At the moment I’m 1000 Kanji into RTK and loving it, but want to do sentences al’ natural (fresh and glistening with rich Kanji and the like.) Well, what I’ve found with this is that it gets pretty hard when you see a big block of Kanji in a sentence – some might even say I shouldn’t do sentences that hard right away, lol. Anyway, what I’ve done is set up Anki with a ‘hint’ field which I use hint peaking to see. What the hint gives me is the Kanji I find difficult + a clue (Helsig style). For instance I might see 会社 and have no idea, so I go for the hint and get [Kanji] =
Man, I have to go work at my … again!” or “Business people work and run them.”

It works for me, give it a go. I recommend only doing ones you don’t get after 3-4 tries.

Using smart.fm I’ve made an Anki deck that is audio-only, and I produce the full kanji sentence and kana reading.

At first it was slow going, but my listening has improved greatly, and other skills are not being deprived from exercise.

Ok – so have you checked out www.Warez-BB.org for learning material?

I’ve already downloaded a number of interactive language learning C.D’s Check out “Rocket Chinese.” Its a good beginners package. The way the website works is you pay a membership fee. I’d say go for the 3 day membership. Im not sure how expensive it is, but it will be worth it when you download as many things as you can in 3 days. Think of it. Not only language learning things, but computer programmes etc.

Ammm I have a question also. I downloaded RTH book 1 on Anki on my laptop. I also downloaded it on Anki on my “other halfs” Laptop. Some symbols are slightly different ! Seriously! How am I supposed to know if I’m learning the right ones!! I’m freaking out. The only words I can think of off the Bat are “straight” , “blade” and “uniform”. They differ slightly…

How do I know which one is right???

@Dan: If you have Windows Vista Ultimate or Windows 7 Ultimate you can change the
UI language to Japanese

Thanks!

I don’t know if you will ever see this but…

Inflection is incredibly easy to remember. when I learned French I was worried about all the verb forms but I just read and listened. Eventually, you will just know what it meant to be. Inflections are not mystical at all. In English or Japanese you might use a particle or a preposition which is considered a word to show some sort of grammatical relationship in the sentence. Like say, ‘with’ or ‘on’, which is just a SOUND that means something. But in a language with cases you use an inflection which becomes a part of the word. It can change the word itself and the inflection can change depending on other factors but the fact is, it’s still just a SOUND representing meaning. With time your ear will just know what sounds right. I have NEVER memorized whether a French word it masculine or feminine. I just KNOW. It just sounds one way or the other. I think I must get it right 99% of the time. Even on words you just learned because words sound feminine or not. (if they don’t sound feminine then they sound masculine and if they sound neither they are probably masculine)… in fact you don’t think “oh this is masculine”.. no no… the word le or la just comes out, because, well, that’s the only word that could come out.

Inflection and gender should be approached in the same way as any other language without them. Lots of exposure! 😀

Oh, and thanks Khatz, for this site I mean, at least 100 cool points to you.

Front:
きょう・しつ
Back:
教室

Keep the sentence cards for learning context, but now there’s no need to write ’em. If you run into same sounding words, you can just give yourself some hints on the front. I think it gives the kana>kanji benefit in a more efficient manner.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been experimenting with. Try it, and tell me if it works for you too.

I am currently struggling with the 10,000 sentences aspiration, but I recently found a guy who has put 20,000 mandarin sentences on the web (www.mnemosyne-proj.org/node/115#attachments). The only problem is they are for mnemosyne, and I am an Anki-proselytiser! I have tried opening the 20000 sentences file in a web browser and then copy and paste them into Anki but it takes an age. Does anybody know how to convert these files into Anki??

zhen xie xie ni-men,

John

I’m just writing to provide an update on my results, albeit rather qualitative in nature. I’ve now been using reading→kanji (r→k) cards for almost two-and-a-half months now and my ability to produce the vocabulary learned this way continues to be significantly better than vocabulary learned only with kanji→reading (k→r) cards.

The latest example that brought this to mind was a new card that I just added:
声を殺し身を潜め
When first going over it, I was thinking, “Ah! I’ve seen 潜 before. It’s in, um, the word for that underwater naval vessel!” But I was unsucessful in actually thinking of 潜水艦 which is in one of my older cards; on the other hand, I have no problems immediately recognising the word when I see it.

It was at this point that I realised, again, that I can produce almost any word that I’ve learned using r→k cards as soon as I think of the concept. However, I have to concede that my progress in terms of cards/time with r→k cards is slightly lower than k→r cards. I can only maintain an average spacing increment factor of 2.3 with the former while with the latter 2.5 isn’t a problem. (Id est, if I last saw a k→r card 10 days ago, I can safely not see it for 25 days, but to be safe with r→k cards, I have to see it after 23 days – on average) Meh, minor qualm, but it’s more than offset by the increased ability to actually make use of what I’m learning.

All in all, I highly recommend using reading→kanji cards.

(Yes, I know of the three types of lies, . . .)

Just wanted to let you know that I’ve been doing it the way you suggested above and far it’s working out great. Thanks for the idea.

(front)
そんなにイキトウゴウしたんだ
(back)
意気投合 – いきとうごう – 互いにすっかり気が合う事

If two kanji words come in a row, I just use ” ・ ” to keep their katakana forms distinct.
– ケッキョク・イッスイも出来なかった

I don’t bother changing some of the easier words into katakana, like 出来る. Does this sound reasonable, Khatz? Any comments/critiques?

I just write out the particles as は、へ and を. Sometimes it can be a little confusing and you have to read it both ways to see what fits, but with practice that becomes quicker and you won’t even notice you’re doing it.

I did have this in a question yesterday though:

はははあしたくる。

Took me a second to realise it was 母は!!