I know Anki users are really attached to Anki and don’t like switching away from it when they have a System for making their own cards and such, but I’ll still make the suggestion: Have you tried Renshuu.org instead? It’s much better at getting you to synthesize kanji and vocab and how the readings connect, because it’s an ecosystem where those dictionary entries are all connected to each other and are displayed dynamically according to what you know, rather than having a bunch of cards that are all isolated and having to build in reinforcing context yourself if you want it.
It would take a bit of set-up to catch the site up to everything you already know and customize your settings to how you like to learn, but after that there’s no work involved like there is in making your own Anki cards. You just press + on a dictionary entry and it’s added to your study, and most common words already have audio and pitch information attached.
There’s also a Text Analyzer tool you might find useful in finding which books would be the most comfortable for you to read for enjoyment over study. If you copy in say, an ebook chapter, Renshuu will tell you what the approximate grammar level is and how many of the words and kanji you know, and show you a reader with unknown words/kanji highlighted so you can gauge how much looking-up you’re in for in advance.
It sounds like you’ve already came up with a solution that will work for you… but just for the sake of discussion…
How do you remember other rules (or anything for that matter)? That’s probably personal. For me, the fact that I popped 小型、中型、大型 into a dictionary and saw the pattern, and now typed them out, is probly enough. The readings never stuck before, b/c I just always just looked it up and moved onto the next word.
I might need to repeat that process the next 1-3 times I see one of them. Or it might just never stick, and I’ll complain “ugh, I can never remember how that works”
Usually when that happens to me, it means I don’t know the actual word (occasionally it means I knew the word, but didn’t know/link it to the kanji).
To reframe this: The kanji aren’t the actual word - they are merely its representation. You’re not actually seeing the word, but the code for it. Sometimes you can derive unfamiliar words or meanings from that representation, but that’s just a lucky bonus (and you’d still have to check if that’s actually the word). It’s like if I give you the HTML hex code #ff0000, you might be able to intuit that it’s “red” but you’re not actually seeing anything red, nor the word “red”.
So if I asked “how do you say small scale/size?”, would you be able to answer こがた? Or if you heard こがた would you go “small scale/size”? If not, the kanji’s not really gonna help you there (as you’re experiencing).
Why がた and not かた? Or けい? 大 and 小 are particularly bad for this
In this case, when I type *型 into the dictionary, the readings are all がた or けい (no かた). Why がた vs けい? I don’t see any discernible pattern. Also I totally sympathize on 大
You may get some mileage out of 漢字音読み一覧表 - Kanji list by onyomi | WordLinker which is quite useful for knowing the readings. I probably need to study these a lot more myself, but I have been finding myself getting issues with kunyomi more than onyomi as of late.
For anyone else who finds Renshuu’s interface incredibly confusing… the steps for making your own deck are:
Resources > Community Lists > Me
New List > Words → Name list & fill out 1 per line. Save & Close
Click list name → click Study → customize format (optional) → click Study again
Review words → Study
Do the flash cards
So I’m kind of the opposite. I’ve done that in the past, but I use Anki b/c it’s dead simple. Front: word, Back: Reading/Definition. If I want something with more bells and whistles, that I don’t have to customize, it would be jpdb, which looks like this:
It allows you to create custom decks (empty, or importing words from text). And has built-in decks for many of your favorite anime, manga, or LNs. Iirc you can also add custom definitions or example sentences to each entry. It also lets you import all your known words/kanji from stuff like WK, RTK, etc. You can thankfully adjust the review frequency and deck ordering as well. I find their initial frequency way too aggressive.
At this point most of the verbs I encounter that I don’t know are like 5 mora long with one kanji and no extra okurigana hints. It’s like final boss time
Little correction, step 3 down is only how you study if you’re cramming, it’s not connected to the SRS and doesn’t progress your mastery. To study with full control of the question types and to get questions asked at SRS intervals, plug the list you make into a schedule. The schedule is where your study settings live and what gives you reviews and new terms to learn every day.
