Anki Nerdery

I have used so many different resources for learning a language. Anki is right up at the top of my list of favorite language learning tools. In short, it is a flash card app. But it is the most engaging, customizable, nerdy flashcard app you can imagine and more.

Which Anki?

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The Real Anki - apps.ankiweb.net

There are quite a few knockoffs for Anki. I started with an orange one that was cheaper and did some stuff, but it didn’t capture my fancy as much (and as a result I didn’t use it consistently). I also really like supporting the open source community of nerds by using the “real” one.

User Guide - No really, it’s worth the read

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Anki User Guide - docs.ankiweb.net

This is the manual. It’s super helpful. Please don’t skip it!

A Guide on How to Learn Shit Efficiently

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Twenty Rules of Formulating Knowledge - supermemo.com

These 20 rules will help you make good flashcards instead of migraine inducing flashcards.

FSRS: The Magic Sauce

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YouTube Video by AnKing about Anki Settings - youtu.be

FSRS is the algorithm/ math equation that calculates how long to wait before it shows you the next card. It tries to wait until you almost forget the knowledge. According to someone, it seems like remembering something that was almost forgotten makes your synapses remember the information better the next time. But for me, the best part of FSRS is that I can learn the information with as little effort as possible. FSRS used to be an add-on to Anki, but it has recently been added as functionality within the main program of Anki. Because it is fairly new, it is not on by default. This video tells how to turn FSRS on and what settings to use.

Adding Audio to Your Flashcards

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I really like hearing the Dutch word on my flashcards. I use this add on:

Text to Speech Add-On - HyperTTS

Because Dutch is not a popular language, the built in Dutch voice is shit. So I bought a subscription to this company to use within the plugin:

Text to Speech AI voice - elevenlabs.io

If you are learning a more popular language (like Spanish or French), the built in voices are probably better, so you might not need to spend money. I think there might be a text to speech directly in Anki, or you can use the add-on above and just use the free services instead of paying for eleven.io. (By the way, most add-ons are free)

Sharing your decks

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Shared Decks - ankicollab.com

This add on will let you share decks with another person so you can both make edits. It’s not perfect about resolving merge conflicts, so if you find a better alternative, please let me know!

My Newest Toy

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Make flashcards from real world text - readlang.com

I recently found this website that lets you click a word you don’t know and then makes a flashcard out of the entire sentence so you can keep the context for how the word is used. Once you have collected your words, you can either practice flashcards in their app, or you can export a file in Anki formatting to import.