anki for memorizing vocab, and when I do it I show the sentence and highlight the vocab word the sentence is meant to be practicing. If the word is in kanji I need to know the reading of the kanji, the meaning of the word, and the meaning of everything in the sentence (not hard to do since I'm fairly high level).

But, I find that as I get more and more vocab I find that I mix up words that are usually written in hirgana(words like げっそり). I can't even recognize them in context unless the context really gives the meaning.

So I need to try a different approach with these words. But I've never used anki in any other way besides the way I described, so I wonder if anyone has any advice? I was planning on making cards where I give everything in the sentence except the target word, and I write the meaning of the word, and I need to come up with it. That way I have to recall the word, so I should be able to memorize it.

Then on the answer side I give the whole sentence again with the word in it and highlighted, and play the audio of the sentence.

Do you think this is a good way to do it? Have you found any other good strategies for memorizing kana words, even outside of SRS?

I struggle with the same problems. If I find some more efficient means than by mass exposure then I'll be sure to post my results. To think "easier" reading material for kids is mainly written in hiragana makes me feel vastly more illiterate in Japanese than my kanji understanding may imply.

I have the same problem too, 擬声語・擬音語 (mimics of actual sounds), 擬態語・擬情語 (sounds representing state or feelings) are the words on which I have the lowest understanding rate [Wikipedia:Sound symbolism]. However I found that over time it's improving gradually, mainly thanks to sheer exposure. A few tips :

(1) ALWAYS learn them with sentence mining (which you are doing already so it's fine), and try to chose the sentences carefully. The sentence should help you to easily associate the 擬声語 with its meaning thanks to the accompanying verb/noun : あの二人はそっくりで区別できない。 (here そっくり can be deduced from the rest of the sentence, the word could even be removed and the sentence would still be correct, though less natural in Japanese). Paradoxically it can also be good to use very short sentences whose meaning is entirely based on the sound word, so that you HAVE to either understand it or fail the card, as in : 王女は国王にそっくりだ。 (there's no content other than the fact that they look alike).

(2) some of them come from other words with kanjis, eg. 騒めく→ざわざわ, 愚図→ぐずぐず, 煌びやか→きらきら, 意地→いじいじ (though the meaning has become the opposite), 塵・芥→ごみごみ, 泥→どろどろ, etc. You shouldn't miss these associations as they almost give you a "free word" (super easy to remember). However since it's all sound-based, you need a really huge vocab to be able to see a sound word and think "oh yeah, it (probably) comes from this verb !".

(3) mangas are full of those, not only in the speech bubbles, there are also TONS of SFXs in the picture that we overlook most of the time. When you read manga (even scanlated in English you still see a lot left), pay attention to SFX sounds.

(4) artificially increase your SRS exposure to these words by always putting "hard" in Anki when you know them, and putting "fail" for the slightest imprecision in your understanding. Even if you're at an advanced vocabulary level, sound words shouldn't represent more than 5% of your cards, so it's fine being super strict on those.

(5) now something that I haven't done yet but plan to, and seems quite effective : simply make a huge list of all those sound words and cram it from time to time (orally with a partner would be optimal), and in both directions (JP->EN, EN->JP, the latter should be quite demanding but very interesting too). Here are some references : Wikipedia:日語的擬態語和擬聲語 (Chinese version of the Wiki article linked above), http://www.xamuel.com/examples-of-japane...matopoeia/.

Warp2243 Wrote:(2) some of them come from other words with kanjis, eg. 騒めく→ざわざわ, 愚図→ぐずぐず, 煌びやか→きらきら, 意地→いじいじ (though the meaning has become the opposite), 塵・芥→ごみごみ, 泥→どろどろ,

Couple of notes here:
- きらめく is a much more common word than 煌びやか, which I have never seen before (nor do I know that kanji).
- 愚図 were kanji assigned after the fact to ぐず.
- I'm not sure いじいじ is related to 意地; it comes from いじける which I don't know the etymology of.

yudantaiteki Wrote:

Warp2243 Wrote:(2) some of them come from other words with kanjis, eg. 騒めく→ざわざわ, 愚図→ぐずぐず, 煌びやか→きらきら, 意地→いじいじ (though the meaning has become the opposite), 塵・芥→ごみごみ, 泥→どろどろ,

Couple of notes here:
- きらめく is a much more common word than 煌びやか, which I have never seen before (nor do I know that kanji).
- 愚図 were kanji assigned after the fact to ぐず.
- I'm not sure いじいじ is related to 意地; it comes from いじける which I don't know the etymology of.

Thanks for you corrections, yudantaiteki (nice nickname btw ). I'll keep that in mind myself. You're probably right with いじける, and many Japanese agree with you : http://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/...q129631717 (as usual 知恵袋 is awesome for those questions).

