[HN Gopher] Learning Persian with Anki, ChatGPT and YouTube
___________________________________________________________________
Learning Persian with Anki, ChatGPT and YouTube
Author : cjauvin
Score : 170 points
Date : 2025-09-24 12:45 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cjauvin.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (cjauvin.github.io)
| thebiblelover7 wrote:
| I've found Anki the best app to learn almost anythinf that
| requires memorization. In my high school days, I saw a direct
| correlation between the amount of Anki studying I did, and my
| grade.
| codyb wrote:
| I add memory tricks (mostly mnemonics in this case) in that I
| learned from Dominic O'Brien [0] (I think some of his work has
| PDFs available) in order to juice the process a bit (helps with
| the tricky ones, and can make learning the new ones quicker if
| you do it from the get go)
|
| [0] - (https://peakperformancetraining.org/)
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I am in high school and I had created anki notes for
| thermodynamics which are since lost but my friend used to say
| to do it in organic notes and I just ditched anki.
|
| My organic chemistry is... terrible to say the least. I might
| try Anki again if you say so!
| garbthetill wrote:
| I found it really great for quickly learning contents of a
| paper or books, my only gripe with anki is the integration
| between desktop and mobile, especially if you dont opt to sign
| in and getting things to sync was a pain in the ass. Hell even
| moving my deck from my old computer to new one wasnt straight
| forward
| mresnick wrote:
| Could you talk about your method for breaking up the contents
| of papers and books into cards? I have a bunch of reading to
| catch up on for a midterm in a few weeks and I'm not sure how
| fine-grained to make my cards.
| garbthetill wrote:
| There is a category called incremental reading,you can find
| more elegant techniques if you look into it.
|
| My method is more primitive, I first get a simple overview
| of the topic (LLMs are great at this). Once I have a feel ,
| i flick through the material book/paper highlight important
| info that stands out or info that I want to remember and
| personally for me, Im not trying to understand things as I
| highlight, once I'm done a chapter or a big section, I pull
| out my anki and start making questions against the
| highlighted parts.
|
| When Im making questions, usually I make one questions that
| corresponds directly and I use the highlighted part as the
| answer with minimum change expect for readability and then
| I make several other questions that takes different parts
| of the highlighted answer, so that I can have an almost
| lego like breakdown of questions that can help me recall
| the "bigger question", also I make sure the questions arent
| to direct and force my brain to think and retrieve the
| answer
|
| I hope this helps, this is the article that inspired me to
| read this way: https://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html
| mtalantikite wrote:
| I've had some successful sprints using Anki, but I always get
| fatigued making cards for it after a few months, even when
| leaning on LLM tools to speed up the process.
|
| One app I used early on when beginning French was Clozemaster,
| set to keyboard input (instead of multiple choice). The largest
| benefit was I didn't have to make all the decks, they progress
| you through the most common words (used in context), and there
| are ChatGPT grammar explanations for everything if you wanted to
| drill into it. It sounds very similar to what OP created for
| themself.
|
| At a certain point you just need to switch to native content, but
| at the beginning I found Assimil + Clozemaster + comprehensible
| input on YouTube to be able to get me to watching regular French
| TV in maybe 6 months.
| codyb wrote:
| There's a large number of prebuilt Anki decks available here as
| well if this is useful for anyone exploring the space -
| https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks?search
| piva00 wrote:
| As far as I know about decks for language learning, you
| should be building your own. Pre-built decks don't work so
| well exactly because you don't spend the time to create the
| links that work for you personally, I know a few people who
| tried to shortcut it by using pre-built decks but gave up
| after noticing it wasn't working well.
|
| It sucks though, it's also the one thing that makes me
| constantly not be consistent using Anki, I get tired of
| creating cards and stop for a while.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I used only pre-"built" decks and got to C1 in Spanish. One
| was actually prebuilt, the other was literally
| algorithmically generated disposable clozes. That, _one_
| graded reader and comic books got me to being comfortable
| in an L1- >L1 dictionary, and then it's over. You don't
| need language learning material any more, just material.
