What's the best way to link Japanese words with English definitions?

Currently, I think of an image of the definition and do by my best to find an image of whatever parts of the Japanese word I can. For example, neko = cat. Neko reminds me of the name Nico, so I just picture my friend Nico with a cat crawling around on his head. There are a few problems with this:
-My word is really niko, not neko. Not only do you have to remember these subtle variations in any words you link, but I'd imagine this becomes a bit confusing when you get to the actual word niko.
-While images are easier to remember than just words, these images have no logical grounding and components have little natural overlap. It's not like RTK, where it's quite easy to come up with logical stories/images that relate the elements to the definition, mainly because the elements are already directly related to the definition.
-It's extremely boring and mentally taxing to go though lists of words, struggling to come up with necessarily obscure links between words.


*I'm aware of passive methods to learn words, but I don't like just sitting there allowing the definition to gradually sink in when I can instead just make an effort to link the two by myself. Also, there's the ajatt sentence method, but even in that you need to at some point link words you don't understand to their definitions (assuming your not passively trying to absorb them).

*I'm confident that after linking words/defs, it will be relatively easy to SRS them 'til they're good. And ideally, I'd like to be able to learn vocab at roughly the same pace as you can do RTK - where 50-100 words a day isn't unreasonable if you have the time.

*I'm not looking for arguments over the pros/cons of isolated vocabulary development. Regardless of how/where you learn a word, you do in fact need to link it at some point (again, assuming you aren't using a passive approach). And, although I do plan on doing isolated vocab learning at first, I will also turn these into sentences and SRS them, using Lang-8 if necessary, so I can understand the usage of the words if there is anything tricky.

*Is there any way to use roots (like, you know, how English has Greek/Latin roots)?

*Finally, I've been trying to think of ways I could implement a learning system into a flash game, mainly to make the linking process more fun. I can program, so if you have any ideas for a game (or Anki plugin, like AnkiWarrior), let me know.

somstuff Wrote:*Is there any way to use roots (like, you know, how English has Greek/Latin roots

Kanji?

Okay, I guess that makes it a bit easier, but you still have to memorize the (multiple) readings for each kanji as well as the (multiple) kanji used for the English translation?

Also, it seems like most people don't specifically try to memorize the readings at first?

Yeah, at least for me it's easier to just learn readings as I learn vocabulary, i.e. to not memorize on-yomi or kun-yomi separately. I've tried associating kanji with on-yomi in isolation, but it didn't seem as effective.

In the case of words that consist of two or more kanji, you'd usually know the on-yomi of at least one kanji before, and could use that to create a mnemonic for the phonetic form of the word.

If it's just one or two simple translations for each word and if you only need to rote learn a couple thousand words, mnemonics plus kanji would work, I think. SRSing words would make it more efficient too.

I don't know what you mean by passive learning, but getting familiar with information you're going to cram always makes the task much easier. For example, think of trying to memorize a list of people. You're supposed to memorize the name, sex, race, nationality, and whatnot of each person on the list. The list may contain brief descriptions of their personalities. If the list contains 100+ people, simple rote memorization is doable but kind of brutal unless you use the memory palace and the like. But if you see them in person and get to know their faces, voices, etc., things get much easier. You may find their personalities quite different from what is described in the list. But it works as a good mnemonics as in, "Hmm. He didn't look exactly a nice guy to me. But this list says he's a gentleman, so he must be..." If by passive learning you mean encountering those words in real life, it greatly helps rote memorization too. Of corse, as you probably already know, if the number of words is large, it's infeasible to memorize definitions or translations in English regardless of the method you use. In this case, you're much better off learning Japanese first and then returning to memorizing translations of Japanese words you already know. But since you seem to need only a small number of words, I'm guessing how you memorize them doesn't matter much to be honest.

Okay, that makes sense.

1. So this is what I'll do: Put into Anki, front- kanji, back- reading + English translation. Basically 10k sentence method with only isolated vocabulary words. Over time I will be able to recognize some common kanji and know their readings. Does this sound good?

2. This brings me back to my original concern - what is the best way to mnemonically link the kanji/English translation with the reading (first 3 bullets of my first post)?

3. I really want to focus on output/production. After I get familiar with the kanji/readings from (1), should I do the reverse cards in Anki, with front- English translation, back- kanji + reading? I guess one concern would be that there are multiple potential Japanese words for a given English word, and it would depend on context, and that's why we do sentences. Any way around this?

Do not do number 3. It's useless. I can understand producing useful sentences but that just makes no sense. U can't get good at Japanese if u never get away from English..

As for the other thing maybe the movie method will work for you. I personally never did that I just read to learn to read lol

@OP
It seems like you're against doing sentences. Is there any particular reason?

