12 Months of Mandarin

Post by throwaway2037 » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 8:45 AM UTC

shepherdjerred wrote: post #214

kenrick95 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> DS/algos How do you study that on Anki?

I started with these decks: https://github.com/teivah/algodeck https://github.com/teivah/designdeck Essentially I'd have a question like "invert a binary tree", "implement union-find", or "structure of a topological sort". All of these are small enough that I can keep them in my head. For small algorithms I would just regurgitate the code line-for-line in my head. For more complex ones I would just go over the struct…

Post by StefanBatory » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 9:27 AM UTC

cblum wrote: post #48

thatsnotmepls wrote: post #36

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I have ChatGPT create 20 sentences for a new word I want to learn, works super well with Anki. Front -> Word. Click button, shows random sentence out of 20. Back -> Word and sentence translation.

The trouble with ChatGPT is that it can produce wonky sentences sometimes, and as a learner it can be hard to validate that. Most of the time it’s great though, just need to be cautious and ideally find a way to validate the content it generates (in my case I can run it by my wife). I use ChatGPT to check my answers to the exercises in my textbooks :)

Post by keiferski » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 11:09 AM UTC

g9yuayon wrote: post #66

kentosi-dw wrote: post #12

The importance of an SRS system like Anki cannot be overstated. However I can see how this might be a burden to some when it comes to entering in your own sentences. For this, I highly recommend making use of your OS's dictation (speech to text) feature. You get to practice speaking _and_ enter sentences much quicker.

> The importance of an SRS system like Anki cannot be overstated. I'm not sure if I agree with that, as no native speakers need to have an SRS to learn their native languages. No doubt that SRS will allow us to remember words, yet few can really acquire those words intuitively. When starting to learn English in school, we used some kind of SRS system to memorize words and phrases and sentences, and man, the result wa…

Post by troad » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 12:28 PM UTC

aebtebeten wrote: post #219

gljiva wrote: post #183

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Interesting. I had the impression that Chinese will likely become very useful during our lifetimes... With the momentum their economy has, I expect knowledge of both English and Chinese to become a very sought out skill

There was a soviet era joke: optimists practise their english, pessimists practise their chinese, and realists practise stripping their Kalashnikovs. Four decades later: I guess some fraction of the optimists have emigrated; the pessimists might be finding their language skills freshly in demand; and the realists teach their grandchildren: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE3UUbBKDS8

Post by FrustratedMonky » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 12:50 PM UTC

TheEzEzz wrote: post #181

jcla1 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do not underestimate the urge to procrastinate (by still doing productive things, like learning Mandarin) while pursuing a PhD. I am not sure if this will be the author's experience too, but pursuing a PhD will often leave you exhausted without any hope of ever finding "the final missing ingredient" to solve the problem you are currently tackling. So turning to entirely unrelated problems, however productive they may…

I wrote my own dynamic keyboard layout to optimize typing speed while procrastinating on my dissertation. 15 years later I'm still using it. My dissertation not so much. Procrastination is (sometimes) awesome.