Anki and kanji: 60 down, 1,982 to go... still??

No Rosetta Stone today and Pimsleur is still introducing directions. So I decided to try and adderess something that was pissing me off about Anki.

Anki is a great flash card program. Don't get me wrong, so far I have loved it. But, the deck I got for Remembering the Kanji only shows cards with English words as questions and the Kanji as answers. This is helpful for people who want to learn how to write kanji, but I think it is detrimental to those of us trying to learn to read. So, what I wanted to do was show Kanji as questions and English as answers. I figured it would be a simple process. It is not.

This video did help me get it straight, but now I will be stuck doing some odd reviews for awhile as my "backwards" cards get caught up to my "forwards" cards. Oh well. At least it works now and I found I actually have a pretty damn good recall of what these Kanji mean when I look at them.

Remembering the Kanji does not have the pronunciation of the Kanji (which can change based on which meaning of the Kanji is being used anyway). But, remembering the sound of a word and what it means is easy enough to attach it to the Kanji. My ability to take a document and read it aloud in Japanese will probably suffer for awhile, but my ability to read and understand it and even translate it will be pretty damn good. Which is perfect seeing as I don't think I will be giving speeches written in Kanji any time soon.