You should really just use http://jisho.org/ for such things, look it up yourself in a katakana chart or figure it out in another way. You can’t expect people to do everything for you.

I found out where I read it(pretty obvious, but I couldn’t remember it lol)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana

“Katakana are also used for emphasis, especially on signs, advertisements, and hoardings (i.e., billboards). For example, it is common to see ココ koko (“here”), ゴミ gomi (“trash”), or メガネ megane (“glasses”). Words the writer wishes to emphasize in a sentence are also sometimes written in katakana, mirroring the European usage of italics.”
So yes I did mean italics, though I thought cursive was the same as italics :P In Danish it is called kursiv, so I figured cursive would be the same :P

@Hattori
八日からイギリスに行きます。 (I go to England on the eighth.) Why is it から and not に?
→My guess is that is just the way you say it in Japanese, because I have seen sentences like 朝9時からミーティングが始まった。 Translated to “The meeting started at 9 a.m.” So “from” might be the way to express both at and on when it comes to time.

ドアをどんどんとたたいた。 (I banged on the door. ) Why is it translated as “bang” and not as “knock”? Does it have something to do with どんどん or is it because both どんどん and たたく are used in the same sentence?
→How I understand this sentence is that と is used to say ‘with’ so maybe it should be”I banged the door with a noice”. I am equally uncertain, but it seems kind of right to me…

後ろから押すと危ないですよ。 (It is dangerous to push from behind.) What is the function of と in this sentence?
→’If pushing from behind, it is dangerous.’ so と means if
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/conditionals ← For info

是非、うちに来てください。 (By all means come to my house.)
明日、うちでパーティーを開きます。 (Tomorrow I’m having a party at my house.) Just to check, both うち here are 家? Or something like うち from うちの息子は大学1年生です?
→I am pretty sure this is 家＾＾。

この大きさの封筒が欲しいのですが。 (I’d like an envelope of this size.) Is it the same as この大きさの封筒が欲しいです。
→が emphasizes that you might be asking for more is my guess. So yeah almost same meaning, though the one with が just adds a slight emphasis

Hope it helped :)
Managed to find another fun translation while writing this
時計を見たらちょうど3時だった。 →I looked at the clock and it was exactly three. Almost like they forgot たら was added :P

• This reply was modified 12 years, 9 months ago by  マーク・ウェーバー.

Core 2k has a lot of listening. Have you tried it?

It is taken from Core 2k, so there ain’t any context sadly :(

my most hated is
かえる
That is such a damn pain!

On topic, Having audio in the card makes a lot of sense, and actually removes one of my complaints about CD. Good idea!
It would just take very long to make cards that way :/ I have decided to try to make an entire TV-show or drama at around 1h~ to audio cards so I can have some audio I fully understand. Maybe I will consider doing it for that :)

I feel the same as Hattori, I can’t ever recall English being a pain to learn. I had it from 3rd grade 8yo. and had classes for maybe 4 hours every week. But somehow without anki, and without any kind of review I managed to learn all the vocab, and could easily use it 5 years later to play MMOs and surf the internet. The learning method used must have sucked compared to how I learn now, but I am still amazed at how I even managed to master English, because I don’t remember much of the learning process.
Today more than 10 years after I started learning English for the first time I feel comfortable typing, speaking and listening to English, and most things I actually prefer to have in English rather than my native language now. Sometimes it is just wrong to see the Danish words for tech and IT, and I am just left laughing at it :P

Now that took 10 years to get to this stage, and it has come at the cost of me forgetting Danish vocab, only remembering the English words often. I easily think the learning process can be refined, and I think the time can be at least halved as long as you stay focused. I think you would agree as well, that during the 20 years you weren’t focused on learning vocab at all, right? Most of my time spend with learning Enlgish has been in classes, and then playing games in my spare time, chatting with people from all over Europe over VOIP. That is not focused at all, and I believe that I can learn Japanese at least at double the rate at which I learned English.

TLDR; The time it takes to learning a language depends on the dedication.

Katakana is only used for foreign words, one I saw today was　タイカレー which with hiragana is たいかれー so as you can see it just translates stuff over to English(mostly). So when looking words up that are written in katakana you most likely already know the word and wouldn’t benefit much from learning it. The words aren’t very common compared to hiragana words, and I think it learns you hiragana first because it is much more common and much more useful.
With Hiragana you can atleast read a little Japanese. With katakana you can read and translate to English. It is like learning letters before numbers in other languages I guess :P