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If you want to learn a new language, there are a lot of people who recommend that you stay within the new language. You are not supposed to learn vocabulary by learning their direct translations but by having images.

I want to learn the vocabulary through Anki flashcards.

Where do I get those images for my flashcards? Is there a source that gives me a good images for every word.

It would be good if I don't have to go through dozens of different pictures in Wikipedia Commons.

It would also be good to have a license that would allow me to share the deck of flashcards online with other people.

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I'm not sure this fits into Personal Productivity. The Language Learning proposal on Area 51 might be a better choice. – Belisama May 31 '12 at 0:06
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I think language learning is a clear part of life hacking in general. It's a topic that gets discussed on personal development/life hacking blogs. My life hacking proposal got merged into the Personal Productivity proposal. On meta on this website there's an agreement to broaden the scope. Even in the faq there written that 'learning' is a part of the website. – Christian May 31 '12 at 10:01
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I suggest you increase your acceptance, which currently stands at 0%, if you want better and more answers. – gekkostate Jul 31 '12 at 20:49

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It's probably easiest to find something if you're sticking to a license you understand and can fulfill the requirements of. Both flickr and google images offer search functions delivering only images under a certain license:

When setting up your deck in Anki, you then need to define your data model accordingly, i.e. have a fact that consists of (for example)

  • image
  • attribution of the image - remember that you can use html in your card template, so it's easy to define a small-print attribution to the image.
  • two fields per language (I'd name it after the language, so you can easily extend the same deck to cover several languages). Why two? That way you can ask cue questions within the language you want to learn, or add a cloze sentence which uses the image as illustration or trigger.

If you restrain yourself to Creative Commons licenses and add the correct attribution to each and every image you use, chances are you might even find contributors taking your concept further, or adding another language.

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Consider trying Rosetta Stone. I've started learning chinese this way and although I didn't finish it (lack of motivation and time) the first lectures are in my head with a lot of words! I think it just works as they advertise. :)

http://www.rosettastone.com

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Rosetta Stone is not using Spaced Repetition which makes it a way of learning that prone to forgetting stuff over the long term. – Christian Sep 12 '12 at 8:13
@Christian Rosetta Stone does use spaced repetition. First you'll learn Shoe with the image of a shoe, the second time the shoe is red and the third time the woman wears a red shoe. – Roel Oct 30 '12 at 7:22

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