do they pile up like WK If I dont do reviews everyday?
Read a lot.
It seems like most people here are recommending SRS systems, but I believe the best way of improving your vocab is through reading. In my opinion it’s much more satisfying to pick up vocabulary by means of reading a story than just hardcore SRS study. Additionally, I often find that words that I have learned in context in a book/manga tend to “stick” much more easily.
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Your advice is right on time as I’m about to start mining. After all this time having it installed, I didn’t realize until now that I can use Takoboto to easily create decks.You can consider me as a Takoboto “convert”. Thank you very very much.
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Unsure, as I do it every day…
Awesome! I’m really happy to hear that!
A little more detail for the occasion:
The exported data looks like this:
So I just make the “Word” and “Translation” columns the first two columns, cut it down to the lists I want, and then import to Anki.
Since it puts all the Japanese variants on one side of the card, kanji and kana all together, but I just want one variant on the front of the card, I just edit them when they come up as a new card, shifting the other variants to the back of the card.
By default I always use the first variant listed, so I made separate word lists for if I want to review the version with no kanji, or an alternate kanji, and I’ll mark those before I import them so I know which variant to use when it comes up.
That way I’ve accumulated 10k and counting cards just from reading, where each of them I know I encountered myself somewhere and can look up roughly where!
I find it takes a lot of the sting out of looking things up too - you can see immediately if it’s something you’ve come across anywhere else before, and adding new stuff to the lists is strangely satisfying.
So even if you come up with a different system for the lists and the import/export yourself, or even don’t bother at all, I think there’s still a lot of value in that word list feature!
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I agree with tdidriksen that vocabulary lists/SRS are not necessarily all that helpful.
I have very little experience with Japanese but my 20 years of foreign language exposure taught me that you learn the best when you enjoy what you’re doing and found a method that works for you.
Reading has already been suggested, but my personal favourites have become:
- Trying to keep a diary in the foreign language, as I will automatically build a vocabulary that matches my daily life.
- Listening, because I can personally retain information that I hear better than when I focus solely on reading. So depending on the language level this for me means listening to the same textbook recordings until I can basically recall them, or listening to native content I just enjoy listening to.
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Thanks! A diary seems like a really fun way to solidify a bunch of aspects of language learning and good as well, I had not thought of that. I personally listen to Nihongo con Teppei on Spotify for at least 15 minutes a day he’s a really funny guy touching on all kinds of subjects during 4-8 minute segments on his podcast. Therefore you can easily listen to an episode anytime, even when you are in a hurry.
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Hi, so I’ve sent some words to Anki from Takoboto but no matter where they were listed within the app, they go end up in the same deck named Takoboto. Is there a way of separating them through lists? Thank you.
I’ve only used Anki on PC, but there what I’d do is edit the csv (from word lists → export to file in the takoboto app) in spreadsheet software before importing. I use one big Anki deck, since the variety during reviews seems good and there’s less overhead than multiple, so I’m mostly cutting it down to what I want and moving the columns to make the import easier. If I were importing to multiple decks I think I’d just have to import multiple times with different targets.
Here’s the import screen I’m used to:
so I make sure via editing that the csv before I get to that screen has just what I want to go into that deck and the fields I want in a clear place.
If you’re talking about the Anki phone app, I’ll be less helpful since I haven’t used, but I’d guess it works probably the same, so maybe editing the csv on a computer is a necessary in-between step?
Does that help at all?
The import/export process was one of those Anki things I found fiddly to figure out the first time, but after I got it how I wanted it’s not been bad.
It looks like I even left myself a how-to to make sure I remember, but it just says “open in libreoffice, get the fields you want the first and second column, save as a .csv in UTF-8”
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Ok, so let me explain a little about my process so far:
- I add a word to a list using Takoboto and separated them depending on where I got them (which helps when I decide to reread the source).
- Within the app, I can open the list and export them to AnkiDroid.
- No matter which list I chose to export, it all end up in a deck named Takoboto instead of deck.
So here’s what I could surmise from your steps, it seems that you have an access to a csv file which is a list of words that you’ve collected so far. So, do you browse your smartphone (through your PC) and then open the csv file on a spreadsheet? If so, on what directory?
I hope you wouldn’t mind if you treat me like a 5 year old because Anki is too complicated for me. Thank you.
No problem! There’s definitely a learning curve with anki! And admittedly, I’ve only really learned enough to process my own workflow (which isn’t very customized).
First off, I can only speculate on the AnkiDroid aspect. Can you move the cards from the “Takoboto” deck to the one that you want, after it’s created?
If that’s possible, the easiest solution might be to import them to AnkiDroid directly and then just move all the cards out of the deck it creates.
As for my own process, here’s the steps:
- Read, and look up words when I need or want to, adding cards to a list related to that source, and a “to export to anki” list if I see I’ve looked it up multiple times (it’s already in a list) or I just like the word.
- In Takoboto, go to the list of word lists, then the options menu (three dots next to the plus) → “export to file”
This generates the full csv. - Connect phone to computer and choose to browse like a file directory
- get the csv from there and move it to my computer somewhere.
It looks like for me it shows up in the “Download” folder - open the csv in spreadsheet software, modify it how I want and save a copy:
remove all data from lists I don’t want to import.
Add “(NO KANJI)” etc. to items I want to label for myself when they come up in reviews.
Make the “word” and “translation” columns the first two columns.
(it might pop up a window when opening/saving the csv about how you want to open it. I think I had to specifically specify UTF-8 as the character set when doing so) - From desktop Anki, File->import and select the to get the screen I showed before, make sure the deck and fields line up with what’s desired, click import.
- Study the deck, and when new cards show up, move the kana/kanji readings I don’t want on the front of the card to the back of the card with the English.
- In Takoboto, go to the “to export to Anki” list and click “move all to” to move everything to an “already exported to Anki” list, so I’m aware when I look those up + to cut down on potential duplicates.
Sorry if it sounds less convenient with the steps explained!
But I think it beats typing up thousands of cards, at least, and you just have to figure it out the first time.
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Now I get it! I guess the issue on my side is that on your first step instead of exporting to file, what I did was I clicked on the list title → options (… menu) → send to AnkiDroid (because I’m worried that the premade study lists will be included).
I guess I have to manually separate them in the spreadsheet or, after importing to Anki move the cards around. Thank you very much.
*edit, Whenever you export the file are the duplicates (words that you previously exported) automatically omitted?
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The export doesn’t omit the duplicates, but Anki will omit duplicates automatically when you import.
One small annoyance, since I modify the cards when I first study them though (moving the other variants to the back), it won’t register those as duplicates during an import. (It will alert you while editing a card if it’s a duplicate then too though, so worst comes to worst I can delete the card when it comes up in review if it turns out I already have one like it)
That reminds me of another step in my process I’ll go back and add - after exporting, in the Takoboto app I move the contents of my Takoboto “for export” word list (which I call “AA” so it’s at the top of the list when looking stuff up) to an “already exported” list, and empty the contents of the AA list.
That way there will be less potential duplicates to deal with when I export, and when I look stuff up I can see “oh I already exported that one, I might have seen it in Anki already, or maybe I’ll see it soon”
But again, Anki won’t import duplicate cards, so you may not need to avoid it so much!
I don’t actually know if the export includes the study lists… but it does include History and Favorites so it’s definitely a ton of data (especially since I compulsively favorite every word…), but it’s easy to clean up in spreadsheet software. Just be sure to select rows with shift+left click to select large groups!
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