The Monolingual Transition

After about two years after you started with ANKI, you will

• have finished the Kaishi 1.5k deck
• have been mining for more than a year
• have a vocabulary of about 5,300 words

If those conditions are all fulfilled you're ready to do the monolingual transition

Definition

The monolingual transition refers to changing from learning Japanese via English definitions to learning Japanese only with the Japanese language.

Why?

A lot of English words have their connotations in our society and a different connotation for a Japanese person. If you only memorize the definition for 野心的 as ambitious, then you might think about drive, motivation or aspiration, while in Japanese it has the connotation of trying to reach something inappropriate for one's lot in life or that's above one's position. The opposite example would be 無邪気, childlike, while it has a negative connotation in English of immature or naive it has the connotation of purity and not harboring bad intentions.

If you look at the Japanese dictionary entries for them you have

やしん‐てき【野心的】 読み方：やしんてき

［形動］望みなどの、身分不相応に大きいさま。また、試みなどの、新しく大胆であるさま。「—な研究」

Or translated

ambitious

[adjectival noun]

Describes something excessively large or ambitious relative to one's social status or position; also describes something novel and daring, such as an attempt or undertaking.

and

む‐じゃき【無邪気】 読み方：むじゃき

［名・形動］

1. 素直で悪気がないこと。いつわりや作為がないこと。また、そのさま。「—ないたずら」「質問に—に答える」
2. あどけなくかわいらしいこと。また、そのさま。「赤ん坊の—な笑顔」
3. 思慮に欠けること。また、そのさま。

translated:

childlike

[Noun / Na-adjective]

1. The quality of being honest and without ill intent; lacking deceit or artifice
2. The quality of being innocent and charming
3. The quality of lacking in prudence or judgment

As we can clearly see, the Japanese dictionary entries give a much more detailed description and allow nuances to be understood

Additionally you also gain the ability to describe objects and phenomena better since you're looking at the way natives describe objects. If you don't know a word in the definition it also helps you as a source of new words.

Why not?

Altough understanding Nuances and the intricacies of the language is important. It also places a significantly higher strain on your mind while reviewing in Anki. Abstract phenomena are hard to explain, culturally specific vocabulary you never heard about might be referenced and worst of all One dictionary entry always lists all possible Kanji variants for that word, meaning that you have to memorize multiple ways to write a word at once.

And for those that strive for efficiency:

Doing 100 cards JP - EN takes me about 10 minutes

Doing 100 cards JP - JP takes me about 17 minutes

How to do it?

Yomitan

• In Shoui's dictionary folder there is a folder called Monolingual
• Inside of that folder are about 30 dictionary files
  • You don't need all of them but still enough to have good coverage

• There are three main ways to pick your dictionaries

  • Follow my list (all listed) or TheMoeWay list (TMW + their order)

    1. 実用日本語表現辞典 (TMW 1)
    2. 旺文社国語辞典 第十一版 画像無し (TMW 3)
    3. デジタル大辞泉 (TMW 4)
    4. 明鏡国語辞典　第二版 (TMW 5)
    5. 新明解国語辞典 第五版 (TMW 6)
    6. 岩波国語辞典 第六版 (TMW 9)
    7. 広辞苑 第六版 (TMW 10)
    8. 故事ことわざの辞典 (TMW 12)
    9. 漢字源 (TMW (13))
    10. 新明解四字熟語辞典 (TMW 14)
    11. 学研 四字熟語辞典 (TMW 15)
    12. surasura 擬声語
    13. 国語辞典オンライン
    14. 三省堂国語辞典　第七版
    15. 日本語俗語辞書

