SRS after three weeks

So, three weeks in, and I still think this SRS stuff is pretty cool. Even though I started reviewing even the most basic Japanese, I've polished up a recollection of Japanese postpositions of motion that I hadn't realized had gotten so weak. Starting with Japanese vocab and sentences that are relatively easy, as well as stuff that needed review, studying the flashcards has been fun.

It's fairly easy to make flashcards that review front and back, so that (for example) you're testing your understanding of the phrase from Japanese to English and from English to Japanese. Creating the cards to do this is a little different from the introductory instructional screencast video, possibly because Anki is frequently updated. I'm using Anki 0.9.9.8.5 with the Japanese plugin. To create forward and reverse cards in the Basic model, choose "Cards: Forward, Reverse" before you create in the cards. In the Japanese model, make sure it's set to "Recognition, Recall".

My strategy is essentially based on sentence mining, studying grammar and vocabulary in full sentences (even if it is something as basic as "This is a chair"/"Iste es un sedia"/"これはいすです"), and say the phrase on each card aloud in the target language before I check and score it. For Interlingua, I've created Forward and Reverse cards focusing on vocab and sentences from "Curso de interlingua pro comenciantes anglophone"; I've gotten through the first four lessons in three weeks at the default settings (20 new cards a day). For Japanese, I've created Recognition and Recall cards for model sentences and vocab from "しんにほんごのきそ I" and "漢字マスター, Vol. 1: 4級漢字100, 100 Kanji in 10 Days, The Easy Way". In three weeks, I've gotten through two lessons of each book. At this rate, I'll finish the Interlingua text in about four weeks, the kanji text in 12 weeks, and the Japanese grammar book over a period of several more months.

The workload is pretty managable. As long as I study every day, reviewing the flashcards doesn't take more than about ten to 15 minutes. Making cards does take some time, but spending an hour or two once a week usually creates enough cards for the rest of the week. I'm working on two decks, which means I'm spending twice as much time reviewing cards.

So, for example, on December 1, I spent 13 minutes reviewing 86 cards, which was pretty typical. Then I spent a few days away from the computer, so when I came back on December 5, I had to spend 38 minutes reviewing 243 cards (with some modest distractions). On December 6, I spent 9 minutes reviewing 60 cards; on December 7, I spent 14 minutes reviewing 90 cards; and today I spent 5 minutes reviewing 39 cards, because I had run out of new cards.

I can see the need, apart from SRS, to create a language-immersion environment for yourself. This method doesn't teach you to think in the target language, or teach fluency or creativity. However, I always found memorization through flashcards to be rather a chore; this is more like a game. And making memorization of vocab relatively fun is both remarkable and useful.

Interlingua

Interlingua is a naturalistic, constructed, international auxiliary language. As far as such languages go, Interlingua is nearly the opposite of Esperanto, and the two demonstrate the difference between naturalistic and schematic languages.

The international auxiliary languages are a quixotic group, since they are so inherently riven by contention. Esperanto is a language with a strong utopian and ideological tradition; many of the international auxiliary languages see themselves as a means to an end (world peace, human unity, hope for progress), and this trait may be most highly developed in Esperantism. L.L. Zamenhof was a proponent of religious humanism, and the idea of international auxiliary languages (or Esperanto) as a means for human unity was embraced by Bahá'í and Oomoto (大本), practiced by the founder of aikido. Some Esperantists aim for the "Final Victory", in which Esperanto has become the world's predominant second language.

Esperanto is a quirky language; though its creator, its phonology and orthography were heavily influenced by the Slavic languages, and so isn't as easily written in ASCII. It's reminiscent of the risk of conlanging, to merely relexify one's native language, although Esperanto is clearly more interesting and sophisticated than that. And it's greatest strength (its agglutinative structure, easy formation of new compounds, and reliance on few roots) can be a weakness. I've heard that while Esperanto has a word for "right" (dekstra), the word for left is the similar-sounding maldekstra ("un-right").

Interlingua takes a very different direction, attempting to resolve the differences between its control languages. It does seem in some ways like le latino moderne, if only because it has a very Romantic phonology like Spanish or Italian, and re-borrows many grammatical words and phrases directly from Latin. They're very different philosophies on language creation, which create two different, interesting conlangs.

The purpose of an international auxiliary language doesn't interest me, aside from the novelty of a conlang that it might be possible to communicate to other people with. I think I am more interested in Interlingua, even just as an artistic language, as an easy-to-learn Romance language that remains similar to, but still different from, some of the existing languages of Europe. Like the language of a Mediterranean country that exists only in the imagination. Or the fictional settings of Miyazaki Hayao's films...although Esperanto may actually be used for often for a purpose like that. "Incubus" was a very entertaining movie, in its way.

The UMI has a page to search the Interlingua-English Dictionary, as well as an Interlingua course for English-speakers, Curso de interlingua pro comenciantes anglophone. I also like the Italian version, which has readings of the text in MP3. It's also useful to know Enough Interlingua to Fake It. & it's always interesting to look at the Wikipedia of a language.