This probably won’t be a helpful reply but I don’t know that anybody can tell you what will work. It is 100% dependent on you. I, for example, used to spend 3-6 hours per day (every single day) studying but it burned me out. I can only handle at most 2 hours a day (although I can go a bit longer if I’m just doing pure kanji) but maybe you can do sun up till sun down. I don’t know very much about you, other than you seem to be a busy person lol, so I don’t know what works.

Unfortunately, based on my experience with it, the only real solution is to try stuff and make a pile of mistakes. You probably aren’t going to get it right from the start, and that’s okay too. Although I do recommend trying to get into conversation before you start developing bad habits on your own. I’ve got a speaking partner now and after all the time I’ve put in, I have zero confidence and I know basically nothing about holding an actual conversation. I know stuff, but I can’t use any of it because I pretty much haven’t ever done it. So I guess my only real advice is if you’re going to make time for anything, make time to get out there and talk to someone (even if that means just chatting on skype or something). It will help you more in the long run than worrying about what’s more important to study and for how long. Even if you sound like a class-A jackhat at first. Which you will lol.

Maybe this will help more; if you’ve ever played any woodwind instruments, you know that everybody sounds like a duck at first. That’s going to be you. You’re going to be the guy with oboe going “quaaaaaeeeeeeeeekkk squeeeeeeeee bwwahhhhhhhhhh”. It doesn’t matter how well you read the music or how much time you spent fondling that oboe, until you actually practise, you’ll just be a duck. I know this, because I sound like a duck lol.

Cimmik wrote:

Did you actually say homies? You didn’t just write it?

Well when you’re right, you’re right – I only typed it instead of actually saying it out loud. You caught me.

As Joel said the words were separated but in normal conversation they wouldn’t be as distinct.

Okay, this example may be entirely regionally dependant, so if it doesn’t work for you I’m sorry lol. But think of it like saying “silly yeti” in a regularly paced conversation. You kind of drag that “ee” sound between the words. At least I do. They’re separate words, but you don’t pause between them because THAT would sound weird, right? Ja arimasen (sorry, no Japanese keyboard on my phone lol) will work generally the same way – it doesn’t function the same as, say, the “u” in “sou” where you extend the vowel, it’s just two “ah” sounds beside each other that kind of melt into each other.

I don’t feel like I’m helping lol. Maybe just watch the YouTube thing a few more times haha.

Greetings, fellow canuck!

I’m not doing too many of these hello messages now that so many people are showing up but I can’t ignore my Canadian homies lol. Can’t believe I just said homies… Anyway. Welcome! Step in from the cold and warm yourself by our fire of multilingual goodness!

It’s really just “jaarimasen” making sure to extend that “ah” sound.

ありません is its own word, so it doesn’t take a long vowel.

But luckily for you, you’re going to be using じゃない a lot more in real conversation anyway ;)
You’re learning a fairly polite version right now. I don’t know if じゃありません is quite keigo but it’s damn close. Don’t get too attached to it, anyway.

When you import decks to other decks you should do it the way Amarkyea does it, although you don’t need to have a whole separate deck for it.

You shouldn’t have to rename any files or folders. Just go Browse, click the deck you want to move, select all the cards, Change Deck, select the destination. I’ve been wanting to spend some time deconstructing Anki for a while (I have the source code and everything, just no time) to see exactly how it points at things, but I assume that when you rename files outside of Anki, you’ve broken the association. I haven’t had any problems with mp3′s though so there may be more at work. I just don’t have an answer rooted in experience. Other than to try importing cards in a different way.