Hi,

I downloaded the core 10k deck from another thread on this forum, and have a few questions/concerns about it. I've already studied Japanese in college for 3 years (using the JSL series), and while my grammar is pretty solid, my vocabulary is unfortunately pretty small.

1) Does anyone else feel that pronouns are overused in the example sentences? It seems that every other sentence has a 彼 or 彼女 in it. My experience from JSL and from the time I spent in Japan was that pronouns are not used very often compared to English. Either the pronoun is dropped or proper nouns are used.

2) What order am I supposed to go in? I sorted by "UIndex", and it looks right (matches what I've seen in other threads on here), but I just wanted to make sure.

3) Does anyone else practice pronunciation when reviewing the cards by recording their own voice and comparing it to the recording? This is what I did while studying using JSL (the software has a fairly streamlined framework for doing this), and I think it was pretty helpful.

Thanks!

As far as 1. goes i think its to remove ambiguot since you have no context.

monitor Wrote:I've already studied Japanese in college for 3 years (using the JSL series), and while my grammar is pretty solid, my vocabulary is unfortunately pretty small.

Sounds familiar. You can expect to make tremendous progress by working through the deck.

Concur with blackbrich on 1)

Check if you have the jsensei-derived deck or the deck with the first 6000 words from smart.fm/iknow, in which case you should have a core2k6k index field. The voice actors in the jsensei deck are a bit annoying and the audio is spoken unnaturally slowly.

blackbrich Wrote:As far as 1. goes i think its to remove ambiguot since you have no context.

Alright, I'll just keep in mind my previous grammar lessons and focus on the vocab with the Core 10k deck.

Irixmark Wrote:Check if you have the jsensei-derived deck or the deck with the first 6000 words from smart.fm/iknow, in which case you should have a core2k6k index field. The voice actors in the jsensei deck are a bit annoying and the audio is spoken unnaturally slowly.

I downloaded the deck from this post: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?p...#pid159749

It looks like there is not a "core2k6k" index field, which means I need to get a different deck. Fortunately, I haven't started yet. Do you have a link for the Smart.fm deck?

As I've been out of the loop, what's the general concensus on the Core 10k list? Even better, do the extra 4,000 words have the useful furigana and clozed additions that Core 2k and 6k now have?

If so, it's not too difficult to redo my Optimized Kore 2k/6k shared deck to include 10k in addition to optimized sort of both vocabulary and sentences. I even think I can use a main optimized order of all 10k words and sentences, then leave it to individual users to suspend the bulk of the cards they're not ready to study. That's not as idiot proof, but not too many idiots use Anki for the most part.

Nukemarine Wrote:do the extra 4,000 words have the useful furigana and clozed additions that Core 2k and 6k now have?

It doesn't look like any of the words are clozed, even the original 6k:

monitor, a good bet is to use Nukemarine's optimized deck
(http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=5110) and then add only the Core10k cards that don't have a core2k6k index (i.e. only those with a MasterIndex of -1 or -2). I think there's minimal overlap.

The quality of the original Core6k is much better than the deck you have, and Nukemarine's work on them has made the deck a terrific resource.

Nukemarine Wrote:If so, it's not too difficult to redo my Optimized Kore 2k/6k shared deck to include 10k in addition to optimized sort of both vocabulary and sentences. I even think I can use a main optimized order of all 10k words and sentences, then leave it to individual users to suspend the bulk of the cards they're not ready to study. That's not as idiot proof, but not too many idiots use Anki for the most part.

Might be worth doing, although I felt that beyond Core6k the vocab became increasingly specialized or formal, and I at least am happy with passive recognition of those words until they become second nature to me. But I'm also reading and watching a lot of Japanese political and economic news so I get exposure to those words.

Irixmark Wrote:monitor, a good bet is to use Nukemarine's optimized deck
(http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=5110) and then add only the Core10k cards that don't have a core2k6k index (i.e. only those with a MasterIndex of -1 or -2). I think there's minimal overlap.

OK, I got the Core2k6k deck set up, and my only question is about the difference in the card format - whereas the Core 10k deck went J⇒E, this one goes E⇒J. Are there any significant differences between the 2 approaches that have resulted in both types of decks being created?

monitor Wrote:OK, I got the Core2k6k deck set up, and my only question is about the difference in the card format - whereas the Core 10k deck went J⇒E, this one goes E⇒J. Are there any significant differences between the 2 approaches that have resulted in both types of decks being created?

That's just a matter of how you set up your cards in Anki. Search the forum for "production" and you'll find various discussions. In short you should never go E⇒J but always J⇒E, because the same English word can be expressed in different ways in Japanese, and the goal is to produce Japanese sentences, not translate E⇒J in your head.

The English translation from Japanese is only to check for yourself that you got the nuances right. Eventually as you keep reviewing the Core sentences and your Japanese gets better, you'll find that you actually get more of the nuances in Japanese than can be expressed in English, or that you start finding the English translations slightly inaccurate.