|
| People are just repeating this advice about making your own
| decks, and it's based in nothing but having had it repeated
| to them. Spaced repetition is boiling in pseudoscience and
| ancient studies that don't say much other than that there's
| a forgetting curve.
|
| Most people are just parroting stuff they read on the
| Supermemo wiki (or somebody read off the Supermemo wiki and
| repeated to them like they came up with it), and all of
| that is just thoughts off the top of one guy's head. His
| innovation is that he wrote a program to do Leitner boxes
| before he had ever heard of a Leitner box, but people treat
| every word like gospel.
|
| The only five things I can say for language learning is to
| go really hard on systems in a new language that are
| completely unknown to you (like Romance conjugations for an
| English speaker); only drill sentences, not individual
| words; always say your Anki answers out loud, and read out
| loud as much as you can; comic books have pictures, too;
| and once you get comfortable in an L2->L2 dictionary,
| you're a more comfortable reader than a lot of natives.
|
| -----
|
| * Random Anki decks for a few European languages:
| https://sookocheff.com/post/language/cloze-deletions/
|
| (Edit: the lovely thing about 10K algorithmically generated
| clozes is that they're utterly disposable, unlike cards
| that you make yourself. If one is a leech, forget about it.
| You'll see another one just like it when you get to the
| point that it won't be a leech for you.)
|
| * Instructions on how to generate your own in other
| languages, for developers:
| https://sookocheff.com/post/language/bulk-generating-
| cloze-d...
|
| (You could probably point out the above URL to an LLM and
| it would generate the code for you.)
|
| * Anki to learn Romance conjugations _first:_ https://www.a
| siteaboutnothing.net/w_ultimate_spanish_conjuga...
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Did you get through the entire KOFI deck for Spanish? I
| started the French one, but didn't make it past a month
| or two before I fell off. I'm thinking of going through
| the French -> Spanish Assimil course soon and might give
| the KOFI deck another go, this time in Spanish.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I very much did, and sticking with it was the best choice
| I made. You will get very very fast at it after a while,
| and the first verbs are the hardest and most irregular
| (and you should spend the most time on them.) Throwing in
| the messy clozes after doing your conjugations is
| relaxing, and you can do as many of those as you're in
| the mood for, whereas the conjugations are systematically
| introduced and you shouldn't speed it up too much. Took
| me 7 months, but complete mastery. But literally some of
| the conjugations from the first hard couple months will
| bother you until the end.
|
| I feel even better than natives sometimes because they
| learn conjugations in order at school, and when asked to
| recall them out of order (or hop from form to form) get
| confused. Once you have conjugations, you can read
| anything with a dictionary (and the online dle is the
| best dictionary I've ever used.)
|
| I'm about to start again with KOFI French, but I had to
| do a lot of work to get my mouth and ears adjusted to
| hearing French as anything other then murmurs, and to be
| able to read (luckily for me, French is the opposite of
| perl and read-only instead of write-only.) There's a lot
| of stuff in French I want to read; reading all of the
| stuff translated into Spanish from French (but never into
| English) has got my beak wet.
|
| Also, Spanish-language comic books will make you forget
| about English-language comic books. And they are very
| online, examples: http://columberos.blogspot.com/ and
| https://comicsmexicanosdejediskater.blogspot.com/
|
| Also lots of other good material for vos:
| https://ahira.com.ar/ including
| https://ahira.com.ar/revistas/skorpio/ and
| https://ahira.com.ar/revistas/hora-cero-suplemento-
| semanal/ which is a landmark of literature that is too
| good for us (El Eternauta spans the entire length of the
| series.)
| codyb wrote:
| Just seconding all of this and how useful (and annoying)
| the conjugation deck has been for me in Spanish. Not sure
| if it was the KOFI one, but it runs through from
| irregular through to the mostly regular. And yea, total
| pain in the ass, and some still get me lol and I don't
| regret it in the slightest cause everything else is a ton
| easier to pick up and everything becomes much more
| accessible.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Thanks for the thoughtful response and links! I actually
| think you've convinced me to go back and try to complete
| the whole French KOFI deck, as there are certainly gaps
| in my verb conjugations.
