The problem is once people pay for a service or invest time on learning a free platform, they will irrationally defend their decision to the point it’s almost impossible to get good recommendations on language learning tools online. Few people really tried multiple platforms fully (it takes years) to the point they are able to make criticism fairly about long term effect (which is the important point).

The SRS approach with cards content made by yourself is more time consuming but works better long term due to the context from which you created the cards, but it takes some time to understand the process correctly (not only the software interface, but how it interfaces with your own memory).

There are also other SRS platforms other than Anki, but Anki gets all the floor space because of its sheer number of users (popularity). Some may be better.

Thank goodness we have people like you to enlighten us! :-)

The 24€ one is the official one:

> AnkiMobile is the official iOS app and all purchases help fund Anki's development.[1]

You could always use the web UI in your phone browser, Ankiweb[2], which is very kindly hosted for free by the developers.

You could also write your cards as CSV, HTML, or really any format you want and import them, if the interface isn’t to your liking. Shoot, you can even use an Emacs package[3] if you want to.

[1] https://apps.ankiweb.net/ [2] https://ankiweb.net/ [3] https://github.com/eyeinsky/org-anki

From the Anki search on iOS App store:

One is made by AnkiApp Inc. (28€-99€ IAP subscription)

One by Ankitects Pty Ltd (30€)

Which one is the official one?

The problem isn't the format of the source, I COULD write it in windows .ini -files. The point is that I want to learn the language, not spend time writing the book about the language first. How do I know what words to add to the deck? Should I add different inflections? How about pronouns, does the language use gendered pronouns? What's the best way to study them, are there rules for it?

I'm willing to pay money for a properly researched and made Anki deck for a language rather than spend time building it word by word.

> What's the best way to study them, are there rules for it?

The best way to study is to make a basic card and just start doing it immediately. A lot of this is individual so using other people's tips isn't going to work (although if you really wanted to do this, you would have very quickly learned by now that there's a whole industry of blog posts and youtube videos and Opinions on how to optimize your deck if you really need that, and there's a whole industry trying to sell you on things to buy to Optimize your Learning Experience). The thing is, overthinking isn't going to work here.

Just make a 2 field note, like the default, and start adding words and doing reviews. You'll very quickly find out what information you find yourself wanting to remember when you're sat there writing sentences in the language, you'll also find out what you find interesting to learn that helps you learn. After the point that you are actually learning, it's really easy to add fields to a note or to switch note types.

Not only are there literally a ton of docs that come with Anki that go over the best way to deal with Anki for learning, but making the deck as you go is ideal for your situation because you're building memory. Inputting sentences and words or whatever you find meaningful to remember into the deck is also building that memory. Spending hours reading blog posts and figuring out which service to pay for, uh, is the opposite of learning.

This might sound harsh, but it literally comes down to "you have to walk to learn how to walk, you have to pedal to learn how to ride a bike". Spending hours or weeks or months deciding if you want to do training wheels or not, what height you want the bike seat, route planning, finding the best bike and the best seat — none of that is riding the bike, all of it is based on preferences that you won't have until you've ridden your first bike, and every inch of it is overthinking and procrastination. Nobody can tell you, beforehand, what the best way to ride a bike is, and that information is meaningless to you until you are physically riding the bike. Nobody can tell you what riding a bike is like and there is no way to learn outside of you physically sitting down on the bike, and pushing off, and pedalling — which is something you can do with a 20$ bike that you found at goodwill. You can, however, find yourself wasting hours or weeks or months thinking about riding a bike and never doing it.

To me this sounds more like "you need to learn how to build a bike before learning how to ride it" :D

I'd rather just buy a pre-made bike from a store.

> I'd rather just buy a pre-made bike from a store.

Right, but if you were going to do that... you would have done it already, if you catch my drift. Like I said, there's no shortage of blog posts, youtube videos, literal documentation on the Anki website, pre-made decks, etc. available. It's a bit like trying to optimize before you've even started writing code — you don't know what the hot paths are yet, and nobody can tell you without a profiler. You don't know what your preferences are in learning are yet, and nobody can tell you until you try. When you have a solid idea of what you prefer, then people can start giving you recommendations :)

Inputting words is part of using Anki, and a big part of solidifying your knowledge. Why should you listen? Well, even though I haven't reviewed mandarin in literally a decade now, and I've had essentially no IRL use for it, there's still words and phrases I can recall at a moment's notice. The software is unbelievably powerful.

As others have mentioned, there are premade decks but most of the practice of using Anki comes down to preference, so the premade decks may not fit your style of learning at all.

The process of making decks and the SRS features Anki provides are some of the most effective ways to learn language (particularly vocab) behind learning (grammar) from books and language exchange with a teacher/native speaker.

Duolingo is incredibly limited. If you are serious about learning a language, you should look elsewhere. Duolingo is only a good investment of money if you want to pay for a video game with minute levels of learning in the background. It's sort of like playing Sid Meirs Civilization to learn history.

You are cooked.