    Additionally recommended by TMW

  • 大辞林 第三版
  • 新明解国語辞典 第七版
  • 精選版 日本国語大辞典
  • ハイブリッド新辞林
  • 漢字遣い参考
  • Make your own list (you will do this over the long-run in any case but it takes time)
• Change your Yomitan
  • Create two profiles
    • Yomitan Settings → Profile → Configure profiles → Rename new to Japanese only and rename the old one to English → Conditions → Give your previous keybind to the new profile & give your English profile an alternate keybind (old but with shift, etc.) → Set Japanese only to be your default profile (dot on the left)
  • Install all your monolingual dictionaries
    • After downloading all your monolingual dictionaries of your choice you should put all the raw dictionary files into one folder on your pc (makes it easier to install all of them at once instead of having to drag and drop 15 files)
    • Set Editing profile to Japanese only → Dictionaries → Configure installed and enabled dictionaries → Import → Select all .zip dictionary files and drag and drop them into Yomitan → It mounts them into Yomitan ※ There are cases where old dictionary files depracate and Yomitan gives you an error, in that case you have to import each dictionary file individually to find out which file is depracated
    • The order of the dictionaries in Yomitan is also the order in which it will display them when scanning a word so fix your order if it's not as you want it
• Create a new monolingual Anki deck
  • Open Anki → Add → Deck → Add → Name it Monolingual study → (Note) Type → Manage → Add → Add:Basic → Name it Monolingual Yomitan → Close → Select your new note type → If you haven't already, sync all your device that you already did new reviews in anki in (phone, laptop, etc.) so your current pc is on the newest reviews → Fields (in the Add menu) → Add the following fields:
    1. Expression
    2. Furigana
    3. Picture
    4. Glossary
    5. Part of Speech
    6. Original Sentence
    7. Sentence Furigana
    8. Word Audio
    9. Pitch Accent
  • Adjust your CSS
    • In the Add menu go on card paste the following code into
    The Front:

    The Back:

    The Styling tab

            <p>
                {{Expression}}
            </p>
        </div>
        <div class="Word Audio">
            {{Word Audio}}
        </div>
        <div class"Sentence">
            <p>
                {{Original Sentence}}
            </p>
        </div>
    </div>
                                    

    <div>
        <div class="Furigana">
            <p>
                {{Furigana}}
            </p>
        </div>
        <div class="Word Audio">
            {{Word Audio}}
        </div>
        <hr style="width: 60%;">
        <div class="Picture">
            {{Picture}}
        </div>
        <div class="Glossary">
            <p>
                {{Glossary}}
            </p>
        </div>
        <hr>
        <div class"Bottom">
            <p>
                Part of Speech: {{Part of Speech}}
            </p>
            <br>
            <p>
                {{Sentence Furigana}}
            </p>
        </div>
        <hr>
        <div class="Pitch Accent">
            <p>
                {{Pitch Accent}}
            </p>
        </div>
    </div>
                                    

    .card {
        font-family: arial;
        font-size: 20px;
        text-align: center;
        color: black;
        background-color: white;
    }
    
    
    .Expression,
    .Furigana {
        display: inline-block;
        padding: 200px;
        padding-top: 20px;
        padding-bottom: 20px;
        font-family: Noto Serif JP;
        font-size: 65px;
        border: solid;
        border-radius: 8px;
        background: rgba(33, 64, 120, 0.7);
        border-width: 0.2px;
    }
    
    p {
        padding: 0;
        margin: 0;
    }
                                    

• Continue configuring your Yomitan
  • Anki tab in Yomitan settings → Configure Anki card format → Select your newly created deck → In Model select your newly created card type → Configure the following:
    • Expression --> {expression}
    • Furigana --> {furigana}
    • Glossary --> {glossary}
    • Part of Speech --> {part-of-speech}
    • Original sentence --> {sentence}
    • Sentence furigana --> {sentence-furigana}
    • Word Audio --> {audio}
    • Pitch Accent --> {pitch-accents}

Now you're basically set to Mine in Japanese only

I would personally recommend you to read like a way too hard text as the first thing so you don't know the words already, then you look up tons of words with Yomitan and look how well you understand the definitions by the various dictionaries, for every dictionary entry you don't understand you should lower it's position in the dictionary list in Yomitan.

As additional reading the Dictionary publisher Sanseido made a "guide" for beginners to monolingual dictionaries. It is however mainly meant for Japanese middle schoolers. In any case, it will help you understand some of the symbols you see in the various monolingual dictionaries. In a nutshell, if you need old words, stick to 旺文社 use 岩波 if you want detailed verb definition entries, use 新明解 for overly detailed noun explanations but it has fewer entries etc.