I'm learning Japanese with Pimsleur at the same time as I'm learning Kanji using RTK. I've also learned Hiragana and become decently fluent at typing/reading Hiragana.

I'm using this Anki deck to learn the hiragana writings of my Pimsleur course words. It's also helped with my Pimsleur retention: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/90188268

I have some Japanese friends I'd like to be able to text with. Problem is, it's really hard to text more than a single word with only Hiragana. So I want to see which Kanji are in the Pimsleur deck, and how many there are. If there aren't *too* many that I don't know yet, I'll learn the Kanji for the course too, alongside RTK. Otherwise, I'll wait.

All the data is in that Anki deck. But I'm not experienced enough with Anki to know if there's a faster way to check than by counting every card and seeing what Kanji are used.

Kanji Stats window from the japanese support plugin may be what you are searching for: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/3918629684

You probably will have to edit the .py file for your field names. Look at the comments.

Thanks! I installed the plugin, and read the plugin page and comments. I can't find "Kanji stats". Where do I look to see that?

Also, what edits would I have to make to the .py files?

graeme Wrote:All the data is in that Anki deck. But I'm not experienced enough with Anki to know if there's a faster way to check than by counting every card and seeing what Kanji are used.

I used this little tool called Fuzzy-Anki to view the deck in your web browser, since Anki's built-in deck browser is the spawn of Satan. I used the url "http://nossl.ankiweb.net/shared/download/90188268" instead of uploading the deck's file, but it'll work the other way too (uploading the deck).

Then, after Fuzzy-Anki showed me the table of all the cards in the deck, I copied the entire page and pasted it in this other tool called Kanjiyears. It analyzes text and makes a report of kanji usage, broken down into kanken levels.

From that, it was a bit of regular expressions magic in Sublime Text (or any text editor of your choice) to obtain the following list of unique kanji used in your deck (order *not* the same as appearance in the deck!):

々一丁七万丈三上下世両中主乗九也乾予事二五交人今仕付休会伝位住何余使便倉偉停側備働僚元先入全八公六共其具内円写冬冷処出分切前勉動務勿北医十千午半去又友取受口古可右号司合同名否味呼員喉喫四図国園土在地坂夏外多大天夫失奇奥女好如始娘嫌子存学宅宜実客家宿寒寝寸寺寿尋小少局居屋山岡州左市帰帳帽幌平年幹幾店度座庭張強当彼待後御忙応念思急息悪意憎成戻所手持捜掛推換改散新方旅族日早明易映昨是昼時晩暇暑暖曜曲書替月有朝木未末本札来杯枚校桜楽構様機欲此歩歳残毎気水氷沢泉泊洗浴海涼渇済渡温満準火為然煎熱物特玩現理生産用申男町画番病痛白百皆目直真着知短砂硬礼社福私移積空立米糖約紙終経結緒線繰羅羊美羹習者聞聴腹自致舞良色花英茶荷菓葉蔭薬行術衣要見角言計記訳詰話語説読誰論議貨貴買赤走起趣車転込迄近返迚通連週遅遊運過道達違遠邪部郵都酒野金釣鉄銀鍵鎌長開間降院階随際難雨雪電非面音頂頃頭願風飛食飯飲餅館馳駅高魔鮨麒麗麟麦麩

This good for you?

Thanks for not being shy about bringing up Pimsleur on this forum. I find it interesting and surprising that you need just 400 kanji (excluding 々) to transcribe Pimsleur's course. Perhaps this can be taken to mean that purely spoken (if tourist-oriented) Japanese needs far fewer kanji to read than written material. Seems obvious but most things are in retrospect.

Wow, aldebrn, thank you! Not only did you give me exactly the answer I was looking for, but you clearly laid out the steps to replicating your work so I can fiddle myself. That's perfect. 400 Kanji is manageable, I probably already know some. My next step will be matching them to the RTK numbers and then testing them in Anki. Thanks again!

I've actually found there's a reasonable amount of discussion about Pimsleur here. This forum always comes up when I google my course. And a couple times I've mentioned it in posts, people have responded well. I think it's an excellent complement to RTK: I'm hoping that at the four month mark, when I'm done Pimsleur, I'll also have Kanji + hiragana + katakana learned, and I'll be able to merge writing with the spoken knowledge I've acquired.

As for the 400 Kanji count: I've used Pimsleur for other languages, and all of their courses have a small vocabulary. This is by design. Pimsleur does focus on travel words, but really they're teaching the core structures we use everyday. I want/I would like/I am/I am from/I prefer, etc. There's a small number of things we say a LOT in our daily communication, and Pimsleur drills those into you, with excellent pronunciation. You also learn how to say "How do I say X" and "What does X mean", so you can very quickly add new vocabulary onto the structure you've built.

The written aspect of Japanese makes Pimsleur a bit less complete than for European languages. For those, you just do pronouncing lessons and by the time the course is over you can read and pronounce all words. But for Japanese, combining Pimsleur with another method like RTK is essential.

