Amazon Kindle and language learning (Language Programs, Books & Tapes) Language Learning Forum

Amazon Kindle and language learning
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Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes

64 messages over 8 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next >>

habadzi
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Greece
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Message 49 of 64

13 November 2013 at 12:12pm | IP Logged

Kindle and Sony can handle pdfs, but this does not make them useful. I have the Sony 565 and tried to use
it with the huge pdfs of the old Fsi courses. Pages take a long time to turn.
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Doitsujin
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Message 50 of 64

19 December 2014 at 4:18pm | IP Logged

I've just learned that the latest firmware updates for Kindle Paperwhite 2 and Kindle Voyage models added support for Dutch and Russian (user interface and on-screen keyboard).

Amazon now also offers some bilingual Kindle dictionaries for free for registered Kindle users:

Oxford Hachette English<->French
Oxford English<->Spanish
Oxford English<->German
Van Dale English<->Dutch (and monolingual)
Priberam English<->Portuguese
ABBYY Lingvo Russian<->English (and monolingual)

(2 dictionaries for each language combination.)
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Ari
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Message 51 of 64

19 December 2014 at 5:37pm | IP Logged

Nice thread necromancy. Let's talk more about Kindle! I use the Kindle app on my phone to read. I find it's much better than reading a paper book, but unfortunately I have some paper books that I want to read that are not availible on the Kindle store. The best feature of the Kindle app is the ability to highlight a passage and save it for later. This is great for sentence mining. My new routine is to highlight difficult sentences as I read and then come back once I'm at least halfway through the book and look through the highlights. A lot of them are now no longer difficult, since I've learned the words through being exposed to them many times throughout the book. The ones that are still difficult I will add to Anki. This delayed approach saves me from having to delete Anki cards, which I find very difficult to do.
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kanewai
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Message 52 of 64

19 December 2014 at 9:06pm | IP Logged

I used to love kindle, but have been having some major problems with it recently.

- My paperwhite is only two years old, but already feels obsolete. It's now super slow
- it can take up to a minute to respond to any command. My theory is that the last
series of updates were designed for the newest generation, or for ipad users, but that
they screwed over the users of the previous generation kindles. And this is too bad,
because I used to love the device. Now it's so frustrating that I rarely use it.

- The French > English dictionary was great. The Italian dictionaries aren't.

- The kindle app works beautifully on my iPad, though. It's fast and responsive, and
super easy to switch between dictionaries. The only downside to reading on my pad,
though, is the size - even though I have a mini. I miss how portable the kindle was.

I also tested some iBooks (through iTunes). They have a much better selection of
foreign language books, at least in Italian, but no Italian > English dictionary yet.
There is a native Italian dictionary, and a Chinese > English and Spanish >
dictionary.
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Doitsujin
Diglot
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Message 53 of 64

19 December 2014 at 9:47pm | IP Logged

kanewai wrote:

That is indeed way too slow. This usually only happens when the book indexing routine got stuck or when the Kindle is almost full.
(The only time I have to wait for a response is when I look up words in a large home-made dictionary with lots of inflections.)

Try the following:

1. If you have lots of books on your Kindle, move 50% of them to a backup folder on your computer.
2. Delete all files in the following hidden Kindle folders:
a) /system/Search Indexes
b) /system/kf8
3. Restart the Kindle and leave it turned on while it regenerates all index files in the background. (If you have lots of books on your Kindle it might take a while until all books have been indexed.)

If that doesn't make the Kindle more responsive, you could try to reset it and to re-download/copy all books.

1 person has voted this message useful

patrickwilken
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Message 54 of 64

19 December 2014 at 9:49pm | IP Logged

kanewai wrote:

- My paperwhite is only two years old, but already feels obsolete. It's now super slow
- it can take up to a minute to respond to any command.

You might want to check out this thread.

Also try searching for some random characters, if you find any of your books after doing this, the ebooks are probably corrupted and need to be deleted and reinstalled. My non-paperwhite was running very slow, and after I did this it was as if new.

This advice is pretty good:

Quote:

I had the same problem. After several unfruitful hard resets, I found a great piece of advice that solved the problem. Install Calibre ebook management (a great, free, cross-platform little piece of software; google it at it should pop right up), and then install the "Kindle collection manager" plugin (http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=118635). Just for the functionality Calibre provides, it's already worth installing (transfer books to and from your Kindle, convert amongst several formats [pdf > mobi/azw3 being particularly useful], edit book metadata, edit Kindle collections via your PC, which is MUCH more comfortable than via the Kindle...). This is not propaganda for Calibre, beyond the fact that it provided a solution to a problem amazon has failed to address, and moreover, is a great little tool, a must-have, I'd dare say, for any ebook owner (give it a shot and you'll end up wondering how you managed without it).

But back to the point: Once you've installed both Calibre AND the kindle collection manager plugin (instructions provide in the link included further up), there's a handy little option called "View report of Kindle collections and books". When you click on it, it will do exactly that, and within the report, you'll find a nifty little problem-solving section in which it points out problematic books on your Kindle.

In my case, there were a few books with incomplete header info (or so the plugin says), so I deleted them from my Kindle and transfered them again. Another common issue, which I discovered my Kindle was suffering from as well, was the presence of duplicated books: A couple books were present twice on the Kindle (God knows why, as they were transfered exclusively via amazon's whispernet, and no other way). Apparently, the Kindle can't cope with this, as they both have the same title and serial number, and this baffles and stresses the poor little device out to no end, causing it to dedicate all its attention to trying to figure out what to do about it, in a fruitless loop that hogs all its processing power and causes the ridiculous delays mentioned in this forum (plus runs the battery down at at least double the normal rate), which, in more than one occasion, made me want to throw my kindle out the window. In my case, removing the problematic books and then hard-reseting solved the problem at once (I'd previously hard-reset it at least 10 times, to no avail). Thought I'd share, just for the sake of anyone else out there who, like I was until just yesterday, is about to pull his/her hair out, wondering why hard resets appear to work for so many people, yet not for them. Hope it helps!

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kanewai
Triglot
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Message 55 of 64

19 December 2014 at 10:34pm | IP Logged

Thanks. I've actually followed those threads. I don't have troubles with indexing, and
rebooting always works well ... for about 2 weeks.

I haven't tried deleting everything. I'll give it a shot.
1 person has voted this message useful

plumbem!
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Studies: Dutch, French

Message 56 of 64

19 December 2014 at 11:27pm | IP Logged

Doitsujin wrote:

I have a Paperwhite 1 and can't figure out where to get the Van Dale. Is this free dictionary embedded or rather a book itself? I have waited for a Dutch dictionary for a couple years now, I'm hoping I haven't misunderstood!

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