
Anki – Powerful, intelligent flashcards - amjd
http://ankisrs.net/
======
kissgyorgy
A lot of people point out other software.

The whole point is the algorithm [1] which how Anki schedules your cards. It
is based on Supermemo's [2], and improved a lot over the years, so I think
it's the most optimal from all of the SRS software's out there.

Also I think Anki has a very simple UI, not sure how people can find it
complicated. You just add cards, and by review you press a button, that's all.
Cards are just HTML, but you can edit them with the built in WYSIWYG editor.

Anki is great for learning programming languages! See the Janki method [3] and
another blog post [4] how to use it effectively. I found the last one
especially helpful, and started learning Programming languages based on that.
It works great. You can also learn linux commands, whatever.

People also asked for sharing cards. It is very important to make your own
cards progressively and learn from those, because you know what you need to
emphasize for the info to stick. Just use small information on every card, use
your own terms, and it will be much easier to learn, compared to some random
deck you downloaded.

[1]: [http://ankisrs.net/docs/manual.html#what-spaced-
repetition-a...](http://ankisrs.net/docs/manual.html#what-spaced-repetition-
algorithm-does-anki-use)

[2]:
[http://www.supermemo.com/english/ol/sm2.htm](http://www.supermemo.com/english/ol/sm2.htm)

[3]: [http://sivers.org/srs](http://sivers.org/srs)

[4]: [http://www.jackkinsella.ie/2011/12/05/janki-
method.html](http://www.jackkinsella.ie/2011/12/05/janki-method.html)

~~~
tauon
> most optimal from all of the SRS software's out there

You should check out [http://ankiapp.com](http://ankiapp.com)

The SRS algorithm uses scoring prioritization instead of intervals and I've
found it to be more optimal than Supermemo/Anki.

I was an Anki desktop user for over 8 years, but I always became overwhelmed
by the number of reviews due that would accumulate if I didn't stay active
with the app almost every day (review hell). I've found the priority SRS model
much easier when studying in small chunks (5-10 minutes at a time, 2-3 times a
day).

~~~
egh
Why is this named AnkiApp? I won't use software that creates deliberate
confusion by using the same name as another application with the same purpose.

~~~
y4mi
because its anki for iphone

there is also an ankidroid apk for android

i think he meant to say that using the desktop appliation isn't really good to
stay on top of the cards, while using a phone makes it very manageable.

~~~
pgcudahy
The link is not to Damien's AnkiMobile which is the legit Anki for the iphone
([https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ankimobile-
flashcards/id3734...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ankimobile-
flashcards/id373493387?mt=8)) but to some other Anki I've never heard of.

------
davycro
Medical student here. I've tried many flashcard programs (StudyBlue, Quizlet,
gFlashcard, MentalCase, and more), and Anki is by far the best for my needs.

One thing that puts Anki in an orbital beyond the other programs is the
ImageOccusion editor add-on [1]. This lets you screenshot an image, draw
rectangles over labels within that image, and then generate a flashcard for
each label. This works insanely well for learning anatomy.

I remember about a month ago where I had two hours to learn the names of all
the tracts and nuclei inside of the brainstem for a readiness quiz. It took
about 10 minutes to create flashcards for them all, and an hour to memorize. I
passed the quiz. Days later fellow classmates were still struggling to
remember the same information.

1 - [http://tmbb.bitbucket.org/image-
occlusion-2.html](http://tmbb.bitbucket.org/image-occlusion-2.html)

~~~
Amarok
It's truly a small world, the guy who wrote that plugin is a med student at my
fac, but I'd never heard of it. Thanks for introducing me to an awesome
plugin, my anatomy classes would've been a breeze with it.

On a more serious note, I've been seeing some comments asking to share Anki
decks. This is fine but you should read this disclaimer first (it's about
language learning, but it should apply to other areas as well).
[http://fluent-forever.com/personal-anki-decks/](http://fluent-
forever.com/personal-anki-decks/)

In short, Anki works better for reviewing rather than learning things for the
first time. So the most efficient way to use it would be building your own
deck for a more personal experience.

However, if using shared decks, it's best to only add cards to your review log
after you've learned the underlying concepts (so that it doesn't break your
review rhythm).

------
bedhead
I used Anki for French and am currently using it for Spanish. It's TERRIFIC.
It's the best method for brute-force memorization of vocabulary and
conjugation. While it's a bit lengthy to set it up, the creation process
actually helps with the memorization.

Remember to only use photos where you can, dont use english words in it. The
whole key is to skipping the "translation" step in your brain. Learn by
thinking of the action, not by thinking of the english word and its
translation. Getting rid of that "lookup" step is the key to getting good at
learning a new language.

