Optimized, interactive 85% core vocab e-flashcard deck

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thornsbreak
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Optimized, interactive 85% core vocab e-flashcard deck

Post by thornsbreak »

I am hoping to create an interactive electronic flashcard set of the 2000 or so vocab words that account for 85% of classical authors' word choices. I want it to require the user to see, hear, and type out Greek text. I'm imagining this as something of a "homemade Duolingo" for Attic Greek, as a tool to get up and running as quickly as possible to a vocabulary that allows the broad reading of texts.

The goal is to have a deck complete with all principle parts and genitive noun forms that plays audio of a vocab word in Greek or English and then requires the user to actually type out the Greek words. I'd like to go English -> Greek and Greek -> English. I find that I learn much more effectively with an active form of production like typing or writing out words, rather than passively viewing flashcards, especially given all the complexities of accent and breathing inherent in Greek. So I'm looking to create an interactive flashcard deck that requires me to produce the forms manually, checks them, and incorporates spaced repetition to optimize efficiency and learning rate. Endgame should be a resource that could be shared among Greek students as a tool for acquiring a core vocabulary for reading absolutely as quickly and painlessly as possible.

So the question is, how best to do this? My current thought is to create an Anki deck. Anki has a great spaced repetition system and allows for the use of audio recordings of the words, as well as manual typed entry of the answer and a comparison against the correct answer. The one difficulty I'm having is the manual typed entry of Greek text in the fill-in-the-blanks when reviewing cards. I have been using Tavulsoft Keyman on my computer to allow typing in Greek. I love being able to type letters and then adjust them for breathings and accents, and the layout of the keyboard is a very quick learn for an English user. The problem is, Anki seems to get a little glitchy when I use Keyman to type the Greek when I'm reviewing the cards and answering the questions. It will sometimes suddenly turn invisible or delete the whole word that I'm typing, and I have to go back and type it in again. This seems to happen primarily when adding accents to vowels. It works most of the time, and I could put up with it, but maybe 5% of the time it screws up and annoyingly forces me to re-type my answer. I could maybe deal with that, but it's harder to imagine sharing a sort of "gimpy" resource like that with others. It's a pity, because otherwise the whole setup is perfect. I'm reluctant to use the more official polytonic greek keyboard that can be accessed through Windows settings, because I find it difficult to learn and very cumbersome to produce the necessary accents on an English keyboard.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how to produce a fluid, spaced repetition vocabulary deck that would allow the easy typing and checking of polytonic Greek? Any ideas on how to get Anki to work right, or other potential programs or solutions to try? I think if I could get this right, it could be a big gift to the textkit community and all of us digital Attic neophytes.

Any thoughts, feedback, or revisions to my idea are most welcome.

p.s.

I'm also considering doing something very similar for the Greek Ollendorff, for the purpose of reinforcing grammar. It would be a way of working through the exercises systematically, hearing, seeing, and producing the Greek, and incorporating spaced repetition so that if you get something wrong, you return to it until it sinks in, and if you have things nailed down completely, you don't keep reviewing them.
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Scribo
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Re: Optimized, interactive 85% core vocab e-flashcard deck

Post by Scribo »

I think memrise has support for a decent amount of what you want.
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jeidsath
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Re: Optimized, interactive 85% core vocab e-flashcard deck

Post by jeidsath »

You may wish to try typing Greek with the native polytonic Greek keyboard in either Windows or OS X. It could fix your problem. Some of those third-party add-ons are weird about their combining codes.

If you do go with Anki, remember you can create cards from text files. It can be easier to produce these with a program and then import.
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truks
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Re: Optimized, interactive 85% core vocab e-flashcard deck

Post by truks »

thornsbreak wrote:Does anyone have any thoughts on how to produce a fluid, spaced repetition vocabulary deck that would allow the easy typing and checking of polytonic Greek?
I use Anki pretty much the way you've described, but in conjunction with GreekKeys on a Mac, and it works flawlessly. I can vouch that GreekKeys also works very well on Windows, but I haven't tried it together with Anki.

Good luck!

https://classicalstudies.org/publicatio ... kkeys-2015

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seneca2008
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Re: Optimized, interactive 85% core vocab e-flashcard deck

Post by seneca2008 »

What is the advantage of using GreekKeys compared to the native polytonic keyboard on the Mac? Should we all be using unicode programs? I have often wondered about the proliferation of add ons.
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truks
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Re: Optimized, interactive 85% core vocab e-flashcard deck

Post by truks »

For me, the main advantages are convenience and speed. The arrangement of the dead keys is more logical to my mind.

It's also nice to have the same keyboard layout when switching between Mac and Windows.

thornsbreak
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Re: Optimized, interactive 85% core vocab e-flashcard deck

Post by thornsbreak »

Thanks guys, I'll give Greek Keys a try.

I don't like the native Windows polytonic Greek keyboard because I find the layout very difficult to master, especially for the variously accented vowels and breathings. I gave it a shot once, and just found it too cumbersome compared to Keyman. I resonate with Truks comments in that regard - it was just a lot faster and easier and more intuitive as an English speaker to use a third party program that kept things more where I'm used to them being, and had simple keys to add breathings and accents on top of a letter you've already typed, rather than various multi-finger ctrl+shift combos to get the accented vowels.

Jeidsath, do you normally use the Windows native keyboard? Also, assuming I'm starting from scratch, do you still think it's faster to create text files and have Anki convert?

How are the rest of you ordinarily typing your polytonic Greek on Windows systems?

I believe I did try Memrise once, and I may need to take a look at that again, but if I recall, I don't think I felt the same degree of control over how it was going to quiz me... I think I recall there being several different sort of answer formats, and that it was more repetitive with drilling.
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Re: Optimized, interactive 85% core vocab e-flashcard deck

Post by Amplaos »

I personally use the native Windows polytonic keyboard. Took a while to get used to, so I guess I'm just used to it, but it works fine for me.
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