Thursday, February 22, 2018

Welcome

This is a website where I share frequency lists and Anki decks.

I made this website in 2016 to post my Anki flashcard decks. 

8 years later, this site has over 2 million page views, and my Anki decks have over 900 000 combined downloads. This is really nice!

Over the years I had new ideas on how to improve my Anki decks, and I updated my decks to implement those ideas. I still have new ideas, so check my decks every year to see if I updated them. 

Good studies, and remember... Learning languages is a wonderful exercise for your brain.



Index of blog posts:

Frequency lists:
The 2000 Most Frequently Used Russian Nouns
The 2000 Most Frequently Used Japanese Nouns
The 2000 Most Frequently Used Korean Nouns
The 2000 Most Frequently Used French Nouns
The 2000 Most Frequently Used Spanish Nouns
The 2000 Most Frequently Used Mandarin Chinese Nouns
The 2000 Most Frequently Used German Nouns

The 2980 Most Frequently Used German Nouns (With Plural)

List of sentences, with audio on Anki, sorted by the average frequency of the words on them:
5000 Spanish Sentences Sorted from Easiest to Hardest
5000 German Sentences Sorted from Easiest to Hardest
5000 French Sentences Sorted from Easiest to Hardest
5000 Dutch Sentences Sorted from Easiest to Hardest
5000 Polish Sentences Sorted from Easiest to Hardest
5000 Turkish Sentences Sorted from Easiest to Hardest
5000 Russian Sentences Sorted from Easiest to Hardest
5000 Italian Sentences Sorted from Easiest to Hardest

"5000? Why so many sentences?"

Memorizing the meaning of individual words... is pretty much pointless. If you want actual fluency, you need to see a word in as many example sentences as possible. That makes the language start to flow in your head. That shows you how to use the word. How it is combined with the other words. And many other things. 

We think that effort always converts into fluency. This is not true. If you memorize the meaning of individual words you won't get fluent and you will spend a ton of effort. But studying sentences is the real deal. Is the method of learning that actually converts effort to fluency. 

Get some basic grammar, some basic vocabulary, then just dive into sentences and more sentences until you're fluent.

~

It is OK to memorize individual words if:
1) You don't have enough vocabulary to focus your study on sentences, or
2) You are a very advanced learner

Otherwise, it is better to just focus on learning and memorizing sentences — instead of memorizing individual words. 

- Also available on Anki - 

If you have technical issues with Anki you should ask the developer: https://apps.ankiweb.net/docs/help.html

I am not affiliated with the developer of Anki. I'm just the rare user who is willing to contribute instead of consuming.



I was getting automated spam everyday so I disabled new comments in 2017. But as usual you can still reach me at: neribrandao2@gmail.com


"Without music, life would be a mistake." Nietzsche