Over 9000! ... New sentences! Making context the king of vocab learning

[Asher]

This is a tricky one. At some point in the future we may be able to introduce a sub-category of sentences that are user submitted, and are either viewable/hidden based on a voting system by other users. However, I am not certain that this is something that we would get native speakers to check as part of the process.

The main reason for this is that checking sentences, thinking about a situation they could sound natural in, and also what context the writer wrote them in would actually be more time consuming than it would take a native speaker to write a natural sentence themselves.

This is based mainly on my experience checking English sentences written by Japanese students. Sometimes they ask me if it was right, I need to say “Well… I mean I guess grammatically…, But what did you actually ‘want’ to say”. Then when they tell me what they wanted to say in Japanese, I would either say “Oh yeah, in that case it’s great!”, Or “Ohhhh, I see, actually that word has a different nuance in English”. Due to this requirement to check ‘what did the writer actually mean’, it would greatly greatly slow down the rate at which sentences were added.

[Johnathan-Weir]

Yeah that’s what I figured. And that explaination makes a lot of sense. Not sure why it didn’t click until just now. We’re here to learn Japanese after all so it makes sense that natives should be making the content.

I think I’d prefer just having community polls to decide which “topics” need more sentences once the initial set of sentences are done.

[Asher]

I definitely think that is a really good idea as well! In addition to sentences, voting for words themselves from certain more unique catogories could be a possibility as well (medical, engineering, romance, agriculture, physics, history, etc.)

Although 20,000 words is a lotttt of words, there will still be certain groups of vocabulary that come up far less than others.

[Johnathan-Weir]

Hmm… I feel like voting for individual words would be a bit too specific. Though I like categories.

I’d really like to be able to talk about engineering in Japanese someday. I’ve started reading random wiki pages while doing my homework.

[Johnathan-Weir]

With the rate you guys are adding content and features in like 5 years Bunpro will be it’s own homeschooling product for Japanese natives.

[yannick]

Are you using BunPro and WK simultaneously now? That’s what I’ve been doing last year, then I took a long break from JP, and now I barely have time to do both, so I’m struggling to decide what to focus on

[SFJerry]

Hi Yannick. Yes, but very carefully, considerably more slowly than before. I was on WK Level 38 this previous summer and not doing any BunPro when I realized I was barely scraping by with each new WK level. I stopped WK for 100 days and then did a full reset. The new approach was to keep WK to around 50-60 apprentice items and not work about passing the level in 7-8 days. Passing 15 days is just fine. I set a more realistic goal of passing the N5 and to do that one needs just the first 16 levels of WK. I found after the reset, my brain absorbing better the mnemonics and better understanding at that important beginning level the difference between the Chinese and Japanese readings. I really want to internalize these first 20 levels or so. I’ve been watching N5 grammar videos and surprising myself how much better I can read full sentences in the examples. My approach with BunPro is similar. I’m not worried about speed, just focused on fully understanding the material before moving on. So, the lesson for myself is not to go full speed on WK. If I go at slower pace I can use BunPro and that reinforces the WK and vice-a-versa. Cheers!

[Jake]

We will take a look. We generally put in Paths based on prevalence of use among users. I would be curious to know how many other people are using it as well.

[Haruka]

@MaximizedNOVA

Since the update with clickable popouts, we are unable to click to turn off furigana on words we think we know. I personally do this to remove my reliance on furigana. Perhaps there’s a way for both of these features to co-exist?

@Asher

We have been thinking a little bit about this as well, and are working on figuring out a way for these features to coexist

I have furigana turned off but find it really really useful that I’m able to quickly check myself with a click. But it did get a lot more tedious with the new popups. One idea to make them coexist would be to show furigana on hover. That would make double-checking even easier than it was. @Jake , is that something you could support? Thank you for considering.

[Jake]

@quadban @MaximizedNOVA @PvtNoob

Could we get your thoughts on the following please?

• Triggering the popout:

  • Option A: If the furigana is shown it will open the popout, if the furigana is not shown, the first click would show the furigana. A second click on the shown furigana will then open the popout. From there you could disable the furigana permanently by clicking on it in the top of the popout (maybe this becomes a Hide Furigana button on the card?)
  • Option B: Some sort of long click to trigger the popout, or the opposite, long click to trigger the furigana alone.
  • Option C: Something we haven’t thought of yet?

