Ridiculous words in N5 deck

[simias]

I think it’s a cultural thing to some extent. It’s a rather common word in my native French as well because we go see (poorly) an ophthalmologist to get a prescription and then go to the optician to get the glasses. It seems that the Japanese have a similar system.

In the other hand other countries like Portugal or apparently the USA let opticians do everything in-house when it comes to basic vision correction so it’s probably a less commonly used word there.

I’ve also seen “eye doctor” used in English instead of ophthalmologist I think.

[carstenosu]

I just wanted to say thank for making this thread. I am taking N1 in December and didn’t know 眼科 but after reading this, it’s pretty solidly committed to memory lol

[Superpnut]

NEVER SAY THIS AGAIN!!!

[EagerProgrammer]

Besides the strange vocabulary in N5 the order is also “interessting” to put it that way.
I would prefer rather grouped by topic or order by relefance for learning. Stuff like basic pronouns are sometimes at the very end of the deck.
I have to admit that Duolingo did a better job here to learn vocabulary for a specific context, besides the fact that otherwise Duolingo did everthing else in a terrible fashion.

I also notices strange translationsa hat I never came across in my English learning journey because they felt unnatual, or missing definitions when you scroll through the examples.

[OneLotusPetal]

How can I do the words flashcards? It doesn’t pop up anywhere in my profile, only grammar

[atsui]

It should be available at the Deck section of the website, available here:

After which if you scroll down enough, you can find the vocabulary decks for N5-N1:

Once you clicked into one of the Vocab Decks, you can add it as your secondary deck to your “Learn” button at your home page:

After you added it as your secondary deck, it should be available on your “Learn” button (after clicking the drop down button):

[simias]

@EagerProgrammer

I would prefer rather grouped by topic or order by relefance for learning. Stuff like basic pronouns are sometimes at the very end of the deck.

I find that grouping too much can be a double-edged sword because you may end up having to learn close synonyms together and things can get confusing pretty fast.

For instance I’d argue that it’s probably a good idea to introduce 私 first, then some time later 僕, then 俺, then 我, then… Giving some buffer between each so that you have the time to memorize their individual nuance instead of being given half a dozen words that mean “I/me” at once.

I feel the same way for things like transitive/intransitive verb pairs for instance.

[I-k-d]

Well I’m pretty sure 俺 is in the N1 deck - - cause its soooo much harder than 眼科

[simias]

A bit silly but I suppose the logic is that they want to avoid “rough” language in introductory materials. I’m not too surprised that the JLPT wouldn’t feature 俺 too often, especially in the lower tiers.

[ultigonio]

completely not related to the topic here but I saw some people mention that they like bunpro because it allows you to input answers and you totally can do this in anki. if you’re curious how, there are guides that explain the process (although if you’re looking for a pre-built deck, yeah, I’m not really sure how many of them offer this feature?)

anyway carry on

[simias]

You can modify preexisting decks to have keyboard input too (it’s not very difficult, although like everything else with Anki it’s unnecessarily obtuse and obfuscated).

But Bunpro, at least for the N5 deck (the only one I’ve used so far) goes far beyond just that. They have multiple clozes for every word, they have hints/warnlists (if you answer with a synonym it will usually tell you it’s looking for something else) etc…

For instance here it wants 小さな but if you answer 小さい you get:

Being fairly new there are still many rough edges such as sometimes odd word choices as highlighted in this thread, but IMO the bones are pretty solid and better than your average Anki deck.

I wasn’t convinced at first when bunpro introduced these vocab decks (I thought it could detract from the core grammar offering) but I’m slowly ramping up my use of these decks and I quite like it so far. I’m mostly just going through the N5 one at the moment though, which is 90% words I already know. I’ll have to revise my opinion when I get to the difficult stuff.

[I-k-d]

Yeah I did try anki with that, but you can’t do it on the web version and I’m already paying for bunpro so might as well use it

[I-k-d]

Update:

What
I’m gonna get this wrong every time purely cause I cant spell it

[djcostcosamples]

お地蔵さん! I actually didn’t know the kanji but those are super common all over Japan.

[Sidgr]

Are you translating the word to English? If so, that may be the real issue you have with the vocab system.

Personally don’t I see the point of doing cloze(fill in the blank) exercises for Japanese->English. At first I was confused what you mean by you cannot spell じぞう. But you mean you cannot spell kshitigarbha. Why should that matter for your Japanese studying?

[AshuRage]

Clearly N5 /s

Fun Fact: It is actually a abbreviation for 地蔵菩薩 (じぞうぼさつ)

[walter]

Same for me as an Italian: I live in the UK and it still feels wrong to go to an optometrist to have my eyes checked. In Italy I would go to an actual medical doctor (ophthalmologist).

[Alpacat]

Expanding on Bunny’s comment, but I used Anki for a short while and it also didn’t work for me either.

1. It caused me to burnout faster. It was really tiring to finish my Bunpro reviews and then realise I still have to do my Anki sesh.

2. Like Bunny said, my main gripe with Anki is that I can’t type in my answer, which makes it harder for me to recall in the long run. As an example, if I were to see “眼科” in the wild (e.g. in a newspaper), I could probably tell you the meaning and pronunciation. But as somebody who barely remembers english words in daily life? Yeah nah, I’m going to need a bit more oomph to remember my vocab properly, especially since I want to be able to have conversations in Japanese.

I still use Anki for other things, just not for Japanese. It is a great resource for memorising general concepts for me, but unfortunately my Broca’s is too teeny for the Anki method lol

[IcyIceBear]

But, you can type your answer in anki… I don’t use it but you most definitely can set it up that way. It’ll even highlight the correct/incorrect parts in your answer.

I do agree though when I bulldoze bunpro grammar I dred continuing on to anki for reviews. But that could just be my learning style for hyper focusing on one thing.

But at this point I’m too invested in ankis system to change to bunpro for vocab. I like the way I’ve set it up and how easy it is to add the words I encounter

my ace attorney deck

The dictionary scrolls, and I have the background randomly change to other characters when you flip or go to next card

[simias]

@djcostcosamples

地蔵

Wanikani has this one too. Still not clear on what it is exactly.