~~~
Larrikin
This technique might be helpful for the extremely basics, but what is
something meaningful you would put on a card for something like hope or
dignity that wouldn't be easily confused? I find pictures helpful but usually
I use them to illustrate the example sentence and not the word itself.

I agree your original language is a crutch but what I've found has made get
better faster is native language translations of the word. It takes a while to
get comfortable doing that, but once you start doing it often enough it works
very well.

~~~
krisgee
> I find pictures helpful but usually I use them to illustrate the example
> sentence and not the word itself.

And this is why you are supposed to create your own flashcards. Everyone
learns differently and your self-guided learning is no different.

Personally I use pictured even for abstract stuff, I just try and find a
picture that says "hopeful" or "amazing" for me and then I use that as my
picture since I figure it'll forge the connection.

------
lettergram
My friend and I have been using this for years. My friend took it pretty
serious this year:

[http://rs.io/2014/04/05/anki-10000-cards-
later.html](http://rs.io/2014/04/05/anki-10000-cards-later.html)

It's really useful for courses in college, especially Language, Biology,
Chemistry, and Physics for definitions, pronunciations, systems, etc.

Math and Computer Science is a bit hard since a lot of that requires practice
and it takes time to figure out how to structure those cards.

Anyways, highly recommend them.

~~~
ralmeida
I've been using a similar method to learn some German vocabulary for about 8
months now (using Flashcards Deluxe, not Anki, though), and I could specially
relate to the "Two-way connections" section of your friend's article.

For example, my deck is currently German to English. As an experiment, once I
reversed the deck for a while (making it English to German) and suddenly it
became much harder. Maybe the solution is using two-way decks for vocabulary
acquiring, so that you can not only read a word in German and understand it,
but also want to - for example - search for something in German on Google and
know it.

Or, maybe the way to go (for languages, at last) is just set the deck to
Source Language* to Destination Language (in my case, English to German).
Anyone has experience with that?

The linked article about "Why" questions was also a good find for me
([http://rs.io/2014/02/25/why-questions-reveal-
structure.html](http://rs.io/2014/02/25/why-questions-reveal-structure.html)).

* Actually, English is not even my first language, but I'm comfortable with it enough to consider it a strong enough base to build on another language, mostly because there's more material in English than Portuguese about pretty much anything.

~~~
seren
I am using memrise.com which works pretty well to learn some vocabulary. You
can learn pre-made lists contributed by users, and does not require any set
up.

~~~
MLR
Have a look at Duolingo if you like Memrise, it's a more in depth language
learning tool that uses the same kind of ideas.

~~~
ralmeida
Duolingo is great, I use it too and know people who got results with it. I
don't think it particularly shines on general vocabulary acquiring though¹, so
that's where Memrise or a spaced repetition flashcard system like Anki or any
other enters the picture.

¹Actually, this is sort of covered by the translation exercises, but since
there is not a system to manage the reviewing of new words you learn there, I
think it's inferior to a flashcard system.

------
scottharveyco
I use Anki almost every day (for language learning) and from a user interface
it is a terrible piece of software. It is inconsistent and not at all
intuitive, even simple tasks usually require looking up documentation or
tutorials.

That being said it is still the best software out there that I've found for
this type of thing. I hope something better comes along at some point.

~~~
jliechti1
If you want to try an alternative, look at Mnemosyne:

[http://mnemosyne-proj.org/](http://mnemosyne-proj.org/)

I use this daily for my foreign language studies. It has less features than
Anki, but the interface is pretty clean, intuitive to use, and has a powerful
plugin system. Plus, the whole thing is open source, written in Python, and
highly extensible.

~~~
mitchty
Is there an iOS client perchance? I don't see anything listed specifically at
the page.

