I have about 1500 cards in my mining deck and do basically all my mining from reading, My goal right now is to be able to switch to using Japanese translations for my cards but I don’t know if I’m ready. Is it better to just take the dive or should I wait until it happens naturally/when I can use it without any trouble? For the people who have made the switch, at about what point did you make it, and how was the switching period?
12 comments
How confident do you feel when looking words up in Japanese? If you can reliably look up words without having to look up more words than I’d say switch. If trying to do so leads to 20 minutes of going from word to word then it’s not worth it.
I would start trying to use Japanese definition at that point, then if you don’t understand them, use the English ones. If you have to look up one word in the Japanese definition, that’s probably fine, but 2+ words is too much imo.
When you feel like it. If you understand the JP definition, then use it.
At 1500 words, you’re probably not ready to go full monolingual. But you can start looking up definitions of words you already know, so that you can see the definition explained in Japanese, rather than relying on an English translation or explanation. This will give you practice and probably even help you learn some new words. You can set up yomichan with monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, and see if you can understand the monolingual entries. If so, great! If not, don’t sweat it, check the English definition. Maybe after reading the English definition, the Japanese definition will make more sense.
I’m somewhere around 4k words (rough estimate, might be as high as 5k), and I still struggle with monolingual definitions. My compromise was to set up Yomichan so that the third nested popup includes a couple bilingual dictionaries (but sorted to the bottom, so monolingual first). So I still get monolingual definitions for words I look up, but if I can’t understand a definition, I can eventually get to English definitions to help reduce the mental burden of looking up a tree of nested words. Also, sometimes, definitions are circular, so it helps break the cycle. (By circular, I mean, for example, A is defined as B, and B is defined as A, so without knowing one of those words, I can’t figure it out.)
Where you are currently, I think you can start looking up dictionary entries for new vocabulary, using them if they’re easily comprehensible, and perhaps using them as a source for new vocabulary in entries that you don’t entirely understand. But I don’t think a monolingual dictionary entry will always be better in every single way – for some words they will be much more helpful, while for others you might find you prefer an English definition/paraphrase or a picture.
The focus on monolingual dictionaries seems to be an artifact of particularly Matt vs Japan’s brand of the immersion approach’s spread within the Japanese learning community. Monolingual dictionaries are certainly a useful reference tool and it’s nice to work on acquiring the vocabulary to eventually be able to use them, but they are one option of multiple. Hence, I personally at least wouldn’t endeavor to make a “switch” where you’re using all monolingual entries, but rather aim for slow, incremental progress in order to reach a point where they become another tool in your arsenal.
Idk how you put dictionary definitions in your cards, but I use an add-on (the migaku anki add-on) that allows to to select definitions from dictionaries to add to cards, so what I do is I have the JP dictionaries show up first, then if I don’t understand those I go to the English dictionary. It’s not really a taking the plunge thing imo, I just slowly end up using JP definitions more and more as I understand more.
Never, IMO. Except for words that don’t have adequate English definitions I don’t think there’s much point. Particularly if you’re reading a lot – you’ll learn the nuances of the words from encountering them in different contexts, not from a dictionary definition. The back of the card should be good to have a quick glance over, not something you need to trudge through.
If you really want to do it, I wouldn’t bother until you can comfortably read dictionary definitions without needing to look up the words in the definition.
I have a vocabulary of around 8000 words now, and although I have and can use a native Japanese dictionary without much trouble, I’d say for 90% of words I don’t bother with it and still use a Japanese-English dictionary.
There’s a lot of words where it’s unarguably more difficult to use the Japanese definition. For example, why write down 「木材のほか金属・石などを切るのに用いる、薄い鋼板の縁に歯形を刻んで柄をつけた工具」(“A tool with a handle and teeth carved into the edge of a thin steel plate, used for cutting wood, metal, stone, etc.”), when you could simply put “saw” instead.
An example of a word I recently used the Japanese definition for is 「解禁」. The English definition was “lifting a ban; raising an embargo; opening a season (hunting, fishing, etc.)”, while the Japanese definition was 「法律などで禁止していたことを解くこと」, which I felt was more succinct.
Basically, if you feel like the English definition is confusing, unclear, or otherwise incomplete you can use the Japanese definition, but other than that you should probably default to using English, especially at the stage you are at now.
As many people have already said, when you feel like you can understand the definitions well enough for it to be more useful/enlightening than it is frustrating. This doesn’t mean you need to have *perfect* understanding, just that reading the definition shouldn’t be as (or *more*) difficult to you than whatever material is was that sent you to the dictionary to look up the word the first place.
I would also discourage you from thinking of it as a “switch”. There’s no reason why you can’t add a J-J dictionary to your set of resources as something you turn to when J-E dictionaries or whatever don’t seem to be giving you as much detail/nuance as you’re looking for.
Personally, I started using a J-J dictionary very early in my studies — I think it was after a couple of months, maybe half a year. I would encourage starting with a dictionary designed for younger students, like the [例解新国語辞典](https://dictionary.sanseido-publ.co.jp/dict/ssd13684), which is targeted at (Japanese) junior high students. This dictionary has definitions that are in more colloquial, straightforward language as compared to something like 広辞苑, which is more authoritative but will often have definitions that use more complex vocabulary or written language styles that may prove confusing to the learner.
I think a transition is better than a full switch.
If you’re reading with yomichan, it has an option for multiple profiles and configurable conditions for when to use which. I made different profiles for my English and Japanese dictionaries and can decide to use one or the other for each word by holding another button.
When I make an anki card for a word I always read the japanese definition, but I leave both english and japanese on the anki card. I think it’s very helpful to read the japanese definition of a word to get a feel for it, but when doing anki I’m not overly concerned with knowing exactly what it means, so I usually just quickly glance at the english to see if it’s near what I thought. If my meaning is way off I usually reread the japanese def
I still use both. J-E for a quick check, J-J for deeper info/subtle differences between words or where the J-E seems lacking or doesn’t make sense in the context.
Sometimes I use Japanese wikipedia or google image search instead.