shamanana Wrote:2) How important is really to know those kanji compounds... - I know, the dumbest question ever... after all, I love my kanji, I do, but there are compounds for the words that I know and yet coming up with the exact kanji even after just 10 minutes after I pressed "soon" in Anki seems impossible. There is just no logic in them! No apparent connection with the meaning... So, how do you deal with those?

How important is it to know English words if you want to speak English? Quite important indeed.

When you have a hard time remembering the kanji because the meanings don't make sense, focus on readings instead. Word pronounced a certain way almost always have a primitive which indicates the reading. This lets you remember which kanji to use better.

Hey Nuke,

Just followed your directions on extracting audio from a drama and adding the lyrics on your youtube page. Worked like an absolute charm! I now know what you mean by showing being better than writing cuz I don't think I could have managed all that via a written instructional, so good on ya for that! Just curious as to when I can expect the next part in the series on making anki decks with subs2srs. Havent tried yet (will soon) but from what Ive seen on this forum there seems to be a lot of things you can do with these types of reviews.

Thanks again

I just moved back to Japan, so it may be a bit till my wife and I are settled in Yokosuka and I can record some more videos. There's only 5 more segments left to do for this series (Dramanote and Subs2srs).

kerosan41 Wrote:

Ghoro Wrote:So what do you mean by "RTK using 2001KO 1-555 Kanji"? I'm not sure what 2001KO is or how I use it.

Thanks

http://rtkwiki.koohii.com/wiki/KO2001

So wait for RTK do I use Anki or smart.fm?

Ghoro Wrote:

kerosan41 Wrote:

Ghoro Wrote:So what do you mean by "RTK using 2001KO 1-555 Kanji"? I'm not sure what 2001KO is or how I use it.

Thanks

http://rtkwiki.koohii.com/wiki/KO2001

So wait for RTK do I use Anki or smart.fm?

For RTK you can use this site or Anki. I've not tried smart.fm but Hashiriya made RTK packs on there a couple years back.

I prefer Anki since you can change up how you review the cards over time.

Thanks I just found your deck on Anki, but each card has so much stuff on it that I don't know what it means lol. So I'm not sure, how should I go about using your deck? Should I from the start try to be learning every thing on the card? Well I'm not even sure what most of the stuff is on the card so I'm not even sure what it is that I would be learning lol. There seems to be a lot more then what is in the book, so I'm not sure.

And maybe I'm just missing it or don't know how to use Anki, but I don't see the stories with the Kanji. Should I be adding them my self or are they there and I just don't know what I'm doing? lol

Thanks

In that case, use this site's stuff. The Anki deck has a lot of extra information that might be overwhelming. On this site, it's just the keyword and the kanji, and the story if you need it.

Ghoro,

The anki deck has a lot of items, but you can edit the cards to display just the Keyword and the Kanji (just like this site). Later, you might want Keyword and kanji meaning (more descriptive than just the keyword) to help counter act ambiguous keywords (I, myself, me, private for example). Later still, you might want to display Japanese words and yomi to further remove ambiguity and play on your growing Japanese knowledge (after you start studying vocabulary).

This is all done by going into edit deck properties and changing the card layout. You can even edit the card display to change font size and color of items on the cards. This is good if you want to emphasize what to look at to get an answer.

It's meant to allow you to improve how you test your knowledge of the kanji as you go along.

Ok thanks for the help, so I guess then I do need to add the stories my self. Also you guys said there is a Anki deck on this site also, but I can't find it.

In the upper right corner click on Reviewing the Kanji link, after that click on Study. When the page opens in the upper left corner under Study and Browse enter the number of the kanji you want (you can start with 1 and move on). After that just use arrows to reach next/previous kanji or directly with kanji, number, or keyword...
You will notice that each kanji has different stories that other members entered. You can use those or make up your own... Enjoy!

I have a question about the grammar...

I'm not super-fond of Tae Kim's, to be honest. Do you have any idea what would be around "equivalent" in other cases? I know I'm a huge dork, but I do enjoy the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar and I also have Genki, though Genki goes rather slowly for my enjoyment. I /also/ have (yay, me...) Japanese the Manga way, which is currently in storage due to the flood (damn) but I'm considering doing that and DBJG.

Any idea on what would be equivalent to Tae-Kims, or should I just start from the beginning and work on it while doing the rest?

Any of those work, I just used Tae Kim as it was free and in a useful spreadsheet format for easy importing into Anki. Tae Kim is just basic grammar that has points in basic and intermediate Japanese grammar books.

One question that I've seen brought up a couple times but not answered (which I am also wondering myself) is how the progression works with the flashcards.

To be more descriptive:

I've seen the KO2001 site, the spreadsheet, and the anki deck (of which I am very greatful for!).

But, how do I use it?

