Going monolingual

That’s a nice setup. I’m gonna implement that right away :muscle:

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@idiomargot
I posted a few days ago asking for help related to making the card transition. @Sinyaven was super helpfull in helping me transform my previous card style into something that would be easily adapted if I added the j-def to an existing card.

In the post you’ll find my card style and the added code provided :+1:

I’ll try not been too anal about this as well. I’m taking this as a transition instead of a cold turkey switch… so far so good. I’ve encountered some words with very complicated defs… so they will remain with eng defs until my vocab and reading comprehension gets better as well.

interesting :thinking::thinking: … indeed. handwritten japanese it’s like a thing in its own… could you explain a bit more regarding this thingie? :wink:

you’re totally right :astonished: … adding extra work to a card I’ll be seeing again in a year sounds like totally wasting time… glad your mentioned this.

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Well, I pretty much built my own version of the jitai user script via CSS and javascript in anki.

The way I went about this was to hunt down a ton of Japanese fonts, install them on both my computer and place them in the Anki media folder, and finally add each one as a separate CSS class (just named font1 - font[however many fonts I have])

The javascript would then randomly pick a number (say 33) and set the class of the text to font33.

I also added a :hover version that displays the default font (just like the jitai user script does)

The most time-consuming part of all this was to check which fonts would display

  1. on my computer
  2. on my phone
  3. even the more uncommon kanji properly.

I guess I could copy-paste the javascript and css if you want, but there’s not much of a guarantee any of it will work for anyone but myself :slight_smile:

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I’ve no idea this existed!! thanks. I’ll try first with WK reviews.

sure!! I don’t know anything about programming, but I might copy paste it and try to eventually make it work for me too. :muscle:

Well, this’ll still require a bit of programming knowledge I’m afraid, but here goes… maybe it’ll be useful to someone

I added the randomFont class to the vocab item like so:

<p class="word randomFont">{{EN_Kanji_Reading}}</p>

Then in my css I have

.font1 {
font-family: "Droid Sans Japanese";
}

[... same for each font I have ...]

.font36 {
font-family: "JF Dot Shinonome Mincho 12";
}

@font-face { font-family:"Droid Sans Japanese"; src: url('_DroidSansJapanese.ttf'); }
[... same for each font I have ...]
@font-face { font-family:"JF Dot Shinonome Mincho 12"; src: url('_JF-Dot-ShinonomeMin12.ttf'); }
@font-face { font-family:"JF Dot Shinonome Mincho 12"; src: url('_JF-Dot-ShinonomeMin12B.ttf'); font-weight: bold; }

Note that if you want to use the bold style you may need to add the bold typeface separately.

The thing after “font-family” needs to match in both lists and also match the name of the typeface on your computer (as it appears in font selection lists, the typeface browser etc).

The thing in url(‘…’) needs to be the filename of the font file that resides in the collection.media folder.

Finally, this javascript will do the actual randomization.

<script src="_jquery-3.1.1.min.js"></script>
<script>
    $(function(){
        var fontno = 1 + Math.floor(Math.random() * 36);
        $('.randomFont').addClass('font' + fontno);
    });
</script>

You need to have the JS booster for this to work with the desktop version, and you need to have the jQuery library downloaded to the _jquery-3.1.1.min.js file in your collection.media folder. The jQuery file will of course have the filename you choose, which could be a different version.

The leading underscores are there so that Anki knows not to delete the jQuery library or font files even if you choose to clean up unused media files.

A note on the collection.media folder: the easiest way I’ve found of locating it is to go to Preferences → Backups and click “Open backup folder”. This folder will be in the same parent folder as the collection.media folder, which is where you’ll want to put all your fonts and whatnot.

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Of, yeah… I’m totally lost.:sweat_smile::sweat_smile:

I will try the Jtai user script first, eventually I’ll give it a try to that lines of code.

little by little my deck it’s looking very fancy…:smirk: . … I’m sure that handwritten fonts will help to make it even more easy on on the eye.

thanks!!

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I’m not ONLY using monolingual dictionaries but my anki cards are purely monolingual now with the exception of some of the grammar and expressions.
Most of the time, I still look up a words meaning in English when I encounter it. If I decide to add a card to my Anki deck I use a monolingual dictionary to find a suitable description of the word.

Example:
Front:
法律というのは知っての通り、抜け穴がある。

Back:
ぬけあな【抜け穴】
うまくのがれる手段。

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Ohh, I see you’ve taken the extra step. So far I’m leaving a few aids besides the jp text still (radical names and picture mostly). But, the goal it’s to departure from english when possible.

The really appealing and ulterior motive for going J-J it’s eventually been capable of learning japanese in japanese. Vocab, grammar, etc.

