Chinese
I’ve obviously just started. I plan to take it real slow, WankiKani has shown me the horror of how reviews accumulate over time, but for now I’m jump starting things to get through the initial stage of pronounciation stuff and radicals. I want to get them out of the way as soon as possible as they pose no challenge. Then it’s back to 5 lessons a day for hanzi and words.
Not about Chinese:
Arabic
Working on my grand summary of all the grammar points I know and a list of known verbs referenced to sample conjugation tables.
Guitar
How long blues, finally get through the whole melody.
I’ve dug up my old Chinese Characters: A Genealogy and Dictionary. I love this book. I see people complaining on Amazon about the binding, paper and print quality. I must have an ancient one because the binding is great, the paper too and the print is crispy as a duck. Just more proof that that newer isn’t always better.
(I know it’s not a “real” genealogy, it’s a learning aid for foreigners. People seem to be confused about that too, even though the author says so himself in the book.)
I was just thinking about ways we could somehow help with this. Especially if life gets in the way and you return to 1k+ reviews
This sounds like you’re taking a class/course of some sort, would I be correct in that guess? I can see the usefulness of such things in self-study routes, it just would never occur to me to do it Reminded of conjugation tables I’d make in Spanish class long ago, I wonder how much more complicated it is
I wasn’t aware of this book–I would suspect there’d be a nice synergy with HH, will have to see as your study log progresses
Long term, I feel like the only way to do this either
A) Spread reviews out at the cost of lower retention rate. For example, when the user returns you could distribute those 1k reviews over the next few days, weeks, even months depending on the SRS rank. Is it really that big of a deal if a 16week plat item is reviewed on week 20?
B) Allow users to unlearn items. If you take a break for a couple weeks, odds are the Iron, Bronze, and maybe even some Silver items are going to be out of your memory.
I’ve been taking classes for almost three years now.
It depends. The Arabic alphabet is just an initial hurdle. The diglossia is not that difficult either, online they make it sound worse than it is. After some exposure to the language you start to pick up the patterns that change between MSA and the regional version.
The coolest thing about Arabic (and Semitic languages in general) is the consonant root system. Most words are derived from verbs that are actually just (most of the time three) consonants, the root.
For instance kataba = to write, the root is k t b. Kitaab = the things that’s written, the book. Maktab is the place where verb happens, so office. Kaatib = writer.
Or s3ada = to climb, to rise. Mis3ad is the thing that does the action, so elevator. Fataha = to open, miftaah the thing, so key. Or khazana = to collect, so makhzan the place where this happens, a storehouse. And so on and on. Of course, a lot of words don’t follow this neat ideal structure because a language lives and is used outside of lab conditions.
As for Chinese, I did my lessons and reviews today
I think this is probably the path we’ll go It would probably have to be separate from the List pages since if someone wanted to unlearn all of Bronze and below, it’d be tedious to have to visit every list page to do that
What does the 3 represent in this case?
From my ignorant perspective, it seems like the writing system is difficult to pick up/read. Does the 3 relate to that writing system?
That’s how people usually transcribe the ع consonant because it looks like a mirrored 3 (in its standalone version). The ayn is a bit hard to pronounce, but again not anywhere near as notoriously difficult as they make it seem.
The Arabic alphabet is just that, an alphabet. Once you know it, you can read anything. It’s really not that hard, it just takes exposure. One of the major advantages of the Arabic alphabet is that each letter always stands for the same sound. So once you can read, you always know the exact pronunciation of a word. Unlike English: crow vs cow, cough vs though vs through, etc.
However, they ususally don’t put vowel marks over the consonants, only in books for kids and foreigners, and in the Qur’an. So you can’t actually read a word unless you already know the word But again, you adapt quickly. You just start to recognize the word as a single construct instead of parsing each letter, just like you do in English. And there are some decent apps (not Google translate!) so you don’t need to consult a 2 kg dictionary like they used to.
To someone that doesn’t know a lick of Arabic, that sounds harder or at least as hard as English. I’m guessing there are a lot of cases where you must parse the phrase to figure out which vowels to insert? Not too much unlike “I read it last night” vs “I’ll read it tomorrow”.
Listening to the video you linked I can see what you mean even with the mark omissions (reminds me of furigana), it just requires a lot of exposure! I’ve never knew any words in Arabic until I watched this video I’m having a lot of trouble mimicking the ع sound.
That’s interesting! I wonder how IME input works. Does the 3 map to ع – is there even IME for Arabic? I imagine there has to be. It’s right to left too, that must be difficult to get used to!
Hope the Chinese lessons/reviews are progressing smoothly
I don’t use an IME, I never looked into it. I use the Buckwalter keyboard layout. It more or less maps the letters to the key that most resembles the pronunciation, with capitals used for empathic consonants. It works really well. On my phone, I just use an Arabic keyboard with the regular Arabic layout.
The reviews are going fine, I haven’t done any new lessons because I’m working the night shift and my brain is not capable of learning new things when sleep deprived
Just looking at the Buckwater layout I’m having a hard time distinguishing the characters I’ve never thought about how Arabic gets inputted into the computer before
I hope your night shift ends soon – one of the few positives about being sleep deprived is that it’s oddly relaxing since you’re out of it I guess
That’s one thing I sometimes feel bad about when it comes to reviews: we allow reviews until 4 a.m., possibly encouraging cramming reviews and losing out on sleep
Reminded of conjugation tables I’d make in Spanish class long ago, I wonder how much more complicated it is 
But again, you adapt quickly. You just start to recognize the word as a single construct instead of parsing each letter, just like you do in English. And there are some decent apps (not Google translate!) so you don’t need to consult a 2 kg dictionary like they used to.
I’m having a lot of trouble mimicking the ع sound. 
I’ve never thought about how Arabic gets inputted into the computer before 