The whole point of Renshuu is customization to suit exactly what and how you want to learn, so if your ideal study tool is something that “I don’t have to customize” it’s probably not a good option for you I disagree about Anki being dead simple though; I found the interface and the process of making cards obtuse and frustrating, while I found Renshuu’s customization to be intuitive and easy to adjust to my study style… goes to show we’re all looking for something different!
I specifically suggested it in the context of kanji readings because the interconnected dictionary entries and the way it reflects what you know back to you do a very good job of reinforcing readings in particular (and there are currently some features in testing to make it even better). Much more effective than Anki for it IMO, as Anki’s effectiveness depends largely on how you design your cards and the time you invest in each card you manually make, whereas Renshuu takes the work and time out of it (after you’ve front-loaded all of the settings customization anyway) and each “card” you add is accurate and tests you on what you want to practice with no effort required in making it so.
Thanks for the correction. I tried doing the schedule thing, and don’t see anything about where to customize it, or what you mean about interconnected dictionary entries. To me it seems like a more annoying version of jpdb… but I’m sure others will find it useful.
Highlight Deck
Click Add
Fill in Front & Back fields
Click Add
Now if you want to customize, sure it’s more complicated - but for my use case, it’s perfect.
志 says “Hi.” - least I remember this one because it has ‘heart’ in it. Though I hate it when it is like 事志と違う which is the worst occurrence I can remember because I generally mess up bad here.
Every schedule has its own settings section (may be hidden in the ⋮ menu depending on screen size), where you can choose things like what kinds of questions you’re asked, whether you type the answer or fill in the blank, how many questions you’re asked, etc. etc. If you aren’t using the default pre-made schedules, you can also customize the contents.
By interconnected, I mean that every “term” in Renshuu (word/kanji/grammar point/sentence) is a dictionary entry with multiple facets of information all being tracked and linked to each other. Renshuu is aware that, say, 大型/おおがた uses the kanji 大 and 型, and when you encounter 大型 anywhere in the site you can click on either kanji and be taken to the kanji dictionary entry for more information (and vice-versa, from the kanji page you can get a list all the words it appears in). It also is aware that 大 is using the おお reading and 型 is using the かた reading with rendaku, so after you study that word, it will know when you’re learning the kanji that you’ve seen those specific readings before and can refer you back to that word as an example (and through an experimental setting, it’s possible to leverage that further to make Renshuu only test you on kanji readings you have encountered in your vocabulary before). And by default the use of furigana throughout the site depends on the kanji you have studied, so if you had studied 大 but not 型, 大型 would only have half of its furigana when you see it, and when quizzing it you would only be tested on half of the reading until you learn the other kanji (depending on your preferences in your settings ofc). Studying kanji is able to dynamically change how vocabulary is presented and the questions you’re asked, and studying vocabulary dynamically changes how sentences are presented and the kanji readings you know – compared to a traditional flashcard where all of the information on the card is static and isolated to the card itself, without being able to synthesize its contents with other cards or adjust itself to your other knowledge.
I feel like I’ve pulled this off-topic, sorry I was just intending to bring up an option that might work better for reinforcing kanji readings, but the merits of Renshuu as a study manager are kind of far afield of the issue of how to approach readings while reading.
I’m not advanced and I’m late to this discussion but I’ll chime in some ideas too.
Similar to what a lot of others have said, I read digital and look up pretty much every reading I don’t know. Authors reuse words a lot so my thought process is that if I ignore doing lookups then I’ll just have this same problem the next time I see the word.
However, I always take a guess at what the reading is no matter what. Forcing myself to make a guess makes the lookup process feel like a game and it is really satisfying when you get it right.
If you are are reading physical and you don’t want to ruin the flow then maybe try a checkpoint lookup approach? For example, you could save up your reading lookups until the end of a page and do them all at once. I find that checkpoint lookups gives my mind some extra time to remember a reading that I should already know.
I think I’d make a distinction between reading and scanning.
If I’m reading as a hobby, I’d want to vocalize every word and enjoy the way the sentence flows, and therefore to look up every reading I’m not sure about.
If I’m scanning a webpage or something looking for a specific piece of information, then readings are not as important as saved time.
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