Hola,

is there an Anki deck for Japanese the Manga Way? Or, better: how do you use this book? Do you just read through without using SRS or do you actually put the sentences in Anki?

I love this book so far but I'm not sure how to use it...maybe I'll just rush through it (the first time) to get an overview of Japanese grammar and then in a second approach I'll put some of the example sentences in Anki. Or shall I not use SRS at all for this book and just try to pick up things on the go by reading through it several times? Uhhmm....

Here's how you do it:
1. Open the book
2. Read
3. When you find an interesting sentence that has something in it you want to remember, put it in.

You don't have to have ALL the sentences in digital format, just the useful ones.

マンガで学ぶ日本語文法！ I like this book.

You should be fine if you do what Alyks does. In all honesty, I'm not too sure what to do regarding SRS and grammar, because my grammar was already JLPT2 level when I found RTK. My vocab on the other hand... At least I've got KO2001 and iKnow!

I've been putting all of them in. I went through just reading it first until I got to about frame 100, and then I started putting the first frames in while I continued reading ahead. I ended up staying about 100 ahead the whole time. It helped out this way because when I first encountered things they tended to be really hard, and I'd forget a lot, but by the time I got to it while putting the sentences into Trinity it would seem a lot easier and a lot more natural. Also, staying about 100 behind helped reinforce concepts that I was still learning 100 ahead.

I've now finished the book just reading it, and I'm on #417 entering it into Trinity. I put each of them in, not necessarily because they were all interesting sentences, but because of the grammar in each frame. Lammers seems to move really fast at some points and only mentions things once, but once in a while he'll give multiple frames for the same concept, which is really nice.

Good book in all. I highly recommend it.

MethodGT, interesting. So you use Trinity instead of Anki, right? Why? Just wondering.

I have just about every sentence from that book in my deck. I'm not big on group book-mining projects, though. Not for copyright reasons, I'm just iffy on relying on others' transcriptions, plus I think it's best to transcribe it yourself--to me, learning to type them up and getting familiar with the structure of sentences and intimately knowing them was a valuable part of the process of my early AJATT experience. *gets misty-eyed with nostalgia*

I usually read the chapters, then put the example sentences (the ones with the square outlines around relevant words) into Anki. I would collect about 5 at a time, sometimes 10, and if I found a point vague, I'd reinforce it with examples from Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar. Eventually I had a separate day for grammar additions, and would add like 10-15 sentences on that day. At first I graded the entire sentence as if I were learning vocab, etc, but eventually I would just ask myself if I understood the grammar point.

Sigh, I really love that book. ;p The politeness levels, the breakdown of the sentences into their constituent parts with context-specific notes, the explanations of slangy particles and contractions. The pictures from the manga stuck with me too.

I love this book, too. (I think I confused the name of it with another book's name in another thread... Whoops.)

I tried reading the Basic Dictionary of Japanese Grammar but it kept putting me to sleep. So I bought this to get a good handle on things and use that as the reference it was intended to be. This works -much- better.

The comics aren't exactly exciting or anything, but they do an excellent job of telling the backstory in a short paragraph, and then showing the comic. The explanation that goes with it tends to be interesting as well.

I'm about halfway through the book now and still liking it a lot.

[Katsuo]

stoked Wrote:...Japanese the Manga Way?....I love this book

Have you ever tried the Mangajin CD ROM? It's written in the same style, but you can also click on the speech bubbles and hear them.

The only problem is it's very old (1995) so the interface is rather clunky. Something like that brought up to date would be great learning material.

(Note: On Apple computers using OSX you need "Classic" installed to run this. I'm not sure about Windows "Vista".)

Katsuo Wrote:

stoked Wrote:...Japanese the Manga Way?....I love this book

Have you ever tried the Mangajin CD ROM? It's written in the same style, but you can also click on the speech bubbles and hear them.

The only problem is it's very old (1995) so the interface is rather clunky. Something like that brought up to date would be great learning material.

(Note: On Apple computers using OSX you need "Classic" installed to run this. I'm not sure about Windows "Vista".)

Note2: Classic doesn't work on intel macs or (afaik) OSX 10.5 (maybe even 10.4).

Katsuo Wrote:Have you ever tried the Mangajin CD ROM? It's written in the same style, but you can also click on the speech bubbles and hear them.

I have an old Mangajin book I bought, but I found it to be quite boring. I was surprised that Japanese the Manga Way wasn't boring, since I had the other first. Of course, this could just be me, so YMMV.

For reference, it's this one: http://www.amazon.com/Mangajins-Basic-Ja...0834804522

stoked Wrote:MethodGT, interesting. So you use Trinity instead of Anki, right? Why? Just wondering.

I use Trinity over Anki because I really like how it's broken up into the sentences/vocabulary sections. And how when I add a new sentence, all the new words in that sentence get added to my vocab flashcards, so I get to learn lots of new words too. I know I could learn those words inside the sentences as given, but then I'll probably just be remembering them cause I remember the sentence. With a separate review for each word, I'll most likely be able to remember what the word means when encountered somewhere else.

Also, Trinity's the one I started with, and never really wanted to do the Anki switch (although I did try it). One complaint I have with trinity is that I can't format different words separately. Sometimes I wish I could italicize or embolden a word inside the sentences, but I can't in Trinity. Not sure if you can in Anki either, but that would be nice.

Anyway, sorry for the late reply.

MethodGT Wrote:Not sure if you can in Anki either, but that would be nice.

To reply to this, you can.

Anyone still interested in making an Anki deck? I found a pdf version and was thinking of pulling the manga clips and using those as the "sentences". Or just using the sentences. Not sure yet.