|
| For hearing French, I went through the old FSI French
| phonology course at the beginning, as well as all the
| grouped (A1/A2/etc) comprehensible input from this
| channel: https://www.youtube.com/@FrenchComprehensibleInp
| ut/playlists. Oh, and I did a bunch of the French
| listening comprehension on Yabla for a few months:
| https://french.yabla.com/.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > FSI French phonology course
|
| I did the same. Got me interested in the old programmatic
| methods and how they could be adapted to LLMs.
|
| Also, pssst... https://seulementbd.blogspot.com/
| hitarpetar wrote:
| the advantage of building your own decks is choosing
| words you will actually use. this matters if you're
| practicing conversation, if your goal is just to read
| general material then using preselected word lists makes
| sense
| pessimizer wrote:
| You should be using all the words. If you want to learn
| words about cooking, buy cookbooks. I want to read _all_
| material. I want to read extremely esoteric subjects from
| UNAM 's press, I want to read Cervantes, I want to read
| cookbooks, I want to read Mexican street fotonovelas from
| the 70s.
|
| > using preselected word lists makes sense
|
| I have never used Anki for word to word translation,
| because there is no Spanish word that means any English
| word. You've restricted yourself to a particular paradigm
| from the beginning. I mean, do whatever you need to do to
| get a foothold, but you want to get away from L1 as much
| as possible as soon as you can.
| __float wrote:
| That makes sense as a long-term goal, but if you're still
| in the earlier stages it's much more fun to learn a
| variety of words and focus on the most common ones. Get
| depth at first, and later you can fill in the holes with
| e.g. a cookbook.
|
| I know you consider it pseudoscience to force creating
| your own cards, but I do find premade decks result in a
| lot more leeches. How do you avoid them when relying on
| these thousands of auto-generated cards?
| pessimizer wrote:
| I don't. I let leeches get suspended. Also, some of those
| autogenerated cards (surprisingly few) won't make sense
| and I just suspend those, too. They're all disposable.
| New cards will eventually come up that are just like the
| too difficult leech, and one will come up when you're
| ready to learn it.
|
| Also, one of the many parts of the spaced repetition lore
| that I do agree with is that if you keep getting the same
| card wrong in the same way over and over again, you're
| building up a weird habit that is going to be tough to
| break. Better to trash it. [edit: you can't do this with
| the conjugation cards, though. If you keep failing a
| particular conjugation card, you need to stop, write it
| down, and spend time with it individually. All of those
| are important, except maybe the unique conjugations of
| europeizar.]
|
| > if you're still in the earlier stages it's much more
| fun to learn a variety of words and focus on the most
| common ones.
|
| I believe of course in the have fun rule above all
| others, because this is an ultramarathon, not a sprint.
| You're going to have to get enjoyment from the process if
| you're going to stick to it at all. I get a "dopamine
| hit" every time I get a card right.
|
| If you wanted to _sprint,_ the best way is probably doing
| the full old-school* Glossika method where you go over
| the day 's sentences, you listen and repeat, you listen
| and transcribe, then you repeat on your own and record.
| The next day you start by listening to your recordings
| and figuring out how to improve them, rerecord, go over
| your new sentences, rinse and repeat for 3-4 hours a day.
| You can certainly hammer a language into your head that
| way, but you probably need a tiger mom threatening to
| withhold food or something to keep you doing that for 6
| months.
|
| About creating your own cards - I've done thousands (not
| language related), and I've learned and remembered things
| with them, but there's no science behind writing a good
| card. Everybody is on their own and flailing, and asking
| themselves "what would Wozniak do?" rather than coming up
| with formal rules and testing them. I've got ideas, and
| there are a few datasets (of people doing spaced
| repetition sessions over time) available, but I think
| that treating cards as a black box, discovering the
| relationships between them over time (through finding
| which cards are passed and failed together), and creating
| some sort of internal market of cards between adversarial
| LLMs could generate good decks, and generate mappings
| that would allow failing or passing one card to affect
| _many_ other cards rather than the single card alone.
