How do you use Anki for learning words?

Japanese
#1

I am curious about some data like:

  1. What type of card do use?
  2. How many words you can learn in one our counting reviews?
  3. How much seconds/card you go while doing reviews?
  4. How much seconds/card you spend on cards you learning?
  5. Have you tried using Anki when you knew only 50-200 words? Was it bad? Have your ability to learn new words increased drastically since then?
  6. Maybe you use some kind of memory palaces to remember words’ readings (for when you know the meaning and need to extract how word sounds from head)? Or maybe you use other techniques?

I will appreciate it if you share some of your data :pray:

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#2

What type of card do use?

Front: japanese Kanji
Back: Furigana + translation + example sentence + translation

How many words you can learn in one our counting reviews?

I’m not sure if I understood the question correctly, but I learn roughly 20 new cards each day.
But only because I learn only 1-2 new Kanjis. So I get a lot of cards that teach me the same new Furigana for those two specific kanji.

How much seconds/card you go while doing reviews?
How much seconds/card you spend on cards you learning?

I don’t count the seconds…
But I need 30min for my 150-200 reviews. There are usually 40 old cards I need to review multiple times before “knowing them”

Have you tried using Anki when you knew only 50-200 words? Was it bad? Have your ability to learn new words increased drastically since then?

I started with less than 50 words.
Since my method is based on learning Kanji + Furigana + meaning and that in different word compounds it never got harder/easier.
It’s always the same difficulty. Since new words usually contain 50% known Kanji/meaning/Furigana I only need to learn the other 50%. And the fact that I learn like 10words with the same Furigana it’s more about the outliers…

Maybe you use some kind of memory palaces to remember words’ readings (for when you know the meaning and need to extract how word sounds from head)? Or maybe you use other techniques?

For the outliers I try to use either the pronunciation to form a sentence or ( when I can’t come up with something) just life with the fact, that I need longer for this few words to stick.

#3

Sorry I totally forgot that Anki counts the seconds for you:
Today it took me 5.53 seconds/cards.
I had a total of 230 cards (new and old) and I spent 24 min for most of them.
I have 37 cards left that I couldnt get right in the first go. Later I will take a second go to see where I need to work on or if I was just a bit forgetful before :smiley:

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#4

also curious what is everyone’s approach regarding Kanji in Anki

I always have an issue with it when I would perfectly know a vocabulary word but am unsure of its Kanji, which happens all the time.
Should I focus on the actual vocabulary knowledge and have a large tolerance regarding my kanji knowledge?
I have to pass the card as known eventually to finish my session while the kanji isn’t properly acquired (and won’t be through Anki reps anyway), it is a major concern with Anki for me.

#5

I built my own jouyou kanji deck, and I cycle through it, on my third pass now. I mostly suspend cards since I am familiar with many kanji now, but for ones I have trouble with, I learn 5 “new” ones a day. The first time going through it was naturally the most strenuous. For characters outside the jouyou set, I learn those exclusively through vocabulary in other decks.

Regarding what to focus on, it depends on your goals. For example, I used to be strict about learning some suitable meaning for each kanji, but over time this has fallen in priority for me. I’ve never needed to answer anywhere in daily life what 遺 means standalone, but I do have a general “feel” for what it means due to the way it’s used in words. Of course, for common standalone kanji like 犬, it pays to know.

My priority is reading comprehension and ability to vocalize, and to that effect vocabulary helps with the former and knowing one reading of each kanji helps with the latter. I fill the other readings in via vocabulary.

Also, I don’t know if the following is common among Anki users, but when I fail to remember a card, I treat that card as new and reset its learning schedule. If I didn’t remember the card after 28 days, I’m probably not going to remember it after 28 +/- some delta.

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#6

Thanks for a ditailed response!

I don’t understand this part, what do you mean? When I was asking this question I meant that I can repete words many-many times and still it is not sticking, and it was with most words, so I was curious if other people struggled with this.

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#7
  1. i just use a card with a word on the front and the reading/audio/sentence/meaning on the back
  2. in an hour, i could probably learn 20 ish words sustainably. Over the summer i probably averaged 18-20 ish in about 50 minutes and since then ive been doing 10 a day in about 30
  3. i spend about 4.67 seconds per card when reviewing them.
  4. when i first learn a card, i spend maybe 30 seconds - a minute researching nuance and coming up with the definition i think will work
  5. yes its how i learned all my words. I did kanjidamage earlier (its like RTK), which helped, but it has still hard because everything was so new. its a lot easier to learn new words now. for a lot of the words, you have a good sense of how they will be pronounced and what they will mean. today i learned 助け船, i guessed the pronunciation correctly and its meaning isnt that hard to guess based on the characters.
  6. no memory palaces i just anki until its in my head. its hard at the start, maybe start a little slower, then work up from there.

realistically i think you just gotta push through the not knowing and then eventually you will get there. anki will beat the definitions into your skull if it needs to, so you will learn it eventually if you keep at it.