~~~
whyever
You can run it on a server and use it over http. To my knowledge, there are
only (unofficial) clients for Android.

~~~
mitchty
I found a few apps that appear to sync, but they don't work all that great.

Maybe I should build an app for ios as a side project.

------
rrreese
I've been using Anki to learn German, specifically getting a handle on the
gender of nouns. Its been remarkably successful, since the data is essentially
random, I can't imagine how I would remember it without using this tool.

I've also got a maths and a stats deck where I've been adding formulas (it
supports Latex) as I progress in a couple of courses I've been taking. If you
are studying at University, School, doing a MOOC or learning a language Anki
is an incredible tool.

The main problem is that you really need to be using it most days. If you fall
behind your backlog builds up and its use as a tool becomes much less useful.
I commute on the tube most days so that hasn't been much of an issue for me,
but when on holiday, traveling etc its easy to fall behind.

------
danshipper
I've been using Anki to remember the books I read. I take notes as I'm reading
and then transfer the important parts to Anki after I'm done. It's a pretty
effective system.

------
philfreo
If you're interested in this you should also check out
[http://quizlet.com](http://quizlet.com)

Not strictly SRS but much better UI, mobile apps, audio, etc.

~~~
barry-cotter
Who cares? The point of Anki is the SRS, the rest is mere sparkles. Sparkles
are awesome but Anki is a full featured, usable, extensible SRS.

~~~
dalacv
I care about UI.

~~~
solarmist
Sure, it's important, but it's like buying a pretty car that doesn't have a
gas peddle attached to anything. It is THE key feature of the product.

SRS is really THAT important to flash cards.

------
ralmeida
One thing I've been doing in the past months, with great results, is
memorizing passwords. I don't know how prevalent this is in the US, but here
in Brazil, we use a lot of cards with chips, so that you type a password
instead of signing a paper. To make it worse, there are sometimes different
passwords for the same service in different situations (for example, most
banks use a 4 or 6-digit password for debit purchases and a different 6 or
8-digit password for Internet Banking).

There are also credit card passwords, employee-issued benefit cards (I for
example have a different card - and different passwords - for a meal card, a
groceries card and a fuel card).

So, lately I've been randomly generating those and memorizing them with
flashcards in a spaced repetition system. Has worked very well for me, with
about 10 random 4-8 digit numeric passwords to remember.

~~~
tomsthumb
Please tell me you encrypt your anki deck, or something....

This could be a _huge_ problem if your phone/laptop/whatever is stolen.

~~~
Micaiah_Chang
I was also concerned about this issue, and have instead taken a nice medium
path: After changing a password, I would try to log into the service at
approximately the same intervals the Anki algorithm dictates until I feel the
interval is long enough (i.e. I can reproduce it after two weeks with no
reminder, which corresponds to a forgetting curve of about a month later).
Just because I won't use the program doesn't mean I won't use the idea!

Ideally I would have a reminder in my Anki deck to log into some service, but
I spend most of the time on Anki via phone and it'd be a PITA to stop my
current session and laboriously type out long passphrases on the tiny iphone
screen.

I'd be interested if anyone else has found a better solution than this.

~~~
ZoFreX
That's brilliant!

To avoid doing it on your phone, could you put those cards in a separate deck,
or use tagging?

------
chrisBob
Free for the computer and android but _$24.99_ for iOS? That seems like a
strange price scheme.

~~~
solarmist
It's still very worth it. It's the one app I'll never uninstall.

~~~
rasengan0
Agreed. Years ago, it took me a few weeks to see the utility of Anki, then I
bought the iOS app to support the developer's efforts. I use Anki more
frequently on Android however. If you are averse to the price, sometimes there
are sales you can check:
[http://appshopper.com/education/ankisrs](http://appshopper.com/education/ankisrs)
but in the goodwill of giving back when you benefit, pay what you can.

------
stockninja
a great article about using anki to improve as a programmer:
[http://www.jackkinsella.ie/2011/12/05/janki-
method.html](http://www.jackkinsella.ie/2011/12/05/janki-method.html)

------
JabavuAdams
I use this every day, on my commute. Currently focusing on:

Physics

Python module stuff. It's not my main language, so I tend to forget exact
names for functions in modules. I.e. what was that function that did that
thing? Is it in os or os.path? If I look something up on stack overflow or in
the Python module docs, I tend to create an Anki card for it.

Same for Cocoa / Obj-C

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Did you make your own Physics cards too?

