Pitch-Accent Anki Decks (Patreon)

Hello, Patrons! 

In the past, two separate patrons contributed their time and effort to building Anki decks that other patrons could use to support their Japanese studies. To make it easier for everyone to find and use these, I decided to put them both in this post, along with some helpful instructions. 

If you want to express your support for their efforts, I've included their PayPal/Cash App info at the bottom of this post.

Before I get to the decks, however, I want to briefly touch on what Anki is in case anyone has not heard of it yet. I think the best way will be to borrow two points from the instructions by patron Neeson:

If you're not familiar with Anki, basically it works on flashcards and showing them to you at an appropriate time to efficiently build your memory. You can even record/playback your voice whilst reviewing! More info about what Anki is here.

Anki is free and is available for most platforms. The iOS app is paid, but you can still use the web app if you choose not to purchase it.

The first deck is by patron Céu, who put together a deck with Japanese pitch accent minimal pairs so that learners can test their listening abilities using words that have similar pronunciations. You can download his deck here: Up-to-date ANKI deck (last updated March 28, 2021)

The second deck is by patron Neeson, who assembled an Anki deck that uses the native recordings and images from a large number of Japanese Phonetics lessons. You can get his deck here: DogenPhonetics.apkg.zip (last updated September 2021)

Neeson provided the following guide to getting started with Anki. Note that in these instructions he is talking about his deck specifically, but the process should be similar if you are installing Céu's deck.

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If you're not familiar with Anki, basically it works on flashcards and showing them to you at an appropriate time to efficiently build your memory. You can even record/playback your voice whilst reviewing! More info about what Anki is here.

Anki is free and is available for most platforms. The iOS app is paid, but you can still use the web app if you choose not to purchase it.

Get Anki here (or your app store for mobile).

Next, follow the first 4 steps of this guide to get setup.

Once you’ve got Anki installed and set up, we need to import the deck.

It should be pretty straight forward, just get the Anki deck .apkg file and open it. If you have the older non-native version of the deck I would recommend just deleting it.

Currently included are the native speaker examples (inc audio and images) of Dogen’s Japanese Phonetics series from lessons 6.0, 6.5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 19.1, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 28, 33 and 33.1. Cards describing phonetic patterns and rules are not included, but if you feel like these would be helpful I encourage you to make your own.

Included are two types of cards for each example, Recognition and Production. Only Recognition is enabled by default. I think Recognition is enough for most people.

• Recognition is to test yourself on your listening ability. It provides the audio, and it is up to you to do your best to hear the pattern. Repeat it out loud. You can also try drawing out the pattern, or imagining it. Recording your voice and comparing it to the native example can be useful too.
• Production is to test your ability to produce the example. The idea here is to read the sentence and reproduce it with the correct pitch pattern.

(only do this if you’re super keen) To enable Production cards, you need to manually add a “Y” to the ShowProductionCard fields of the cards you wish to enable. You can do a search-replace to add it to all the cards. You can disable Recognition cards in the same way by removing the Y (the field needs to be completely empty).

To record/playback your own voice whilst reviewing, on Windows, hit Shift-V to record, and V to playback. On Android you need to enable the recording icons from the 3 dots menu (whilst reviewing). I imagine other platforms are similar.

If you want to jump to a particular lesson you can use Create Filtered Deck (Custom Study on Android) and choose the lessons you want by their tag. If you’ve updated the deck you might need to do this to study lesson 12 in order (otherwise it will appear towards the end).

For desktop, the Anki Manual will give you answers to most questions you might have. Manuals also exist for Ankidroid and AnkiMobile.

Let me know in the comments here if you have any troubles, questions or comments!

-Neeson

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If you want to express your appreciation Céu and Neeson, you can comment below, or you can donate to them directly to show your support!

Neeson (PayPal): https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/neesonc

Céu: (Cash App) $ceualonzo

You can find both decks and Neeson's instructions also linked at the bottom of this post.

Post in the comments below if you have any problems, questions, or comments about these decks. A special thank you to Céu and Neeson for their work, and as always thanks to everyone for your support!

Dōgen