Hello, all. I want to thank the Bunpro staff for adding vocab decks because I’ve been thinking about transitioning from MemRise. I wanted to ask, will there be an option to have the English shown and the user types in the Japanese equivalent?
Like, “Surely” is shown and the user has to type in “てっきり”
Thanks in advance.
I’m not from the bunpro team, but I’ve seen this discussion quite a few times in language learning communities. TLDR: if you want to practice output, vocab flashcards might not be the best way to do it.
Why てっきり and why not: 是非、きっと、 どうしても、確かに?
They can all be translated as “surely”, but they might or might not have the exact same meaning. E.g. てっきり is “surely” in the sense when you’re talking about a belief that turned out to be incorrect, e.g. 「今日はてっきり晴れると思ったのに…」, but it’s not even remotely interchangeable with e.g. どうしても.
Even a really simple word like “to eat” can be translated in many ways, and they can all be correct in certain situations: 食べる、食う、頂く、召し上がる、食事する…
Creating an E->J deck is not as simple as flipping a J->E deck, it would need a lot of rework to be useful. You’d have to think about a way to test 食事する specifically - for all words. Also, the simple version you suggest could actually lead to incorrect understanding if the context is missing (like in your てっきり example).
I’m not saying it’s impossible to make a deck like that, but IMO it’s just not worth the effort:
And unless you want to be an interpreter/translator, you won’t even be needing the E->J skill. As I’m writing these sentences, I’m not translating from my native language, I’m just writing in English. In the long run, practicing output shouldn’t even include your native language at all, IMO.
Even the J->E direction, for me it’s more of a J->meaning deck. The meaning is often an English word/expression, but sometimes it’s a word in my native language, sometimes it’s a definition (front: 悲運, back: ひうん: 悲しい運命 - why should I care what’s it called in English?), and sometimes it’s a picture (that’s why I won’t be switching away from Anki any time soon).
I also agree that just 1 to 1 decks are inefficient and a pain.
Though If you use the closed/input vocab cards, and set to English hint first, you get 90% of what you are asking for.
You have to output the word, and you can use English as a scaffolding until you transition to the Japanese hints/definitions of words.
edit:
To clarify, it looks like this on bunpro:
I stand corrected, I’m not in the beta so I didn’t know that they’re already making what I described as “not worth the effort” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Thank you, this might actually work. I have a follow-up question.
Vocabulary words always end up being “manual input,” even when I switch to Bunpro Cloze.
I’ve tried the Deck Settings, change ALL to Cloze, and manually on the vocab page. It still stays as “manual input.” Is this a bug, or does it always start as manual input?
Thanks again
I’ve been experiencing this too, I think maybe the “cloze” option is only available for N5 vocab because when I add an N5 vocab word it automatically adds it as cloze but any other word gets added as manual input and won’t let me change it to cloze…
Ah, it must still be in development. I’m glad it’s not just me. Thank you.
Yeah they only have the sentences written for N5 set up for close as of yet. I am just slowing working thought that deck using just the Japanese as reading practice and a mental rewiring of basic words. As they fill out the further decks it will be even better. Also @veritas_nz added the ability to add vocab words directly into your decks from the furigana tool tip (if that word has an entry built so far) so vocab is really starting to come along.
The issue is caused because there aren’t Cloze questions for all Vocab yet (only N4 / N5).
Tring to change an item to Cloze will revert it to Manual Input if there is no Cloze question.
It’s a pretty confusing interaction, and we’re currently talking about what we’re gonna do about it until every Vocab has Cloze questions!
Thank you, Sidgr, and thank you, Veritas_nz. It’s great to hear from the staff and get confirmation. I’m not going to start the N2 vocab until later this year, so I’m not going to stress over cloze vs. manual input. Just the fact that these decks are available is a big deal.
Not staff just a zealot haha
