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You know you’re a language nerd when... | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5568 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes  Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 2681 of 3737 22 October 2012 at 10:00pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I understand the skepticism, and I have a lot of respect for Cecil Adams. More study probably has to be done to get to the truth of the matter. But in my personal anecdotal experience (which I recognize has no scientific validity), I definitely think it's made my typing more efficient. Having all the vowels on the home row really helps, as does having the least frequent letters on the bottom row, and things are arranged so common digraphs like "th", "ou" and "ng" are easy to type. Having the vowels all on one side of the keyboard, I find, actually increases hand alternation.
Of course this is all going to vary depending on what language you are typing in, and there are Dvorak-like layouts designed for many other languages, but the vowel thing helps out for pretty much all of them. I definitely don't buy the argument that, since QWERTY ousted other layouts in the early typewriter marketplace, that says anything about its actual efficiency. Commercial success involves a lot more than the technical efficiency of your product, especially when we're considering what is a modest effect at best. You have to take technology changes into account too. Certainly smart-phone thumb-typing has totally reshaped the equation. In any case, I don't want to start a huge debate here. We're past the typewriter age, and now anyone can use any layout they want, depending on their own needs and preferences. Edited by Levi on 22 October 2012 at 10:01pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5925 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 2682 of 3737 22 October 2012 at 10:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
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My latest contribution to this thread are:
I know I'm a language nerd when reading the last few pages of this thread really were a highlight of my day. No, my life isn't boring (it really isn't) I just found all the discussion about keyboards and software for typing in different languages very informative. When I wrote a post in my log in Afrikaans about how worried I am about how bad my Italian pronunciation is and then think I should have written about that in Italian! Edited by mick33 on 22 October 2012 at 10:38pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4874 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish | Message 2683 of 3737 22 October 2012 at 11:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
Either way, qwerty is not that difficult to use anyway, so why even bother discussing it? :p Edit: if there is any keyboard layout that is really bad, it must be the kana-input for Japanese. And some characters require more keystrokes than with romaji input こんにちは can be typed as 'byiak', but じゅ requires three keystrokes. Edited by stifa on 23 October 2012 at 12:16am 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 2684 of 3737 23 October 2012 at 2:11am | IP Logged | |||||
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I thought Dvorak was mostly more efficient for English? I definitely think that with my list of languages, any convenient combinations will be balanced out. For example, I can see that the combination io is easier to type in qwerty than in dvorak. it's also easier to type qwerty in qwerty than dvorak in dvorak XDDDDDDD
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5568 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 2685 of 3737 23 October 2012 at 5:29am | IP Logged | |||||
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Truthfully, the biggest time-saver for me has been, by far, switching the caps lock and backspace keys.
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrmap167 Tetraglot Newbie United States Joined 4684 days ago 21 posts - 23 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Italian, German | Message 2686 of 3737 23 October 2012 at 9:36pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You know you're a language nerd when:
- you base your daily events on the fact that you'll be able to speak X language. (Going to a Cuban restaurant to speak Spanish, meeting with an Italian prof. just to speak Italian). -You dream of what languages you want to have mastered in the future. For me: (English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Greek, Polish) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4829 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 2687 of 3737 23 October 2012 at 10:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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...when of the only 3 emails you sent today, 2 were not in your native language, although curiously, the one that was was to your German tutor, and one of the others ones was to close family members...
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| boon Diglot Groupie Ireland Joined 6160 days ago 91 posts - 177 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Mandarin, Latin | Message 2688 of 3737 24 October 2012 at 11:50pm | IP Logged | |||||
I heard that the QWERTY layout was designed so that typewriter salesmen could type out the word "TYPEWRITER" quite easily (all the keys are in the top row). Also, QWERTY makes use of the left hand more than the right, so it's better for left-handed people. APPARENTLY. I once tried DVORAK for a while, but I hated losing my QWERTY skills. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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