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#8

So after you added card, researched what exactly it means, you begin repeating it as much as you can until you can recall reading + meaning in less then 5 seconds, and failing if it is more then 5 seconds?

#9

As example I added the Kanji “週” yesterday.
So I add all words containing “週” + Kanji that I already know into my active anki deck.

週 = week = [しゅう]

New Vocabs:
週 / 今週 / 先週 / 毎週 / 週休
Since I already know all the second Kanji (What they mean + how they usually get pronounced) I only need to learn how my new Kanji 週 interacts with it.

週 = week
今週 = This week
先週 = last week
毎週= every week
週休 = week rest => weekend

Ofc this is an easy example, since it only has one prounanctiation but the general gist stays the same.

力 is usually りょく at the end of a word ちから at the beginning of the word.
example: 入力: 入 means inside/putting something in and 力 is power. So the word means power input.
I knew 入 can be にゅう from before so I only need to look at 力 and since it is at the end of the word its called りょく.
So the word is called にゅうりょく

Thats why I prefer to learn like that. bc otherwise you have a bunch of unreleated words and need to learn all of this for every single word. Ofc at some point you know it and then its gets way easier to guesse new words.
But I prefer to have a clearer idea from the get go.

And for the words I cant learn like this:
example: せっかち - meaning: impatient
I try to come up with something that connects those two.
seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee sounds like a charge. As example someone charging an attack in an anime.
So I creat an image of someone quickly reapadly pressing a button (sound: kachi) because this person is waiting impatiently for the elevator to come to their floor.

And the few words I cant remeber with one of these methodes and won’t just stick on their own get suspendet. Either their important enough so I gonna read them all the time in the media I gonna consume or they wont and are probably just really unimportant.

#10

Ok, that makes a lot of sense!
I’ll try this with moving some cards in my kaishi deck.

Also I think it can be beneficial to start creating cards with yomitan from the start, so I add only card I’ve seen a few times, and I think I’ll have better time remembering (but I need to setup everything, so not right now)

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#11
  1. Kanji front, with the reading I need to type, and decide on a meaning, the on the back I have the glossary, sentence, screenshot … The typing part is very nice and I also do it for sentences deck like MoeWay Tango N5. It allow me to speed up my reading/typing and also to switch between kanas/romaji.
  2. Not sure what you mean, but I have 6 kanji cards and 3 sentences card that are NEW per day. It makes me do around 150 reviews per day for those. I also do Kanas cards and Katakana on the side, but that’s just bonus for 10-15min
  3. As long as necessary. I’m a firm believer that to remember things faster you first need to remember things. Practice slowly, to be precise. Speed will come later. My average is 9.87s/card though.
  4. A bit longer, I try to create some kind of mnemo based on the shape, or based on kanji I already know that are part. Maybe around 30-60seconds.
  5. I started Anki when I knew 0 words. I don’t agree with people saying you can’t use Anki to learn from scratch. You can. Of course, you have to create your own mnemo, those might not be ideal, but I’m someone that is highly driven by interactive things, just learning material in form of reading/listening bores me, not actually trying to guess
  6. Not really a memory palace of any kind. I just find a memno that I will remember, sometimes some dirty words (sex, insults, violence… are things that work well because they are quite “emotion triggering” and emotion help you to remember), but with time the memno goes away and then I start to just remember some kanjis by themselves. 空間 for example is a good example of a Kanji I know by other kanjis. 空 can be pronounced そら or くう, but I know くうかん sounds better than そらかん. If I had trouble remembering くう, I would probably use the fact that くう pronunciation means ass in french, so くうかん is the space between my butt cheeks. Tada ! Remembered it.

Most important thing to remember is that the less new word you do per day, the more efficient you are, but the more new words you do the more you learn (at the expense of efficiency). For me, 9 cards/day equates to 30min/day. The first 1-2 months, I did 40 new cards per day and I was around 3h/day. So you see, 4 times more cards, but 6 times more time. Not as efficient, but definitely more learning.

So all in all, it’s a balance to find for yourself.

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#12

pretty much. i fail if i dont get reading + meaning. i probably give myself an extra half second by closing my eyes (lol) but if it takes any longer than that it i just fail it. its not worth spending 15 seconds on a card if you could just fail it and then do it again later and have it be faster.

