Tag Archives: Language

Great Design

If You Had To Learn Spanish From Scratch…

I will diverge from standard academic thought, and say that if one is learning Spanish from scratch, or essentially from scratch, then they might as well learn “standard” conjugations for the vos person (not to be confused with vosotros) – which are only used regionally (most notably in parts of South America).

I would say the cutoff point is when one finally commits to memorizing conjugations for regular Spanish verbs.  At this point, one can easily include conjugations for vos, along with everything else.  These vos conjugations often replace conjugations in regional Spanish.

The reasons academia has not done this include the following:

•  the demand for vos is less

•  it increases learning complexity

•  vos is used very differently across the regions that do use it

I decided that thinking is wrong based on the following observations:

 a significant amount of print and film media is produced in countries that use “standard” vos – in Rioplatense-Spanish-speaking countries in particular (notably Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Bolivia)

•  the increase in learning complexity is actually a function of the learning method; a bad method (rote memorization) means incremental additions to the teaching material are (unsurprisingly) difficult, but a good learning method means incremental additions have a negligible cost

  the problem of regional differences is sidestepped if you simply teach the “standard” version of vos; furthermore, this standard version is a reasonable foundation should you want (or be forced) to try your hand at the other regional vos dialects (e.g. Chilean Spanish)

Great Processes

Chicken Or The Egg, When To Really Learn Spanish Tenses, And What Has Worked For Me

One challenging aspect of language acquisition is the chicken or the egg problem.  Languages tend to have many moving parts, which in turn are all dependent on each other.  Thus, there is not a strict, orderly sequence of lessons you can simply march through to learn the language.

Although I suspect language experts and theorists have studied this concept in detail, as well as specific manifestations of the problem, I’ve never really heard anyone talk about it as it pertains to learning tenses in the Spanish language.

In my experience, you can only learn so much Spanish before a lack of proficiency in the tenses start to become an learning bottleneck or roadblock.

To illustrate with an overly simple example, you can learn how to say different colors in Spanish, without any comprehension of the Spanish-language tenses, but it will be quite painful to at the same time study general Spanish idioms, which have a much greater dependency on tense knowledge.

The interesting question is this: Where would one draw the line in Spanish curriculum, and say that Spanish-language tenses must really be learned before this arbitrary line in the sand is crossed?

I’m definitely not an expert, but I’ll share my personal observations and use popular Spanish educational books as a proxy for Spanish curriculum and the Spanish language in general.

You can really learn up to, and probably finish, Spanish 3: Advanced Conversation, without really learning Spanish-language tenses.

However, starting with Ultimate Spanish Beginner-Intermediate: A Complete Textbook and Reference Guide, I would say you really want to have already learned Spanish-language tenses.

I read Spanish 3: Advanced Conversation while concurrently writing and learning Flawless Recall: Universal Memorization Method For Conjugating Regular Spanish Verbs, For Students And Teachers.

My results have been very good.  Where as I would have previously been blocked or significantly slowed down while trying to read Ultimate Spanish, I am now able to read it normally.

I would also point out that Spanish 3 and Ultimate Spanish (both by Living Language) are pretty good books.  I definitely recommend both of them.  Just looking at the marketing, I was worried Ultimate Spanish might be a rehash or regurgitation of Spanish 3, but it’s not.  It’s a completely separate book, and it’s definitely a step up from Spanish 3.  Finally, both of those Living Language books have some typos that might tend to really confuse you if you don’t have a decent understanding of the Spanish-language tenses!

Miscellany

Flawless Recall: Universal Memorization Method For Conjugating Regular Spanish Verbs, For Students And Teachers by Alexander Van Berg… Now In Its 8th Edition!

This foundational book has already progressed to its 8th edition.  Helpful diagrams have been added, there is enhanced clarity, and minor errors have been corrected.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B9Q9S6GS

https://books.apple.com/us/book/flawless-recall-universal-memorization-method-for-conjugating/id6443279953

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/flawless-recall-alexander-van-berg/1142006254

https://books2read.com/flawlessrecall

To reiterate my own progress from an earlier post:

Before I designed this system, I had spotty recall on maybe just a few tenses.  I’m now able to write out the entire 18-tense conjugation chart purely from memory, and I also have a better understanding of what the tenses actually are.  (If you’re counting, that chart has upwards of 200 or more facts, and those facts are not conveniently packaged.)

Flawless Recall: Universal Memorization Method For Conjugating Regular Spanish Verbs is better than ever in its 8th edition.  I highly recommend it – there’s never been a better book for reliably learning this aspect of the Spanish language!

Miscellany

Languages Inside Languages

Back in the era of the Iraq War, it was often repeated that Arabic was a “valuable” language to know, in terms of government recruitment efforts.

