Learn Japanese Today

I found myself asking that question the other night as I was perusing some other Japanese learning blogs. The term SRS just kept popping up and I couldn’t quite get what it was. I knew it was some piece of language learning equipment, but it took me forever to find out what it actually was.

SRS stands for “spaced repitition system,” and it’s essentially a flashcard program with a complex algorithm attached to decide when you should see the next card. You just plug in your cards and then study them. Seeing the same card again with some space gives you time to remember your mistakes and not make them again.

I’m new to the SRS game, so I don’t feel comfortable putting up a review yet, but right now I’m tooling around with an SRS called Anki that seems to be pretty cool. It’s kind of geared towards Japanese in that you can enter in the kanji, kana, and meaning for any card. It seems pretty useful for retention so far, but only time will tell. I’ll try to put up a review tomorrow.

Some other SRS’s include Mnemosyne , which is a very simple, bare-bones SRS, and KhatsuMemo which you can use on cell phones.

Special Thanks to Khatsumoto over at AJATT for pointing this out to me.

Also, sorry about the short posts lately. I have a Japanese friend staying with me, so I’ve been busy doing fun stuff with him. I’ll have a review tomorrow for sure.

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