7 ms·

Learning Persian with Anki, ChatGPT and YouTube

265 points by cjauvin 1y ago

BeetleB 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - shermantanktop 1y ago
      What works for one may not for another. Content on screens just doesn’t tickle my memory mechanisms in the same way. I wish it did. Part of it, for me, is that “magnitude fewer” is a benefit, not a drawback. Mastering a bounded scope and then intentionally expanding it by hand writing new cards keeps me focused on the rock face that I need to practice and internalize. Having the next 1000 words be two clicks away, and then dozens more decks waiting after that, makes the whole enterprise seem incredibly daunting. That may not be your experience, of course, and I wish Anki were effective for me.
      - BeetleB 1y ago
        I think a happy middle ground exists. Most of my cards are manually typed - not copy/pasted. And yes, it totally sucks, so I don't produce as many. I've been doing it since 2018, and the total number of cards I have is a few thousand - probably under 5000. If you review daily, you'll often end up with days where you have nothing to review. Very manageable. I recently got back to coding in C++. I'd forgotten some aspects of the language, and also needed to come up to speed with many of the newer features in C++23 (I was mostly an 03 and a bit of 11 person). It's a lot of cards to create! I'm doing it slowly, but this would be totally infeasible if I had to do it by hand. Still mostly manual typing, although I do copy/paste code snippets.
- FranzFerdiNaN 1y ago
  It works, but it also makes me hate my life. It’s just so incredibly mind numbing boring to do.
thebiblelover7 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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/ https://peakperformancetraining.org/)
- Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
      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 https://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html
mtalantikite 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks?search
  - piva00 1y ago
    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 1y ago
      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/ 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-deletions-for-learning-a-language-with-anki/ 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.asiteaboutnothing.net/w_ultimate_spanish_conjugation.php https://www.asiteaboutnothing.net/w_ultimate_spanish_conjuga...
gotodengo 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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 1y ago
      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 Español were two good ones.
HexDecOctBin 1y ago
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.
- FromTheSteppe 1y ago
  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 şodegi).
- veqq 1y ago
  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 1y ago
  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
  - FromTheSteppe 1y ago
    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).
eloycoto 1y ago
today I also read this, and I find it related: https://www.seangoedecke.com/autodeck/ https://www.seangoedecke.com/autodeck/
veqq 1y ago
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.) هیچ کُدام 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 án/ám 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 1y ago
  > 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.
re-sounding 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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.
techlatest_net 1y ago
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bsnnkv 1y ago
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 1y ago
  I speak Farsi and I am really curious about some of these blunders if you could share
  - bsnnkv 1y ago
    Using the word pistan instead of sina when talking about "chicken breast" (the cut of meat)
    - y-c-o-m-b 1y ago
      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.
      - cblum 1y ago
        Somewhat kinda related: I grew up in a Brazilian town that borders one of our many Spanish-speaking neighbors. We used to make fun of the folks across the border for pronouncing pizza like piça (“pissa”), which on our side of the border was a vulgar word for penis.
casey2 1y ago
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!
- josefrichter 1y ago
  I share your skepticism. The approach you mention seems to be not only the most efficient, but maybe actually the only one that works. This is probably more about neuroscience than personal preferences. The approach presented in the post is not necessarily on conflict with that, but it seems like extremely laborious preparation stage. And despite expectations, learning the different alphabet is usually unnecessary until fairly late into the learning process.
ntnbr 1y ago
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 1y ago
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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 Dänisch kenne.
  - Aldipower 1y ago
    Åh, du skriver en rigtig god tysk! Du hast Recht mit der Ähnlichkeit der Wörter im Dänischen und Deutschen. Sind ja auch beides germanische Sprachen. Man muss aber aufpassen, es gibt einige "falsche Freunde". :-) Z.B. Bier/bier, Kind/kind, Tag/tag, osv.. Har det godt!
- isaacremuant 1y ago
  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.
  - bb86754 1y ago
    I'd say Farsi is too. I'm finding it easier than Spanish much to my surprise.
submeta 1y ago
Persian is such a beatiful language. Sounds like singing. Like the french language of the middle east. And Anki is a super effective tool. I learn all kinds if things with it. Technology like AWS, new concepts, infos about colleagues, infos about my city, just about everything. Love it.
bumseltagbaerbi 1y ago
Russian is more usefull than any Persian or Arabic dialect. Never fraternize with your cultural enemy.
- HK-NC 1y ago
  Learning the language of any enemy is incredibly useful.
  - cindyllm 1y ago
    [dead]
b_be_building 1y ago
Maybe its the enthusiastic indi-developer in me, but it feels like this is an opportunity for someone to make a better version of Anki specific to language learning. I see it as a hybrid of Babbel + Anki. I see some individuals creating LLM generations of the cards which is definitely helpful at times, but also a double edge sword when it comes to learning. But I don't see anything taking in the users voice as an input which would be immensely beneficial