In the post-Iraq-War era, Arabic remains highly relevant to America, but it seems like America may have new strategic challenges ahead.

It kind of depends on whether you see the glass half full or half empty.

If you think the glass is half full, the USA and China will cooperate on everything and there will be blinding economic prosperity, for many.

If you think the glass is half empty, the USA and China will repeatedly butt heads, and increasing levels of confrontation will be the order of the day.

And here enters the subject of Cantonese, a Chinese language much older than Mandarin (the language favored by the government of China).

Cantonese happens to be spoken by many Chinese dissidents, and it’s currently being used to disseminate anti-government messages inside China.

One could characterize it as the “language of resistance” inside China, and abroad by older generations of the Chinese diaspora.

If the glass is half empty, it makes me wonder if Cantonese might soon be one of those “extremely valuable” languages, in terms of government recruitment efforts.

Weighing in its favor, it’s more of a greenfield language right now.  If you’re applying for a relevant government job, you’re less likely to be competing against an entire room full of Cantonese experts for that job (as compared to Arabic).

Weighing against it is the fact that many Cantonese speakers tend to also know English (technically, the same can be said of Mandarin).  Thus, the necessity isn’t quite as high.

But also weighing in its favor is the fact that the severity of the potential conflicts between the USA and China is quite high – probably a lot higher than conflicts where Arabic was relevant.  This fact alone sort of promotes the value of the language up several notches.

I know next to nothing about Cantonese, but several things in that article fascinated me.  One of them is that Cantonese can be expressed very similarly to Mandarin, while retaining a completely different meaning.  This almost suggests a degree of steganographical potential.  Furthermore, it suggests that automated censors will not be able to handle this.

Points of Controversy

Clarity Is King…

The importance of ensuring clarity in written work isn’t all that controversial.  The general reason is simple: the total amount of time everyone spends reading something is typically much greater than the amount of time it took one person or one team to write it.

The controversy alluded to is in the bucking of several bad habits that have very large followings.  These bad habits fly in the face of clarity, and unfortunately they don’t receive the appropriate level of scrutiny.

The first bad habit is a bizarre programming style where curly braces are placed on lines occupied by other text.  This is a holdover from antiquity when screen monitors were tiny and every pixel was highly coveted.  In that age, you could have made a case for sacrificing clarity in order to have a few more rows of code on the screen at once.  These days it is inexcusable, and when you have to read this stuff, sometimes it can seem almost unforgivable.  With the prevalence of huge monitors, multiple-monitor setups, and futuristic code editing tools, why would you make your code harder to read in order to save a few pixels?  Screen space is cheap.

programming unclear vs clear

The main difference between the left and the right example above is symmetry.  Things that are symmetrical are easier to read.  They’re easier on the eyes.  Also, on the right, things are more structured and orderly in that the curly braces are on their own lines and so you don’t have to read around them as if they’re clutter.  And so, all of that is simply to say, the style on the right is objectively better.  Now, if you don’t program and don’t know whether to believe me, try reading the next two fragments and decide for yourself which is better.

script1

I’m not aware of any other engineering discipline which creates documents or artifacts that regularly sacrifice clarity in this manner.

Two other questionable habits involve constructs in the English language: the Oxford comma, and sentence spacing.  In both cases, the method that promotes the most clarity ought to be chosen, but yet many people opt for the alternative.  I claim we ought to put two spaces between sentences, and we ought to use that final comma when listing things (except in rare cases where it actually introduces ambiguity).

I really believe the Oxford comma speaks for itself.

oxford-comma-tebow

And if there’s any doubt about leaving two spaces between sentences, just consider how many spaces we put between paragraphs, and then think about the reason behind that.  If an author merely wanted to express a change in something, such as a new speaker, this could theoretically be done without jumping to a brand new line.  For example, a hyphen prefixing the next sentence could indicate this change, and that would be much more economical in terms of space.  Of course, we all know which method is used to indicate a new paragraph, and I believe the reason it’s been around for so long is because readers perceive change more easily with the help of additional white space.  This type of visual aid is as applicable to sentences as it is to paragraphs.

http://aysoweb.blogspot.com/2013/09/white-space-in-design-and-why-it-matters.html
http://aysoweb.blogspot.com/2013/09/white-space-in-design-and-why-it-matters.html

Although the two English language examples sacrifice much less clarity than the programming example, all three are valid subjects for inspection.  In general, why not adopt the approach which promotes the most clarity, especially if the cost is negligible?  The cost of not doing so for any one piece of work is nominal, but in the aggregate, the cost is much larger.

lets_eat_grandpa