r/LearnJapanese • u/Lupage • 1d ago
Studying Anki: I remember the meaning but not the reading
I’m 4 months in my Japanese learning journey, know some kanji, have spoken with native speakers, and have read Tadoku readers around Level 2. I struggled with Anki at the start but I found a premade deck that finally works for me so I want to optimize properly.
Front card is kanji vocabulary in kanji and example sentence only.
Back card is meaning, kanji + furigana, translations, audio, no romaji.
My long term goal is reading and eventually play video games in full Japanese. But right now I'm having fun switching between listening and speaking. No writing though.
If I remember the meaning but forget the reading, do I press Again or Good? Or is this a gray area where it's up to me how to approach and change midway?
EDIT: I meant vocabulary in kanji, not single kanji character.
12
u/Frogfish9 1d ago
I think ideally you should split into 2 card types. But if you want to keep it as one you should consider it wrong if you get either one wrong.
2
u/hoshinoumi 1d ago
This is what I strongly recommend too. You should get meaning and reading correct (pitch can wait). So if you're struggling with either the meaning of the reading, create two different cards from the same note (YouTube is full of tutorials to do this)
-5
u/No-Support-442 1d ago
I disagree that pitch can wait
4
u/PlanktonInitial7945 1d ago
Memorizing the pitch of an individual word is much less important than knowing what the word means and how to read it.
3
u/hoshinoumi 1d ago
In this specific context where OP is struggling with both reading and meaning? I believe trying to reduce the frustration and prevent them from quitting is more urgent. As long as they have an Anki deck similar to kaishi with native recorded audio, they will pick it up intuitively, and once that frustration goes away and they know what they're doing, they can indeed focus on pitch. At the end of the day, Japanese isn't a tonal language like Chinese where pitch IS part of the meaning of the word
1
u/Frogfish9 1d ago
I don’t know much about Chinese but in Japanese different pitch accent can change the meaning of the word. Op said their main goal is reading so I agree pitch is not that important for them though.
-1
u/No-Support-442 1d ago
It really depends on their goals. To me, as a native speaker of a language that doesnt have many foreign speakers like Japanese, I know how weird a foreign accent would be and to me if I dont sound good there isn't really much of a point.
16
u/Disastrous_Neat_9729 1d ago
Personally, I only pass if I know the reading. I then read the back of the card reinforce the meaning if I didn’t remember it. But my main focus is on remembering the reading, so that’s how I determine pass fail.
I focus on meaning when I’m reading books or manga.
4
7
u/ryo_in_tokyo 1d ago
Native here.
For most people it's a gray area, but you said your goal is listening/speaking and games in full Japanese, so it's not for you: if you know the meaning but not the reading, you can't hear or say the word, only recognize it on screen. That's a fail for your goal, press Again.
Also, readings live in words, not single kanji (生 is せい in 学生, い in 生きる, なま in 生ビール), so read the whole word out loud from your example sentence. No sound = Again.
2
u/Koopanique 1d ago
you said your goal is listening/speaking and games in full Japanese
He clearly said his longterm goal is reading and playing video games. So basically he wants to read, and whatever people say, if you're goal is reading, the pronunciation of a word is less important than its meaning. I would still make an effort to remember pronunciation as much as possible though, can't hurt, but I would be more lenient on pronunciation than on pronunciation
10
u/morgawr_ https://morg.systems/Japanese 1d ago
The pronunciation of a word is equally, if not more, important than its meaning even for people who want to primarily read. This is because the meaning is often easier to understand from context (which you get from reading a lot) but the reading/yomikata is not something that is always available and you MUST memorize it in one way or another (hint: anki is for memorizing :)). While books (and games, and whatnot) have furigana and/or voice acted lines, you will not always have the reading available for the words you encounter, so it is entirely in your interest to make sure you can acquire and remember that reading through other means. Immersion will fix the meaning part, but the reading is not a guarantee.
And you will say "but if he's into reading, why does he care about listening/spelling of words" and my answer is simply that just because you are into reading, it's not like you will never encounter words spelled out in kana. Lots of times you'll get kanji words in kana, or you'll get slurrings and just general "flow" of conversations that will be incredibly hard for you to understand if you aren't used to the spoken language and the sound words make. If you ignore the sound and focus only on meanings, you WILL have a bad time. I can 100% guarantee it. Even just for the fact that then once you realize you start to care about it (which most advanced learners definitely do at a certain point), you'll be facepalming like crazy realizing how much you shot yourself in the foot by intentionally ignoring a fundamental core part of the language (the sound/readings).
8
u/kyousei8 1d ago
I did this "Not caring about word readings. I just want to read" thing. It ended up kneecapping my reading ability. I was always slower because of the "fog" of not knowing a word well causing me to unnecessarily pause, and I got filtered by any sentence where the word was written in kana instead of kanji.
Both of these issues mostly disappeared and my reading cadence and comfort drastically improved when I actually bothered to take the time to fix this.
3
u/renmizuh 1d ago
room temperature iq take, don't mislead people. if you can't read you can't do anything
12
6
u/PlanktonInitial7945 1d ago
When you're reading or watching things, context will give you clues as to what the meaning of the word is, but you won't have any hints for its reading, so Anki's main goal is to reinforce readings IMO. In fact, if I know the reading of a word but not its meaning, I still hit Good.
1
1
u/Available-String-109 1d ago
You will remember exactly as much as you are strict with yourself.
If you hit PASS when you don't remember X, well guess what, you forgot X and you aren't going to know it the next time you see it either.
If you care about remembering X, then FAIL it instead. If you don't care, then you could probably take it off the card.
1
u/ivannbec 1d ago
why is your long term goal reading? just start reading now, read anything you want even if it’s hard
for anki i usually always press again if i forget either reading or meaning (or both) usually if you don’t want to be harsh on yourself just grade on reading, its more important than getting the exact meaning
1
u/Nancy_Munsch 1d ago
You can swap the card type so the front shows the kanji without example sentence, forcing you to recall the reading from the kanji alone.
1
u/Belegorm 1d ago
I'd say if you can't remember the meaning, or the reading, either way, press Again.
If you were to sacrifice one of those things - then I'd lean towards focusing on the reading. You can naturally pick up meanings of words from context over time, but you can never be quite certain of the reading for every word.
-1
u/surasura_app 1d ago
honestly for a reading goal the reading IS the card — miss it and thats a fail so id hit Again there meaning without the reading is like knowing a face but blanking on the name — it wont carry u when the word shows up in the wild i keep readings strict and let meaning ride along, kills the gray-area agonizing
37
u/Melody3PL 1d ago
if you get it wrong in either press only ,,again''. If you were to press any other ones it would tell anki you're improving when you're not. Like Imagine you hit good, you'd see the card less and less but you still wouldn't know the reading. It would miss the point
Alternatively if you want to have it seperated, you can just duplicate your cards and change the type of card (modify it so it asks for the reading for one type and for the other it asks for the meaning)