If you can do 300 reviews in 30 minutes by going at 6 secs per card, then things go a lot faster. I also agree with the dude who said use mneumonics to remember vocab, especially at the start. i found it to be really helpful. like for 退院, i did something like “once you are discharged from the hospital, you are in tai’d to bills” (tied to bills). it doesnt really make too much sense but its helpful just to have the sentence there. it makes smashing it against your skull a little easier

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#13

Putting a voice for the “you don’t need to SRS absolutely everything” crowd for the sake of variety. SRS definitely is an excellent tool, especially as a beginner/intermediate, but I personally can only manage so much of it. I always delete leeches and I once deleted a 10k mature card vocab deck because I didn’t enjoy repping it. For reference, I have been learning for about 2.5+ years (been in Japan for 2 years). Currently going through the Shinkanzen Master N1 reading textbook and either I know all the words or I can easily infer the meaning from context/kanji when I don’t know a word.

  1. Word on the front (sentence shows when clicked). Reading and definition on the back in Japanese and English.
  2. I can probably do 50-100 new in an hour. I would guess between 60-70 is about right for new material. Depends on the words. When I did a pre-built N2 deck I could do about 150-200 new per hour but I knew most those words already.
  3. About 4-7 seconds per card average. Depends on the day and my mood. Sometimes I read the sentence and the definition which adds a couple of seconds. Sometimes I tab out to research something but the clock is still running. For cards I pass first time probably it takes about 1-3 seconds.
  4. Learning cards take a similar amount of time.
  5. I did use vocab SRS from the start. It was very very difficult. I did no kanji study so I was learning the kanji with the vocab at the same time so it probably increased the difficulty. My ability to learn new words is far better than then, naturally. I now barely use SRS for vocabulary and mostly I learn words from reading, listening, and conversation. Most words or phrases I come across are just made of things I have seen before. Sometimes I find new kanji or readings of kanji but those are limited to specialised fields normally (medical stuff, etc). I do still sometimes find I am not solid on a surprisingly high frequency word (top 15k) but normally if I look up a word it will be in the 20k+ frequency range or and idiom or something. In the time I have studied I probably used vocab SRS only half the time.
  6. No memory techniques. As you know more words/kanji you don’t need memory techniques.

This stuff is very much personal preference though and will probably change as your level changes so I would always suggest to do what you personally want to do and enjoy.

Good luck on the vocab journey!

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#14

1. What type of card do use?
I use N+1 sentence cards, vocabulary cards (recognition and recall), kanji cards (keyword to kanji and vice-versa).

2. How many words you can learn in one hour counting reviews?
I usually limit myself to 20 new words per day. But sometimes I do more.

3. How much seconds/card you go while doing reviews?
If I’m focusing hard I can do 5s/card. Normally it’s like 9s/card. If I’m multitasking it goes up to 20s/card.

4. How much seconds/card you spend on cards you learning?
10s/card

5. Have you tried using Anki when you knew only 50-200 words? Was it bad? Have your ability to learn new words increased drastically since then?
Never tried it. I used physical flashcards prior to using Anki.

6. Maybe you use some kind of memory palaces to remember words’ readings (for when you know the meaning and need to extract how word sounds from head)? Or maybe you use other techniques?
I learned kanji through the RTK method which uses absurd mnemonics related to keywords. I never used memory palaces specifically. I don’t think I used mnemonics for vocabulary words, but some of the sentence cards I make have a screenshot of the game/anime I extract them from.

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#15

My advice is to focus more on vocabulary, but use kanji study to reinforce your learning. I switched from Anki to more specialized apps

Jitaku for writing and vocab SRS

Delta Nintendo DS emulator using

Zaidan Houjin Nihon Kanji Nouryoku Kentei Kyoukai Koushiki Soft - 250 Mannin no Kanken - Shin Tokoton Kanji Nou - 47,000 + Jouyou Kanji Jiten, Yoji Jukugo Jiten (Japan) (Rev 1)

for comprehensive kanji study in context with reading sentences.

Kanji Garden for on/kun reading practice in context with vocabulary

Learn Japanese! Kanji for writing practice with JLPT vocabulary

Kanji etymology dictionary for joyou kanji by 白川 静
This book is great for reading practice once you get to an intermediate Japanese level. The histories tend to use the interpretations that emphasize religious customs and beliefs from when the kanji were created. I like it because these descriptions help me remember the kanji characters better and I like learning about the creation of the writing system and how belief /mysticism/history fed into a character’s creation. Plus the original characters look really cool, so it feels almost like you’re leaning a rune system.

An English kanji etymology /mnemonics book
Henshall’s kanji mnemonics

Chinese character etymology lookup

If you’re using Android, check out the kanji study app
Chase Colburn’s Kanji study app

#16

  • What type of card do use?
    I make my own style and I manually add the new words and required information from time to time. For vocabulary, I test the meaning, writing, audio and have one “review everything card”.

