I Learned 20,000 Japanese Words! (+ My Final Deck)

[@perryschnabel]

I cannot comprehend the discipline it takes to not miss a single day of Anki. Same as mining for hours and then still doing Anki. My most honest respect for you. Watching your videos motivates me for both workouts and studying Japanese, although my humble next goal is just reaching 1000 Anki cards.

[@notcyfhr]

Humble or not 1000 will take you far. I agree I can’t do Anki very well but it’s caused my language ability to be lopsided listening and I don’t know enough kanji or words associated with that kanji. But I’m going to try and grind Anki once more with you

[@thechugg4372]

A salute to everyone who failed on the way, and those who are still on the path, stay strong everyone!

[@NoFuqinIdea]

Thank you. I needed that.

[@w花b]

Yeah... We often forget those who gave up... especially midway which must be the worst feeling

[@Hassan-zw9tb]

​@@w花b shootfor the stars and if you fall you land on a cloud, they might not have finished it but their japanese skills is much better then most after giving up

[@kahwull014]

I failed with my anki decks but I keep watching Japanese content

[@nielst.6514]

@@w花b I'm one of those people who gave up at first. Quited for a year, but got back at it again with more motviation then ever before! The good thing is, everything you've learned before is not gone. It will all quickly come back so it was never a waste of time!

[@grybx835]

I feel like the value of having your whole Japanese learning Journey documented here on youtube in such detail is so huge it's hard to quantify. The effect this will have on people thinking about / learning Japanese now and in the future is going to be massive. Your videos are so underrated. Thank you!

[@DilawD06]

To tell you the truth, I always watched your videos every single day because they're such a comfort zone for me. I have been learning English for almost 4 years, and I started using Anki for more than 2 years. My vocabulary has skyrocketed enormously because of that. I still need to learn a bunch of things but it's just magical to completely understand another language without much problem. Just a year ago, I also began learning Japanese. It's been hard ngl. Your videos have done a lot for me when I just want to give up. As you have said, it's keeping the habit and doing stuff we like. It's just a matter of time to reach the level that you are right now. It is indeed a long way, I only have 2000 words on Anki. One of the most important things that I learned from your videos was that resting is also work. Sometimes, the mentality of always working has stormed me much more than I would want to. But it's good to remind myself from time to time.

[@Livakivi]

Thank you for the comment! If you started learning English less than 4 years ago, then you've definitely come very very far in that time!

[@くぽにゃん]

This deserves at least 20,000 views

[@clementinebedsheets3210]

Awesome work man!! Your next challenge should be to learn Ancient Albanian Sign Language

[@adammasterx5854]

I don’t know why but I feel so happy for you man, massive congratulations!

[@thebeesknees1162]

Thank you for all the videos you've uploaded to this channel! I found out about the Core 2k/6k deck from this channel and I've finished it recently. The deck has helped my understanding so much and I'm really grateful for these videos for making it known. Moving onto sentence mining (also with the help of videos from this channel) and I can feel the progress already. Thank you for all your hard work!

[@CtrlAltDeliciousGaming]

Consider checking out JALUP which is now Nihongo lessons which is 7k cards that are all n+1. After the first 1000 cards the definitions are given with Japanese words you’ve learned :)

[@Ness817]

This is such a huge acomplishment that I hope to acheive one day. Congratulations. Your videos have gotten me to 1500+ cards and I'm still learning every day.

[@Cats83747]

I swear your dedication is unmatched, multiple hours of mining seems insane to me. I guess seeing the fruits of your labor really motivates you, I hope the best for the next parts of your journey! Doing all this while making high quality YT videos seems otherworldly to me

[@JasonWilmot]

Great job Liva, congrats on 20K cards! You've been a huge inspiration for me on my own language journey, and it makes me super happy to see you reach this milestone.

[@greenisop6883]

I just started doing anki and theses videos really help motivate me

[@wlafy3359]

Really nice video, im also on my japanese journey and memorized 2k words thanks to your videos encouraging me, and it looks like it wont stop anytime soon as i am not even slightly burned out and feels amazing to be able to read japanese words i see on the internet, I hope I will be able to come to your levels one day. I'm quite amazed the fact that dog princess game music started playing in a row but it is probably a lucky coincidence lol

[@Kyle10005]

Congrats! You’ve been my favorite channel to watch during my Japanese learning so far, you’re super inspiring!

