Anki

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księżycowy
Re: Anki

Postby księżycowy » 2017-11-04, 19:51

Another important question: recognition or recall? :P

Who now?


I'm kidding. I suppose for me, I'd like to do both fairly evenly.

Karavinka

Re: Anki

Postby Karavinka » 2017-11-05, 5:27

księżycowy wrote:I'm curious, which do you guys favor: new or review cards?

I've always had it set to where I'm learning new vocabulary more than I'm reviewing, but I feel almost like I should be reviewing more then learning. Or maybe they should more equal? Idk. What do you guys do for that? And how many cards of both types (new and review) do you typically do in a day for one language?


I don't mind throwing +50 sentences per day if I know I can handle it (and I'm not too tired). If a language is familiar enough and it's about a word or so per card, sure, 50 is fine. If it's a language I'm barely starting with, maybe 10 to 20 is more reasonable. (And I don't have a cap of new cards per day on my Anki.)

Same with reviews. I don't have an artificial cap of maximum reviews per day. But when I see the next day review count like 350, I know it's about time to slow down with the new cards for a while until the deck calms down.

Recognition vs Recall : Always recognition. I read my card, I know what it says, I press "good." Doesn't matter if I can recall it. If it's important, it's going to be common. If it's common, the same pattern or vocabulary or expression will get repeated eventually by different cards. By then I'll have seen enough of that thing in multiple different contexts, and I'll feel comfortable using it myself. It'll come naturally, when the time is ripe.

Might be a little off-topic and something controversial here. Your mileage may vary. Greatly.

This is partly due to my personal history though. Japanese is my strongest "foreign" language -- my co-workers assumed I was born and raised in Japan until I told them I wasn't. Passing as a native -- after achieving it with my two non-native languages, this is now my standard.

And it's the one I barely made any attempt to "practice." I think I got where I am because I didn't practice. I didn't let my tongue compromise with a shitty accent until I knew exactly what sounds I had to make, listening to hundreds (maybe thousands) of voices for hours counting in 5 digits. I didn't let my brain develop fossilized mistakes because, you can't make a mistake if you don't practice. I'm struggling with the languages like French and German because I practiced, and gained bad habits along the way.

I struggled greatly while trying to fix English, and even to this day, I actually need to pay more attention when I speak English than Japanese. And that's even after working as a "native English teacher" in Seoul (of course, completely fraud, but my employers told me to do that lol). It's frustrating, and it's because un-learning fails is much harder than not failing in the first place... human brain and tongue are as stubborn as a mule. I'm sure it'd take less time to learn Vietnamese (a random example) than to fix my French. IMVHO, practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes failure. Please don't, unless your aspiration is becoming something like "fluency in 30 days" guy and making an ass out of yourself.

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Luís
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Re: Anki

Postby Luís » 2017-11-05, 9:47

Karavinka wrote:Recognition vs Recall : Always recognition. I read my card, I know what it says, I press "good." Doesn't matter if I can recall it


I started doing this for my new Hebrew deck (I had cards going both ways but I decided it would take me too much time to review everything). I also did this before with my Chinese deck - I wanted to be able to recognize characters, I didn't really care much about recalling them or knowing how to write them by hand *

But for other languages (that use the Latin alphabet) I tend to go from my native language to the target language. It's harder and there are some issues (e.g. synonyms, multiple possible translations) but I think it helps me remember stuff better. I don't know if I'd do it when starting a new language, though.

Karavinka wrote:IMVHO, practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes failure.


Now that's a controversial statement... :P

So, when exactly do you start speaking / writing a foreign language?

*Rant: why is it that Chinese learning materials focus so much on writing by hand, stroke order, etc.? I believe that writing a character many times does help you memorize it, but these days people hardly ever write by hand in their native languages, let alone Chinese!
Quot linguas calles, tot homines vales

Karavinka

Re: Anki

Postby Karavinka » 2017-11-05, 19:01

Luís wrote:
Karavinka wrote:
Karavinka wrote:IMVHO, practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes failure.


Now that's a controversial statement... :P

So, when exactly do you start speaking / writing a foreign language?


When I realize I can. When I'm doing something in the target language, and my brain thinks, reacts, comments on it in that same language used in the media I'm interacting with. When my idle thoughts during commuting happen in that language. But more importantly, when I actually need to.

I've barely spoken Japanese with my voice -- be it over the Internet or face-to-face -- for more than five minutes maybe. There were a few times where I had a lengthier discussion a few years ago, and maybe I was already ready by that time - but I didn't force myself to because there was no reason to.

But at the same time, I have listened to a sickening amount of it, I know the subtle tone and accent differences of different speakers, in different contexts not only anime but pretty much all kinds of modern media coming out of the country. As I got placed as a "Japanese language guy" in my current job along with Japanese co-workers, I just started speaking it and writing it, now 8 hours a day. And I spoke and wrote the language. The important thing IMO was -- I didn't have bad habits to correct, that would mark me as a non-native.
Last edited by Karavinka on 2017-11-05, 19:04, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Anki

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-11-05, 19:03

Luís wrote:
Karavinka wrote:IMVHO, practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes failure.