I'm 3/4 done with RTK, but I still don't know any of the vocabulary or grammar in the cards.

It might be that I'm not reading between the lines, but am I supposed to "find" a copy of KO2001, and guess about how far along in that I am with the flashcards?

Or do I just take only the flashcards, look them up to figure out each part of the sentence, and then repeat that process for every card (not that it wouldn't be helpful, but a bit slower and I'm not sure where I would look up each part of the sentence while still understanding the grammar).

I'm reading through Tae Kim's, and would like to use the deck, but I don't know how many cards to add. I'm unsure of how many to add, in hopes to not overlap my reading of the guide.

That part I suppose I could figure out myself, but decided to ask to see if there was a clear and concise way to approach this. I don't need babysteps, but a general guideline for this could easily be summed up in a short paragraph.

Part2:
I was attempting to use the KO2001 guide. I had read on your post that including the audio and pictures is important.

I tried, but the only advice given (that I saw. I possibly could have missed something) was either:

-Put it in the .media file
-Make a copy of the deck file that includes the new media (pics and sounds)
-Add it through the edit deck option

I'm an IT major and I'm having a little trouble with this lol.
I'm using windows 7 64-bit along with the 64-bit version of anki (or at least its installed into my computers 64-bit directory)
I see no .media file
I cannot identify a deck file or file type
Also, when I go to the edit deck option, it appears to be the same as creating a new card for that deck.

I haven't had a ton of time to figure it out myself (which I would prefer so I would learn for next time), but since I've been working a lot lately, I figure I would save myself some time and just make a post on here.

Thanks in advanced for any advice =)

I'm not quite sure what you're asking. The guide is set up so you teach yourself Kanji, then basic grammar, then basic vocabulary. None are dependent on the other. If you're doing KO2001, you can go in order but it might be difficult. Cangy has a sorted deck for KO2001 if you can find it, but I didn't provide anything to it in the links.

With grammar, I just read a chapter of Tae Kim, then studied the associated sentence cards in anki. I also added notes where appropriate.

About the media, you have to put it in the .media folder with the same name as the anki file that'll use that media. The anki file should already be set up to use the media, as I checked it prior to uploading.

Nukemarine Wrote:I'm not quite sure what you're asking. The guide is set up so you teach yourself Kanji, then basic grammar, then basic vocabulary. None are dependent on the other. If you're doing KO2001, you can go in order but it might be difficult. Cangy has a sorted deck for KO2001 if you can find it, but I didn't provide anything to it in the links.

With grammar, I just read a chapter of Tae Kim, then studied the associated sentence cards in anki. I also added notes where appropriate.

About the media, you have to put it in the .media folder with the same name as the anki file that'll use that media. The anki file should already be set up to use the media, as I checked it prior to uploading.

Ok the tae kim part makes sense.

But for KO2001 I'll try to simplify the question
I go to a flash card and have no Idea what any of the words mean. What do I do?

I'll give the media another shot and let you know how it works. The problem with that was that I couldn't find the anki file (deck file) to put the media in.

Edit:
figured out drag and drop (derp)
but oh god its playing all of the files in order while adding them. wut?

would still like to know how to find the .deck or .media file, as i cannot locate either

In Windows, anki decks are in Documents. deckname.anki is the deck. Make a new folder named deckname.media and stick the sound files in there. If the deck is not located there on your system, search .anki.

The premade deck probably has long mp3 file names in the fields which refer to those media files. You shouldn't need to add anything to the deck directly (if that's what you were doing.)

@Nukemarine

Are there any particular reasons as to why you opted to exclude Tae Kim's Advanced Topics?

I gave a quick look at it and it doesn't seem much advanced.
You probably can learn that from core 6k.

mentat_kgs Wrote:I gave a quick look at it and it doesn't seem much advanced.
You probably can learn that from core 6k.

Do you mean just through sheer exposure?

Vileru Wrote:Although Fabrice seems against it, a sticky on how to import Anki spreadsheets would be helpful, especially since the tutorials on the Anki website do not address the issue. Sure, the information is probably available somewhere on this forum or on the Anki forum, but a centralized location would prevent many headaches.

Vileru and hotswp,

There are different ways to convert a spreadsheet to a plain text file that can be imported. FYI, a simple method is described in the Anki wiki under File Import (just copy and paste the data into Notepad (or similar) and save as UTF-8). Mapping fields is pretty self-explanatory once you try it once.

The Anki wiki seems like a better place for this stuff. It's available to all Anki users. You can edit any parts that aren't clear enough.

PS But I agree that cangy's overwrite/swanki plugin should be a feature and the card template html stuff isn't particularly friendly for many users. (We should all take the time to vote on proposed features over at Anki...)

fwiw, I also wanted to slip in a different perspective on the anki difficulty issue...

