I've avoided anki for a long time because I found it vague and confusing. But I am getting into it now, trying to wrap my head around all these crazy abbreviations for sentence packs and vocabs available, among other things.

I downloaded a "Core 2000 Japanese Vocabulary" pack and I am not sure why the deck is full of sentences and not just pure words. How do I approach each sentence?

Using this for an example:

円 -- そこに大きな円を描いて。

What am I supposed to take away from this? Do I have to be able to recognize, be able to write out and understand every component of this sentence, basically memorize the sentence, before I can select "Very easy"? Obviously be able to write out the kanji as well as know how it is read within the context of the sentence, too?

仕事 -- 3月は仕事が忙しい。

For this sentence should I be able to understand exactly why GA is used as opposed to WA or whatever before I can click "very easy"?

And what happens if I encounter a sentence structure that I don't recognize nor understand?

I'm just not used to this kind of learning by osmosis method. What I'm used to is learning the ins and out of each sentence pattern first.

What is the difference between the Core 2000 and the Core 6000?

Sorry I'm such a complete noob at this!

The idea is that you should always try to learn words in context. If you learn a word, but don't know how to use it in a sentence, it's mostly useless to you.

If you are looking at the Core 2000 sentences, and they are too difficult for you, you may want to start at a lower level.

Either way, try to learn new words in full sentences so that you can actually use them in a conversational phrases, rather than a simple one-word utterances.

To this end, your flashcards should have your study words in a sentence with grammar and vocabulary that you understand, so that you aren't having to decipher the entire sentence, but at the same time are able to glean contextual use from the word you are learning.

So far the sentences I've encountered are not beyond my level, but I am wondering how complete my understanding of the grammatical structure of the sentence needs to be.

If I come across a sentence pattern/ grammatical structure I do not understand do I make sure I know how to use it before moving on?

Like this sentence structure:

家 -- 家に遊びに来てください。

I'm not exactly sure why it's asobi NI kite kudasai. So I can't really say I understand this sentence fully. And am I supposed to be able to translate the English back into the same Japanese sentence? eg) Reading "Please come to my house," I must know to recite back Uchi ni asobi ni kite kudasai.

But I guess the point of Core 2000 is the vocab not the grammatical structure. My main concern is absorbing the meaning of the words & how to use them, right?

So should I have pen and paper in front of me and actively practicing each word and kanji I come across?

I mean... I just want to know the correct approach to take with this. Maybe I'm being too anal retentive about this.

If I select Learn More when I have not finished reviewing, is this detrimental?

misspoly Wrote:So far the sentences I've encountered are not beyond my level, but I am wondering how complete my understanding of the grammatical structure of the sentence needs to be.

On the whole, I'd say don't worry too much about it. As long as you know what it means and how it's used in this particular situation, there's no need to know the exact "why" of the grammar. Grammar is defined after the living language and is there to help you understand it, not the other way around. On that note, it might be wise to acquire some nice reference material such as the "Dictionary of <level> Japanese Grammar" series for when you're really stumped.

Quote:I'm not exactly sure why it's asobi NI kite kudasai.

When used with motion verbs like this, に indicates a cause or purpose. 遊びに来る would appear to mean "to come and play", but it's a set phrase with a more general meaning of "to come over".

Quote:But I guess the point of Core 2000 is the vocab not the grammatical structure. My main concern is absorbing the meaning of the words & how to use them, right?

The SRS is a flexible tool; use it how you see fit. Personally, I think sentence cards have their merits in the beginning stages, but as you get more used to grammar, the potential benefits decrease and eventually don't warrant the additional time investment vs. pure vocab.

Quote:If I select Learn More when I have not finished reviewing, is this detrimental?

It's not detrimental per se, but adding more cards will get you more reviews. Try to balance this according to your own pace. Most importantly, leave some time for "real" exposure.

@astendra: Remembering myself discovering Anki lol I didn't know what would happen if I clicked "Learn More" too much for my decks and ended up having a shitload of REVIEWS the other day, hahaー

Did you download the Core 2k6k deck that was uploaded by nukemarine in seperate sections for beginner - intermediate? Also you should write it out Kanji and all at least once then review write the word it's testing. Nukemarines deck has the testing word in bold so you know. Also the order of Nukemarines deck is in the Kanji Odyssey order which is said to be easier on the brain. cuz you learn multiple words with the same kanji around each other.