|
| The best thing about FSRS to me is the decision to stop
| asking the user about process, and just ask them about
| goals. Some of the Anki community seem on the verge of
| giving up on the self-grading, too, and just moving to
| pass/fail, which I couldn't support more. I never used
| anything but pass/fail, with the settings from refold
| (https://refold.la/simplified/) which have been obsoleted
| by FSRS, which works better with pass/fail only. As I
| said before, a lot of how these things were designed from
| the beginning was simply cargo-culting Wozniak.
|
| ----
|
| [*] I haven't tried the new school online version, but
| I'm sure they have varieties in the same mode.
| codyb wrote:
| Ah, that's interesting. I've definitely learned a ton
| through the vocabulary and conjugation decks and they're a
| great way to continue learning even on days when there's
| little other stimulus.
|
| I think what's key is that I'm taking the words and
| conjugation rules I'm learning and using them relatively
| quickly, often that day or that week. I.E., I'll come
| across words in Anki, then hear them in a baseball
| broadcast or see them in a news article. Or I'll recognize
| what tense something is because of the rules.
|
| So it's supplemental, and maybe that's why it's sticking
| better. I don't think I'd want to create decks constantly,
| I created one 140 card deck and that was enough.
|
| Finally, I do frequently use memory tricks to create
| associations so maybe my experience with memory castles,
| mnemonics, and other techniques (which I use on cards I
| forget frequently to create links I'm unable to create
| quickly on my own (or to differentiate similar words (or
| words that are the same but in different tenses))).
|
| Yea, it's _work_!
| mtalantikite wrote:
| For sure! I've gone through some pre-made verb conjugation
| and vocab decks -- and actually have been meaning to upload
| one I made for learning Bengali script -- but I still find
| grinding Anki decks to not be that effective for me. Which
| sucks, because all you hear is how magic Anki is, but I guess
| I've always struggled with rote memorization.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| I made a native iOS/macOS app for discovering and mining
| Japanese content into Anki: https://reader.manabi.io
|
| It's gotten quite popular enough that I've gone full-time on it
| piazz wrote:
| Shameless plug for anybody who has been through the hell that
| is Anki card creation for language learning - I built an LLM
| powered extension for Anki that allows you to wire up fields to
| arbitrary prompts, and then generate notes in batch (or
| selectively per field). I use it every day for generating
| example sentences, definitions, and TTS. Would have quit Anki
| ages ago without this.
|
| https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1531888719
|
| https://smart-notes.xyz
|
| FWIW I did get a lot more mileage from building my own deck vs
| a custom deck too, would recommend that approach regardless
| once you're past the initial vocab bootstrapping phrase.
| sharperguy wrote:
| This is why for learning Chinese I use Pleco, which is a
| dictionary that allow has a button to instantly add any word to
| your flashcard list. So when I encounter a new word I just look
| it up and then add it to flashcards which I review each
| morning.
|
| I don't know what similar tools exist for learning other
| languages but it does help a lot for Chinese.
| 0xbeefcab wrote:
| I use yomitan + a spanish dictionary + ankiconnect for
| flashcard creation. i can browse whatever in spanish, hold
| shift and hover to see the definition(s) of a spanish word
| unconjugated + how its conjugated, and hit a + button to add it
| to my anki deck, either in context or just as a word
| gotodengo wrote:
| I'm on year 10 of learning my second language and passed through
| a variety of teaching/learning methods. Intensive FSI courses,
| immersion including output as early as possible, self guided
| based heavily on reading and vocabulary, etc. While I get by
| mostly fine and now live in my second language, my listening is
| definitely my weakest skill.
|
| Anki is probably my most beneficial single tool. Though if I were
| to do it over again I'd follow more or less the poster's
| strategy. Maybe 80% comprehensible input for listening and 20%
| Anki for vocab building. At least until I could watch native TV
| without much effort. I've played around a bit with LLMs, but
| still haven't found a really great use case for my study.
