How to use Free Software to learn Japanese, and more.

Setting up Anki

December 28, 2020 — Tatsumoto
anki

Anki is a Spaced repetition system (SRS), a program which allows you to create, manage and review flashcards.

There are currently many different SRS’s available. Mnemosyne is considered to be a good Anki alternative. However, I recommend that you stick with Anki. It’s cross-platform, rich with features, and supports addons, written in python. There are many add-ons available that greatly aid language study, including a few of my own. Because of the add-ons it's in my opinion really the only SRS application worth taking seriously.

What's most important, Anki is libre software that respects the users' freedom and community. Unlike Supermemo, for example. But you can't use that on GNU/Linux and Android anyway.

Many language learners find Anki useful to quickly memorize (frontload) core vocabulary of their target language (TL), as well as boost their learning in the later stages.

It should be noted, however, that memorization of most vocabulary throughout all your language learning phases should be done by studying sentences. You will be making vocabulary cards in the process as well, but much less so, and mostly for nouns.

The only downside of Anki is that it can be a little bit difficult to learn how to use. Depending on how you use it you can either greatly decrease your time spent studying or make using Anki a living hell for yourself. If you find yourself confused about how Anki works, it is recommended that you read the Anki manual. However, because it's highly detailed and technical, the bulk of this article will focus on explaining the most useful Anki settings to help you get things up and running as quickly as possible.

Installation

There are two main ways to install Anki.

  • Using your distribution's package manager (pacman, apt, dnf, etc.).
  • Using pip.

The first method guarantees that you'll have the right dependencies installed, but you may get an old version of Anki. Distro maintainers are not very good at keeping Anki up-to-date. The second method guarantees that you get the latest version, but you need to make sure you have all the dependencies installed.

Please don't install Anki via FlatPak, Snap packages or other non-native package managers. People have been reporting various problems connected to these installation methods.

If you are running Wayland, please revert to Xorg to avoid possible issues.

Using your package manager

  • On Arch Linux the official binary from GitHub can be obtained by installing anki-official-binary-bundle.
  • If you're not an Arch Linux user, I'm sure you'll find Anki in repositories of your distribution as well.
  • Debian users and users of other stable distros should note that outdated versions of Anki work poorly with most add-ons, especially new ones. Use a version released at least 6 months ago or newer.

Using pip

The latest version can be installed with the aqt package.

$ pip install --upgrade aqt
  • pip places executable files in ~/.local/bin/ by default. Don't forget to add this directory to the PATH.
  • To run Anki, type anki in the terminal and press Enter. However, having a desktop entry is more convenient. Download this file and save it in ~/.local/share/applications.
  • If after installing Anki with pip Fcitx doesn't work, open your ~/.profile (~/.pam_environment or a similar file) and add export QT_PLUGIN_PATH=/usr/lib/qt/plugins.
  • Anki depends on mpv to play audio. You have to install it separately.
  • You may have to install PyQt5 as well.

Troubleshooting

If you're still unable to install or run Anki, refer to Anki Manual and Anki Betas guide.

Sync your mobile device

By signing up for AnkiWeb you can keep your cards synchronized across multiple machines. You can also sync between devices. Install AnkiDroid on your Android device and sync your collection. This will allow you to review your flashcards when you're outside and don't have access to your computer.

To sync your collection on desktop, press Y or click "Sync" on the toolbar.

I must warn you in advance though. Don't sync your collection with AnkiWeb if you are a heavy user of subs2srs. subs2srs decks take a lot of disk space. Use a different Anki profile to store them.

To make multiple profiles, press File > Switch profile.

Import an example mining deck

After you install Anki, you need to set up a Note Type to keep your flashcards formatted as you like. Anki comes with a few basic Note Types but they aren't suited for learning Japanese.

Because making your own Note Type is a tedious process consisting of essentially adding the fields you need and copy-pasting html and css, I recommend you to import a pre-made mining deck.

A sample mining deck can be found here:

Japanese language support

Press "Tools" > "Add-ons" > "Get Add-ons" to download and install the AJT Furigana add-on. Then restart. The add-on is bundled with mecab, so you don't need to install any additional dependencies.

Anki settings

I recommend the following settings.

Preferences

You can access preferences by going to Tools > Preferences… on Anki’s main window.

  • Learn ahead limit. I recommend keeping the value close to the default of 20 minutes. Mine is 35 minutes. When you finish your daily reviews and new cards, Anki will start ignoring intervals of cards in the learning queue less than this value and showing the cards to you right away. This is good for cards with small intervals because it lets you finish your reps without breaking the flow and waiting for your cards to become ready to be reviewed. But if you set the Learn ahead limit too high cards with longer learning steps will be shown to you too early. Keeping the value on the lower side enforces the wait time of your steps. If you set this to 0, Anki will always wait the full delay, so it's not optimal either.

  • Show new cards after reviews. You always want to finish your reviews first, and you don’t want new cards to slow you down. You can choose Show new cards before reviews if you are consistent and feel confident that you will never have a backlog of Anki reviews. Mixing is probably the worst way and will confuse you when a new card pops up after a streak of mature cards.

  • Anki 2021 scheduler. This is a new scheduler that comes with Anki 2.1.45+. If your version of Anki doesn't show this option, it has been already enabled by default. Otherwise, make sure to enable it. The old V1 scheduler was buggy and clunky. The new one fixes its issues.