Now that's a controversial statement... :P

Yeah, I think there's a difference between mistakes and failure.

księżycowy

Re: Anki

Postby księżycowy » 2017-11-05, 23:50

Karavinka wrote:I don't mind throwing +50 sentences per day if I know I can handle it (and I'm not too tired). If a language is familiar enough and it's about a word or so per card, sure, 50 is fine. If it's a language I'm barely starting with, maybe 10 to 20 is more reasonable. (And I don't have a cap of new cards per day on my Anki.)

Same with reviews. I don't have an artificial cap of maximum reviews per day. But when I see the next day review count like 350, I know it's about time to slow down with the new cards for a while until the deck calms down.

I'm not looking for "an artificial maximum cap", just a sense of what others are doing.
I'd like to set it up so that I have a bare minimum of what I think I should reach in language A. Certainly, if I want, I can add to it but I'd still like to get a minimum going.

Thanks for your post. Don't think I'm not grateful for your thoughts, Karavinka. :)

Karavinka

Re: Anki

Postby Karavinka » 2018-01-18, 1:56

Something that might be useful. After a few hours of toiling, I was able to get two languages to display properly on Ankidroid.

Image

Middle Korean. The "Styling" field looks like this:

Code: Select all

.card {
 font-family: myfont;
 font-size: 20px;
 text-align: center;
 color: black;
 background-color: white;
}

@font-face { font-family: myfont; src: url('_NanumBarunGothic-YetHangul.ttf'); }


This is relatively straightforward. Following the web manual for Ankidroid, I was able to add the font to the custom media folder and get it shown properly. NanumBarunGothic-YetHangul (나눔바른고딕 옛한글) was the font that I chose for this purpose, as Noto Sans CJK KR was a bit too large in size and thus heavy on memory.

Image

Manchu. This was more challenging. The "Styling" field looks like this:

Code: Select all

.card {
 font-family: myfont;
 color: black;
 background-color: white;

   layout-flow: vertical-ideographic;
   -webkit-text-orientation: sideways-right;
   -webkit-writing-mode: vertical-lr;
   -moz-writing-mode: vertical-lr;
   -ms-writing-mode: vertical-lr;
   -o-writing-mode: vertical-lr;
   writing-mode: vertical-lr;
   vertical-align:top;

}

@font-face { font-family: myfont; src: url('_monbaiti.ttf'); }


And adjusting the font size for the front:

Code: Select all

<font size="6">{{Front}}</font>


Looks quite a bit messier, and I'm not sure if I need all of this, but I just copy-pasted the layout flow part from BabelStone website's Manchu Unicode test page's source code and it worked. monbaiti.ttf is Microsoft's Mongolian Baiti, which should be available on any modern Windows system. Whatever the Android default Manchu font is called, it seemed a bit too ugly.

I deleted my former Manchu deck altogether, but I don't really feel bad about it. That deck was completely Romanized, after all. I don't think I have the time nor energy to dive right into Manchu again now, but now I know I have the tools.

Thinking about Ancient South Arabian, though. ...Is there anything that can be done if the language is boustrophedon by default? :D

księżycowy

Re: Anki

Postby księżycowy » 2018-01-18, 18:45

That is fucking awesome Karavinka! Yet another resource to use when I study some Classical Mongolian!

Karavinka

Re: Anki

Postby Karavinka » 2018-02-10, 23:53

A little more Ankidroid formatting. As I re-started some Middle Korean out of vain wanderlust, I formatted the Styling field as following:

Code: Select all

.card {
 font-family: myfont;
 font-size: 17px;
 background-color: white;

   layout-flow: vertical-ideographic;
   -webkit-writing-mode: vertical-rl;
   -webkit-text-orientation: use-glyph-orientation;
   writing-mode: vertical-rl;
   vertical-align:top;
}

@font-face { font-family: myfont; src: url('_NanumBarunGothic-YetHangul.ttf'); }


The last line of font-face is to add a specific font to the Android devices, whose default font does not support Middle Korean extension of the Unicode range. (I linked the Ankidroid web manual in the above post) This will make the preview screen and the review on the PC Anki look weird...

Image

Everything's rotated by 90 degrees. It'll also look like this on the card preview screen. But on Ankidroid...

Image

Now it's shown properly. The vertical display isn't really necessary like with Manchu, but for some languages, it just feels "right" to be in certain orientation than others. I don't know if there's anything I could change to make it look good on both devices, but I think I'll just settle with this, since I edit the deck on PC but review on Android. Not only Korean, but the Chinese sentence deck now is also vertical.

The text on the second screenshot might be interesting to some. It's from Nogeoldae Eonhae, the Korean glossed-version of a medieval Mandarin conversational manual.

You are a Korean; what use is to learn Chinese?

What you say may be right, but each person has what he sees as useful.

What do you see as useful? You speak, I will listen.

