Re: START (coming back after disappearing for 5 years) A Study Log

if this jpdb.io could use WK api,

it would be great to have stats what manga I could try to read based on already learned items.

Those stats in difficult I dont have any idea what parameter they are using

Natively shows a level number but it is odd recommending よつばと as level 21?

I thought it was one of the basics to start using it like in level 10 wk.

よつばと is one of the easiest manga on the site and a commonly recommended first manga, but it certainly is not as easy as other things :slight_smile: . The vocabulary and kanji usage are quite limited but there are a lot of colloquialisms.

Agreed the JPDB would be lovely if it could combine with WK somehow, but I personally just add the Genki decks as “known” and blacklist any words I know I know already. Little bit of foot work on my part but worth it. You can configure it so I DOESNT teach you Kanji as I personally don’t like their method of teaching it.

As for Natively, so far their leveling has been accurate. At level 21 (natively) you’d know all the grammar points of Genki 1 and 2 and probably be around level 27 WK which would make reading よつばと fairly easy. Grammar is what really makes or break reading ability.

This year, I upped my grammar knowledge (any N5 I was lacking, and more N4), and joined book clubs in the community here. This pushed me to start looking up grammar I didn’t know. When I returned to Yotsuba, I was able to make my way through volume one, and understood a lot of it! Grammar was the big thing, but having an increased vocabulary helped keep me from having to look up every word. While knowing kanji isn’t necessary due to furigana, being able recognize some kanji is always nice.
What level would I be able to start reading Yotsuba? - #10 by ChristopherFritz

3 Likes

jpdb.io owner here; feel free to ask me anything.

Agreed the JPDB would be lovely if it could combine with WK somehow

If there is enough demand that could certainly be done.

it would be great to have stats what manga I could try to read based on already learned items.

FYI I don’t have any manga yet. I want to add a list with manga in the future, but compared to things like anime/light novels/visual novels it’s a lot more difficult simply because manga is usually distributed as images, so I’ll need a reliable way to extract the text from those images to be able to analyze it. It should be doable, but it will be very time consuming to get there, and since I only have a limited amount of time to work on this app (since I have a full time job and this is only a side project) the priority of this is pretty low at this point.

Those stats in difficult I dont have any idea what parameter they are using

The difficulty ratings are automatically calculated by a machine learning model based on thousands of different parameters, including exact vocabulary used, grammar complexity, kanji used, etc.

You can configure it so I DOESNT teach you Kanji as I personally don’t like their method of teaching it.

If you’re already using WK then it definitely doesn’t make sense to use my app to learn kanji. (Also, to be fair, WK is “finished” while my app is still pretty much a work-in-progress.) Still, I’m curious, would you care to share what exactly you don’t like about it?

Even still in its early stages JPDB is pretty great. When I tried out the Kanji learning on JPDB it would ask me to think about what the Kanji looked like and how to write it. It was a little frustrating for me as handwriting isn’t a skill I’m focusing on at all in Japanese. If it would show me the English term “water” and I have to type in the kanji “水” (not just the reading) I’d like it better. But it’s all a personal preference. I know some people do not like WK way of teaching or the Vocab they teach and would then prefer your system better.

When I tried out the Kanji learning on JPDB it would ask me to think about what the Kanji looked like and how to write it. It was a little frustrating for me as handwriting isn’t a skill I’m focusing on at all in Japanese.

That’s somewhat of a misunderstanding I’m afraid. (: The app doesn’t actually care about this. It’s just a suggestion meant as “can you imagine how this kanji looks like in your mind”, instead of actually having you to physically write it. Since you grade yourself anyway you can choose on which aspect you’d like to focus on and ignore the rest.

Anyway, I’ll look into improving the wording on that so that it’s more clear!

If it would show me the English term “water” and I have to type in the kanji “水” (not just the reading) I’d like it better. But it’s all a personal preference.

Yep, that’s perfectly fine! Some people prefer the Anki-style “grade yourself” method, and some people prefer the WK-style “type in the answer” method.

I actually intend to support both, and let the user select whichever they want. Currently I only support Anki-like grading, but I have plans to add WK-like style grading too.

This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.