Just curious to see who else is using the book. I like GT's method - read ahead, then add cards for a second look at them later.

nohika Wrote:Anyone still interested in making an Anki deck? I found a pdf version and was thinking of pulling the manga clips and using those as the "sentences". Or just using the sentences. Not sure yet.

Just curious to see who else is using the book. I like GT's method - read ahead, then add cards for a second look at them later.

Perhaps make a spreadsheet and start a bit to attract people, a la "If you built it, they will come"? Alternatively, I think someone on here once mentioned they mined all/most of it (nestor maybe?).

nest0r Wrote:I have just about every sentence from that book in my deck.

Would it be possible for you to send that deck (or an export of the JtMW subset) if I prove I own the book? I'd rather transcribe sentences from sources nobody has tackled yet, or at least fill in whatever you missed rather than start from scratch.

I would never ask someone for proof they bought something.

Unfortunately I didn't tag my JMW cards (they were some of my first) so it'd be difficult to find and export them, plus they were really messy. Since I was just transcribing and reviewing piecemeal as I went along, it was a rather organic process with a short-term mindset.

You may be interested in this: http://www.hornlo.org/jtmw/ .

Code:

jtmw-1.png     30-Jan-2011 03:24   68K    (screen shot of how field data is used)
      jtmw-2.png     30-Jan-2011 03:25   94K    (screen shot from sample data below)
      jtmw-deck.zip  30-Jan-2011 03:30   98K    (anki deck, ready to run, lessons 1-5)
      jtmw.zip       30-Jan-2011 03:22   15K    (data and code generate the .tsv and .anki file

I really don't care for entering long data in a spreadsheet, so I've been experimenting with creating a deck from a data file, using Japanese the Manga Way. I prefer a format like this, so I can view things vertically:

Code:

Id:         *
Source:     *
Page:       12
Lesson:     2
Frame:      17
Part:       a
Expression: Tanaka:  よっ、　島。　久しぶり　だ　な。
Reading:    よっ、　しま。　ひさしぶり　だ　な。
Romaji:     Yo!,  Shima.        Hisashiburi          da      na.
Literal:    hi/yo (name)  first time in a long time  is (colloq)
Inter:      Yo, Shima! It's the first time [we meet] in a long time, isn't it?
Meaning:    Yo, Shima!  It's been a long time, hasn't it? (PL2)
Comment:    な na, a masculine ne

The jtmw.zip file contains japanese-the-manga-way.dat, japanese-the-manga-way.sql, mkdeck, and tag2tsv. The code creates the empty deck and tsv file; I copy those to the .anki/decks/ directory, then import the tsv file. With current anki, you can just update your deck with from the tsv file, using ID as the key.

I'll be adding lessons to the file slowly, as I experiment with the code. I'm aiming for a generic format I can just toss data into from any source, so that's why it looks like the kitchen sink instead of a subset of the JTMW frames. If anyone else wants to provide lesson data in this format, I'll be glad to merge it in.

hornlo Wrote:You may be interested in this: http://www.hornlo.org/jtmw/ .

Code:

Id:         *
Source:     *
Page:       12
Lesson:     2
Frame:      17
Part:       a
Expression: Tanaka:  よっ、　島。　久しぶり　だ　な。
Reading:    よっ、　しま。　ひさしぶり　だ　な。
Romaji:     Yo!,  Shima.        Hisashiburi          da      na.
Literal:    hi/yo (name)  first time in a long time  is (colloq)
Inter:      Yo, Shima! It's the first time [we meet] in a long time, isn't it?
Meaning:    Yo, Shima!  It's been a long time, hasn't it? (PL2)
Comment:    な na, a masculine ne

A friend and I actually started this last night and perhaps should join you, but we weren't recording some of the data you are (like the romaji, since it's useless).

hornlo Wrote:I'll be adding lessons to the file slowly, as I experiment with the code. I'm aiming for a generic format I can just toss data into from any source, so that's why it looks like the kitchen sink instead of a subset of the JTMW frames. If anyone else wants to provide lesson data in this format, I'll be glad to merge it in.

Collaboration is easier when you can do it asynchronously, thus our use of a shared google spreadsheet. I know you have a tool to convert your data to .tsv, which let's us import your data easily, but what about the other way around? If you wrote such a script, we could all continue adding stuff as we go and pull from eachother as needed.

Oh, and I had to change mkdeck:46 to find tag2tsv:

Code:

< tag2tsv --type="tsv" --tags="tag2tsv" "$DATAFILE" > "$TSVFILE"
> ./tag2tsv --type="tsv" --tags="tag2tsv" "$DATAFILE" > "$TSVFILE"

It was a spur of the moment thing to make this available. I was doubtful that anyone would be that interested in it.

I'd put the 'tag2tsv' script in my ~/bin since it turned out to be useful; I didn't fix up the makefile before I uploaded the files, thus the error.

I included the romaji just to be complete. It's easier to skip it later than not have it to begin with. I can deal with whatever columns you actually put in a spreadsheet, although it would be convenient to have the extra columns there, even if empty. I can fill in the romaji and other missing data later on if I want it.

I'll make a more elaborate script to go from tsv to dat, but it's fairly trivial as a one-liner, without any options or error checking. Example pasted from my terminal window, works fine with my tsv file:

Code:

$ perl -n -e 'BEGIN {@tags = qw(Id Source Page Lesson Frame Part Expression Reading Romaji Literal Inter Meaning Comment)}
@flds = split "\t"; foreach $t (@tags) {printf "%-12s%s\n", "$t:", shift(@flds)}' foo.tsv >foo.dat