    Main killer features:

    • You can have subdecks and review all of them at once, the cards will be properly mixed when reviewing.
    • You can learn new cards in filtered decks. Filtered decks no longer reset learning steps when rebuilt or emptied.

preferences

Options Groups

Each deck has an Options Group attached to it. The subdeck options will override the parent deck options. Click Deck > Options to access Options Groups settings. You can hit Manage to create additional options groups.

Warning: If you're running Anki 2.1.45+, you will be presented with a new Options Groups settings dialog. As usual, Anki developers are making the app worse with each release. The new layout won't match with the screenshots shown on this page. If you want to bring up the old version of the dialog, click "Deck Options" while holding Shift.

Below are the options I recommended using.

New cards

  • Steps (in minutes): This is the number of times you have to answer good on the card before it graduates. I recommend beginners to stick to the default learning steps of 1 10. When you get more familiar with Anki you can add your custom steps and experiment with them. But don't overdo it: too many steps will make you spend too much time in Anki for no substantial gain in retention. The learn ahead option set in the previous section will make sure that you won't be shown cards with custom steps too early.

    You can experiment with so-called micro steps if you see that remembering new cards is more difficult than you thought. This means specifying an interval in seconds instead of minutes. For the new settings menu you just type 30s for 30 seconds. For the old menu you need to specify a decimal like this: 0.5.

  • New cards/day: The default value of 20 cards is very reasonable and manageable for most users. However, if you feel overwhelmed by the amount of reviews you have to do, lower it to about 10 new cards a day. Doing more cards is also possible if you can keep up with the review load, but generally in the AJATT community it is advised to learn no more than 30 new cards a day.

    As you've noticed, I keep my setting at 0. That's simply because I use the Learn now Button add-on to manually pick and learn cards from my Sentence Bank.

  • Starting ease: Set it to 131% and you won't have to worry about Ease at all. Ease is very nasty because by default it gradually decreases when you fail cards or answer "Hard" on them. This leads to intervals growing slower, and eventually you fall into Ease Hell. Similarly, pressing "Easy" causes the Ease to increase. It drags the cards' intervals along causing them to grow faster than normal, which leads to forgetting in the future.

    • If you've been using Anki before applying this setting, you should refold your collection with the RefoldEase add-on.
    • If you would like to learn more about Ease Hell, watch this video.

new cards

Reviews

  • Maximum reviews/day: This value sets an arbitrary cap on the amount of reviews you can do each day. If the cap is low, your due cards won't magically disappear after you've done with the reviews. Instead they will form a backlog of likely forgotten cards. Because you want to review all your due cards every day, set this at a high value.

  • Interval modifier: Now here is where it gets interesting. When you answer Good on a card, its interval is recalculated:

    New interval = current interval * Card's ease * Interval Modifier

    By default, new interval is 2.5 * last interval. At its default value of 100%, Interval Modifier does nothing. However, this is not what you want because you've just lowered Starting Ease to 131% in the previous step. To restore the balance bump Interval Modifier up to 192%. 1.92 * 1.31 is roughly equal to 2.5. Later after you've used Anki for a couple of months and have had high retention, you can increase the value further and do less reviews. If you forget too many cards, it is recommended to lower it a bit.

    If you've used the RefoldEase add-on from the previous step, your Interval Modifier should be already set to the right value.

  • Easy bonus and Hard interval: Ignore these settings as you should never use the “hard” and “easy” buttons.

    hard-easy

    As I mentioned in the Starting ease section, the “hard” and “easy” buttons have counter-intuitive effects on Anki’s algorithm, which causes long-term problems with Ease of your cards.

  • Maximum interval: Intervals of your cards can never increase beyond this limit. I advise setting it as big as possible. The default is 36500 days, which is equal to 100 years. However, you can decrease this to a smaller number if you want to ensure long-term retention.

reviews

Lapses

  • Steps (in minutes): Works similar to the setting in the New Cards tab, except it’s for cards you've pressed “Again” on. It affects how well you will relearn your lapsed cards. Beginners should set one learning step and observe their experience. The default of 10 minutes is okay but I prefer a slightly bigger one. Later you can experiment with more learning steps.

  • New interval: You often still somewhat remember a word in Japanese even if you fail it. A different context or another word, or studying it on a different day may jog your memory. Thus we don’t need to fully penalize a fail here.

    I use a new interval of 55% so as to not completely reset a card to 0. The recommended range in the AJATT community is between 50 and 75%.

    For a word cards deck you may set it to about 30-40% because word cards are noticeably harder than sentence cards.

  • Leech threshold and Leech action: Leeches are cards that you keep on forgetting and relearning over and over. Keep the leech threshold low (4-6 lapses) and suspend the cards when they become leeches. You have to properly deal with leeches instead of letting them rotate in your deck and slow you down.

    Possible ways to deal with leeches:

    • Delete them: For those small minority of cards that just won’t stick, it’s best to just get rid of them. Instead of wasting a bunch of time on a single leech, it’s more productive to learn 5 normal cards in its place.

    • Keep them for later: If you can't remember a word after 4-5 lapses, it means that your brain hasn't been primed yet to acquire it. Wait a month or two and try again. Often you'll find that cards that wouldn't stick before had become very easy.

    • Make a new card for the same target word: If a word is of high value to you, you can try to memorize a different representation of it. Find a different example sentence in your Sentence Bank or online. For example, on weblio.

lapses

GTK theme

Anki uses the Qt toolkit. To tell Anki to use your GTK theme, install qt5-styleplugins and set the following environment variable:

export QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=gtk2

Then relogin or reboot.

Tags: anki