NoSleepTilFluent Wrote:Did you download the Core 2k6k deck that was uploaded by nukemarine in seperate sections for beginner - intermediate? Also you should write it out Kanji and all at least once then review write the word it's testing. Nukemarines deck has the testing word in bold so you know. Also the order of Nukemarines deck is in the Kanji Odyssey order which is said to be easier on the brain. cuz you learn multiple words with the same kanji around each other.

I did download the Japanese corePLUS (huge) deck (about 230mb or something including the sound and pictures), having tags for basically every good textbook (genki 1, 2, an integrated approach to intermediate japanese, tobira and a few others I guess, including KO2001, RTK2 and naturally, very helpful Core2k/6k tag and JLPT tags!! woohoo!).
Currently I'm planning finishing the deck first and then afterwards changing the layout of the cards to kana->kanji (writing, reading, meaning).

I haven't been in study mode for almost 6 months now (my due stack is about 6,000 cards) so feel free to ignore my thought process here:

For basic vocabulary, there may be merit for a modified English (or L1) to Kanji+Pronunciation type card. Something like

Q: Car - 彼は____に乗っている
A: 車; くるま　

If later you find that you're missing a card due to there being multiple ways to interpret the English word, add in the answers you don't want

Q: Car - 彼は____に乗っている (not - 自動車)

Please understand, I originally started Core2k with the idea one had to understand the entire sentence. So at the time, I did Kana to Kanji and later Kanji to Kana. In addition, the resources (Core 2k from iKnow or 2k1KO sentences) were mainly just about sentences. It took effort to change things around, but now there are so many variants out there that you can literally pick and choose your own approach.

Now, I kind of feel like one can approach vocabulary like we approach kanji (keyword to kanji). Later, when you're doing cloze deletion with sentences you're also filling in the gaps but this time with the context providing the clues.

TL/DR: Consider making your first few hundred vocabulary cards English to Japanese, but with Japanese context on the question side.

This is getting kinda confusing. Please someone explain.

I want to have more of those "Listen to a complete sentence in Japanese and then write it on a paper in Japanese, make sure to understand the meaning also" type of decks. I had one that had 200 first, most easy ones but now I can't find the following decks. My old deck is called Smartfm Japanese Core 2000 Step 1. Anki's download list does not seem to have the following deck for that.

I heard Smart.fm has quit but can I still get the other sentences somewhere?

The deck doesn't need to be smart.fm's deck as long as it is beginner stuff and is "Listen to a complete sentence in Japanese and then write it on a paper in Japanese, make sure to understand the meaning also" type.

You can find core here.

You might be better off just using Subs2SRS with morphology though, since that will allow you to focus on the things that interest you.

I PM'ed you Nuke, basically about how to really go about starting to learn Japanese after "graduating" from the first RTK phase (2042kanji, later 3007).
I read through a lot, but I don't wanna make the mistake and find myself beaten down by decks that are too huge or hard for me or I find have to start over with different ones.
Thanks.

Hey, does anyone here know how to get the audio files working with anki for Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8? I've been trying to figure out where the media folder is, and how to open it. also, why aren't the media files included in the first place? The files worked for windows 7, however, the pictures didn't for some reason.

unmei Wrote:Hey, does anyone here know how to get the audio files working with anki for Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.8? I've been trying to figure out where the media folder is, and how to open it. also, why aren't the media files included in the first place? The files worked for windows 7, however, the pictures didn't for some reason.

Spotlight the name of your deck and that will bring you to the location that your media should be stored (mine was in "/Users/username/Documents/Anki"). If the deck is called "Pooh", the media folder should be called "Pooh.media".

BTW, you would probably have got a faster response at the Anki forum.

Boy.pockets Wrote:Spotlight the name of your deck and that will bring you to the location that your media should be stored (mine was in "/Users/username/Documents/Anki"). If the deck is called "Pooh", the media folder should be called "Pooh.media".

BTW, you would probably have got a faster response at the Anki forum.

I went there, and all I found was a Japanese corePLUS.anki file. right clicking doesn't give me the option to show the package contents. I'm not sure what I need to use to add the media files. I'll try the anki forums too maybe.

* so I read the forums.. but it's not very user friendly. I don't have a clue about what to do, and it sounds like it would take forever. I'll try making the folder and adding the files to that.

Hey So I've looked a few times and I've tried to export from Anki etc. to get a list of the Kore words in the KO2001 order used in this guide. I just need the words part ( Kanji and Hiragana) without all the sentences and formatting information. etc. But the order is also important as it would make my life that much easier. I plan to use them for Japanese Keywords as I already know the words.

My problem is on my mac when i export there is a lot of "Noise" in the files that is proving frustrating.

Do you have a list readily available or know where one is? If not it's cool I'll just keep treading along as I have been just looking for a way to speed it up.

