[mtalantikite]

I've had some successful sprints using Anki, but I always get fatigued making cards for it after a few months, even when leaning on LLM tools to speed up the process.

One app I used early on when beginning French was Clozemaster, set to keyboard input (instead of multiple choice). The largest benefit was I didn't have to make all the decks, they progress you through the most common words (used in context), and there are ChatGPT grammar explanations for everything if you wanted to drill into it. It sounds very similar to what OP created for themself.

At a certain point you just need to switch to native content, but at the beginning I found Assimil + Clozemaster + comprehensible input on YouTube to be able to get me to watching regular French TV in maybe 6 months.

[piazz]

Shameless plug for anybody who has been through the hell that is Anki card creation for language learning - I built an LLM powered extension for Anki that allows you to wire up fields to arbitrary prompts, and then generate notes in batch (or selectively per field). I use it every day for generating example sentences, definitions, and TTS. Would have quit Anki ages ago without this.

https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1531888719

https://smart-notes.xyz

FWIW I did get a lot more mileage from building my own deck vs a custom deck too, would recommend that approach regardless once you're past the initial vocab bootstrapping phrase.

[codyb]

There's a large number of prebuilt Anki decks available here as well if this is useful for anyone exploring the space - https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks?search

[piva00]

As far as I know about decks for language learning, you should be building your own. Pre-built decks don't work so well exactly because you don't spend the time to create the links that work for you personally, I know a few people who tried to shortcut it by using pre-built decks but gave up after noticing it wasn't working well.

It sucks though, it's also the one thing that makes me constantly not be consistent using Anki, I get tired of creating cards and stop for a while.

[codyb]

Ah, that's interesting. I've definitely learned a ton through the vocabulary and conjugation decks and they're a great way to continue learning even on days when there's little other stimulus.

I think what's key is that I'm taking the words and conjugation rules I'm learning and using them relatively quickly, often that day or that week. I.E., I'll come across words in Anki, then hear them in a baseball broadcast or see them in a news article. Or I'll recognize what tense something is because of the rules.

So it's supplemental, and maybe that's why it's sticking better. I don't think I'd want to create decks constantly, I created one 140 card deck and that was enough.

Finally, I do frequently use memory tricks to create associations so maybe my experience with memory castles, mnemonics, and other techniques (which I use on cards I forget frequently to create links I'm unable to create quickly on my own (or to differentiate similar words (or words that are the same but in different tenses))).

Yea, it's _work_!

[borroka]

It's not true that “you should build your own,” especially in the beginning. There's no need for complex customizations when the student knows little or nothing about the language. Start with excellent, generic decks already created by others and thank them. You can suspend cards, delete some, add new ones. Especially in the beginning, it is necessary to eliminate any friction, any reason that could stop the work on the skill (“it's so boring to create my own cards”). After you know, say, 1k or 2k words, you can think about the next steps.

[pessimizer]

I used only pre-"built" decks and got to C1 in Spanish. One was actually prebuilt, the other was literally algorithmically generated disposable clozes. That, one graded reader and comic books got me to being comfortable in an L1->L1 dictionary, and then it's over. You don't need language learning material any more, just material.

People are just repeating this advice about making your own decks, and it's based in nothing but having had it repeated to them. Spaced repetition is boiling in pseudoscience and ancient studies that don't say much other than that there's a forgetting curve.

Most people are just parroting stuff they read on the Supermemo wiki (or somebody read off the Supermemo wiki and repeated to them like they came up with it), and all of that is just thoughts off the top of one guy's head. His innovation is that he wrote a program to do Leitner boxes before he had ever heard of a Leitner box, but people treat every word like gospel.

The only five things I can say for language learning is to go really hard on systems in a new language that are completely unknown to you (like Romance conjugations for an English speaker); only drill sentences, not individual words; always say your Anki answers out loud, and read out loud as much as you can; comic books have pictures, too; and once you get comfortable in an L2->L2 dictionary, you're a more comfortable reader than a lot of natives.

-----

* Random Anki decks for a few European languages: https://sookocheff.com/post/language/cloze-deletions/

(Edit: the lovely thing about 10K algorithmically generated clozes is that they're utterly disposable, unlike cards that you make yourself. If one is a leech, forget about it. You'll see another one just like it when you get to the point that it won't be a leech for you.)

* Instructions on how to generate your own in other languages, for developers: https://sookocheff.com/post/language/bulk-generating-cloze-d...

(You could probably point out the above URL to an LLM and it would generate the code for you.)

* Anki to learn Romance conjugations first: https://www.asiteaboutnothing.net/w_ultimate_spanish_conjuga...

[mtalantikite]

Did you get through the entire KOFI deck for Spanish? I started the French one, but didn't make it past a month or two before I fell off. I'm thinking of going through the French -> Spanish Assimil course soon and might give the KOFI deck another go, this time in Spanish.

