Hacker News: sicvita

New comment by sicvita in "Show HN: Turn native language audio into flashcards and shadowing practice"

sicvita — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 22:40:08 +0000

This is fantastic! I took it for a quick spin with Japanese, and I'm impressed with the interface.

Any plans to add option to generate audio from text?

The 'blur' feature is great. Would love to see the option to blur the entire text and then 'reveal' each sentence individually.

New comment by sicvita in "Japanese verb conjugation the simple hard way"

sicvita — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 20:10:58 +0000

Agree with others that grouping verbs into -ru and -u verbs is a weird choice that only kicks the can down the road. I get why a textbook like Genki does this, i.e., not wanting to throw terms like 「一段」and 「五段」at people literally a few chapters into their Japanese language learning journey, but it just muddies the waters.

Like so much pedagogy, this feels like a good example of "hey, here's a quick-and-dirty heuristic for how this thing works, but just keep in mind that we'll explain how it really works later on". Except Genki I+II never mentions the terms 「一段」or「五段」at all. (it's similarly criminal that they never introduce pitch accent either, but that's another story).

My advice to anyone getting started with Japanese would be to get out of the introductory textbook stage as quickly as possible. Supplement with grammar explanations from other resources early on. Cure Dolly, Imabi.net, Tofugu, YouTubers, LLMs--whatever clicks with you.

I'm just glad that early in my learning journey, I heard a YouTuber describe Japanese as "agglutinative" (with a comparison to German)--a term I'd never encountered before. A light bulb went off for me and things started to click.

In any event, glad to see this kind of article kick off discussion/debate :D. 皆さんは、頑張りましょう！

New comment by sicvita in "I want to live like Costco people"

sicvita — Thu, 07 May 2026 19:37:32 +0000

> I will never buy Costco coffee—I know too much about coffee, and my allegiance to a coterie of indie micro roasters (Yes Plz subscription for life) and esoteric brewing methods has ruined me for life from enjoying the simple pleasures of a Kirkland Signature K-Cup pod.

You can pry the 2-lb bags of Mayorga Cafe Cubano dark roast coffee from my cold, dead hands.

New comment by sicvita in "I did 98,000 Anki reviews. Anki is already dead"

sicvita — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 21:20:52 +0000

I totally agree with the 4 rules listed here (especially #1), but in line with other comments I don't see how LLMs make flashcards for language learning obsolete. If anything, after ~15 months of semi-casual Japanese learning, with flashcards as a core part of my routine, I'm even more convinced of the power of brute force memorization / spaced repetition. I often have moments where I'm presented with a word I can't quite remember, and 90% of the time my "gut instinct" on the pronunciation is correct (I'm usually wrong when I second guess myself). It's a spooky feeling being able to summon the correct pronunciation for a word from deep within my brain when I've consciously told myself "I don't really remember this one".

Also agree that learning a bunch of vocab / flashcards is only a small part of language learning, and it should only be a small % of your studies. After ~80k review items in ~15 months, I'm at the point where I simply spend 20-30 mins. before bed knocking out 100-140 review items (both recognition and recall). Now it's just part of my daily routine and I genuinely still enjoy it. I invested a lot of initial time with flashcards while working through Genki I+II just to lay some solid foundations, more like 200-300 review items a day (knowing some Chinese was my main headstart with this).

+1 for Skritter. I was an early user way back in 2011 for Chinese, and after setting language learning aside for many years it was a joy to boot it back up. I much prefer the Kana/Kanji interface for writing practice than Anki. Admittedly it is a bit pricey, though. I'd also highly recommend Satori reader as a reading/listening practice app. Aside from that, plenty of manga, conversational Japanese 'podcasts' on YouTube, anime, and video games helps. Next step is to find a tutor at some point....

One thing that I've always found weird among the Japanese language learning community is the emphasis on drilling/learning individual Kanji. I don't really recall this being a "thing" in Chinese (presumably b/c you're on the hook for 4-5+k Hanzi rather than 2-3k Kanji :D). Truly bizarre to me to drill individual Kanji out-of-context rather than just learn a couple of common words that use them.