Hyperborea Wrote:First, I want to thank you for putting the effort into getting this all together.

I think I'm running into a problem and I'm not sure if it's something wrong I've done or if there is a problem in the kanji ordering.

I've found two issues with the kanji. In the set of 555 kanji from RTK that are used in the Anki card deck and marked as 2k1_1 there are number of missing component kanji that made it more difficult to work up stories / use existing stories and in remembering the kanji. I just added the components as I went along. There were 97 of these. One such example is Heisig 68 - 勺.

I'm now hitting another and more troublesome issue. I'm running into kanji used in the Core 2k step 1&2 vocabulary deck that weren't covered in the RTK deck. For example, 建てる, is in the vocabulary deck at position 289 but the kanji doesn't show up in the RTK deck until card 732 which is beyond the kanji that are supposed to be required. There are a number of these though I don't have an exact count yet. I've encountered about 10 so far.

Am I doing something wrong? Is there something wrong with the card decks?

Thanks.

Yes, there are some problems with the system. For skipped kanji that act as primitives, what you can do is treat that kanji like a normal primitive. This already happens with other primitives that you learn in RTK3 happen to be kanji themselves.

For words in the sentence list not in the RTK list, I may have mentioned it before, but you have three options: Suspend cards that have new Kanji, learn the new Kanji, or create a note that you're learning it kana only for such words (then remove the note when you learn that kanji later).

Though I've not followed up on it (pretty much stopped studying/contributing learning material for the last 8 months, sorry), I do have a more detailed spreadsheet with smarter ordering lists. I need to to get around to updating the Anki file with this ordered data. Even then, yes, there will be a point in the lists where there's advanced kanji since the Kanji list and the Sentence pack came from two different sources. We're just forcing them together in a way that works for the most part.

I added a link to this thread here: http://rtkwiki.koohii.com/wiki/Methods_s...orum_users

In case you want to wikify it. ^_^

Thank you for your efforts Hyperborea.

Just letting you know, Nukemarine, that I and many others still care about this guide and want you to make updates!

Just saying this is one of the few favorite links I put on my main tab on firefox. Thanks for the guide I have been using it for a while already. Its simple and clear and for what Im doing its helping wonders.
Thanks ^^

jonuhey Wrote:Just saying this is one of the few favorite links I put on my main tab on firefox. Thanks for the guide I have been using it for a while already. Its simple and clear and for what Im doing its helping wonders.
Thanks ^^

Mhm. Hopefully he will come back and make that update he was talking about one day...

I don't see what the Core2k/6k thing is doing for me.
I get presented a word with a sentence using it in hiragana/katakana and it is even read out to me. How am I supposed to make anything with this? Or is the Beginner deck like that?
Or is the Deck containing several Versions per word (and the actual reading later)? I'm not learning any readings whatsoever here?

I hoped to find a collection of sorted vocabulary in actual sentences, using Kanji, making me try to read it, write it out and then hear a recording etc..

It comes like this:

Question:
これはあついです。 (With a picture and it is read aloud)

Answer:
熱い　- これは熱いです。

What is this doing for me?

Revenant Wrote:What is this doing for me?

The deck contains all the data, and it depends on your deck settings, what you want to test for. You can put the audio and the picture fields on the back of the card in your card properties for instance. In the case of this example you could try to write the word in Kanji. You could also put the answer field on the front of the card, translation and audio on the back, and then read it yourself. You can also have dictation cards, where you have the audio on the front, and everything else on the back. You are then supposed to write the whole sentence, Kanji or Kana doesn't matter that is again up to you.

There are many ways you can test your knowledge. You just have to set-up everything the way you want it to be.

I see. I kinda figured that I was supposed to set the thing up like a 'G.
Mhm, what I want is to be asked to read a word + the sentence in kanji, then reveal the card and see the writing and hear the sentence.

I'm having a bit of trouble with it.
I'm trying to only enable the reading cards, but there's none in the deck.
I only managed to only have the clozed sentences activated, but that's not
completely what I am looking for. (Like 400 of the 514 cards are "dictation")
What can I do?

Revenant Wrote:I see. I kinda figured that I was supposed to set the thing up like a 'G.
Mhm, what I want is to be asked to read a word + the sentence in kanji, then reveal the card and see the writing and hear the sentence.

I am not familiar with the CORE deck. If both words and sentences are in seperate fields, you can put {{vocab}} and {{sentence}} on the front, and picture, audio, sentence and words in kana on the back.

What is the name of the deck? Core 2000? CorePlus?