On my very back burner is Chinese, which I studied decades ago. But being the Anki obsessive that I am, I have been slowly preparing a deck to use when I resume studying Mandarin in a couple years. I want a deck with both traditional and simplified forms, and some vocabulary terms in Simplified form. Attached to this post (hopefully), is the first part of that deck, comprising the first 1000 characters in frequency order. It is subdivided into groups of 100 and then groups of 10. I would welcome comments and corrections, and possibly some additions in the form of tags for various courses (i.e. NPCR_vol1_ch1 etc.). For frequency, I am using Jun Da's Modern Chinese Character Frequency List, which contains 10K characters in frequency order. You can get further information on his website regarding its sources and creation. My method to create this deck: 1) I started with an Anki deck entitled "Top 3000 Chinese Characters", which was created (I think) from The most common Chinese characters in order of frequency. But I started this some time ago and only recently began working on it again, so I am unsure of the origin of that Anki deck. I used this deck just so as not to have to enter 100% of the content by hand. 2) When I work on it, I open in different browser tabs, the frequency list above, the most common (3000) character list above, wiktionary main page, and the nciku English-Chinese dictionary. 3) Then starting where I left off, I copy/paste the next character from the frequency list into my Anki browser and find the entry in the 3000 list. I add the frequency number in a field, then search wiktionary and the most common character page (via cntrl-F). I then use the latter to add a traditional form if it exists, move the English definition into its own field, and add vocabulary items containing that character from either the most common list (need to keep using search to find entries under other characters if any) and wiktionary (where such actually have its own entry instead of just a stub). Sometimes the most common page does not contain the pinyin for an entry, which I then look up in the nciku dictionary. I don't use the latter much for definitions since they seem all over the place. After that, I move the English definitions of the vocabulary entries into its own combined field, and finally use the change deck function of Anki to move the character into already prepared sub-deck it belongs to. The above process for each character can take only 30 seconds or a couple minutes or more, depending on how many vocabulary items I find. I use no other sources for vocabulary items, for example the HSK lists (old or new), but just what I find in the above sources. When I start studying Chinese again I will do something I don't do with German or Spanish, which is to keep a notebook by my side and write each character 2-3 times regardless of how well I know it. I will be glad to share more in the future when I get parts of it done in 1000 character batches, and I am planning to go to about 5000-6000. There are various other Chinese decks on AnkiWeb, but none that I know of that go this far, or contain what I have put in. I am not including example sentences because the vocabulary entries themselves take up so much space in many cases. The most important thing to me is having both traditional and simplified forms since I studied both in the past (De Francis series plus PCR), and at least De Francis included simplified forms in the otherwise all traditional material. Anyway, hopefully I can upload the anki deck here successfully, and any interested can download it successfully. Note that it can only be associated with the desktop version, but if someone wishes to reupload it to AnkiWeb that's OK with me.
Thanks to da Big Dog it looks like I was able to successfully upload the deck despite the extension not initially being supported. If someone can download it and verify it works and looks OK, that would be helpful. On my offer above for someone to reupload this to AnkiWeb from where it can be shared more widely, if you do so, please include a link to this thread at Polydog so that users can get the info above on it. Plus it might generate a little traffic here or at least help with long-term search results.
I downloaded it. A big turn-off for me was that you have it divided into so many decks. The cards look ok, but I won't download it again in this form.
The reason I divide decks into so many sub-decks, is to study exactly how many cards I want to at any time. With other languages I usually put them in groups of 30-60. While one can use the global setting for how many new cards Anki offers you per day, I don't want to affect other decks. Also, if you stop in the middle of reviewing, you have not fully finished new cards you initially fail. Nonetheless, it is exceedingly fussy. Since I normally combine those smaller sub-decks into larger ones as I study and know most of the contents well, I might as well just make a copy like that to begin with to offer here. Would you recommend just one deck of 1000 cards with no sub-divisions? While I intend the total eventually to be 5000-6000 cards, I initially can share it better with at least some division into 1000s. Or not? Re the cards themselves, do they look like something that would be helpful to you? Or do you only study vocabulary in Anki instead of characters in partial isolation? My intention is also to make a separate vocabulary deck, starting with the HSK vocab. Don't be shy of giving me any negative feedback. While I am going to use it myself like this, if I can change some things to make it more useful to others, I don't mind making a second version if it doesn't involve an extreme amount of effort.