|
| On the otherhand I think consistent practice (with growing
| difficulty) trumps technique. Whatever process keeps you
| motivated to practice month after month is most important.
| codyb wrote:
| The most effective routine is the one you stick with for sure!
|
| I love anki and use it for Spanish which is showing marked
| improvement. I do vocab and conjugation with Anki.
|
| Then I just find other ways to immerse myself and call it a
| day.
|
| - Spanish audio for sports whenever possible - Interfaces for
| personal computers/devices - Picking up the Spanish language
| weekly from the little box on the corner - Listening to Spanish
| artists - Reading the news in Spanish instead of English (One
| major benefit here is consuming far less news) - Writing notes
| for work and personal projects - Texting friends
|
| It all really adds up over time and is definitely doable even
| as an adult, but it requires a ton of work, so being able to
| find ways to incorporate it into the activities I'm already
| doing is key for me on top of the more active Anki learning.
| 0xbeefcab wrote:
| im in the exact same boat. Do you have any recs for news
| sites? I use el pais, but that has a lot of locked articles.
| codyb wrote:
| I'm at the... "the less news I consume the better" phase of
| my year lol so I haven't found much I visit regularly but
| Telemundo and AP News en Espanol were two good ones.
| piffey wrote:
| Just kicked off my third language after reaching B2/C1ish in my
| second (~5 years in), we'll see what the C1 test determines
| this fall, and Anki has been the consistent thing that stayed
| through all the other learning experiments. It's amazing just
| investing in Anki right out the bat how much quicker I'm moving
| on the new language. Especially considering it's way harder as
| it's not like any language I know (rich declension system,
| etc).
|
| GenAI also been a big helper when I run out of content. "Write
| me an essay involving [subject I want to learn about]. In my
| response after reading, any word I've written separated by a
| comma generate a CSV of the format "that word, english
| definiton"." I'll then just dump those new words into Anki.
| HexDecOctBin wrote:
| I find it interesting that despite the relationship between Iran
| and various Arab countries being pretty hostile, there is no move
| towards stop using the word "Farsi" and revert back to "Parsi".
| Anyone know why? Seems like a easy political win for a besieged
| regime.
| dashtiarian wrote:
| Because it has nothing to do with Arabic. /p/ in Persian is
| aspirated, and in some words, like aspirated /p/ in some other
| languages (e.g. Greek), it has turned into /f/; Ever wondered
| why ph is pronounced /f/? In Persian this is called "softening"
| (Narm sodegi).
| veqq wrote:
| Both are used in Iran. Though a common folk etymology, Parsi
| didn't change under Arabic influence. Words like abzar and
| afzar exist in similar variation, guwspand gufsand, ispand,
| isfand, Espahan, Esfahan. Even modern loans from Russian
| sometimes undergo this change like apelsin->aflesun.
| jagaerglad wrote:
| There are some people suggesting that, however at a small scale
| and not taken that seriously by many. What difference does it
| make? What about all the other words that underwent the sound
| change? Also, some nuanced people can keep languages and
| politics separate. The sound shift isn't even entirely clear to
| be due to arabic influence, how come it turned into 'f' and not
| 'b' such as the arabic approximation? How come sounds like 'g'
| remained?
|
| And in the end, in English it should be "Persian" and not
| "Farsi", that is where the actual move should be. How sad and
| historically wasteful if we started to do that to all
| languages, "deutsch", "zhongwen" or "elliniki" instead of
| German, Chinese and Greek
| dashtiarian wrote:
| It used to be called Persian in English, the media changed it
| to Farsi to reduce it's "prestige". If you knew English and
| you are old enough you even remember the shift (1990s-2000s).