Unless you're advanced in Japanese, I would recommend not just studying Kanji -> Kana/English. I would recommend going with the sentence/grammar approach.

If you really want to go Kanji -> Kana, then you could always use a deck like Core6000, and create a separate template that shows you Kanji on the question field and Kana on the answer field. Don't worry about the English definition for those cards.

If you want to do production using Anki, then look at the cloze-deleted Tae Kim deck or the cloze-deleted Core6000 deck.

howtwosavealif3 Wrote:U can't get good at Japanese if u never get away from English..

I would caution against giving this advice to newcomers. I believe this idea was brought about by Khatz, who always recommended going 100% Japanese after your first 1000 cards or so. But if you look at people on this forum who have achieved a high level of Japanese, there are a lot who are still using J->E cards, not J->J. I would attribute this to the fact that it's a lot easier to remember a J->E definition than a J->J definition. There are also a lot of words where the J->J definition is much less concise than the J->E definition (a lot of nouns are like this, for example 駱駝).

To be fair though, I imagine all the people who have achieved a high level of Japanese regularly use a J-J dictionary.

Personally, I make cards that have definitions in both Japanese and English. I find this helps with "nuances" in words that only really make sense if you look at the Japanese definition. It also makes the words easier to memorize because of the English definition.

Okay, sorry for being unclear, but I think you guys are misunderstanding me. I don't particularly want to do E-J, I just want to do output as opposed to only input. I wanna be able to produce those words I just learned.

And I'm not against doing sentences - in fact I am doing / plan on doing them. However, I will use them mainly for grammar or tricky/new vocab usages. If there's a simple noun that has a direct English translation, it seems fine to do kanji->kana+English translation. My main issue is that I want to output this kanji/word as well:

I could do cloze-delete, as you mentioned, and I will do those pre-made decks, but I'd like to be able to create my own sentences. When making your own, it's hard to get good context and the target word is often unclear. When I do sentence-mining or anytime I come across a word I want to know, I want to put it into Anki and be able to produce it (normal sentence mining provides recognition, but not recall/production).

I could just use natural conversation and Lang-8, but I'd want to specifically work on those sentences I just learned. Also, I'd need to re-add words/sentences if I used them incorrectly.

How bout I do this -
(i) Make a sentence, like you (partner550), J-J with target sentence on front and Japanese description with English "clarifier" sentence on the back. The Japanese description is favored and the English translation is looked at only to make clear the exact word that is used.
(ii) Not long after working with this sentence in Anki, have the reverse sentence comes up. The English part might only be included as a hint.

somstuff Wrote:How bout I do this -
(i) Make a sentence, like you (partner550), J-J with target sentence on front and Japanese description with English "clarifier" sentence on the back. The Japanese description is favored and the English translation is looked at only to make clear the exact word that is used.
(ii) Not long after working with this sentence in Anki, have the reverse sentence comes up. The English part might only be included as a hint.

I'm not sure what you mean by "Japanese description". For my sentence cards, I have a Japanese sentence on the front. On the back I have an English translation of the sentence along with definitions of all the "hard" words in the sentence. With the way my cards are setup, it would be impossible to do (ii). What do you mean by "Japanese description"?

Have you read about MCDs? It might be what you want, but it's usually used by people who are pretty advanced in Japanese.

Keep in mind that it's difficult to do production using Anki precisely because of the points you brought up. Make sure to check out the Taekim deck and the cloze-deleted core6000 to see how they have set up things. Maybe base your own cloze-delete cards off of them. Also you could try MCDs and see if they work for you.

But really, I wouldn't recommend doing too much production (using Anki) when you first start learning because it's slow and hard. Maybe you could try the Asmill(sp?) approach and only do production for things you learned (in recognition) 50 days prior.

the way I did it was

1) Learn a buttload of kanji

2) use anki to associate kanji with various readings.

I didn't bother about memorising the definitions too much (I would use cloze delete to give strong hints)

eg:

Front - 脱水 e_a_oration Back だっすい evaporation

伝説 le_end, t_adi_on Back でんせつ legend, tradition


The reason for this is that there are alot of nuances in the vocabulary that often isn't noticeble when drilling using flashcards. Not to mention alot of words have similar meanings (look how many words there are for different degrees of hot and cold) so I think its a waste of time to set definitions to the words in stone.


3) using Rikai-sama, practice a buttload of reading. This is when I really try to associate meanings to the Kanji/Kanji readings.


In other words, try not to juggle too many things in your head at once...

Learn how to write the Kanji, then learn the Kanji readings, then learn how to use the words....

keep them apart as separate tasks.

@partner: By Japanese description I just meant the Japanese definition of the word. And okay, I will learn more about the cloze stuff. What do you do for production, and how is that working for you?

@midonnay: Alright, thanks for the tips.