1) Judging from what's most popular of the shared decks at anki, I think decks of 1000 are a good idea 2) The cards looked nice to me. Well manicured, with lots of information. 3) There are many different ways to study chinese writing, and I prefer my own personal method, so I probably wouldn't use cards like this if I had to do it all over again. I can't really tell how you are planning to study Chinese, or even what your goals are from your posts here. But I can make some comments and tell you what works for me. I think that you are correct to learn both simplified and traditional at the same time, and to learn characters in isolation. It has suddenly dawned on me that I don't have a "how to learn Chinese script" post in the home directory. I promise to write one in the near future. When figuring out how to learn characters, one has to consider the final goal, and make sure all the steps will lead up to that. Regarding the script, I want to be able to read with understanding and correct pronunciation. Although writing isn't a goal, I've found from experience that, especially with difficult scripts, it supports the goals. Sentences are made up of words, which are made up of characters. So I need to understand, be able to pronounce and write sentences, words, and single characters. Now lets talk about anki. Sentences. Other than in the beginning, I try to avoid doing sentence cards, but Mandarin and Japanese are exceptions. Both L1 to L2 & L2 to L1 cards are usually advisable, and in the beginning, when I'm still working with Pimsleur, I do this. But at the stage I'm at now, I only do L2 to L1. It's really mostly a pronunciation check. L1 to L2 is just too time consuming. There is a wonderful Chinese sentence set of anki decks available (Mastering Chinese Characters) with sound (pictures too, but I don't use them). This is my only source of new vocabulary now, and I'm not writing sentences, since Mandarin is "on hold". Words. I do both L1 to L2 & L2 to L1 cards. I don't write words in isolation, because that gets taken care of at the sentence level. Single Characters. I do both keyword/pronunciation to L2 and L2 to keyword/pronunciation cards. For the keyword/pronunciation to L2 card, I draw the character. For the L2 to keyword/pronunciation cards, I just pronounce it and make sure I understand the main meaning. So that's how I do anki with Chinese. Some notes: a) I don't like extra stuff on my cards. Just the things I mentioned and nothing more. b) If there is anything you want to be anal about when grading your reps, be anal about tones. Always fail a card if your tone is wrong. c) I recommend using the Heisig mnemonic method. It's a great memory hook. However, I don't recommend working your way through the whole book, unless you are in a super intense full time course or something. I have found that it's much better to learn the characters as I encounter them; they stick much better. I hate having a big anki deck full of stuff I'm not using; it's extremely inefficient. I think learning characters in isolation is practically a necessity for westerners, but learning characters before they can be heavily put to use is rarely a good idea.
Big Dog, Thanks for the honest and detailed feedback. Again while I have my own purposes in making this deck, I would like to share it if it can be of use to others. I can copy it and then eliminate the sub-decks (have to use a different profile in Anki to do that). When I get this done, can I replace the attached file with the new one? I agree with the importance of tones. I would definitely fail a card if I didn't get it right. With the additional layer of decoding that Chinese and other languages have, a more difficult layer than just a different alphabet like Cyrillic, along with tones, and the complication of both traditional and simplified characters, a western learner has a difficult row to hoe. With that in mind, I am probably going to restart by doing something idiosyncratic. I plan to revise the pronunciation and slowly start a course, whether FSI or my old De Francis books, and then start drilling my Anki character deck in earnest. While you disagree with that approach, I want to eliminate the most difficult layer of decoding first. Personally years ago, I never had much problem remembering characters, *as long as* I kept writing them, even in isolation. So while I know others swear by Heising, that doesn't seem necessary to me. If anything, I might purchase An's Cracking the Chinese Puzzles series, since an analytic approach appeals to me. After 3 years of De Francis, I had probably learned only about 1200 characters, not sure of the amount of vocabulary, and a couple hundred chengyu. Thanks again.
This is an excellent book; very deep. I have to admit I bought it and never really did anything more than page through it, but I still have a very high opinion of it.
I have it at home, but I'm away on vacation now. I think there was a good summary written up on HTLAL several years ago; you might try searching there.