I like this answer :

tonnybruaさん Wrote:「いじいじ」は「いじける」からきているのだと思います。
「うじうじ」の語源は分かりませんが、出雲弁らしいです。
元々の意味は「蚤などが背中を歩くときの様子」だとか。

[RawToast]

I struggle with hiragana only words in Anki until I cover them in iknow. I guess the extra steps for learning vocabulary in iknow help and you could simulate them in Anki by having cards for recognition, production, and listening of the hiragana words.

uisukii Wrote:I struggle with the same problems...To think "easier" reading material for kids is mainly written in hiragana makes me feel vastly more illiterate in Japanese than my kanji understanding may imply.

Me too.

Has anyone implemented the above methods? Any success?

I guess brute memorization always works, if you put enough effort in it. Myself, I am not that patient. In 'げっそり''s case, given that jisho.org does not list it as a common word, it would not be my highest priority to put in my SRS anyway; just learn other words and try to understand 'げっそり, if you'd encounter from context; it may become easier as your Japanese advances further. So decide to not learn it at all or do not learn it yet (so in a year or so).

If I DO want to remember a hirigana word, and the word gives me more trouble than I like, I myself try RTK-like tricks/mnemonics. If I interpret the OP correctly, the problem may not so be that the meaning of the word is abstract (then the OP would have had problems with regular kanji words as well), but that hirigana does not offer as much 'distinctiveness' as kanji.

So my personal method is to have one image/person for each mori. Sometimes I combine two mori into one image, or such. But say that I would want to remember げっそり. I don't have a ready-made image for 'ges', but I'd use my own ideosyncratic mnemonics (I'm Dutch, growing up in the 80s) - ge is "gek" (crazy), for which I use the image of Howling Mad Murdock from the A-team. Sori - I could split it up in 'SO' and 'Ri' (schoolteacher and one of my aunts respectively), but fewer images is better, so I'd use my memories of the old computer game 'Ambush at Sorinor' which I played for a while. I'd remember 'げっそり' as the location of 'ge' (the lunatic asylum where HMM was residing; locations work well, so my system is: first part of word indicates location, second part acting characters) being surrounded by hidden armies of orcs and dwarves. Murdock himself growing disheartened and losing weight since he could not leave the asylum safely.

Mnemonics take time (I guess I needed about one minute or so to design this particular one), so I only do it for words I really want to remember and are difficult/fail multiple times (so far I don't bother with all words). But if the mnemonic is in place, it just stays in the SRS and does not have a particularly high failure rate.

So basically the question is either to
1) skip it for now, put it on a list to learn a year from now (if at all). You don't have to learn every word in a language; I bet there are many words in your native tongue that you don't know at all, still you're probably quite proficient in it.
2) just do the default 'rote learning' (many short tries, but you'll learn it in the end). Just learn to tolerate all the failures... you WILL learn if you persevere.
3) use mnemonics (it takes a while to construct a mnemonic, though less with practice), or other ways to make hirigana words more distinctive from another than 'just another bunch of kana' you need fewer tries to memorize it though to compensate.

Mcd format use useful for intermediate to advanced learners where you blank out each syllable or even 2 syllables. japanese words are just have so many syllables so the mcd format lets me really notice every syllable or the syllable i keep ignoring in the word. Mass exposre and context really is effective lol. It totally works for me

U should find something to do in japanese u enjoy so its not learn japanese for the sake of learning japanese. For me with the Gessori I learned it in context on a Japanese variety show and the person who used it talked expressively and used hand motions so I pretty much remebbeed it easily in that encounter after I looked it up. I agree its not that common and I have t come across it that much. U should definitely focus on COMMON words for first since their frequency is higher and once you learn those the less common ones stand for being not common and it makes the learning process easier. I have no idea what level you're at but definitely pracice the n+1 thing otherwise you're wasting a lot of time. The other thing is though as you get better and more familiar with japanes it gets easier to remember words... Obviously cramming vocab is just gonna make words seem arbitrary whether its one syllable or not. I totally understand your frustrations. I was at that point before and that was before I found fun japanese media I can enjoy and learn from without any compromise with the quality of the media. That would be talk variety shows I found through YouTube

I don't think the best thing for you is to focus on anki because it doesnt teach you the word. It helps lengthen your memory of the word. U shouldn't focus on the number of cards because like you said u dont really know all the words in the deck since u said u dont remember unless the context is really obvious. I would focus on getting used to japanese and finding the japanese thing that u enjoy reading or watching or hearing and learning from that in context. A really good source for even beginners would be song lyrics

Hiraganaひらがな平仮名ヒラガナﾋﾗｶﾞﾅ.

These are the correct spellings. Note the absence of 'hirigana'. Hiragana in full-width romaji is also missing; for some reason, it kept getting converted into half-width upon submission.