[@77coast]

Congratulations! Your channel has always been a great source of entertainment for me and others, and it's cool to see this massive milestone.

[@adriangrana1239]

Awesome video and congrats on 20k. I totally get why you don't want to mine further and you made some good points about not having to reach some daily quota, but it's interesting that you never considered mining without a daily quota, for example you could just immersive when you feel like it, and when a new word pops up that you really would like to have in Anki you would then mine it, then the amount of new cards everyday is totally depended on how much you immerse and you wouldn't have to keep immersing late at night to hit 20 new words, if the day is over and you only have 3 new words, then so be it. The amount of reviews would most likely still plummet really quickly as the way I understood you, you don't see new words that often. (Not saying you should keep mining, this comment was meant as an alternative idea where mining and no daily quotas could be incorporated together^^)

[@jei-jeioa]

Just wanted to congratulate you man. You're the reason I started learning Japanese, you inspire us all. I look forward to your next videos.

[@ameuee]

How is your Japanese going since I really want to start but still hesitant

[@uglyluffy7815]

@@ameuee Just start -- A good series good be George Trombley's Japanese From Zero Videos. They were really great for me when I first started a year or so ago. He's hilarious, and a good teacher

[@ameuee]

@@uglyluffy7815 thank you I’ll get started eventually

[@uglyluffy7815]

@@ameuee gl and hf bro. The journey is super satisfying!

[@Vincent89297]

Congrats! I'm 8k words in and was slowing down a bit but this inspired me to pick up the pace again.

[@iyar220]

Anki has the quirk that it convinces you it is essential to your learning, while the only real essential thing is immersion. Out with anki, have fun!

[@iyar220]

@@technic1285 at the point I'm currently at i remember most words instantly, no point in continuing with anki. After his 20k cards im sure his brain became a jp sponge, and that he is in the same situation as me.

[@Pawnsappsee]

It's crazy how anki serves as a net for all of those words you want to make sure you remember but we all know that the real thing happens when you immerse 😊❤

[@_stealth_y]

You gotta start somewhere

[@hexamine666]

must be easy to talk smack about anki after you have reached 20k+ cards, thinking you would have reached a word count even remotely that high by pure immersion. anki is absolutely essential as a beginner, even as an intermediate learner I would say. because you won't benefit as much from immersion without the much needed vocabulary for you to pick up words you don't know in an i+1 fashion, since as a beginner, you pretty much understand nothing at all. while you could still learn something without anki even as a beginner, the process would be a lot more arduous and time consuming than if you would have just used anki in the beginning. so no, anki >>>> everything else as a beginner. it's a different story as someone that has 20k different cards down and I think he also made that pretty clear in the video when he said how long it takes to even find 20 new cards daily.

[@iyar220]

@@hexamine666 I only put it as I did because he went as far as 20k. I learned around 5.5k words with anki, and it was incredibly difficult for me to quit, and realize i can make progress without it, and that i don't need to remember every word(quit around 11 months ago, after around 5 months of usage) . No one is going to hunt me for not knowing 御御御付け. I can immerse in whatever I want from 銀河英雄伝説 to 平家物語( I even learned classical with zero anki use), so I really don't agree with the "don't quit until you have 15-20k cards" approach .

[@femkeroozendaal9767]

I can't begin to describe the amount of respect I've got for you. Man you've inspired me so much. The only question is where do you get the time from, an hour a day for me is already hard to achieve, let alone 5 hours. But anyways very proud and massive respect!

[@Livakivi]

Back when I was still working full time, I did Anki during downtimes such as commutes, toilet, when waiting for something, eating, watching something, after waking up for 15 minutes and so on.

[@SalmonShark]

Congratulations man, what an insane milestone to achieve

[@Crahb]

Congrats liva! Been here since the duolingo videos. Excited to see your growth! Would be awesome to see some videos of you eventually in Japan interacting with people in Japanese.

