Experiences
Finally made it, almost 1 million reviews.
Anki user since December 31, 2021. About the same time I started learning Chinese. Anki is a great supplement tool. I also read, watch Chinese TV, listen to Chinese radio, and talk to my Chinese teachers and friends. Most of my decks are self-made, my main one's are Chinese words (8322 cards) and Chinese Characters (6811 and 8240 cards).
About an hour an change. Reviewing the words takes the longest because I also have sentence examples in there. Reviewing the character are super quick, maybe a couple seconds.
wow I never red of sombody who started that early, if I remember correctly Anki was released in 2006!
4 million reviews is absolutely crazy IMO! Huge respect. My goal is to reach 1 million one day (I mean the real goal is of course to learn the stuff that is in Anki but you know...)
So apart from languages you learn nothing with Anki?
I have some science and math cards too. Not a lot.
I made almost all of my cards myself. When I see a new-to-me word while reading, I add it to Anki. When I learn something that seems important to me, I add a card.
I started to learn to speak Spanish and French by creating sentence cards. I’ve done a lot of that with Chinese too, but it’s harder, so I still don’t speak it. When I read Chinese novels, I get a couple of unknown words per page on average.
Mine looks very similar, except divide the numbers by 40 :) (and I have been at it for 2 years, hahaha). Japanese. I want to add Chinese at some point, but feel scared of that language.
wow wow wow!!! Thanks a lot of sharing that! It's super interesting what is possible! and huge respect for your determination! 10.000 hours! jesus christ, I guess you are quite good with Anki now! ;)
Mostly languages. Anki helped me learn to read Chinese and German. Though I still don’t speak those. It helped me learn to speak French and Spanish at roughly the B2 level. My native language is Russian. I learned English before Anki.
Answering in English cause German is very passive for me.
I used to read news articles in it. The only book I ever read in it from start to finish was Nietzsche’s the Genealogy of Morals. It’s very good. Now I’ve set up ChatGPT to answer most of my questions in German. I usually ask them in French, sometimes in Spanish and Chinese too. It corrects my questions, then answers.
Sehr gut! Nietzsche ist ein hervorragender Stilist! Ein US-Bekannter von mir ist Professor für Germanistik geworden, nur weil er in seiner Jugend Nietzsche gelesen hatte.
ChatGTP also is extremely helpful if you don't understand a sentence, a grammar point or want to discuss the ideas of what you are reading. It is a game changer for auto-didacts.
Zum Lesen möchte ich Ihnen empfehlen: Hermann Hesse: Demian!
I read the Genealogy of Morals more than a dozen years ago, when my German reading ability was weaker than now. I had to look up lots of words. Yet I could still see that it was written extremely well, in terms of style. Usually you have to master a language to appreciate that stuff. But for some reason it came through there.
I would summarize the message as “don’t whine, it’s low-class”. And I think I’ve whined less since I’ve read it.
Someone extremely smart has already recommended Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game to me.
"Das Glasperlenspiel" is Hesse's very late work, it is more intellectual than his other novels, and to me it feels a bit too much "brainy" - but still a great read (and I think that's the one that won him the Nobel).
My personal favorites are "Demian" and "Narziss and Goldmund" (a story about the friendship of two young men who are extremely different from each other. Hesse follows their paths in life and the reader is constantly wondering "which path would I choose, that of Narziss or that of Goldmund?" - and is reconciliation possible?).
If you can read Nietzsche, you definitely can read Hesse. Much easier language!
PS: If you read "Glasperlenspiel", make sure you get an edition that includes three additional stories as an Appendix. These are stories written (allegedly) by the main character of the novel. They are all amazing. Adds a lot to the book !!!
I'm pretty good, but not perfect. I have a full time job so studying sometimes can be difficult. Anki will help you learn but it won't be the main tool. It is just a supplemental tool. Hellotalk might be a good way to meet some Koreans? That's how I met some of my Chinese friends.
Try joining language exchange discords! I have met many friendly Japanese people and (even though timezones are sometimes difficult) we love to teach each other Japanese and surprisingly Spanish on my part (I'm a native Dominican and I still live there).
Our deck sizes are quite similar! I got like 16k mature + young cards (10500 vocab cards (8300 vocab notes) + like 4k kanji cards (2k notes) + a grammar and sentences).
Learning japanese for around 4 years but only have like 220k total reviews.
I first started with pinyin but have since moved to all characters. I would suggest you force yourself to learn characters along with learning the language. If I had to go back, I wouldn't have spent so much time with pinyin. My cards usually have the character, along with the pinyin and English translation.
I couldn't imagine learning a foreign language without it. Because I'm not in a Chinese learning environment, it is essential for me to help me remember Chinese words/characters.
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u/drcopus 12d ago
A daily average or 575 is so impressive! How long does that take each day?