I’m new to Anki but I’ve used it for a couple weeks so far, having made 800 Basic cards to learn Thai. At the time, since I was creating cards from a CSV, I had a third column named IPA to show the transliteration of the Thai words. I was able to get this 3rd field in Anki in general, but I never figured out how to display it when learning/reviewing. It wasn’t a problem though, as I rarely needed to view the IPA, and when I did, I could always click “edit” and it would show.
After having made and studied most of those 800 cards, I discovered what Basic (and reversed) was. I found a way to convert all my cards to Basic (and reversed), but in doing so, it warned me that the IPA field will get erased. Not that big a deal, so I proceeded.
Everything’s going well enough, but I do wonder if there’s a way to add that 3rd field (the “IPA” field) to future cards that I’ll add to the deck as I continue to study. I wouldn’t think that’d be too hard. The real question is though, assuming I can do that, would it be possible to always display the IPA field upon answering the question, regardless of which field it’s testing me on (English or Thai field)? Could someone run me through how to do this if it is possible?
I went over the guide, FAQ, and searched the forums, but either maybe no one asked this before, or the search terms I used didn’t align with how it’s written. Sorry for the trouble if this is obvious somewhere and I wasn’t able to find it.
You can follow the instructions here to add the IPA field to all cards of the basic and reversed templates. Then, you can click the “Cards” button inside the editing screen to modify the back of the template with HTML. At it’s simplest, you can add
<br>
{{IPA}}
at the bottom of the template code, but you might want to do some extra styling with HTML. (Sorry, I can’t look at my PC right now.) If you only add the IPA field to the back template for Basic and reversed, the IPA will show when after you hit space to see the answer.
Make sure you understand the key concepts of Anki first – then everything sidereal said will make more sense. The only reason I can think of that you couldn’t find how to do this is that you were lacking the terminology to explain what you wanted to do.
To be honest, I’m still a bit too green ( like Danika said) to manually edit templates (looking at card templates is like looking at bunch of garbled math equations for me right now), but I can see you’ve broken it down into easier to understand steps for me, and I appreciate that. Thanks!
Yeah I’m sure I just didn’t know how to phrase it, and you’re right, I should probably understand the basics first, which apparently I’m still lacking. The manual is just sooooooooooooooo long though, it’s hard to find which parts ARE the basics, like the most relevant info, and what to skip. It gets somewhat complicated fast too (for me that is, I’m sure others picked it up much quicker), so I admit I READ maybe 10% of it and skimmed the rest, hoping youtube videos would put me up to speed on the other stuff (which… they didn’t, not as much as I was hoping at least). Thanks for the tips and the link to the basics. I’ll go over it again and try to understand it more.
I think I get what you mean, kinda along the lines of what sidereal said. But also, what Danika said was true too, I think I’m still too wet behind the ears to confidently do that without screwing everything up at the moment. Also, I think doing that for 800 cards one by one would be a huge time waster, so I’m hoping to figure out a way I could automate it somehow, but I have awhile to go before I get to that level so I’ll just have to wait for now. Nevertheless, thanks for replying and lending a helping hand!
It’s editing the template, so you aren’t modifying each card’s data, and you only have to do it once for the IPA field to be added to each card of a card type. You can also do Ctrl+Z to undo changes to the template after saving, but you will see a preview before. I can help you further if you message me your card template
I already gave you the link to the most basic of basics (which you could have read before replying, right?). That page also includes links to 5 basic videos.
After that, read Sections 5 and 6, and skim Section 7.
Ah, well that doesn’t sound as bad. And thanks so much for the offer to help! Mind if I just ask a question on if a scenario is even possible?
Would it be possible to output the entire collection into a CSV, then add an IPA column to it, in which case I’ll have ChatGPT add a 3rd column with all the transliterations of each Thai field, and then import that new CSV (with the IPA column) into Anki to automatically fill in the IPA field with all of text from the columns, “updating” them so to speak? That’s how I added the Thai & English, and it sounds like it should be just as easy to do that with a new field, but just thought I’d confirm the possibility of that before messing around and trying to do it. Thanks again for the help sidereal.
Well that link I did read before the post, but it didn’t really get into the details of what I needed in this case. Thanks for the advice on the follow up sections to check out. I’ll give those another look.
Yes, but in a slightly different order. First add that new IPA field to your note type. Then export notes as plain text, populate the column (however you like), and import the file back in to Anki to update your notes. Text Files - Anki Manual
Thanks for the response, and sorry for the late reply. I’ll give that a try actually, it actually sounds pretty easy when you put it like that. Although I may give sidereal a shout as well for some backup instruction just in case. Thanks for the link too by the way, I’ll read up before attempting it. Cheers.