[@daysandwords]

Livakivi is me if I didn't have kids... and lived alone... and in Europe... and had self-discipline... and could make points concisely... So basically, yeah, not me. 😆

[@Hiandbye95]

9:13 Nice. I saw you mine Hunters and Gatherers live, and I liked it so much I also mined it. And here you are reviewing it.

[@yadisson.k]

I aspire to be at this stage one day. Currently at 1300 words around 6 months and gradually getting better. Congrats!

[@MoJaKF]

congrats bro

[@Lewboskii]

one of the only channels i have notifications activated on :)

[@kitgxrl]

yippie!! my biannual reminder that i have failed in learning japanese. but on a serious note, congrats. i just graduated highschool and really want to get back into learning japanese as i have more free time but feel like its gonna be near impossible

[@Forsburn]

Failure is never real!!!!!! Sometimes you just get busy with other things and need to pick up stuff later. Also if you just finished high school u have so much time!!!!! Good luck and give it ur all we all believe in you

[@Livakivi]

Its just a matter of consistency, you don't have to do so much all at once in the beginning, there was a time when I took only 5 cards a day for a long time from the core 2k/6k deck as well.

[@kitgxrl]

@@Livakivi For me the biggest challenge is picking back up where I left off. "Starting over" feels like the correct solution at times but the one that also discourages me the most. I've used wanikani for the majority of vocab since it was easier to get into compared to anki for me, but looking at 300-400 reviews is terrifying since I haven't done it for months lol. Almost feels like there's no good solution that's effective and motivating. I do understand where you're coming from, the hardest part is just taking that first step.

[@pkandy2]

I Have been learning on and off Japanese since highschool (I've been working for around 3 years now and in my late 20's) and I'm truly amazed at how much you've accomplished by yourself. I only started taking things a bit more seriously in the past 4 years but you're already waaay better than I've ever imagined was possible. Congrats!! I can't read more than 200 kanji lol, but I can mantain conversations, so our aproaches are vastly different. I don't know if I can get to your level of understanding (can't read a book lol) but I'd like to c:

[@mil3636]

Congrats man on the Anki Grind! Not learning japanese but learning korean I have recently reached 10K words and I have been contemplating what to do next. I have been mining 15 new cards a day for a year now, it's really tiring and takes a long time as there is less unknown words. I really want to put 20k as my "finish line" too, doing 20 new cards a day would really bring me faster to my goal but I don't know if I can take it....Nowdays I can watch an entertaining Drama for 1 hour and only mine 2 words, I feel like I would either need to mine for 5 hours a day or read books everyday to get to 20 a day. Anyway sentence mining is so funny because it literally makes me annoyed when I understand everything in a video, it be 2am and I be screaming at my screen like "ppleease tell me something I DON'T KNOW"

[@雨緑-q4t]

I am so happy for you! Congratulations on reaching 20k words! ~~ You've been a reaally big inspiration for me all this time, your dedication and perseverance in itself are something to learn from, but you were also so kind to share your journey with us! You've worked so hard and did a really great job! お疲れ様でした ＼( O＾＾O)／Hope, you'll have even more fun with Japanese from now on!

[@thelastronin7277]

I just started learning japanese and watching your videos inspires me so thank you for making them.

[@bileq6004]

I am so happy that you did it!!! You are my favourite creator ever

[@faythesk8r]

Gosh I wish I was that dedicated to stuff like u are with Japanese, congrats on reaching ur goal!!! And I'm glad i was there in the Livestream when u reached it, real chill vibes, would love to see more if u want to do that.

[@sadeed22]

Congrats man!!! Your content has been really motivating and informative. It’s legitimately helped me in language learning journey.

[@DanielMArana-zh1ey]

I'm not learning japanese nor in any language learning grind but I watch every one of your japanese videos because they are so inspiring

[@capitalismoburgues5549]

Because of the videos you made last year's may I tried a second time learn Japanese once again, now I am at almost 6000 words! (I will probably reach 10000 by the end of the year) your videos motivates me so much that I can't wait for your 5 year video thanks for everything! Also next time could you talk about reading? (My end goal) Your experiences in the different parts of your journey?

[@capitalismoburgues5549]

I also used your refill link to sign up to migaku, it's has been a huge thing in my learning

[@auxiliaryboxes]

A big inspiration for me to keep going. Thanks for all your Japanese videos man!