~~~
JabavuAdams
Yeah, but it's slow going. LaTeX rendering helps. I'm slowly working through
Classical EM and non-relativistic QM.

------
yfefyf
I used to be a SuperMemo user for several years and accumulated more than six
thousands items. It has advanced algorithms. Both Anki and Mnemosyne are based
on the algorithm of SuperMemo 2(its version is 16 now). And there are several
pieces of articles about human memory on its website which are very helpful.

But about a year ago, I gave up Supermemo. Because it's really buggy and
bloated. I was so worried about my data that I used to back up my data into a
zip file every day. Then I decided that I shouldn't trust a buggy closed
source software like SuperMemo to protect my data. If it died, I would have
trouble converting my data to other formats.

When I was considering the alternatives, I chose Mnemosyne instead of Anki.
Because Mnemosyne seems cleaner, and its author is doing some research on
human memory which made me think that its algorithm could be better than Anki.

~~~
wahnfrieden
Unfortunately there's no sign of progress on the Mnemosyne research project,
it looks unlikely to ever happen at this point. It uses the same algorithm as
Anki (SM-2) as its base. Not to say they are equivalent though - both
(especially Anki) add many refinements to the basic algorithm.

------
gotofritz
I use it a lot for language learning and brushing up on those obscure nuggets
of programming knowledge that tend to be asked at interviews.

The interface is quite clunky, but it's good enough, and with Latex and media
support quite powerful. Probably not fluffy enough for the general public,
though.

~~~
3rd3
I think you hit the nail on the head with this summary apart from that you
forgot to mention that the syncing across multiple devices works quite well
too.

------
gailees
Mattan Griffel of One Month Rails gives a great use case for Anki in his
recent post "How to never forget anything ever again"

[https://medium.com/medium-redef/5481606b087a](https://medium.com/medium-
redef/5481606b087a)

~~~
vdm
i.e. remembering the names of faces to build rapport.

------
jaredandrews
I went to Thailand a few years ago to do a research project for school. One of
the requirements before leaving was taking a two month intro to Thai course. I
used Anki to make flashcards, and they worked pretty well. Apparently I was
the only person to realize that digital flashcards existed and when I sent
them out to the rest of the class everyone loved me after that, haha. Didn't
end out learning that much Thai but the cards served their purpose in helping
me pass the class. I especially liked the feature that let you play a sound
clip for both the question and answer. Given the tonal nature of Thai it was
great to have sounds accompanying each card.

------
orky56
Can you please provide screenshots or a video above the fold? Even if the
highlight of the product is not the GUI, I'm still okay seeing the product
work even in a command line interface. It helps me process the context of what
it is.

~~~
Walkman
You can find intro videos in the documentation:
[http://ankisrs.net/docs/manual.html#intro-
videos](http://ankisrs.net/docs/manual.html#intro-videos)

------
thesoonerdev
I made an app which uses the idea of spaced repetition to help you memorize
flags. I was really amazed when I learned about this system a while back, and
made this app to help my niece learn some interesting stuff. My app is really
rudimentary and buggy, but I believe we are soon going to be seeing plenty of
apps which incorporate these kind of ideas and really help us hack our
learning process.

[http://www.amazon.com/Touched-By-Designs-
Flags-30DMC/dp/B00I...](http://www.amazon.com/Touched-By-Designs-
Flags-30DMC/dp/B00IZ8ZWX4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399672441&sr=8-1)

------
krrrh
Anyone enjoying this discussion owes it to themselves to check out Gwern's
exhaustive page on spaced repetition.

[http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition](http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition)

~~~
Walkman
There was a discussion about this a couple of months before:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6461936](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6461936)

------
nordicway
I've been using Anki for a hybrid approach to learn for some university
courses, learning with the Android app during commute and physical paper cards
at home. shameless plug: I wrote a small tool to export Anki decks to PDF:
[https://github.com/nordicway/a2pdf](https://github.com/nordicway/a2pdf) Only
works for simple cards though.

------
Walkman
For HN audience, probably the most useful plugin is the syntax highlighting
plugin [1]. It uses the Pygments Python package so it can handle almost every
known programming language, and makes it easy to save snippets into the cards!

[1]:
[https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/491274358](https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/491274358)

------
agumonkey
Is there a cli version of anki ? a quick google search session didn't give any
hint, which means plausible negative.