Sorry Irix, have to disagree in this case. The purpose of Core 2k6k is about vocabulary, not producing sentences. As such, the question has full english sentence, clozed japanese sentence and english word for maximum context to get the correct Japanese vocabulary word. One can even add notes to say what the word is not to help this case.

Now, that's only in the case of vocabulary where we're dealing with the basic and intermediate words all should know on the path to literacy.

Yes, I also advocated Kana to Kanji vocab cards at one time. In hindsight, I found they lacked when applying that knowledge to the real world (trying to speak on the fly).

Nukemarine Wrote:Sorry Irix, have to disagree in this case. The purpose of Core 2k6k is about vocabulary, not producing sentences.

I don't feel like you can make that statement flat-out. That may be one use of it, but the way you are saying it makes it sound like it can't be used as a sentence deck. (By that I mean as a recognition deck, no production.)

I have gotten a lot of use out of it as a sentence/recognition deck.

To each his own. Production from English to Japanese just doesn't work for me. To get better at speaking, I just have to speak.

I did the two decks like this, after some trial and error: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=9335

Basically just as dictation cards. If I can write a sentence after hearing the audio (which I only do if I'm about to hit "hard" or if I've got it wrong), then I can also read it, and I get the listening comprehension practice as well. But everyone has different goals and approaches, you need to do what works best for you.

partner55083777 Wrote:

Nukemarine Wrote:Sorry Irix, have to disagree in this case. The purpose of Core 2k6k is about vocabulary, not producing sentences.

I don't feel like you can make that statement flat-out. That may be one use of it, but the way you are saying it makes it sound like it can't be used as a sentence deck. (By that I mean as a recognition deck, no production.)

I have gotten a lot of use out of it as a sentence/recognition deck.

You are correct I should have said "primary purpose", though I set up that deck to be English to Japanese for that purpose (assuming monitor was talking about the deck I posted).

To be fair, I was responding to the flat out statement to not do English to Japanese. It was the absolute statement I disagreed with, backed by my own personal experiences. Now, keeping it as much Japanese as possible does work, I just feel it introduces a major weakness in production when you're trying to speak or write. On the other hand, English to Japanese means you have to include a lot of context to prevent equally correct answers

Boils down to there's no perfect way to do this. Either path will have weaknesses involved. However, when you pick your path, stick to it.

Irixmark Wrote:To each his own. Production from English to Japanese just doesn't work for me. To get better at speaking, I just have to speak.

I did the two decks like this, after some trial and error: http://forum.koohii.com/showthread.php?tid=9335

Basically just as dictation cards. If I can write a sentence after hearing the audio (which I only do if I'm about to hit "hard" or if I've got it wrong), then I can also read it, and I get the listening comprehension practice as well. But everyone has different goals and approaches, you need to do what works best for you.

Yes, there's really no 100% right way. I just have to keep a consistent study path laid out for any questions related to material I put out there.

I'm still backing the theory that subs2srs will be the best to enhance listening. As such, I push to get the vocabulary production to a high level which should still create listening comprehension through passive reinforcement. (You should still listen to the word and the sentence when the answer pops up in addition to reciting it).

Nukemarine Wrote:

partner55083777 Wrote:I have gotten a lot of use out of it as a sentence/recognition deck.

You are correct I should have said "primary purpose", though I set up that deck to be English to Japanese for that purpose (assuming monitor was talking about the deck I posted).

Yes, I downloaded the deck from the Anki Shared Decks menu ("Core 2k6k Optimized Japanese Vocabulary") and then added media downloaded from the links in your linked post.

Speaking of the uses for the deck, can anyone comment on the pronunciation question from my initial post? Has anyone used this deck to practice pronunciation while also gaining vocabulary?

Hope I'm not straying too off topic, but i was wondering how to study the core decks. I just finished RTK1, and find that i pick out the kanji meaning almost every time before i see the reading. I guess my main question is, should i study the readings in the brackets first, or just hope that by the time my cards mature my brain will pick up the readings through the audio. Also if it's recommended that i should study the readings first, then does that mean i should do kanji > kana + english. With the sound on the back of course.

Sorry about the silly question, answered it myself after a bit of searching the forums.

monitor Wrote:Speaking of the uses for the deck, can anyone comment on the pronunciation question from my initial post? Has anyone used this deck to practice pronunciation while also gaining vocabulary?

The problem with this is that it is hard to grade yourself. When you listen to the the recording, and then your own voice, you may think they sound the same, but to a Japanese person you may be pronouncing it wrong. I have this happen to me quite often.

On the other hand, it probably won't hurt, and it will likely help, so maybe you should go ahead and do it. Do you have a Japanese person that is willing to check your pronunciation every once in a while?

Also, if you really want to use Anki to work on pronunciation, you could add accent symbols to your deck. You can find these symbols in the 大辞林 dictionary on yahoo. There is a thread about this somewhere.