So far it’s proving to be an excellent reading practice time. So many synonims come to serve as aids for every deffinition, specially for compound verbs, which lots of times have a similar version using the same suffix verb (込む、出す、付く、etc) plus a different version of the root verb. I love how that it’s creating new connections in how I think about a particular word, having much more to grasp and eventually fix the new vocab.

I see many words have different meanings and small nuances that are noted as a different meaning altogether… do you put every meaning in the card or just the the one related to whatever brough it to your attention?

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Haha well since some words can give you up to 20 different definitions I only pick 1 or sometimes 2 that really make sense to the context of my card. I only study vocab in context with sentences so there is no real need for the other definitions to be on the card.

Below for example, I felt like either of the meanings could relate to the context of the sentence so I added both “encountering something unexpected and losing calmness” and “doing something terribly rushed”.

Front:
慌てないで、今なら逃げられる!

Back:
あわてる【慌てる】
思いがけないことに出くわして、落ち着きを失う。驚きうろたえる。
ひどく急いで事をする。

I guess 慌てないで!would translate to “don’t panic!”
It just feels great to slowly distance yourself from the English translations since they really don’t allow for great nuance.

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Would you guys recommend adding a monolingual card if the definition is simple enough? I’m still a beginner but I encountered the definition of 署名 as 自分の名前を書くこと. Should I add it as a monolingual card as I understand the definition or stick to English?

Thanks

I’m not the voice of experience, as I’ve been following this routine for only about a month. In any case…
So far I add all new vocab cards with j-def, exeption to this are super simple concepts (like “thing” or “condition”), where a lot of going around would be added for such a simple word.
Anyway most of those words are covered in WK, oand you can also check them
here, as this happens to be basic vocab you should manage before jumping into j-j defs (mostly because are mainly used in deffinitions).

Another exception for me are animal, plants, etc. A card with picture with or without the english def it’s much more valuable than the sometimes super scientific definition.

Concepts that are easy to define, like 署名, I go with the j-def, it doesn’t take almost any time, and sometime I encounter easy cards that are in the 6 or more months intervals, and if I fail those and I would rather see the j-def than more english. In any case the definition it’s helping even if only to do some reading.:yum:

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Thank you! That website is a wonder. Thanks for the feedback. Currently, as of 30 minutes ago, I’m looking at the Japanese definition and if I can’t decipher that then I add the definition from Jisho, and may add a word or two that I didn’t know from the Japanese one in the hopes that one day I can come back and understand it and swap the English out.

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I would say don’t worry too much, it’s a transition, no need for the cold turkey approach.
I’m comfortable with adding maybe up to two new words for any given definition, and most of the time I get to find a def that doesn’t include any new vocab (or maybe I’ll chop off to its bare bones for make it happen :laughing:). But then again I’ve gone into some branching spirals as well. Specially when topics that I’m totally new… last time was because of political terminology, which was totaly new for me up to that point (but actually quite basic if I thought about it in my native language).

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Oh yeah, definitely a transition. I’ve done dumb stuff before like change my then ~700 flashcards to Kanji because “it’ll help”. Took a few hours and after few days I had to change it back. I’m slowly introducing sentences as well so hopefully everything falls into place.

Thanks for the help! :blush:

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Another question, I thought I’d ask you seeing as we do the cards the same. When you answer, do you try to answer in the Japanese definition, or just the English equivalent? eg. if the card says “特大”, do you answer “特別に大きいこと(もの)” or just “very big”?

Thanks~

you mean like when I answer outloud or in my mind before pressing the anwser button?
If thats the case, then I will go with either the english or spanish (L1) equivalent.
I’m not anywhere close to think in japanese like I do in english, and outputting in japanese It’s not what I’m aiming right now; maybe when I had worked more on speaking I could try to actually anwser in japanese though :sweat_smile:

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That’s exactly what I meant, thank you. I get what you mean, interesting you can answer in two languages. Thank for the feedback again

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Sorry I’m a little late to the game, but a couple of comments from trying the monolingual cards for a little over 4 months now.

(1) I started with just pictures…but quickly found part of speech (I use several grammar terms: 他動詞、自動詞、名詞、形容動詞、形容詞、副詞) and definition was important even for my basic cards. I ended up having to go and add this to a bunch of cards because I started getting a lot of similar words and a slightly different definition or the part of speech would be the only way to differentiate.

(2) Another important thing for me, was having an audio only card for each note. I used Yomichan to automatically create the basic card, or forvo.com to download the audio if Yomichan couldn’t pull it from Jisho (which actually uses the audio from wanikani) or japanesepod.

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It’s great to hear others doing things slightly different. Yeah the part of speech reference it’s great to have it at hand , specially for me are the 自動詞ー他動詞 mention on verbs.

As for audio , I’m doing sentence listening practice with this. I’ve setted so the same day or maybe the next day I do my new vocab lesson I’ll have a +1 sentence for that word.

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