265 points by cjauvin 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - shermantanktop 1y ago
    What works for one may not for another. Content on screens just doesn’t tickle my memory mechanisms in the same way. I wish it did. Part of it, for me, is that “magnitude fewer” is a benefit, not a drawback. Mastering a bounded scope and then intentionally expanding it by hand writing new cards keeps me focused on the rock face that I need to practice and internalize. Having the next 1000 words be two clicks away, and then dozens more decks waiting after that, makes the whole enterprise seem incredibly daunting. That may not be your experience, of course, and I wish Anki were effective for me.
    - BeetleB 1y ago
      I think a happy middle ground exists. Most of my cards are manually typed - not copy/pasted. And yes, it totally sucks, so I don't produce as many. I've been doing it since 2018, and the total number of cards I have is a few thousand - probably under 5000. If you review daily, you'll often end up with days where you have nothing to review. Very manageable. I recently got back to coding in C++. I'd forgotten some aspects of the language, and also needed to come up to speed with many of the newer features in C++23 (I was mostly an 03 and a bit of 11 person). It's a lot of cards to create! I'm doing it slowly, but this would be totally infeasible if I had to do it by hand. Still mostly manual typing, although I do copy/paste code snippets.
FranzFerdiNaN 1y ago
It works, but it also makes me hate my life. It’s just so incredibly mind numbing boring to do.

thebiblelover7 1y ago

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 1y ago
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/ https://peakperformancetraining.org/)
Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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 https://augmentingcognition.com/ltm.html

mtalantikite 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks?search
- piva00 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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/ 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-deletions-for-learning-a-language-with-anki/ 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.asiteaboutnothing.net/w_ultimate_spanish_conjugation.php https://www.asiteaboutnothing.net/w_ultimate_spanish_conjuga...

gotodengo 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 1y ago
  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 1y ago
    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 Español were two good ones.

HexDecOctBin 1y ago

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.

FromTheSteppe 1y ago
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 şodegi).
veqq 1y ago
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 1y ago
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
- FromTheSteppe 1y ago
  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).

eloycoto 1y ago

today I also read this, and I find it related: https://www.seangoedecke.com/autodeck/ https://www.seangoedecke.com/autodeck/

veqq 1y ago

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.) هیچ کُدام 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 án/ám 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 1y ago
> 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.

re-sounding 1y ago

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 1y ago
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.

techlatest_net 1y ago

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bsnnkv 1y ago

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 1y ago
I speak Farsi and I am really curious about some of these blunders if you could share
- bsnnkv 1y ago
  Using the word pistan instead of sina when talking about "chicken breast" (the cut of meat)
  - y-c-o-m-b 1y ago
    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.
    - cblum 1y ago
      Somewhat kinda related: I grew up in a Brazilian town that borders one of our many Spanish-speaking neighbors. We used to make fun of the folks across the border for pronouncing pizza like piça (“pissa”), which on our side of the border was a vulgar word for penis.

casey2 1y ago

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!

josefrichter 1y ago
I share your skepticism. The approach you mention seems to be not only the most efficient, but maybe actually the only one that works. This is probably more about neuroscience than personal preferences. The approach presented in the post is not necessarily on conflict with that, but it seems like extremely laborious preparation stage. And despite expectations, learning the different alphabet is usually unnecessary until fairly late into the learning process.

ntnbr 1y ago

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 1y ago

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 1y ago

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 1y ago
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 Dänisch kenne.
- Aldipower 1y ago
  Åh, du skriver en rigtig god tysk! Du hast Recht mit der Ähnlichkeit der Wörter im Dänischen und Deutschen. Sind ja auch beides germanische Sprachen. Man muss aber aufpassen, es gibt einige "falsche Freunde". :-) Z.B. Bier/bier, Kind/kind, Tag/tag, osv.. Har det godt!
isaacremuant 1y ago
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.
- bb86754 1y ago
  I'd say Farsi is too. I'm finding it easier than Spanish much to my surprise.

submeta 1y ago

Persian is such a beatiful language. Sounds like singing. Like the french language of the middle east. And Anki is a super effective tool. I learn all kinds if things with it. Technology like AWS, new concepts, infos about colleagues, infos about my city, just about everything. Love it.

bumseltagbaerbi 1y ago

Russian is more usefull than any Persian or Arabic dialect. Never fraternize with your cultural enemy.

HK-NC 1y ago
Learning the language of any enemy is incredibly useful.
- cindyllm 1y ago
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b_be_building 1y ago

Maybe its the enthusiastic indi-developer in me, but it feels like this is an opportunity for someone to make a better version of Anki specific to language learning. I see it as a hybrid of Babbel + Anki. I see some individuals creating LLM generations of the cards which is definitely helpful at times, but also a double edge sword when it comes to learning. But I don't see anything taking in the users voice as an input which would be immensely beneficial