• Popout into Popout:

  • We are thinking a single popout with a back arrow and a trace of how you got to where you got. This would let you go back one at a time. Clicking on something while the popout is open would open that new thing and you could go back with the back arrow.
  • We could alternately do a “stack” of popouts on top of one another but I think that adds more complexity then is needed.
  • Is there any need to be able to go forward in the trace?

Any feedback or suggestions you might have would be greatly appreciated!

[Megumin]

@Jake

Option B: Some sort of long click to trigger the popout, or the opposite, long click to trigger the furigana alone.

This is always a tricky implementation for touch screens. Just saying.
It can be done, but…

[rdennison7]

Hover mouse over the word for Furigana, clicking into it will have the popup appear? Kinda screws over mobile users, but I think it’s the simplest implementation for desktop users imo. Also, having a button that allows you to copy the word into the clipboard would be really handy when the popup appears.

I use Yomichan now instead of the Furigana if I forget the pronunciation. So simply holding shift and hovering over the word shows it, then clicking into the word will have the popup. Granted, you shouldn’t expect users to have a third party extension to use your site.

[Megumin]

^ This I subscribe.

The mobile experience has to be as painless as possible, at least until there’s an official app on both major platforms (Android + iOS).

I guess you could alter the behaviour of the website if the browser is requesting the mobile version or the desktop version, but it’s important to be taken into account I think. Then there’s the exceptions, I’m sure my surface doesn’t request the mobile version of the webpage even if I’m using it on tablet mode.

[rdennison7]

There are ways around the hover in mobile, but I honestly had to stop using bunpro on mobile. It’s a pretty painful experience haha so I consider it’s a lost cause to me until the app is deployed.

[Megumin]

The fact that it’s painful doesn’t mean that we have to add stuff that makes it worse.

I really think it has to be taken in mind though. Maybe the stats of the users using the website make the decision easy to discard the mobile if it’s a very minority, but still… I’d say it’s important, there’s clearly users out there using it on mobile by reading the forums.

[rdennison7]

Tbh, I think having the popup show up with Furigana on by default is probably the best for mobile users with the option to turn it off. The Bunpro devs can choose to disable the hover effect if they are on mobile or tablet.

Or just take a more fiery approach and have an option to turn off the popup and have the default behavior. Maybe some people don’t want the extra context sentences.

Idk, it’s a tricky problem and those are the simplest solutions I can come up with off the top of my head.

[Haruka]

@rdennison7

Hover mouse over the word for Furigana, clicking into it will have the popup appear?

Yes, that is what I was suggesting too. (Bunpro already uses hover to switch between kana and kanji in the lesson page, and this would also go well with that.)

It’s also better than Option A because the user can just hover off to hide the furigana, as opposed to having to open and close the popout.

[Asher]

This is interesting, as a user I have always used the mobile version, as I just hate sitting down in front of a PC to study. I always thought the mobile experience was good, so wasn’t too worried about an app .

I am not too sure what Jake’s plans are for this one, but we would definitely try to find something that works well for both platforms. If we only had to think about PC, I think hover would make the most sense as well.

[Jake]

I would be curious as well to hear about @rdennison7 or other’s experience and thoughts about what makes mobile hard to use. I too tend to use the mobile version. There definitely are ux issues on a few pages but nothing that makes it unusable in my opinion.

@Megumin @Haruka Another option would be something in the ellipse dropdown or a button near the top that triggers the sentence to be similar to the Highlight Grammar option in reading passages. This would then make anything you click cause the popout. Popouts could only be triggered when that state is active.

[rdennison7]

So, I have an iPhone and use Safari as my browser. When I click “oops” I have to readjust the screen to get back to the default view or when I get an answer close, so I have to enter it in again as the keyboard hides where I am typing my answer. It’s a pain in the butt imo, especially when you have 30 or 40 reviews to do.

I am using my phone in portrait mode, in landscape mode, it’s nearly impossible to view the entirety of a review without scrolling. It largely depends on how long the sentence is.

I don’t know if it’s due to the browser, but it’s not unusable, just not efficient for my needs. I like having all the information displayed nicely, and be able to quickly look up words or add it to an Anki deck, which are features I can do on desktop but not mobile.

Here are some screen grabs as it’s a bit hard to describe.

Portrait

Default view, which looks nice.

When tapping on the answer box to input an answer:

View after scrolling:

In short, it gets annoying after doing so many reviews in a row lol

Landscape - warning NSFL

Default:

Scrolling

Keep…on…scrolling…