Which deck to use for early Japanese learning

Study Subjects Japanese
#1

I’m a bit confused about how this works. Should I add multiple decks or just one? I was inclined to start with either the JLPT N5 deck or the Genki Complete deck, but I assume that if there’s overlap between decks I’d end up with duplicate cards in my learning. So should I just use the 10k deck and ignore the others so that I don’t have to redo a bunch of lessons once I move on to the 10k deck?

I tried searching the forums but didn’t find any clarification about how to approach the various decks.

I guess for context, I’m level 3 on WaniKani and very early on with Bunpro, so I’m still in the process of figuring out the best set of learning resources for me, but so far it seems I’m much more suited to SRS learning than textbook reading.

Thanks!

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#2

Welcome to Kitsun! Hope you find it useful as I do, it’s been super useful in Japanese studies.

There’s actually a feature to work around that! Well, there’s actually two kinda :joy: So, if you know you’ve already encountered a word in a deck before, you can just hibernate it during the lesson.

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If you think you’ve seen a word before but you’re not sure, you can go to the cards management page, check for cards that are both Level 0 and Known, and the hibernate all of them.

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This is also very useful when you’re starting a new deck.

You can undo any hibernations by just using the “awaken” option.

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#3

This is very helpful, thank you!

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#4

No problem!

To be honest I recommend eventually having multiple decks and doing a bit of each at a time since it provides more diversity in what you’re learning. For new people however, I would recommend starting out with a small amount of sets that focus on what you see as the most important areas to study. The JLPT, the Genki, and the 10k are all great options. :smile:

Another deck you may want to check out is either the Katakana 4.5 Set or the Wasei Eigo Set.

The Katakana Set is a huge and fun set where you can learn a lot of words imported into Japanese (a lot of which come from English). It’s worth studying even if you’re a natural English speaker because a lot of words won’t use the sounds you expect they would.

The Wasei Eigo Set is a smaller & more focused set I made to focus on Katakana words that don’t mean what you think they would. For example, ネクタイ sounds like and means “necktie” and is easy enough to remember, but コンセント sounds like “consent” and actually means “electrical outlet”

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#5

IIRC, bunpro’s grammar points use example sentences limited to the vocabulary of their respective N level (eg. N5 points only use N5 vocab). While I do use Kitsun’s JLPT deck and the 10k at the same time like some sort of animal, I don’t think it’s necessary. There’s so much overlap between the early vocab that any of those deck options should be fine on their own, just pick what looks/feels the best to you.

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#6

Welcome Claire in the moonlight!

For people coming from WK, I recommend the 10k deck and here is why:

  1. Cards can be managed by WK level. You can hibernate all cards that use Kanji from WK levels above your level very easily.
  2. You can start with only kana vocab if you like.
  3. It’s a well made deck and has overlap with the other decks you are considering.

If you absolutely want to keep pace with Genki, then the Genki deck makes more sense.

If you are learning specifically to sit for the N5, then, naturally, the N5 deck makes most sense.

If you pick either of the latter two, you would be able to hibernate any words you learn in those decks when you inevitably join us on the dark side 10k deck.

If you need help setting up, just drop your discord username here and I’d be happy to assist over a screenshare and call.

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#7

I might as well ask you, but is there way to search for cards of WK Lvl X that are in frequency/index below a set threshold (eg. All wk level 1 items in the 1k)? I’ve been doing this to bump up lessons for common items I should know the kanji for while still leaving some breathing room for cards in the normal ordering.

When I do it using the tags the search seems to work as a logical OR instead of AND, so I ended up just doing a search for the appropriate WK tag and manually adding everything below the target index.

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#8

I’ve been playing around looking for a way to do this since you posted the question. I’m afraid I can’t find a way.

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#9

Hi!! I think most of the people here have already said my answer so I’ll just go ahead and tell you that I adore your avatar and the art style :kithappy:

Did you make it yourself?

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