Adding Words to Your Anki

Siggi

August 20, 2024

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You’ll need to know about 6,000 words to speak Icelandic in your day-to-day life. That’s a lot, and you’ll be spending a good deal of time learning vocabulary, so it pays to be efficient. Anki is undoubtedly the most efficient answer to how you should learn vocabulary.

If you’ve already set up your Anki properly, you’re well on your way to learning vocabulary as fast as possible.

Here we’ll learn to navigate Anki’s interface to add words to learn, and the format that we want them to be in.

Don’t Download Words

Don’t download a deck from the Internet. Add your own words. This improves relevance and context.

Words in a downloaded deck frequently won’t be relevant to you. They’re too advanced, or too simple, or simply don’t have to do with your field and interests. If you’re a geophysicist, you’ll want to make sure to learn jarðskorpufleki (tectonic plate): if you’re not, that word will be a waste of time for you.

When you choose the words to add yourself, every word is relevant to you.

Also, downloaded decks don’t give you any context; you only know those words as entries on a list you’re memorising. You have no memory to tie them to, no event where you first heard the word, no emotion that the word connects to.

This lack of context makes memorisation much less efficient.

Where to Find Words

It’s best to find words to learn by reading and listening to a lot of Icelandic, and learning (some of) the words you don’t know. Just don’t stop to look up every single new word you come across.

Dictionary Form

Dictionary form is the base form of a word that you find in a dictionary. You should learn the dictionary form of all your words, because it’s the base that all other grammatical forms are derived from.

Memorising word forms other than the dictionary form is usually a waste of time. That is because grammatical forms are systematic: if you know the base form and the system, you can usually deduce every other form from that.

Advanced learners will need to memorise some principal parts, but that would be wasted effort for beginners and most intermediate learners.

Where to Find the Dictionary Form

You find the dictionary form in, drumroll please, a dictionary.

I generally recommend Digicoll.

Adding a Word (Desktop)

Let’s start adding words into your Anki. To add a card, click the add button at the top.

The first time you add a card, you’ll have to make a deck by clicking on the deck option. Name it “íslenska”, because it’s classy to use the language you’re learning.

Type

You have your choice of a few different types of cards, and my recommendation for what to use depends on your level of Icelandic and device choice.

Beginner: The priority is to stuff you as full of vocabulary as possible, as fast as possible. The types Basic or Basic (and reversed card) are best for that.

Intermediate/advanced: You may want to use Basic (type in the answer). This forces you to spell correctly and learn to use an Icelandic keyboard.

If you plan on doing your reviews on mobile, where you don’t have a keyboard anyway, I’d consider sticking with Basic or Basic (and reversed card).

Front and Back

Front is for your native language (or whatever language you like, really)
Back is for Icelandic

Adding a Word (Mobile App)

Let’s start adding words into your Anki. To add a card, tap the blue plus again, then tap add.

Type

You have your choice of a few different types of cards, and my recommendation for what to use depends on your level of Icelandic and device choice.

Beginner: The priority is to stuff you as full of vocabulary as possible, as fast as possible. The types Basic or Basic (and reversed card) are best for that.

Intermediate/advanced: Stick to Basic or Basic (and reversed card) if you plan on doing your reviews on mobile.

If you plan on reviewing on your computer with a keyboard, you may want to use Basic (type in the answer). This forces you to spell correctly and learn to use an Icelandic keyboard.

Front and Back

Front is for your native language (or whatever language you like, really)
Back is for Icelandic

Grammatical Information

There’s a tiny bit of grammatical information I would recommend including in your Anki, depending on the part of speech and your level.

Everybody

No matter your level, there is some information I would always include.

Verbs: mark verbs with the infinitive marker, að (to).

Front: að tala
Back: to speak

This helps differentiate verbs from nouns. If you have the word tala on its own, you can’t tell if it’s to speak or a button, for instance. Að tala is clearly to speak.

Nouns: Include the gender, and mark it using a pronoun: hann (he), hún (she), það (it).

Front: a phone
Back: sími - hann

‍

Front: a weekend
Back: helgi - hún

‍

Front: a blanket
Back: teppi - það

Beginners shouldn’t worry about getting the gender right when reviewing. It’ll become important soon enough, though, so it’s good to get used to seeing it with the noun.

To know the gender of a noun, check the dictionary. Here’s planta (plant) as it appears in Digicoll, for example.

The f stands for feminine. An m would stand for masculine, and n for neuter. The rest of the information isn’t important right now.

Other: You don’t need to do anything special with most adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions. How they appear in the dictionary is just fine, no need to add anything.

Beginners

You should prioritise learning the meaning of as many words as possible, as fast as possible. Grammar information is a secondary (or even tertiary) concern.

Don’t add any grammar information to your cards. In fact, what little you have (noun gender), you shouldn’t even worry about getting right when reviewing. For now, just the exposure is plenty.

Intermediate

Verbs: Intermediate learners may want to include the verb category.

Front: to speak
Back: að tala (-a verb)

‍

Front: to do
Back: að gera (-i verb)

‍

Front: to go
Back: að fara (strong verb)

Nouns: Intermediate learners should be able to recognise the gender of nouns, so they may want to be stricter about learning the gender of a noun.

Advanced

Verbs: Advanced learners may want to include principal parts for strong verbs.

Front: to go
Back: að fara (fór, fórum, farið)

Nouns: Advanced learners may want to include even more information, such as the genitive singular and nominative plural forms for some nouns.

Front: a boy
Back: strákur (-s, -ar)

‍

Front: a guest
Back: gestur (-s, -ir)

‍

Front: a forest
Back: skógur (-ar, -ar)

Strictness

How strict you should be with learning the grammatical information is always a judgement call. It depends on your level, goals, and personality.

A beginner might want to consider their answers correct if they know a noun’s meaning, even if they forgot the gender. A more advanced student who is focusing on gender might want to consider it incorrect. It’s up to you.