[@ginpachii7910]

You're a huge inspiration for my japanese learning story. love your videos

[@PeroP3r0]

Congrats!! You rule!! Absolute legend

[@thatstokedgamer]

Dude, you are an absolute unit. I wish I had the strong will that you have. I am happy for you!

[@MeesBoterkoek]

Thats insane dude congrats

[@marco.nascimento]

This is incredible, 20k is so many cards!! hahah your learning journey has been a big inspiration for me, I've been learning Japanese for 2.5 years now in a very slow pace, got a bit of traction just this year, actually. Right now I'm using Duolingo and Lingvist for vocabulary flashcards, and its been quite fun.

[@daftgin]

Congratulations! I've been following your journey for around 2 years now which is crazy to think about since it really does feel like yesterday when I started. Somewhere down the line I lost interest in learning Japanese myself, but I've been thinking of getting back into it and this video came at a perfect time. Thank you for that

[@lyckodraken_]

I’m really happy for you! I am also sentence mining Japanese but not as long as you. But I have a slightly different idea or plan on how to get fluent. My plan is when I reach around 20 000 cards, I will not stop sentence mining but instead not try to mine 20 cards a day. I wouldn’t have a goal of sentence mining daily, but sentence mining when I see a new card

[@abdusqamar9667]

Congratulations man, long awaited great to see your progress!

[@longbranchgooberdapple2238]

Oh wow. I ran through everything that happened to me from 2018 and dang, that was a long period of time. Amazing job!

[@RWaarden]

Congratulations on hitting the 20k. Absolute legend. Watched your videos on Japanese through the years, got me inspired multiple times and this time I’m really trying to learn through immersion and anki (still having an issue with consistency but ayy almost hitting 1k). Anyways, 本当にどうもありがとう　😊

[@TragicGFuel]

A year plus and only 1k words??? That is scary to me

[@RWaarden]

@@TragicGFuel don’t worry Tragic, that is just my pace. You might do double on your own, but I hope that you’re having fun on the journey of learning it and don’t forget that it is a process. It’s just like any other thing, with enough dedicated practice, it will turn into a routine that just occurs.

[@TragicGFuel]

@@RWaarden Thank you for the kind words. How is your reading speed after these years? Are you able to read at a decent speed (assuming the content you're reading is within your vocab)

[@mohammadalinejad728]

Wait! I was just binge watching your Japanese learning videos!

[@mikuminou]

I was able to make it for the tail end of the stream but congrats again! 🎉 Quite the milestone, looking forward to seeing how things develop in terms of both your Japanese and your future content!

[@Livakivi]

Thank you for tuning in mikuminou!! I'll be trying to enjoy learning Japanese even more from now on, and hopefully it will be fun to see the outcome as well!

[@TheWishDragon]

Congratulations! :D Damn 20k in 2 years... with such high retention? Wow! Congratulations! I loved Migaku a lot until it started capturing audio that was way out of sync. Hopefully it gets fixed someday though! You're very kind for sharing this huge deck! Congrats man! :D

[@Livakivi]

That's odd, I didn't have any issues with desynced audio, unless you mean on youtube on macOS where I figured out that the reason it happens is when I switch audio source eg from speakers to headphones, but that might just be a macOS chrome issue as well. Just making a new tab fixed it though.

[@chris_calisthenics9392]

I'm also curious about this.. How on earth did you manage to add 20 new cards/day and still keep an 80% retention at an average answer time at less than 10 seconds? I was adding 15 cards per day before, but had to cut it down since my reps would take close to 3 hours per day in order to BARELY manage 80% retention. Now I add less cards and restrict my rep time to 20s/card and my retention has dropped to 60% 😂 Do you only rep the meaning of the word (and not the reading)? Do you not listen to the audio? Would love to know more about the specifics on how you rep your cards (as well as your Anki settings) Also, congratulations on this milestone and a huge thanks for these videos in general! They are incredibly helpful for staying motivated on the journey :)

[@jeffreybarker357]

Really tough to put into words to say how much I respect you for this achievement. Just know that it is and you have a lot of motivated viewers who’ve also been following your journey for a long time *raises hand*. Congratulations.