~~~
Kankuro
What do you mean by "a cli version"? A version that would run in a terminal?
Or a version that would present one card when the command is invoked? In this
case, how would the user enter the answer (again, hard, good, easy)? It would
require Anki a way to bind this answer to the right card (the algorithm for
choosing a card should be deterministic, or a card ID should be passed to the
command for answering).

~~~
agumonkey
Simply a shell / terminal TUI instead of a window/mouse GUI

------
dylangeorge
Does anyone have experience learning JavaScript with Anki? I am still trying
to figure out the best way to learn JS.

~~~
dnissley
Not so sure about using flashcards to learn a programming language. Better
just to get out there and use it to make something.

~~~
yebyen
I have been experimenting with the idea of learning Urbit through Anki. No
useful decks published yet. Hoon has a complex set of runes (~& |- $_ ++) and
several rich vocabularies of three and four letter words, and for the most
part it's made by one man.

These (unique?) properties make Hoon language a prime target for an Anki deck.
Programmers learning languages with less byzantine syntax (like Javascript, or
even Brainfuck) might not benefit much from Pauker-style study and deck
creation.

------
owynn
Anyone studying Japanese should check out Flashcard Tree:
[http://www.flashcardtree.com/](http://www.flashcardtree.com/)

It's an SRS like Anki with a focus on integrating real video content like
Anime into the learning process.

~~~
Kankuro
I have used Anki a lot to learn Japanese. I think that the principle is not
that great for languages. It helped me to remember the vocabulary and the
kanji, but it only help me to acquire visual memory. When I hear Japanese, I
am way too slow to make the relationship between the Japanese word and the
associated concept. What comes to my mind first is the French word (my native
language) and now I feel like I am learning the same vocabulary again (and the
fact that Japanese has a lot of homophones does not help). Having sentences
cards and audio cards helped, but that is barely enough.

My advice would be not to rely too much on Anki. I considered it as a silver
bullet because it was so much better that using a notebook (like I did in my
childhood), that was a mistake. Find other way to practice. Take lessons
(maybe one day I'll try these Skype conversion offers), read articles, watch
tv show with subtitles, find people you cant talk to…

~~~
Blahah
Did you use audio cards? My Japanese listening is pretty good as a result of
learning all my vocab through anki with separate image, kanji and audio cards.

~~~
Kankuro
I did, but only recently. My listening is improving, but until that Japanese
was for me only a written language. Also, it's easy to create cards from a
dictionary, but it is more complicated to find audio resources for specific
vocabulary (maybe it is possible to get them from sites like forvo.com). I
wish I had taken a more diversified approach earlier. The first months/years,
I almost only used Anki and a grammar book. A better approach maybe would have
been to start from simple texts or dialogues.

------
apricot13
I've been using Anki on and off for a while but I don't feel I can get much
out of it without the ability to review my decks when I'm on the go.

Unfortunately AnkiWeb isn't a cure for my cheapskate problem, because the
signal is so bad on my commute!

~~~
mattmalin
Both AnkiDroid and the iOS Anki support syncing, so then all reviews can place
on the device without using any data and then synced later in the day.

I do this myself and it works well: most of my Anki reviews each day take
place using my phone when travelling without any signal on the metro.

~~~
apricot13
True but I resent having to pay £17.49 to cover the development costs for the
other platforms. (I think the android version was developed by someone else
which is why its free)

------
nerdbites
Has anyone found or is willing to share an objective-c or cocoa deck for Anki?

------
greenmountin
Flashcards are great, but I can't do the initial learn that way. Does anyone
know of a way to do SRS but also generate a classic memorization sheet with 2
columns and like 20 pairs?

------
makmanalp
This is awesome! I can't wait to try it. It would help to have some samples on
the front page though. Maybe a loginless demo of ankiweb with something like
GRE words.

