I’m contemplating about making an anki deck that teachs you japanese but only using images and sounds example: [_front: image of a fire] [_back : kanji for fire and someone pronouncing it (no furigana or explanation)]
For simple words it’s fine, but it won’t work for words representing abstract and complicated concepts. Like, how are you going to illustrate something like “finagle”?
I’m suddenly reminded of how duo tries to teaching [右](#fg “みぎ”) / [左](#fg “ひだり”), but they do something silly with which hand is used vs the direction that it’s pointing so it’s easy to misunderstand.
I do this for some words but it doesn’t work for a lot of words
e.g. here are the words I learned yesterday
直撃 direct hit 路線 route 似て非なる similar but different 髪型 hairstyle 共通 common/mutual 共通点 point in common 共感する sympathy 共同する cooperation 気力 willpower
Which of these can you make a picture for? And would that picture actually help if you need to use this or encounter this word in a book or somewhere else?
But yeah, having pictures is one thing that is nice about digital flashcards.
It’s a good idea for nouns, but it doesn’t work for verbs and more complex terms.
I kinda have a deck like that for the genki vocabulary, the genki app includes in image with most of the vocab. The images are pretty helpful for remembering!
Though for most words there could be multiple interpretations of the image. For example “job” and “to work” use the same picture. So you still need the english translation. Like in your example, the word could also be “to burn”. So it’s a guessing game if you don’t have a translation, or maybe an example sentence.
But still, I use images for learning vocab and I wouldn’t want to miss them.
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Sounds sort of like what Rosetta Stone does
For simple words it’s fine, but it won’t work for words representing abstract and complicated concepts. Like, how are you going to illustrate something like “finagle”?
I’m suddenly reminded of how duo tries to teaching [右](#fg “みぎ”) / [左](#fg “ひだり”), but they do something silly with which hand is used vs the direction that it’s pointing so it’s easy to misunderstand.
I do this for some words but it doesn’t work for a lot of words
e.g. here are the words I learned yesterday
直撃 direct hit
路線 route
似て非なる similar but different
髪型 hairstyle
共通 common/mutual
共通点 point in common
共感する sympathy
共同する cooperation
気力 willpower
Which of these can you make a picture for? And would that picture actually help if you need to use this or encounter this word in a book or somewhere else?
But yeah, having pictures is one thing that is nice about digital flashcards.
It’s a good idea for nouns, but it doesn’t work for verbs and more complex terms.
I kinda have a deck like that for the genki vocabulary, the genki app includes in image with most of the vocab. The images are pretty helpful for remembering!
Though for most words there could be multiple interpretations of the image. For example “job” and “to work” use the same picture. So you still need the english translation. Like in your example, the word could also be “to burn”. So it’s a guessing game if you don’t have a translation, or maybe an example sentence.
But still, I use images for learning vocab and I wouldn’t want to miss them.