Jalup App – Kanji Assist
The new versions of the Android and iOS apps were just released, which include a new optional setting feature called Kanji Assist:
From the user settings, you can now link up Kanji Kingdom with all the other decks. While activated, a list of tappable kanji will appear at the bottom of every sentence card. You are limited to 5 kanji assists every 12 hours. This is intentional to keep you from over-relying on English.
Think of them as a special weapon you should only use when you absolutely need to. If you want more, you’ll have to go through the more time-consuming search feature.
This is a very experimental feature. It started from requests for an easier way to search Kanji Kingdom cards while learning/reviewing non-Kanji-Kingdom cards. As it was, to view a Kanji Kingdom card while on a sentence review you had to:
- Return to the home screen
- Enter search
- Enter the kanji/perform the search
- Return to the home screen
- Return to Learn or Review
- Repeat for any kanji you want to look up
A bit of a pain. Kanji Kingdom and the sentence decks have never been connected directly (including the old Anki versions) because there is a bit of a strange relationship between them.
Learning all the kanji as English keywords is great. But it poses a direct conflict with Jalup Intermediate and up. In Kanji Kingdom, you are given the English for a lot of the words you would have learned in J-J. Just knowing the kanji doesn’t always help (a kanji keyword doesn’t necessarily equal the meaning of the word it is used in). But there is a good chance it does. In this way, it becomes a kind of cheating.
However, learning kanji separately is extremely valuable (and why I created Kanji Kingdom in the first place). So my best solution up until recently was to just keep them separate. You learn those English kanji keywords while doing Kanji Kingdom. But you aren’t going to want to go through the above process every time you want to look up one kanji. If you did though, that was fine – using it sparingly still lets you get the full benefits of J-J.
How to solve the problem – Screenclearing
When I started getting requests about making the lookup one tap away, I was hesitant.
In old side scrolling shooter games, you had your basic weapons, and then usually 3 special “screen clearing” weapons. Using them would instantly kill all enemies on the screen. Since they were limited, you’d save them up for just the right moment and exactly when you truly needed them. If you could use them all the time, the game would be boring and you would never get good at it. But by having only 3, you had to employ strategy that made you a better player.
That’s exactly what I tried to reproduce. You get 5 special screen clearing weapons (kanji link taps from any non-KK deck), every 12 hours. You need to use them strategically. Or as a last resort. Having them in this way won’t take away the value of J-J. This gives you power.
At least that’s the idea. I hope everyone finds them useful!
*Kanji Assist shares the same name as the old kanji product I used to sell on Jalup many years ago, but has no relation to it.
Founder of Jalup. iOS Software Engineer. Former attorney, translator, and interpreter. Still watching 月曜から夜ふかし weekly since 2013.
This is a great idea. I didn’t know I needed this. Excellent work. I don’t regret buying your decks even slightly. Thank you for your hard work Adam!
I’m very happy to hear you find it useful :)
Hey Adam, I was wondering if you know about mattvsjapan and his latest videos on ‘retiring srs cards’? The theory is that once a common word has a long enough Interval (say 1yr), you can suspend it as you’ll probably come across it multiple times during daily reading/watching.
It would be nice if the app has a feature to suspend cards that go over a certain Interval eg. If interval passes 12 months, suspend it.
I don’t personally believe that’s necessary, since all it takes is a few intervals to push it into the decades. Sometimes on those extra reviews when you already know a card because of other exposure, you:
– Realize that you had a misunderstanding about the way a word was used, and it wasn’t until you saw the definition after a long time, you realize your misunderstanding
– See a word that you don’t encounter much in the real world, but still have it in your long term memory. Seeing it again makes you aware of that word again.
– See a sentence over a decade at minor intervals helps you internalize it, pushing it from passive to active, giving you more control.
– Prevent extra will-power draining “decision” moments. (I guess if it was automatic then you wouldn’t have to decide, but there are too many factors to make a blanket removal.)
See more where I discussed this a few years back.
This is great! I was looking up the odd kanji now and then in jdic but it was frustrating as the keyword isn’t always the same as in jalup. Great way to reinforce those persistent kanji I seem to always forget.
Dear Adam,
i have two feature requests.
1. Would it be possible to receive a list of Kanjis which were failed in the last 24 hours?
2. Also it would be nice to have the possibility to study Kanji vice versa, currently Kanji are learned by Meaning => Symbol, but i have a feeling Symbol => Kanji would help me improve.
The 1.st feature would be nice because i want to write kanji which i failed at a day because i recognized that there are some Kanji that are seriously troublesome for me.
But often writing then could help. So a list of failed Kanjis for the current day would be helpful.
The 2.nd feature simply is because i recognized that some Kanji i vastly fast learned because they occured in other Kanjis sentences and where already filled so i often saw the Kanji and checked the Meaning of it.
Of course those are only suggestions from a person currently struggling with kanjis.
Of course i can also help with the development if needed/wanted since im a java/python programmer with work experience
Thanks for the suggestions. I’ll add these to the feature request list.