Katakana SRS

Bunpro
#1

I have been learning japanese for about a year now and I am still terrible at katakana. So, recently I started reviewing the symbols here, but… It is great that Bunpro has option to practice it, but would it be possible to att these symbols to SRS queue as well? In order to practice the hard ones, I have to do them all and it also doesn’t help that they are all in one big review. I would prefer to let SRS sort them out and randomly throw them at me out of context during reviews. Is it hard to add?

I guess it can be done using custom deck but I don’t know if it will be the same. For example I only want the exact correct answer to be accepted, not like with vocabulary where you can make small typos.

Edit: I just tried the custom deck, but only existing entries can be listed, and the kana entries are not findable, or at least I couldn’t add them. Creating completely custom items in the deck doesn’t seem to be possible.

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#2

Katakana seems to cause trouble for a lot of japanese learners, for some even more than kanji does, so you’re certainly not alone with that!

I think for most, it’s not caused by actually having trouble to remember the letters, but the way we use them. If I see a katakana word, my brain expects it to be an english loanword and starts to sound it out slowly. Which means my brain doesn’t treat katakana the same as hiragana or kanji and learns and remember them differently.

If that’s the case for you, too, a katakana SRS wouldn’t help you. More exposure might fix it, though.

If you want to have a katakana SRS you can set up one on anki, there might probably already some premade decks even. :slight_smile: But yeah, bunpro doesn’t seem to allow making your own cards.

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#3

If you like anki or are willing to try it, there is the official tofugu katakana guide deck: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1027153995. You can use it on ankiweb for free.

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#4

Lol I swear there are plenty of katakana words that I read, and then I feel pretty dumb when I have to look up the “translation.” Most recently トレーニング (the translation sentence had something like he works out everyday, and sounding out the word…). But then you have like アルバイト, which is from German, and I’m trying to figure out how it meant part-time job. I wish there was a straight up Katakana dictionary. (Best I found was an english word list, but can’t remember how many were on it, maybe a few hundred.) Also, I find the pronunciation always seems closer to the original language’s than I would guess when I hear it said. At that point I feel really dumb, lol.

1 Like
#5

The best thing to do for katakana is to treat it like kanji & just learn through vocabulary. With that exposure alone, it’ll become very natural. There are a ton of katakana words in the vocabulary decks on Bunpro.

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#6

seconding the tofugu anki deck. it’s what i started with (and their hiragana deck) to learn all the kana fast, and it worked really good.

#7

Seconding lunchbox. Yes, the first time, thinking hard if it might be a word in your own language is a valuable tool, but you should still treat it as its own word because 1) it will help you pronounce it like a native. And 2) there’s lots of words that come from English words but straight up mean different things. See イメージ、クレーム、コンセント etc. Just give it the normal word treatment, and be happy when sometimes you can understand stuff for free. :sweat_smile:

#8

And to add on, then you learn キュウリ is actually of Japanese origin. :joy:

#9

No shot! For real?? That’s crazy :joy:

#10

I use the Ringotan iOS app which utilises SRS to help you remember hiragana, katakana and kanji. You have to draw them out instead of typing the reading, it’s a great addition to the likes of bunpro, wk, kaniwani etc. :slight_smile:

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