[pessimizer]

I very much did, and sticking with it was the best choice I made. You will get very very fast at it after a while, and the first verbs are the hardest and most irregular (and you should spend the most time on them.) Throwing in the messy clozes after doing your conjugations is relaxing, and you can do as many of those as you're in the mood for, whereas the conjugations are systematically introduced and you shouldn't speed it up too much. Took me 7 months, but complete mastery. But literally some of the conjugations from the first hard couple months will bother you until the end.

I feel even better than natives sometimes because they learn conjugations in order at school, and when asked to recall them out of order (or hop from form to form) get confused. Once you have conjugations, you can read anything with a dictionary (and the online dle is the best dictionary I've ever used.)

I'm about to start again with KOFI French, but I had to do a lot of work to get my mouth and ears adjusted to hearing French as anything other then murmurs, and to be able to read (luckily for me, French is the opposite of perl and read-only instead of write-only.) There's a lot of stuff in French I want to read; reading all of the stuff translated into Spanish from French (but never into English) has got my beak wet.

Also, Spanish-language comic books will make you forget about English-language comic books. And they are very online, examples: http://columberos.blogspot.com/ and https://comicsmexicanosdejediskater.blogspot.com/

Also lots of other good material for vos: https://ahira.com.ar/ including https://ahira.com.ar/revistas/skorpio/ and https://ahira.com.ar/revistas/hora-cero-suplemento-semanal/ which is a landmark of literature that is too good for us (El Eternauta spans the entire length of the series.)

[mtalantikite]

Thanks for the thoughtful response and links! I actually think you've convinced me to go back and try to complete the whole French KOFI deck, as there are certainly gaps in my verb conjugations.

For hearing French, I went through the old FSI French phonology course at the beginning, as well as all the grouped (A1/A2/etc) comprehensible input from this channel: https://www.youtube.com/@FrenchComprehensibleInput/playlists. Oh, and I did a bunch of the French listening comprehension on Yabla for a few months: https://french.yabla.com/.

[codyb]

Just seconding all of this and how useful (and annoying) the conjugation deck has been for me in Spanish. Not sure if it was the KOFI one, but it runs through from irregular through to the mostly regular. And yea, total pain in the ass, and some still get me lol and I don't regret it in the slightest cause everything else is a ton easier to pick up and everything becomes much more accessible.

[hitarpetar]

the advantage of building your own decks is choosing words you will actually use. this matters if you're practicing conversation, if your goal is just to read general material then using preselected word lists makes sense

[pessimizer]

You should be using all the words. If you want to learn words about cooking, buy cookbooks. I want to read all material. I want to read extremely esoteric subjects from UNAM's press, I want to read Cervantes, I want to read cookbooks, I want to read Mexican street fotonovelas from the 70s.

> using preselected word lists makes sense

I have never used Anki for word to word translation, because there is no Spanish word that means any English word. You've restricted yourself to a particular paradigm from the beginning. I mean, do whatever you need to do to get a foothold, but you want to get away from L1 as much as possible as soon as you can.

[__float]

That makes sense as a long-term goal, but if you're still in the earlier stages it's much more fun to learn a variety of words and focus on the most common ones. Get depth at first, and later you can fill in the holes with e.g. a cookbook.

I know you consider it pseudoscience to force creating your own cards, but I do find premade decks result in a lot more leeches. How do you avoid them when relying on these thousands of auto-generated cards?

[mtalantikite]

For sure! I've gone through some pre-made verb conjugation and vocab decks -- and actually have been meaning to upload one I made for learning Bengali script -- but I still find grinding Anki decks to not be that effective for me. Which sucks, because all you hear is how magic Anki is, but I guess I've always struggled with rote memorization.

[wahnfrieden]

I made a native iOS/macOS app for discovering and mining Japanese content into Anki: https://reader.manabi.io

It's gotten quite popular enough that I've gone full-time on it

[sharperguy]

This is why for learning Chinese I use Pleco, which is a dictionary that allow has a button to instantly add any word to your flashcard list. So when I encounter a new word I just look it up and then add it to flashcards which I review each morning.

I don't know what similar tools exist for learning other languages but it does help a lot for Chinese.

[0xbeefcab]

I use yomitan + a spanish dictionary + ankiconnect for flashcard creation. i can browse whatever in spanish, hold shift and hover to see the definition(s) of a spanish word unconjugated + how its conjugated, and hit a + button to add it to my anki deck, either in context or just as a word

[brianphan1803]

I ran into the same wall, and I built a browser extension to solve it for myself: https://pickvocab.com/features/anki-integration

Now I just click any word or phrase when browsing the web, and it shows me the exact meaning in context, thanks to an AI-powered dictionary that works for any language. I save the word along with the sentence, add a quick note if I want, and later export everything straight to Anki.

It’s cut out all the friction of card creation for me. I use it daily for English and Chinese, and it’s made sticking with Anki sustainable again.