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _the media changed it to Farsi to reduce it 's
| "prestige"_
|
| This is not true.
|
| It happened after the 1979 Iranian revolution, when
| _Iranians_ abroad wanted to call it Farsi out of cultural
| pride, using the same word in their own language, rather
| than Persian which is the "foreign" word for it (from
| Greek/Latin). It was literally reclaiming the name. Then
| the media followed suit out of respect. It was cultural
| _sensitivity_.
|
| Today some non-Iranians and therefore groups like the UN
| prefer "Persian" because variants are also spoken in
| Afghanistan and Tajikstan, and Farsi is a reference to the
| Fars province of Iran, so Persian can be seen as more
| neutral. But then again, not many people complain about
| "English" being associated with England and not being
| neutral enough to Americans or Indians. So it's definitely
| complicated. But it's also definitely _not_ about trying to
| diminish anybody 's "prestige".
| eloycoto wrote:
| today I also read this, and I find it related:
| https://www.seangoedecke.com/autodeck/
| veqq wrote:
| Author, you're not properly engaging with the language. Instead
| of learning to type (and simply adding vowel marks), you complain
| about letters having different forms akin to someone saying q and
| Q are different and then write a post about an actively worse
| approach.
|
| You also didn't understand that cards in anki can have more than
| 2 sides. Making Persian writing->Latin transcription then Latin
| transcription->English translation is a huge antipattern, when
| you can have all 3 on one note (simply add a 3rd field, also
| there's a built in "hint" field) - and above all should not use a
| Latin transcription at all (Notably, in the deck settings, you
| can generate cards from notes in different ways.)
|
| hych khudm now has the o marked, that easy! (N.b. author, another
| issue with your method is... Youtube videos are teaching you
| random things without structure. Colloquial Tehrani Persian turns
| an/am into un/um which you are learning in your vocabulary. But
| you can simply learn the replacement rules and apply them when
| speaking in certain contexts.) Please use a good textbook
| instead. In 100-200 hours, you should be around B2 with a good
| program. (Better Assimil courses bring that down to ~75 hours.)
|
| I strongly recommend:
|
| - Baizoyev & Howard's Beginners Guide to Tajiki - teaches the
| written language, with all vowels marked, and multiple dialects,
| this is by far the fastest way to master Persian. Reading/writing
| in Persian script is essentially mechanical with a good base in
| the language and not an issue, but you can read all Persian
| classics in the Tajik script with all vowels marked...
|
| - Lambton's Persian Grammar - teaches the written languages along
| with colloquial Iranian usage
|
| - Elwell-Sutton's Colloquial Persian - uses Latin transcription,
| quickly teaches the grammar and a nice vocabulary
|
| -----
|
| But going further, if a vowel's not marked but feels necessary:
|
| > In 1792, Edward Moises already suggested not trying and just
| saying e
|
| Different dialects differ a lot on short vowel usage (even in
| grammatical forms), so this is a surprisingly valid trick.
| raincole wrote:
| > Instead of learning to type
|
| How do you know they are not learning to type?
|
| > you complain about letters having different forms
|
| Where did they "complain"?
|
| The OP's article:
|
| > From this, I will extract three screenshots (with the MacOS
| screenshot tool). First, to create a card of type "basic" (one
| side). I use this type of card to exercise my reading, which is
| very difficult and remains stubbornly slow, even though I know
| the 32 letters of the Persian alphabet quite well by now. But
| the different ways of writing them (which varies by their
| position in the word) and the fact that the vowels are not
| present makes it an enduringly challenging task.
|
| It doesn't sound like they literally can't type in Persian, or
| they're complaining about how it's written, at all. They're
| merely stating the fact it's difficult for them (like every
| language learner).
|
| They also screenshot the English part too. So presumably they
| screenshot because it's faster, not that they can't type.
|
| > Author, you're not properly engaging with the language
|
| Strangely condescending. They're focusing on reading and
| listening, which is legit for beginners.
|
| I do agree that the use of Anki cards is suboptimal though.
| veqq wrote:
| In English you have to actually press shift to change q to Q.
| In Persian, this is all done for you. Simply press a letter
| key and the correct form will appear (automatically changing
| form based on letters later.) Describing that as
| "challenging" indicates that the author does not know how to
| type in Persian.
| raincole wrote:
| ...
|
| He's talking about reading as a challenge. Not typing. It's
| very clear and unambiguous from the original article.