[@henri8194]

Congratulations man!

[@kar01870]

Congrats, Liva!

[@imposter5413]

Congratulations!!

[@slipfi]

Your videos have inspired many of us to keep persevering in our Japanese learning!

[@Wonk_Bonk]

W mans! Congratulations on your progress!

[@julianosimiaocardozo13]

Congratulations!!!!!! Your videos are amazing, like even before watching

[@rodthedigger2902]

Congratulations man! You are a big inspiration to me for learning Japanese.

[@eire02]

Congratulations! I started my sentence mining journey for Korean last year, can’t wait to be a solid enough level to start it for Japanese too! 😊

[@MuEnViFitness]

Huge congrats. Incredible effort.

[@santiagomorals8289]

Congratulations 🎉

[@Roz9l]

Huge congrats! You are an insane inspiration to me as I am also learning Japanese (1 year anniversary next month). Seeing your progress gives an insane boost of confidence, that this approach will give results if I just stick to it and be consistent

[@thaoremchan9234]

congrats liva.

[@BigHuebert]

You have got me to start learning a language myself, thank you my man your amazing

[@squidanado2765]

Congratulations!! 🎉

[@cito2820]

Hey Livakivi! I've been watching your videos for a year or two now and I've loved watching you grind and learn so much! I remember in one video you talked about possibly studying Russian (which I am doing) or Mandarin (I think?) and I just wanted to say that if that is still the case it could be very cool to see you coming at a language nearly from scratch and using what you have learned from studying Japanese to apply it to a new language. Nonetheless, great job!

[@wango6603]

Congrats🎉 I currently have around 7200 cards. Gotta grind for another 2-3 years more to reach 20k

[@LucaPedro]

im in the same journey but with chinese. Gladly i only need about ~3000 characters to conversational fluency (of course, with a lot of practice also) Im already studying for 1 year and 2 months and got ~1150 characters in anki. But i really feel i could do waayyyyy more. My studies habits are very relaxed rn

[@Forsburn]

Congrats man

[@yoni6847]

I've neever seen such an efficient human being, you're an inspiration

[@Livakivi]

I'm really not that special in reality haha

[@alexprus7953]

Congrats!

[@a_begal]

Congrats dude

[@thealchemist1789]

万歳！目的をやっと届くことおめでとうございます！

[@kbandz_]

Congrats man! You’re and inspiration. Hopefully I hit 10k by the end of the summer lol can’t wait to see what’s on the other side

[@oxleygreive6003]

Congrats Livakivi 🎊

[@vivi-vw8jd]

congrats!!!

[@JustIzzan]

contrats man. love your japanese content. always motivates me

[@nihonSkill]

Great job mate.

[@ankitbhandiwad]

Congrats! Hope to be there one day

[@turbanix]

congrats, love from finland

[@Kyjor_]

Congrats!!

[@amalandro000]

you are such an inspiration!

[@corflonultra8022]

Congrats man! you definately inspire me to stop using duolingo and actually learn the language. i finished the core 2k/6k last year and have been doing cards with immersion. Seeing you keep going for so long inspires me to keep on going as well on this long journey. (also i was hacked on discord and i got banned from your server, im sorry :,(

[@paulwalther5237]

Grabbing the deck now. I doubt I’ll complete it or anything but I’ll have fun playing around with it. The idea that you have native audio from KZbin for the cards is kind of mind blowing.

[@Livakivi]

As a tradeoff, the sentences themselves are completely broken though a lot of the time because of the autosubs haha. But definitely do let me know how it goes, or if the deck was of any help!

[@paulwalther5237]

@@Livakivi I had to fix it so it would wrap words on my iPhone Anki app. It had some code to preserve original formatting for some reason?

[@Livakivi]

@@paulwalther5237 Not sure if those are some old cards or if something is different on iPhone

[@paulwalther5237]

@@Livakivi It was weird. I think it was just a few old cards but their formatting seemed to affect the whole deck.. If you use find & replace to replace and with nothing, it fixes it. If you use a computer or a tablet with a big screen you probably wouldn't notice anything.

[@mattidevs4310]

Congratz!