Now the Imperial Court has unified the world, and the language spoken in the world is Chinese. Our Korean language is only spoken in Korea, and past [the city of] Uiju and enter the Imperial land, everyone speaks Chinese. If one were to ask us a thing and we cannot answer, what will the others think of us to be?

Nothing has changed.


EDIT: v1.1

Code: Select all

.card {
 font-family: myfont;
 font-size: 17px;
 background-color: white;
 line-height: 1.2;
 height: 440px;

   layout-flow: vertical-ideographic;
   -webkit-writing-mode: vertical-rl;
   -webkit-text-orientation: use-glyph-orientation;
   writing-mode: vertical-rl;
   vertical-align: top;
}

@font-face { font-family: myfont; src: url('_NanumBarunGothic-YetHangul.ttf'); }


I noticed that Ankidroid displayed the line height rather arbitrarily, so I forced 440px. And the "line-height" actually means width in the vertical display.

Karavinka

Re: Anki

Postby Karavinka » 2018-02-13, 6:40

I think I'm having more fun decorating the deck than actually studying them. I wanted to add Middle Korean and Gothic to my schedules, as 1. both will be mostly reviews 2. I kind of miss them and 3. I want a comfort zone, a "reward" of the sort at the end.

I might go back to other existing decks to make similar cosmetic changes. I mean, Anki reps can be quite grueling. It might as well look pretty, though striking the right balance between cosmetics and readability is a bit hard.

Image

Image

demol
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Re: Anki

Postby demol » 2018-03-22, 20:55

Hello,

i've been looking for something like this since a long time. however, it doesnt work for me, the letters are sideways and i cannot understand what i did wrong

Image

it seems those settings are for ankidroid right ? however i could not find any setting for pc on this thread nor everywhere else, it is always sideways. i never use ankidroid so i would be very glad if i could have the proper settings for pc

(i forgot to jump the line on the pictue after the background color element but its unrelated, ive tried with many formatting different it never worked)

Karavinka

Re: Anki

Postby Karavinka » 2018-03-22, 21:12

Yup. I don't know why this happens on PC, it might be how they process HTML on PC and Android. (AFAIK, Ankidroid is developed and maintained by a different group of people than PC Anki and Ankimobile on iOS) I couldn't get the vertical text to display correctly on PC, and I was surprised to see it worked on Ankidroid.

ps. while 開く can be read as あく and it is not wrong to read it that way, the more common reading would be ひらく.

demol
Posts:4
Joined:2018-03-22, 20:51

Re: Anki

Postby demol » 2018-03-22, 21:17

mmh thats very unfortunate. thanks for the heads up.

for the kanji thing, dont worry i am not making the sentences up, they are from the book kanji in context so the writing is meant to be that

Karavinka

Re: Anki

Postby Karavinka » 2018-03-22, 21:32

Image

I thought I might be able to rotate the text manually, but it turned out that adding this rotates the entire line. So 90 degrees means it's back to horizontal. And using the same styling code it on the horizontal Japanese of course just resulted the whole thing in 90 degrees rotated.

demol
Posts:4
Joined:2018-03-22, 20:51

Re: Anki

Postby demol » 2018-03-22, 21:37

damn... i really wanted that, its so unfortunate. i think there are a lot of different commands but they all either straight uo dont work or end up sideways

demol
Posts:4
Joined:2018-03-22, 20:51

Re: Anki

Postby demol » 2018-04-09, 2:03

Hello, i came back to try again but on ankidroid and its weird, it doesnt work at all there, the text shows like without any modification. What version of Ankidroid do you use ? Im using the last stable

Karavinka

Re: Anki

Postby Karavinka » 2018-04-09, 2:11

Mine says it's Ankidroid 2.8.3.

Karavinka

Re: Anki

Postby Karavinka » 2018-04-25, 7:25

Another useless -- or maybe useful -- Anki trivia.

I've noticed that Ankidroid starts blinking/flickering whenever I tap Show Answer or any of the answer buttons. Not always, but very often. It's kind of weird since my decks were laden with background images for a long time, and as it started doing it for the first time today, it's affecting all decks.

Closing other apps or re-installing Ankidroid didn't solve the problem. So...

Using the day mode, when the flickering happens, the screen turns white for a brief moment. Using the night mode, it flashes black. While this cannot fix it altogether, it's much easier on the eyes when my decks have darker backgrounds. Just in case someone else is using Ankidroid, has dark themed deck formatting and is experiencing problems like this.

Image

For this Japanese miscellaneous/technical vocabulary deck, the styling now looks like this.

Code: Select all

.card {
 font-family: Open Sans;
 font-size: 20px;
 text-align: center;
 color: #ef8d97;
 background-image: url("_reclass.png");
}


.night_mode.card {
 font-family: Open Sans;
 font-size: 20px;
 text-align: center;
 color: #ef8d97;
 background-image: url("_reclass.png");
}


The night_mode specifies how to show the card in the night mode. It's identical. This was added because by default, night mode makes the background black and the text white. Though this deck in particular was a bit brighter in comparison to the others, I think I'm going to adjust the brightness a little more.


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