dEhiN's Language Log

[księżycowy]

おかあさん
Okaasan (mother) [o-ka-a-sa-n]
きょう
Kyou (today) [k(i)-yo-u]
せんせい
Sensei (teacher) [se-n-se-i]

I'll respond to the rest in a bit.

EDIT: If you're curious how the romaji relates to the kana, I've split it up by [mora]. (And even if you're not curious, I still did it! )

[księżycowy]

I guess surf the internet. I've tried to be more rigorous about mining for new vocab when watching a French show or reading some French article online, but I'm usually not able to or not really wanting to stop what I'm watching/reading, look up the new vocab, and write it down in Anki. Heck, I'm not even willing to write it down somewhere (i.e., in an Evernote note) to then look up later. I actually have multiple notes like that, both digital and analog.

I think I've lost them now in the 3 moves over the past 4.5 years, but I had planned at one point to go through the 5 or 6 notebooks of various vocab I'd collected for all the languages I've ever tried to study and add them all to Anki. (I haven't actually lost the notebooks; they're just in storage somewhere and I don't know where). If I were to try and do that some day, I think I would need to be selective of what I add to Anki. For example, my very first language notebook is from 2011 when I using some language exchange website to find a partner in French. His English was much better than my French, and over time, we became good friends who pretty much just communicated in English, but initially, I did write some vocab he taught me. Some of it includes slang like kif-kif, which I don't really need to add to Anki.

Thanks for the context, and I'm sorry you can't find your notebooks. That has to suck.

I don't know how many "words" one should know per CEFR level, though I'm sure there are sites that will tell you.

I have noticed that some decks on Anki (and websites as well) have wordlists for whatever level (A1, B2, etc.). I'm thinking of something like the Goethe Institute for German, which has such wordlists on their site, and then Anki users have made decks out of. I'm not sure if there is an "set" vocabulary for any given level though. And it's not so much that specific words need to be learned at any particular level (like, learning die Arbeit "definitely" happens at level A1, and if you don't you did something wrong, or some crap), more like they just try to come up with useful vocabulary for any given level and the things you are suppose to be (at least theoretically) doing at that level. But then there are also those figures through around for "fluency", like knowing 10k words will have you reading 97% of anything you come across in X language. I suppose that's maybe a bit different. (I just pulled those numbers out of thin air, don't take me to court, guise.)

I have sometimes thought of looking up a Swadesh list for my languages, especially the newer ones, but I think I remember a discussion on another language forum about how that's not what the list is meant for and it's probably not a good way to learn a language.

It might be worth looking up either a frequency list or A/B/C level premade list on the shared Anki Decks site. Those would probably be more worth it. Or maybe, if someone has created one, a deck for your particular field/interests.

[...] I did delete a bunch when I decided to whittle down my decks. Since deciding to just suspend and eventually export those I no longer want/need to learn, I've tried to get back those I deleted, but I fear that's a losing battle. It's a shame though, because I had cards going back to 2014 from the first time I ever started using Anki.

If you don't mind talking about it, what led you to "whittle down" (as you say) your decks?

I do generally try to keep cards and decks I've made. I usually save a back-up in my Google Drive, and if I don't want to use said deck anymore, or whatever, I just export it, save it, and then delete it for the time being. I don't often delete cards. I'm more apt, for better or worse, to create decks for specific resources, and thus I am able to shift decks around more easily. But I suppose once I break out of the A1-A2 arena, I'll probably shift to just general language decks. That could get complicated.

I am a little sad that I can't find my deck for TYI, though. I thought I had saved a copy from when I made it a good few lessons in (at least lesson 7, if not from the time I made it to lesson 16), but I can't seem to find it. Back to creating it from scratch, I guess.

On a fun side note that you'll appreciate, it seems in my current database, the first card I ever created was on August 1, 2014 and it was おかあさん. It's sad that I can't read that anymore; well, I could if I really tried, but I'd have to literally look up every kana. Actually, it looks like my first three are all Japanese: きょう and せんせい are second and third respectively.

I already responded above to the words in particular, but that is something I both appreciate and helps remind me to work on at least one or two "core dialogues" from JSP. Thanks!

[dEhiN]

おかあさん
Okaasan (mother) [o-ka-a-sa-n]
きょう
Kyou (today) [k(i)-yo-u]
せんせい
Sensei (teacher) [se-n-se-i]

I'll respond to the rest in a bit.

EDIT: If you're curious how the romaji relates to the kana, I've split it up by [mora]. (And even if you're not curious, I still did it! )

Thanks for writing it out, and yes, I appreciate the splitting by mora. I should have remembered teacher, as I still have the English meanings.

If I recall correctly, I have one or two Japanese cards with kanji. Actually, I just checked and I have several like that! Here's one I have for watashi:

Screenshot_20221229-221506.png

As you can see, I put the hiragana in brackets. My Japanese deck has 32 cards, including several particles. Talking about this is making me want to relearn the Japanese I did know.

[księżycowy]

Talking about this is making me want to relearn the Japanese I did know.

Do it! Come over to the dark side!

[dEhiN]

I'm going to break up my responses into separate posts.

I have noticed that some decks on Anki (and websites as well) have wordlists for whatever level (A1, B2, etc.).
...
It might be worth looking up either a frequency list or A/B/C level premade list on the shared Anki Decks site. Those would probably be more worth it. Or maybe, if someone has created one, a deck for your particular field/interests.

