After studying all the grammar points from N5 through to N1 with Bunpro and having a really good experience, I thought it would be good to go through and pick up any vocabulary that I’m still missing from my other studies and began studying the N5 deck, quickly setting anything to ‘mastered’ that I already knew comfortably. But my overall experience was so much poorer than with the Grammar decks that it’s hard to believe the vocab decks are a maintained feature. For example:
- The robot audio is wrong in a very significant proportion of vocabulary cards, both in the word audio and example sentence audio. I’d estimate at least 10-15% of words. I know opinions vary about the importance of correct intonation, but for me personally hearing the wrong intonation multiple times is a huge dealbreaker.
- The intonation diagrams seem wrong about 5% of the time too.
- Words that I don’t think are ever commonly written with kanji are introduced in kanji instead of hiragana or katakana.
- Less important, but frequently there have been words from N3 or higher in the N5 deck like 天の川. There must have been at least 20 or so that are clearly not N5 level.
It feels like they’re not being given the care and attention that the grammar decks have been. I’m disappointed because I was looking forward to filling up my progress bars for vocabulary like I’ve been doing for grammar, but it feels like such a poor experience in comparison that I’m inclined to just stop completely. Are they still maintained or are they gradually falling into disrepair because they’re not really a first-class feature of Bunpro?