------
amjd
For people already using Anki, if there are any decks you can share, please
post them in this thread. It could be useful for people just starting out. :)

~~~
krrrh
I've saw some great examples today from Gabriel Wyner's upcoming book 'Fluent
Forever'. They aren't for public distribution yet, but there are a few good
posts on his blog.[1]

There is some really valuable advice in the Supermemo website[2]. and Gwern's
post on spaced repetition[3], which I posted a link to elsewhere in this
thread, is fantastic if you want to take a deep dive.

[1] [http://fluent-forever.com/](http://fluent-forever.com/) [2]
[http://www.supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm](http://www.supermemo.com/articles/20rules.htm)
[3]
[http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition](http://www.gwern.net/Spaced%20repetition)

------
underlines
I use anki to learn Thai since 4 years. Made my advanced decks with html5
audio tag and more advanced stuff like dictionary lookup link...

~~~
kanwisher
Anki helped me soar past everyone in Thai writing course. You aren't by chance
in Bangkok are you ?

------
xerophtye
Anyone else here clicked the link thinking of Anki Drive? (anki.com)

------
chappi42
Brrr, I didn't like, much too complicated and - I hope I remember correctly -
the install size was huge.

(But it's free so what shall I complain? And people here seem to have a
different view than me)

~~~
dfc
Anki's deb package is 3MB, Windows installer is 24MB and OSX installer is
30MB. The package in the debian repos is 854K and the installed size is 5.4MB,
with 2.7MB in locale files. I imagine the " _huge_ " 20MB+ installer file you
are put off by includes a ton of third-party libraries/tools to ease
installation for novices.

~~~
chappi42
Thanks for the numbers. It was on OSX. Checking out some different flashcard
options I was surprised about the 30 MB size for Anki. - But yeah, 30 is not
'huge' nowadays... I'm likely still spoiled by old Delphi applications.

~~~
dfc
I imagine the extra cruft includes a ton of third party libraries. I think the
tarball was 4 MBs. Just grab the source.

------
freedrull
Seriously? This crap is so old. SRS is great and I can't believe someone
hasn't made a better application than crufty old Anki yet. This is some
seriously low hanging fruit here.

------
earless1
I wish there was some sort of demo on the site

------
nollidge
How can there be no screenshots?

------
tedks
This comment was killed -- mods, why? It's the only comment in this thread
mentioning image occlusion, a hugely powerful anki technique. I've reproduced
it below in it's entirety.

""" Medical student here. I've tried many flashcard programs (StudyBlue,
Quizlet, gFlashcard, MentalCase, and more), and Anki is by far the best for my
needs.

One thing that puts Anki in an orbital beyond the other programs is the
ImageOccusion editor add-on [1]. This lets you screenshot an image, draw
rectangles over labels within that image, and then generate a flashcard for
each label. This works insanely well for learning anatomy.

I remember about a month ago where I had two hours to learn the names of all
the tracts and nuclei inside of the brainstem for a readiness quiz. It took
about 10 minutes to create flashcards for them all, and an hour to memorize. I
passed the quiz. Days later fellow classmates were still struggling to
remember the same information.

1 - [http://tmbb.bitbucket.org/image-
occlusion-2.html](http://tmbb.bitbucket.org/image-occlusion-2.html) """

~~~
auxbuss
Serious question, I see this from time to time, but have no idea what triple
double-quotes means? These """..."""

Mentally, I transcribe it as CAPS LOCK, and ignore what is written. Should I
interpret it in another way?

~~~
benwr
They're from Python; they're a third kind of string delimiter, alongside '...'
and "...". They allow multi-line strings (or, as in this case, quotations)
that contain both unescaped " and ' characters.

------
cube_yellow
If you use emacs org-mode, check out org-drill [http://orgmode.org/worg/org-
contrib/org-drill.html](http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/org-drill.html).
It uses the same algorithms, allows you to tweak everything, and you can keep
your flashcards alongside the relevant
notes/code/files/issues/ToDos/bookmarks/contacts/feeds/calendar-
entry/emails/thesis/spreadsheets/journals/diagrams/pictures/evernotes/etc.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-dUkyn_fZA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-dUkyn_fZA),
rather than in a totally separate program.

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kingmanaz
Having studied Homeric Greek vocabulary for ~140 hours with Anki, the only
change I found which made the experience more pleasant was to disable the card
leeching. The "threat" of a card becoming a leech tended to take me out of the
zone.

If one has 20 minutes to spare a day there is no reason one cannot gain a >
1000 word vocabulary in a foreign language in a matter of months. Anki comes
highly recommended for vocabulary building.

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smegel
I use AnkiDroid every day. Bit buggy but free and best on Android in my
experience.