I made an excel file with all the RTK Kanji numbered, and then a list of the 400 Pimsleur Kanji in another column. I'm not sure how to sort to match. I searched how to match one column against another, but couldn't get the programs to work.

If someone else wants to try, go ahead, it should be pretty simple I just don't know the right code: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ymk9wrvtqr1tc4....xlsx?dl=0

What I'm trying to do is fine out which RTK numbers are in Pimsleur. Then I'll be able to see which ones I already know, and which I'd need to learn to learn the writing of the Pimsleur words in Kanji with Anki.

If you put the number on the right of RtK (switch columns) you could put this next to the Pimsleur column:
=VLOOKUP(D3;$A$3:$B$4401;2;0)

Upps, you have blank lines. I adjusted, but check by yourself if it fits.

Thanks. I pasted it into column C. Nothing seemed to happen. I tried column E, and it said there was an error. I'm guessing I am missing something simple. Is there a formula error, or am I supposed to do something beyond simple copy-paste into the column?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7hwni6nnl15p6c...6.png?dl=0

remove the blanks in the Hg Kanji fields (they are in front of each kanji)

[and then you take the formula down until line 402)

Sorry, I don't have that much excel knowledge. I got rid of the blanks, but what should the formula look like?

That dropbox link above goes to the updated file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ymk9wrvtqr1tc4....xlsx?dl=0

I'm not sure what the fields in the vlookup are supposed to correspond to.

=VLOOKUP(D3;$A$3:$B$4401;2;0)

I'm guessing D3 should be D1, and this should be: $A$1: now, but I don't understand $B$4401;2;0)

graeme Wrote:What I'm trying to do is fine out which RTK numbers are in Pimsleur. Then I'll be able to see which ones I already know, and which I'd need to learn to learn the writing of the Pimsleur words in Kanji with Anki.

I don't know much of anything about spreadsheets (though their power and elegance, compared to ugly textual programming, always surprises me), but here's an answer using just JavaScript: I give both the list and the steps to produce it at:

https://gist.github.com/fasiha/cd650215413fb5e1df23

and this includes both RTK1 and RTK3. Note that there are four kanji used in Pimsleur that aren't in Heisig: at the bottom of the link, you'll find these: 其, 羹, 迚, 麩.

Sorry, you have blanks before each RtK Kanji - that means in the field itself. So the formula compares " 一" with "一" from Pimsleur, that is why it can not match.

You can mark the complete column and go to replace ("find& select" is part of editing in the top right corner):
Enter a blank in the find what field and leave the replace with field empty. Press replace all.

graeme Wrote:I'm using this Anki deck to learn the hiragana writings of my Pimsleur course words. It's also helped with my Pimsleur retention: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/90188268

Oh man I would have killed somebody for this when I was going through my experiments with pimsleur. Some kind of flash card makes pimsleur a lot more usable in my opinion.

btw, if you paste your spreadsheet into a google doc and share, it makes it a lot easier for people to help editing and for collaboration. most, but not all formulas that work in excel also work in google sheets.

yogert909 Wrote:Oh man I would have killed somebody for this when I was going through my experiments with pimsleur. Some kind of flash card makes pimsleur a lot more usable in my opinion.

I've nearly convinced myself to just go through this as a sentence deck, without the Pimsleur audio ?…

I made a quick google doc. Let me know if I should change the permissions: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...edit#gid=0

aldebrn, thanks for that list, it's exactly what I was looking for. Great work. I may hold off on Pimsleur sentences until I learn more Kanji, since over half of the list I haven't seen yet in RTK.

I wouldn't recommend the Anki deck for sentence practice. The anki deck has vocab, and is a GREAT supplement to Pimsleur. But it's not a transcript of the course. It's just isolated words. The Pimsleur course actually puts them together in various sentences, and has you make new sentences spontaneously. Plus you get pronunciation feedback.

However, this deck significantly improved my Pimsleur recall. I'm hoping to find one for Pimsleur Japanese level IV. And if none exists, I may make one myself once I get to that level.

What I'd really love to see is a deck with the AUDIO. That would really help people drill Pimsleur, especially for languages with less regular pronunciation than Japanese.

I didn't have permission to edit your google doc, but throw this in column E (or another column):

=VLOOKUP(A1, D12500, 1, FALSE)

Then copy that down to column. Is that what you are looking for?

Oops. I just changed it editable now. Though actually aldebrn actually already solved it.

I think what I'm going to do is continue RTK and Pimsleur separately. Then when I get to 1500 I will start learning the Kanji writings of the words. Though I guess I could figure out which Pimsleur Anki cards have a Kanji I know, and make a custom deck that only uses Kanji I already know, and start adding to that deck as I learn more Kanji.

Is there a tool like fuzzyanki that will show the number of the cards as well. I'd need to think of a way to tag each of the Kanji with the cards it's used in. Or I guess ultimately show the cards in order with the level of RTK Kanji they use. So that someone could start with only cards that i. They knew from Pimsleur, and ii. Had Kanji from the first 500 that they had already learned, etc.