[@et6729]

Just noticed livakivi has a sentence card from watching back in blood in Japanese. A truly RARE card

[@NicoDerProfi]

You are such a motivation. Congrats on your accomplishments 🎉💪😊

[@MochaxMatcha]

Bro i JUST watched your previous video where you said your goals for this June, and I commented "how's the June 2023 going?" I got my answer! 🤣 CONGRATULATIONS!

[@IcePlayzMSM]

Big congrats man, ive been watching your videos since 2021 and you inspired me to start learning japanese (205 day streak atm). Thank you so much for making these videos and again congrats on 20k 🎉🎉

[@zakuraiyadesu]

As a learner of Japanese, boy is it hard to keep consistent. I’ve not even been learning for 2 years, and I’ve considering giving up on the language, but you have certainly my inspiration to keep it up. Also, do you have any Japanese channels you recommend? I don’t seem to find any easy channels I can understand, and we have pretty much the same interests, so it won’t be a problem. Congrats on your milestone, man. Keep up your work and keep reviewing through immersion as if you don’t, the language you were learning could fade away pretty fast.

[@Pawnsappsee]

Thats right, if we slide and digress it is quite real that we may lose language knowledge

[@baza0]

I like your learning Style, mix it up a bit but still quite focused. I've tried and done lots of things to acquire Japanese over the last 33 years, and I'm loving this new technology. I'm going to use gpt-4 to make me some new Anki cards.😀

[@southcoastinventors6583]

You heard it here folks all you need to to do to understand most of the Japanese content is learn 20k words with sentences. So if you learn 5 new words a day it will only be 11 years till you reach the same level, so start practicing. 頑張って

[@Pawnsappsee]

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@Pawnsappsee]

Let's not say learning but acquiring, it sounds far better 😂❤

[@IZombiesProIIZombiesProI]

Its very nice to see you continue with this journey and thank you because you have inspired me a lot :3

[@blotchyt]

100 days of the 2k/6k deck liva I'm going strong averaging 10 words a day! You're an inspiration hopefully I can make it as long as you do lol

[@Vincent89297]

Migaku has a card retirement option, which you can use to gradually phase out cards that reach a specific interval, until eventually you have no cards left.

[@dozdaz3446]

The madlad did it! Wow

[@amazinggaju]

I started "learning" Japanese in 6th grade. However, the whole time I was "learning", I was really lying to myself. I did a duolingo lesson every like 2 weeks and when I started my core 2k 6k deck with Anki, I kept consistant for around 4 months before I quit. I kept telling myself that I was just taking a break and that I would get back to learning Japanese when I was feeling like it, I realized recently that I will probably never feel like it. I know now that I will probably never want to wake up and feel excited about learning Japanese. Im entering High School now and I'm about to start taking tagalog classes. I feel like this will be much better for me with the knowledge I know now about language learning. I would like to get back into learning Japanese after I take 4 years of Tagalog but for now, I feel like it is time to let go. I don't plan on not watching anime or consuming Japanese media but now, I feel like a huge burden has been lifted off my shoulders. Please, PLEASE: If anyone reading this is considering learning Japanese, PLEASE note that you will not want to learn Japanese everyday, especially because it is a very complex language. Learning Japanese will take a lot longer than you expect. I salute everyone who is learning Japanese rn, I plan on joining you in a couple years!

[@Some_Guy_87]

And with that you became yet another internet language learning genius rather than an ordinary learner :D. Gotta admit I'm feeling jealous as I personally can't retain anything and am losing more and more motivation. N4 test is up next week after 1.5 years and I'm honestly not sure if I will even make it - meanwhile I struggle to keep up with 2 new grammar rules per day and just reviews of my Anki deck of which I used to only add 6 words per day and have it set to 0 for more than a month now, but still need 30 minutes just for the reviews. I'm really starting to get sick of this daily grind and the recommendations I got are to add WaniKani on top of it so that I have to grind even more. It's really frustrating by this point, especially because my performance is miles away from even the average learner. But not grinding at all just leads to no results. Anyway, sorry for the rant. Huge achievements and it's absolutely impressive how productive you are with your time, you can really be proud of yourself.

[@Axel-yj8uq]

Congratulations my favorite KZbinr. Day 144 of Chinese!!!!!! All thanks to you.