| veqq wrote:
| You still misunderstand. This is only relevant because
| the author doesn't understand the system and instead of
| engaging with it, is making counter-productive crutches
| which prevent actual learning.
|
| I'm flagging your comment for claiming I didn't read the
| article. If the author has trouble reading letters, how
| can he type well (which was your first point)? Addressing
| that first would prevent him from using transcriptions
| and dual sets of flashcards.
| cjauvin wrote:
| Author here: my learning objectives, in order of
| importance, are: (1) vocal understanding, (2) speaking,
| (3) reading, and (4) typing and writing (far further). As
| I explain, I'm mostly bypassing the problem of typing by
| using screenshots (ChatGPT's OCR capabilities are very
| good, and Anki works very well with it too).
| veqq wrote:
| With a few hours of applied learning, distinctions
| between these will collapse. If you work on typing, your
| reading will naturally improve (because you're
| identifying letters to input). With stronger reading, you
| won't see differences between scripts and reading will be
| the same as listening. That is, improving your knowledge
| of the language by reading will improve your listening
| comprehension too. (Reading the wikipedia article on
| phonology will also unify reading out loud and speaking,
| Persian is extremely phonemic.)
|
| At minimum, consider a few hours now compared to the time
| saved by halving the number of flashcards you need.
| cenamus wrote:
| Don't know how applicable it is in regards to vowel marks, but
| similarly in online conversation Czech people often leave out
| all diacritic marks (so no cstdrnuuaeiyo). This used to be
| completely incomprehensible to me, until I had enough knowledge
| to read "normal" Czech text with relative ease.
|
| So it seems to make a lot of sense to learn with that aid and
| later transition to no vowel markings (or reduced / the normal
| amount)
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| Your post is actually very helpful, but comes across as harsh
| and condescending. I think you should reconsider how you
| approach this.
|
| EDIT: to be more specific, language like "You complain" and
| "You also didn't understand" can appear abrasive and scornful.
| Removing them would probably make the effect you're hoping for
| (proper learning techniques for the language) more meaningful.
| re-sounding wrote:
| That's pretty cool-but also quite a time intensive workflow when
| my biggest challenge is not being lazy. Anki has been useful for
| me but I find it hard to just stick to a rhythm.
|
| I was super bullish about ChatGPT's Voice Mode, but it is so
| eager to respond that I never get a chance to complete sentences!
| meken wrote:
| I, too, had the same frustration as you - until I figured out
| you can hold down the circular icon while you're speaking then
| let it go when you're done and it won't interrupt you.
|
| Edit: it looks like they updated the Voice Mode UI since I last
| used it - hopefully they retained this capability.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Wow. It's been 3 hours. This is the first submission I've seen
| that mentions spaced repetition that _doesn 't_ have a comment
| trashing spaced repetition!
| shermantanktop wrote:
| I won't trash it, but for me, anything that means i'm using a
| screen/app means my retention is lower than if i just pick up a
| pencil and write on a flashcard.
|
| The flexibility of being able to dynamically generate a ton of
| Anki cards using a script is trumped by just using ChatGPT to
| generate and grade answers. This will not work well for
| advanced language learners but for German it works really well
| - as much repetition as you need to master specific skills - up
| through intermediate level.
| BeetleB wrote:
| There are two problems with physical flashcards:
|
| 1. The lack of a good spaced repetition algorithm.
|
| 2. You'll end up with an order of magnitude fewer flash
| cards. When it's easy to copy/paste, there's no way you can
| create all the flashcards you need by hand in a decent amount
| of time.
|
| > The flexibility of being able to dynamically generate a ton
| of Anki cards using a script is trumped by just using ChatGPT
| ...
|
| I would never advocate doing it with a script. All my
| flashcards were created by me - either by typing or selective
| copy/paste.
| FranzFerdiNaN wrote:
| It works, but it also makes me hate my life. It's just so
| incredibly mind numbing boring to do.
| bsnnkv wrote:
| Always fun to see two of my worlds collide!
