Egyptian, slowly, with Anki & Beeminder (Links & Internet Resources) Language Learning Forum

Egyptian, slowly, with Anki & Beeminder
Tags: Ancient Egyptian \| Flash cards \| Anki \| Motivation \| Assimil
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Language Learning Forum : Links & Internet Resources

emk
Diglot
Moderator
United States
Joined 5534 days ago
2615 posts - 8806 votes

Speaks: English*, French^B2
Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian
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Message 1 of 4

22 May 2014 at 9:58pm | IP Logged

A while back, I mentioned Beeminder on Serpent's Reach your goals or pay thread. This is the tool I use to keep from slacking off on Egyptian. It's certainly not for everyone (see my post in Serpent's thread), but I've found it useful.

Anyway, the nice folks at Beeminder were curious about how this actually worked in practice, so I wrote up an introductory post: Learning Ancient Egyptian in an Hour Per Week with Beeminder.

Quote:

I learned to speak French in my 30s. It turns out that learning a language is a bit like hiking all 2,200 miles of the Appalacian trial: it sounds like something that only a talented elite could do. But all you really need is the ability to keep putting one foot in front of another for 6 or 7 months. Couch potatoes have hiked the trail — as well as a grandmother in sneakers with a homemade bag slung over her shoulder. Language learning is the same way: If you can stick with it long enough, you’ll get there. Sheer stubborn persistence is a superpower.

Now, when I learned French, I had the luxury of being totally committed. I spoke it with my wife. I read 500 pages of French a month for 20 months. I bought the French dubs of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel and watched season after season. It was easy for me to stay motivated, because I was obsessed.

But when I decided to learn Egyptian, I was faced with a dilemma: I couldn’t justify spending more than an hour per week on it. Hierogylphs are cool, but come on — it’s a dead language.

I talk about Assimil, Anki, cloze cards and how I use Beeminder to stay on track. I also mention AJATT and Benny's book, because I think they're both good introductions to language learning. I tried to leave a link to HTLAL in the comment section, but the spam filter appears to have eaten it.

Anyway, I hope this provides a clearer explanation of one of my running experiments.
7 persons have voted this message useful

iguanamon
Pentaglot
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Virgin Islands
Speaks: Ladino
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Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Creole (French)

Message 2 of 4

22 May 2014 at 10:32pm | IP Logged

Well written post, as usual, emk! Your style is always engaging, humble and encouraging, unusual for a programmer. It must be that the Northeastern literary tradition is in your blood. I've been saying for years that you should write a book. In a sense, you've already done that with your French blog :), you just need to edit it and put it together.

Your post on Beeminder will help a lot of people who may have thought that "learning a language would be nice" to actually make that happen. Well done!
1 person has voted this message useful

Serpent
Octoglot
Senior Member
Russian Federation
serpent-849.livejour
Joined 6599 days ago
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Speaks: Russian*, English, Finnish^C1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish

Message 3 of 4

23 May 2014 at 5:12am | IP Logged

Great post!
The link to HTLAL has been approved, it seems. I can see it, at least.
1 person has voted this message useful

Hampie
Diglot
Senior Member
Sweden
Joined 6661 days ago
625 posts - 1009 votes

Speaks: Swedish*, English
Studies: Latin, German, Mandarin

Message 4 of 4

12 June 2014 at 1:17pm | IP Logged

If you were to write a book about using Anki I'd so buy it.

2 persons have voted this message useful

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