I completely agree about there not really being a "set" list of vocabulary that one should or would know at any given level. Even the CEFR uses descriptions of what one should be able to do at a given level. Then, there's the fact that each of the 4 major competencies - reading, writing, listening, speaking - can progress separate to one another. I think I can safely consider my French to be B2 now, but for quite a while, it was either B2 or on the edge for writing, a little lower for writing, and still B1 for speaking and listening. And, even though I can probably put all 4 competencies in B2 (based on self-assessment), my writing and reading skills are still stronger than the other two.

I like the idea of looking up a frequency list. I guess it's not the exact same thing as a Swadesh list. I also have started lately to entertain an interesting idea: see if I can somehow formalize a language learning methodology that works for me specifically, but that I can then test out and apply to a new language. I'm thinking something similar to what many of these famous "polyglots"* claim and try to sell via merch, except it would just be a fun exercise for me. If I do decide to try this out, it would probably involve some sort of a frequency list or Swadesh-like list, even perhaps one of my own making. For example, "I'm going to use Anki and start with learning the following nouns, pronouns and verbs. Then I'm going to study how to express the present/past/future (or past/non-past). Next...", and the initial nouns, pronouns and verbs would be a set list of concepts necessary to create very simple sentences.

*I'm not trying to get into a discussion about whether these YouTube polyglots really are or not, but I personally don't believe most of them have a strong level in many of their languages.

[dEhiN]

If you don't mind talking about it, what led you to "whittle down" (as you say) your decks?

If I recall correctly, when I restarted using Anki back in January, I took the approach of wanting to relearn every single cards I had in my database. Since I didn't want to overload myself, I spent some time learning about Anki's algorithm and all its components. That let me create deck study options and tweak settings to better balance wanting to go through several hundred cards as quickly as possible while being tied up with work, taking care of my partner, etc. After using those new study options, I realized they were helping but there was still a bottleneck stopping my study from being 'optimized'. (Not that I was seeking some perfect optimization, it was more I just realized an aspect of my approach that was hindering my learning). There were a lot of cards in my decks, especially for French, that might have been relevant to learn or reinforce between 2014 and 2018 but were no longer relevant. Further, I was expending mental energy trying to memorize the "correct" answer for that card when I didn't need to since I knew the term/grammar point inside and out.

That's my long-winded explanation of what led me to "whittle down" my decks. I initially started my "refactor project" as an attempt to identify and remove these cards I no longer needed to keep around. I even had a Google Sheet template set up for it: I would take about 100 or so cards at a time, export the notes, import it into a copy of the template, and then decide which terms to keep, which to delete, and which ones I wasn't sure about and would decide upon later. I then created tags in Anki for that, added those tags to the data in the template copy, and then imported that modified data back into Anki. Unfortunately, after I had a bunch of to-delete cards, instead of exporting them like you did, I actually deleted them.

You mentioning about Google Drive backups reminds me though that I did the same thing. In fact, when I stopped using Anki in 2018, I backed it up to Google Drive in case my account got deleted. So, even though I didn't specifically make a backup of my to-delete cards, I guess I do have a backup of those cards. Yay!

[dEhiN]

I'm more apt, for better or worse, to create decks for specific resources, and thus I am able to shift decks around more easily. But I suppose once I break out of the A1-A2 arena, I'll probably shift to just general language decks. That could get complicated.

It doesn't have to get complicated. For example, I use subdecks quite a bit to structure my decks. I also make use of tags and the fact that you can have subtags. So, you could have a parent deck for each language, and then in there, subdecks for each resource you used. Or, if you want to just put all the cards per language in one deck, you could tag all the cards from each resource. I've done that for the French cards I added from the summer course. I had a specific deck for the course while taking the course. I then created a tag for it, added it to all the cards in that deck, and moved all the cards to my general French deck.

If you go the deck/subdeck route, the nice thing about the new scheduler is that you can have a parent deck set to one set of study options with each subdeck using a different set of options. For example, let's say you end up having a German deck with several subdecks for each German resource you've used. Let's also say that none of the subdecks have new cards but they each have between 30 to 50 cards. You could create a study option that studies 5 cards per day and set that for each subdeck, with the German parent deck having a study option for 50 cards. All you need to do is just click on the German deck and you automatically go through the first 5 due cards of each subdeck / German resource you've used.

I am a little sad that I can't find my deck for TYI, though. I thought I had saved a copy from when I made it a good few lessons in (at least lesson 7, if not from the time I made it to lesson 16), but I can't seem to find it. Back to creating it from scratch, I guess.

I'm sorry you can't find it.

[księżycowy]

That sounds more complicated.

Maybe I'll just tag the hell out of stuff and go for language decks rather than resource decks.

I knew about subdecks, but subtags? TIL...

[dEhiN]

Talking about this is making me want to relearn the Japanese I did know.

Do it! Come over to the dark side!

It's tempting but I'm not ready to add another language just yet, but especially not one where I have to (re)learn a new script.

I knew about subdecks, but subtags? TIL...

It's the same naming convention as decks to subdecks. You just stick two colons in the middle. Here's an example of what I've done:

Screenshot 2022-12-30 020207.png

[Sonjaconjota]

Hi, just stopping by to say that I have skimmed through some of your posts, and was fascinated by one with a sentence in Tamil.
I had never (consciously) seen any Tamil before, and the script looks so beautiful!
I wonder if this is a language like Georgian, that language learners end up dabbling with just because they adore the writing system.