May 15, 2007...12:44 pm

Japanese Love for the Mac

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I have been employing the “10,000 Sentences” method of bumping my Japanese up over that long bridge into fluency, but I had one major set back - There are no free decent flashcard programs for Mac.

UNTIL NOW

Introducing Anki, a flashcard program made for Japanese study. I came across this gem on a Japanese language forum. It’s available for Windows, Linux, and most importantly Mac.

It comes with the usual features of other flashcard programs, like spaced repetition, and a nice little chart to show your progress. But, it also comes with a synchronization feature allowing you to access your “deck” from the internet, and even on a cellphone.

10 Comments

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10 Comments

  • Deas
    May 15, 2007 at 1:57 pm

    THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

    Or should I say that in Japanese? :-)

  • claytonian
    May 15, 2007 at 4:27 pm

    I had it but didn’t know I could study my list online!

  • Alex
    May 15, 2007 at 5:27 pm

    Yeah, it seems like a pretty nifty feature, but when I tried it earlier this morning it said that the server was down, so it’s not perfect.

    I also tried the Windows version, and the functionality of it is 10 times that of the Mac version. I guess the Mac version is maintained by someone else, so it’s behind the Linux and Windows versions, unfortunately.

    The best part on the windows version is the Jouyou kanji summary. I don’t really need the pretty graphs that act only as an ego booster.

  • heath
    May 15, 2007 at 5:40 pm

  • heath
    May 15, 2007 at 5:40 pm

    aww wtf, it doesn’t like my smiley face? > :(

  • Alex
    May 15, 2007 at 6:29 pm

    You back to studying the J-Language, Heath? I wish the three of us (+Brian) could group up in Jay-pan again.

    My schedule might become super flexible soon, or I may be too dirt poor to even get myself off the island. It all depends on how or little adventure down south goes in August. Can you have your parents drug you and put you on the plane?

  • Deas
    May 15, 2007 at 7:58 pm

    Hey Alex - I’m baffled about the decks. Is there not a pre-made deck for Joyou Kanji? I feel like I just got the core program and need to build a whole set of cards…(which I’ll do for other stuff)…but for the Joyou Kanji? Any links to prebuilt decks? ‘Preciate it. :-)

  • Alex
    May 16, 2007 at 12:34 am

    Are you on a mac then? My mac version was considerably lighter than what I saw when I installed it on our desktop computer running Windows. But, either way, they were both empty so you have to make your own “deck” from scratch it seems, unless you can find someone who has their deck for download.

    The Jouyou kanji - On the windows version it shows you statistics about what words you have in your deck, and compares it to a list of Jouyou kanji that shows you what kanji you still aren’t studying. I use a different method for studying where I only study entire sentences with target words in them, so I need to compile my deck from scratch anyway. (The major portion of my sentences come from the 日本語ニュアンス entries that I’ve been posting.)

    You might want to ask the program creator in this thread. (My forum handle is “Ezrach”, in case you were wondering)

  • Damien
    May 17, 2007 at 5:43 am

    Hi all,

    I’m the author of Anki. I found this blog in my website logs.

    Alex: when syncing, the server wasn’t down - the Mac version was so old that it was no longer able to communicate with the server (the protocol evolved). You’re right that the Mac version was way behind the Windows version, and your complaint prompted me to find a Mac and build the new version. Please let me know how you go on the Japanese Page thread.

    Deas: Recent versions come with a number of sample decks. The complete list of JLPT4 vocab is available, and portions of JLPT2 and 3 are also available.

    Having said that, Anki is most effective as a supplement to your existing study. As you learn new words in your textbooks, daily life, etc, you should add them to Anki. Words remembered in this way take on a lot more relevance than an arbitrary list of words someone has made.

    Have fun :-)

  • Alex
    May 17, 2007 at 4:05 pm

    Damien: I’m glad to see you stop by my humble blog. Thank you for all of your hard work on the Anki program! I’m sure we all appreciate it!

    I look forward to hopefully seeing it’s nice new interface adapted to the Mac platform.

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