|
| I studied Dari own my own and at college as an elective, and
| ended up taking a job with the ICRC to investigate ISAF war
| crimes in Afghanistan right after I graduated
|
| These days Dari is my most comfortable second language (and I
| have quite a few of them)
|
| I'm not sure if, given I had to start from scratch again, I'd go
| down this route - the description and screenshots seem very
| overstimulating for me
|
| The most important parts of my language learning in Dari (and
| Pashto) - the "aha" moments if you will, were trying to express
| something, making a fool of myself, making everyone around me
| laugh, and then being gently corrected in a long-winded way
| (usually because I couldn't understand a simpler, more direct
| correction)
|
| In hindsight this feels like a very equitable cultural exchange -
| I learned something valuable about the language and culture while
| giving my interlocutors a funny memory to share with their
| friends and family
| maininformer wrote:
| I speak Farsi and I am really curious about some of these
| blunders if you could share
| bsnnkv wrote:
| Using the word pistan instead of sina when talking about
| "chicken breast" (the cut of meat)
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| Well you got another good laugh out of it from me LOL
|
| As an Iranian-American, I've made similar blunders in
| trying to communicate with my Mexican friends and
| colleagues. "Hey amigo, do you need a chauqeta?" I would
| ask to the eruption of laughter. If you look up "Chaqueta",
| translation services will happily tell you it means
| "Jacket". Don't trust it. Apparently to some Mexicans it
| also means jerking off.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Anki is great for building one's vocabulary. It is not meant to
| be the only tool used for learning a language. But actually
| learning a language is much easier and goes much faster when
| one has adequate vocabulary.
| jean_lannes wrote:
| Let me ask: what sort of background is necessary to get jobs
| based on your skills in a second language? I'm very into
| language learning as a hobby, but would it be necessary to get
| a degree before applying to these sorts of jobs? Where would
| one even look for jobs?
| casey2 wrote:
| Trying to learn a language by anything other than going through
| the process of constructing grammatical sentences in the language
| is my favorite genre of hackernews posts
|
| This is a fine way to bring the material into your "cache" but
| you aren't doing the work required to learn a language:
| Communication!
| ntnbr wrote:
| Cool! Have done a similar thing in the past with AP Psychology
| and Anki. ChatGPT is really helpful for turning Quizlet-esque
| flashcards into good-quality copy+pasteable Cloze cards in Anki.
| kwoff wrote:
| I haven't incorporated Anki yet, but I guess a similar idea would
| be Memrise. My experience with that for Korean was that it was
| too intense in the beginning, since it was throwing random
| (though basic) phrases of like 9 syllables at me, and I couldn't
| keep them straight. I am considering trying Memrise again, since
| I've gone through A2 level on Busuu since then, and know more
| basic phrases and grammar. I do think I should be building my own
| Anki set by this point, but I've been too lazy.
|
| Helping with language learning is one of the things I think
| ChatGPT is excellent for. I have a long-term conversation only
| about Korean, and I can ask questions like "how would a Korean
| understand [some grammatical structure]?" and it gives very
| insightful answers, and even refers back to vocabulary that I've
| already used or other discussions about similar topics.
| Aldipower wrote:
| I could learn Danish with Anki, YouTube, ChatGPT and a teacher in
| evening school. I think Danish is even harder to learn then
| Persian. ;-) Anki is a great concept!
| JohnLocke4 wrote:
| How difficult a language is to learn is very subjective. My
| mother language is Danish and therefore learning German was
| relatively easy for me (relatively because it is always
| difficult to learn a new language!)
|
| Manchmal, wenn ich ein Wort noch nie gesehen habe, kann ich die
| Bedeutung herausfinden, weil ich das entsprechende Wort auf
| Danisch kenne.
| isaacremuant wrote:
| If you know English danish/swedish/Norwegian is absolutely one
| of the easiest languages to learn.
|
| People do underestimate how much a good teacher and putting in
| the work can make a difference. Money well invested if you
| actually NEED to use the language and will have opportunity to.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-09-24 23:00 UTC)