I'm verging on idiocy when it comes to computers, programming, spreadsheets, encoding, html, etc. yet somehow managed to figure it out by reading the anki wiki and playing around a bit. Some of the wording could benefit from more consistency, but most info is available if people are curious enough. What I learned in the process turned out to be very useful (even beyond Anki).

So I'd encourage beginners not to look at it as daunting. Allocate a bit of time to experimenting with Anki customization. It's worth it!

Some frequent anki questions are covered in the wiki (a general observation, not limited to this thread). I've found the Anki forum to be great for quick and friendly answers. I personally think it'd be good if Nukemarine and other generous folks could focus more on new resources and instruction, and less on Anki stuff. :-)

Thora Wrote:In Windows, anki decks are in Documents.

thank god that was all i needed. haha thanks a bunch

So Ive been pounding away at my RTK deck for a while now (finished the book about 4 months ago) and what Im finding is that going from keyword to kanji is no problem, but if Im out in the wild (I live in Tokyo) and I see a particular kanji thay I know Ive covered in RTK, it can be a struggle to bring up the keyword. I know the RTK method advocates going from keyword to kanji, but is there a point in your reviews when going kanji to keyword would be more helpful?

I also share the same feeling in the Core2k series. Ive been using (nukemarine's) core deck for a while now, going from kana/kanji to english. The deck is great, packed full of useful information, but Im starting to think Im only remembering words based on the sentence's context.
For example, if you were to randomly ask me what the word for "light" (as in light weight) is I probably couldnt tell you. However, when Im doing my reviews and I come across the sentence telling me "I bought new shoes and they're really light" I remember it because I've heard about these particular shoes a bunch of times so I associate the word "light" with them. Does that make sense?

Anyways, what Im getting at, which kinda goes against AJATT, is going from English to Japanese when you have already gone from Japanese to English with the same sentence.

Thoiughts...?

dusmar84 Wrote:So Ive been pounding away at my RTK deck for a while now (finished the book about 4 months ago) and what Im finding is that going from keyword to kanji is no problem, but if Im out in the wild (I live in Tokyo) and I see a particular kanji thay I know Ive covered in RTK, it can be a struggle to bring up the keyword. I know the RTK method advocates going from keyword to kanji, but is there a point in your reviews when going kanji to keyword would be more helpful?

I also share the same feeling in the Core2k series. Ive been using (nukemarine's) core deck for a while now, going from kana/kanji to english. The deck is great, packed full of useful information, but Im starting to think Im only remembering words based on the sentence's context.
For example, if you were to randomly ask me what the word for "light" (as in light weight) is I probably couldnt tell you. However, when Im doing my reviews and I come across the sentence telling me "I bought new shoes and they're really light" I remember it because I've heard about these particular shoes a bunch of times so I associate the word "light" with them. Does that make sense?

Anyways, what Im getting at, which kinda goes against AJATT, is going from English to Japanese when you have already gone from Japanese to English with the same sentence.

Thoiughts...?

Sometimes I too will only remember a words meaning from its sentence. When this is the case, I will add another sentence (to my anki deck) with the word the next time I come across it and forget its meaning/reading. As for production, after reading/hearing the word enough times you should be able to recall it when you need to. Totally learning a word involves much more than looking up its definition. You will need to come across and recognize it in a variety of contexts before you understand its meaning enough to use it. Anki will help to make sure you're ready the next time you see it.

It's a trade off when doing Kana reviews. Because of the nature of Japanese, you need some type of context to reasonably review Kana to Kanji (I don't like going Japanese to English). However, like the photos (that I ended up removing from my deck), the sentences almost give away the answer without testing your ability.

I recently changed my vocabulary deck (Core 2k/6k) to display the Kanji Word in VERY LARGE FONT, with the sentence in a very small font. Now it's more about knowing the meaning and the pronunciation from just the word itself. If I have to get the meaning from the sentence I'll mark it hard. I don't think one should start off like this, however, by the time you reach the intermediate phase (Core 6k or equivalent) you need to speed up your reviews and the number of words you're learning. As IceCream and Jarvik7 say they get great benefits from doing this. I'm finding reviews are now VERY FAST yet I'm missing what I thought were simple words, yet I guess are not so simple without a sentence to help.

In Brief: First 2000 words learn Kana (w/sentence) to Kanji, trying to comprehend the sample sentence. Next 4000 words learn Kanji (w/ or w/o sentence) to Meaning/Pronunciation, not worrying about the sentence at all except as a "hint".

I also have the clozed-delete cards for the verbs. This you have to use the sentence as you're trying to figure out the correct verb. I only made these when it was obvious the passive/active verbs are given away in normal reviews. Since verbs are VERY IMPORTANT (as Mike Cash put it, learning 1 verb is more important than learning 10 words), I find this a useful addition and recommend to anyone.