Hi!

Recently I've decided to make the J-E -> J-J leap. I know more than half of core6k but I find the transition overwhelming. I look up the words recursively (i.e. I look up every new word in a definition) and I have a huge overhead because of this. I spend much more time looking up words, searching for example sentences than actually learning new vocabulary. I'm aware that this way I'm constantly bumping into real Japanese sentences and I can find words that are not in core10k but I feel that my progress has slowed down too much. I was prepared for this when I started the process but somehow it's just too stressful.
I've read about the J-E -> J-J transition on japaneselevelup.com. That guy recommends it after 1000 j-e sentences. I found that number very unrealistic when I read the article and now I think it's simply ridiculous.

Could you give me some advice, please? Should I postpone this whole thing until I feel more comfortable about it or should I persevere? At which point did you make the switch? Is it really that useful to switch early? I've learned English in the class room and at some point I just realized I can easily handle a monolingual dictionary but that time my English vocabulary was much greater than my current Japanese vocabulary and I had much deeper understanding of grammar and the language as a whole and I know that I'll reach the same point with Japanese if I continue using bilingual cards. Do you think I should wait for that point or force the switch a bit more?

Yeah, postpone it. It sounds way too early for that. If you want to make the switch, it's best to wait for a time when the switch is realistic.

No point in being absolute about things, either. I'm well beyond Core6K, reading books in Japanese, etc but still, when I'm making cards and I come across a word like 顕微鏡 or something and the Japanese definition for whatever reason seems all sorts of crazy, I just put "microscope" for the definition. On the other hand, if I look up a word and it has a friendly, comprehensible definition, I put the Japanese definition only. Point is: forcing J-J only might burn you out, but if you are flexible you'll find over time that even though you _try_ to read the Japanese definition first and then decide what to use (E or J), you'll find yourself getting used to Japanese definitions and over time more and more cards will be J-J. それだけだ。

p.s. microscope was a bad example, the definition is pretty friendly, but you get the point.

Maybe try using Rikaisama. Like if you press o then it shows the sansei do definition and if you press o again it shows you the English definition so it makes it faster to fall back on English if the Japanese is to difficult? You press c to copy the definition and or the sentence.

I've probably read somewhere around a million sentences of Japanese and I'm still using a J-E dictionary for most of my lookup. If there's a nuance I feel like I'm not understanding, or it's something that wouldn't be in a J-E dictionary (new slang, classical Japanese), then I use a J-J dictionary.

You have more interesting sentences to read than definitions, is what I'm thinking.

The one problem with J-J is that it just takes too long to add into the SRS. So if you want to do it, do it in small amounts (20 cards per day or less than that). As for J-J itself, once you have a good amount of vocabulary down. It becomes easier but just remember one important thing, they will always be words you do not understand(still happens to me). I tend to just add those cards into my SRS and I'll eventually be able to read them and understand them.

Thank you, guys, I feel a bit relieved now after I've read your answers! I'll keep the J-E cards and only use the Japanese definition of a word if I find it easy.

I usually add both a J-J definition and a J-E definition. I feel like this is the easiest way to remember the meaning of the card, as well as get some of that "extra" meaning you don't usually find from an English definition.

It does take a long time, but I wrote this Anki-plugin to help:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid170831

It's currently in alpha, but you might want to check it out.

partner55083777 Wrote:It does take a long time, but I wrote this Anki-plugin to help:
http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid170831

It's currently in alpha, but you might want to check it out.

Oh, you're a fellow Archer! Your plug-in looks very useful, I'll give it a try when I'll have a little more spare time next week.
By the way, Anki 2.0 is just around the corner and as far as I know the new version won't be compatible with Anki 1.2.x plug-ins. Probably you already knew that but I said it just to be sure.

gombost Wrote:Oh, you're a fellow Archer! Your plug-in looks very useful, I'll give it a try when I'll have a little more spare time next week.
By the way, Anki 2.0 is just around the corner and as far as I know the new version won't be compatible with Anki 1.2.x plug-ins. Probably you already knew that but I said it just to be sure.

Thanks! I've been using Arch for a couple years now. It's a great distro.

Before you try out the plug-in make sure you have the lxml bindings installed for python2 (`pacman -S python2-lxml`).

When Anki2 comes out of beta I will port the plugin over to it. There is currently very little code that actually interfaces with Anki, so it shouldn't take more than a couple hours to port it over.

Fillanzea Wrote:I've probably read somewhere around a million sentences of Japanese and I'm still using a J-E dictionary for most of my lookup. If there's a nuance I feel like I'm not understanding, or it's something that wouldn't be in a J-E dictionary (new slang, classical Japanese), then I use a J-J dictionary.

Seconded. I still use a J-E dictionary, and I've never found it a problem.