  • How many words you can learn in one hour counting reviews?
    I have new words mixed with everything else… So no idea, at most 10 new cards per day.
    I don’t really use Anki as much as I should haha…

  • How much seconds/card you go while doing reviews?
    On average, I spend around 18 seconds per card. I try to do minimum 2 minutes per day. Recently, I average 20 to 30 minutes per day doing Anki reviews.

  • How much seconds/card you spend on cards you learning?
    Same as above – 18 seconds, maybe a bit more if I write the kanji / words on a piece of scrap paper.

  • Have you tried using Anki when you knew only 50-200 words? Was it bad? Have your ability to learn new words increased drastically since then?
    For Korean, I did start when I did not know much just for fun. It wasn’t that bad. However my ability to learn new words in Japanese (or any language) still takes me a lot of time. Sometimes it can be a bit faster eg if I am reading a light novel and I constantly see the words that I am trying to learn. eg 訊く

  • Maybe you use some kind of memory palaces to remember words’ readings (for when you know the meaning and need to extract how word sounds from head)? Or maybe you use other techniques?
    I did use a memory palace at one point to learn kana and some kanji. I used to flip through / review my notebooks. Sometimes while doing reviews, I write on a peice of scrap paper the word / kanji.

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#17
  1. What type of card do use?
    Japanese Recognition
    front: N+1 sentence
    Back: definition of keyword in Japanese with audio (if possible)
    Front: audio
    Back: sentence
  2. How many words you can learn in one our counting reviews?
    I averaged 12 new cards per day over the past 4 years, but have been doing only 2 words a day for all of 2024 … 13,500 mature cards!
  3. How much seconds/card you go while doing reviews?
    Averaged 17 seconds per/ card over the past year
  4. How much seconds/card you spend on cards you learning?
    Maybe 5 minutes. I’ll double check the meaning and example sentences in bunpro and weblio thesaurus.
  5. Have you tried using Anki when you knew only 50-200 words? Was it bad?
    no, I started anki after I finished genki 1 in class
  6. Maybe you use some kind of memory palaces? Or maybe you use other techniques?
    Nope.

This is the default anki behavior when you press the ‘again’ button instead of ‘good’ button.

I use anki similar to Bunpro reading reviews
" 健康に気をつけて、お元気でいてください"
Read the sentence, if you know it means health, and is pronounced けんこう good, if you get the meaning or pronouciation wrong, wrong.
Separately, I did the kanjidamage anki deck that says “Health Ken” and I draw 健.

#18

1: Right now I’m going through the core 2k decks of anki. So Kanji/Sentence/Listening. When that is over, I intend move over to jpdb.io (To shill that little dictionary) because I dont wanna learn to data mine. I have the advantage of living in the country and have already created a deck for when I learn new words. Allows me to keep them refreshed and in use.

2: I have my 2k deck set to thirty new cards. Due to the way each word has about 4 separate cards I think I learn about 8ish new actual words a day via anki.(Then Jpdb and Wani of course. So maybe about 20ish new words a day on a good day)

3: I try to keep it around 15 seconds per card. If its a listening card I only allow myself 3 relistens but is always a “hard” if i do manage it.

4: I typically have about 60ish cards per day in review, plus my new 30. I can do them all in about 30ish/40 minutes depending on the day and if I get sidetracked. I typically do them while walking home or to the bar to get my speaking practice in. Nothing better than learning a word and then hearing it within hours.

5: That’s probably about what I was at when I started. Maybe the first few chapters of genki under my belt but it was laborious. Definitely rough getting through the first couple of steps but I do better now. It’s all about the daily usage which can be hard somedays. Not enough time.

6: Nothing but brute force baby. Wanikani mems definitely help the readings, and I’ve certainly used them while trying to speak. I guess is could be counted as similar? If I forget a word, I picture the kanji in my head and answer it. Kinda like writing out the sentence in my head and then reading it as weird as that sounds.

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#19

週休 doesn’t mean weekend. Jisho just translates it as “weekly holiday” but from what I understand it’s the day off you have from work inside a week. For example, in a standard 5-day work week, you’d have one day off (plus Sunday), that one day off is what the word means.

I came across with word in a drama, if I remember correctly the main character applied for a job with２週休, (two days off per week), so since we exclude Sunday, we’d arrive at a 4-day work week.

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#20

Just a point of information since we are getting into it: Sunday isn’t normally excluded. It actually gets more complicated as well as depending on the context it may not mean guaranteed weekly days off (I had to google this). See the below image and definition:

image

「完全週休2日制 」は毎週必ず2日の休みがあるのに対して、「週休2日制 」とは、年間を通して1カ月に1回以上、週2日の休みがある制度です。

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