New Japanese Phonetics Anki Deck with Native Recordings!

NOTE: Please see the updated post for current links to the Anki deck. This post is no longer being updated.

Good afternoon, Patrons!

You may remember that last year I posted an Anki deck created by Patron Céu (updated in March this year; see this post). This deck was built with minimal pairs such that learners could test their listening abilities using words that have similar pronunciations. Today, I'm very happy to bring you another Anki deck!

Patron Neeson has assembled an Anki deck that uses the native recordings and images from a large number of Japanese Phonetics lessons. I paid Neeson a small fee for his time and energy, and would encourage any patrons that find the deck useful to consider donating to his PayPal linked below.

Here is a short read-me that Neeson kindly wrote up for the 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 .apkg from here 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, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 19.1, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26 and 28. 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.

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

ps. If you feel like donating, you can through Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/neesonc

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Again, thank you to Neeson for putting this together, we truly appreciate your time and effort!

If you have any questions or comments related to this post, feel free to comment below. Best of luck with your future studies, and talk to you again soon!

Dōgen