As usual yesterday I got through creating more Anki Cards.
I am getting through them quite quickly at the moment with it taking about 23 minutes to do a session of 20 or so words.
So having finished 25 cards yesterday I suddenly had a heart stopping moment.
Well more like a loud “F%*&” moment.
I thought I hadn’t synchronised the Anki App properly.
You see the online web account is the master database. So when you make any changes by using the system to review cards on your smart device OR by adding cards on the computer, this master database needs synchronising.
Otherwise you will have different devices with different databases on them. So it pays then to synchronise from wherever the changes are made to the web account. Then it is straightforward to align the other devices.
The challenge comes when you have done a card review on the iPhone app (which will make changes to the progress database in the App), AND you have added new cards.
If you try and synchronise the web account with two different versions, there are going to be conflicts. So it pays to regularly synch.
Now adding 25 cards does take 50 minutes of focused effort and to be quite honest it is a bit of a pain (but it is worth it). I am always glad when it is over and done with.
So imagine my relief when I had finished yesterday’s tranche of cards on the computer…only to be replaced with the loud “F$%&” moment when I realised I hadn’t synchronised the system first.
It took a while for me to calm down and pick up all my toys I had thrown everywhere!
However all was not lost because even though I had made changes, I could get round it with a sneaky ordering of the synch.
First thing I had to do was synch the iPhone to Ankiweb. Which I did.
This now created an alignment between the iPhone and the web account. Had I done this first before adding the cards, this is the state these two would have been in anyway.
Then I did a synch between the computer and Anki web so they were now aligned. Then I re-synched the iPhone with Anki web so it could pick up the changes created on the mac.
Big Lesson – Align all platforms before making any changes.
Creating Cards Has Its Challenges
Whilst I was creating cards yesterday I came across a couple of words where the images presented were not what I expected from the search.
This is because the word had been hijacked by some company to be their brand name.
It happened with punto which means “dot”. But is also the make of a car.
Yesterday I also discovered the vivo which means live, is also an electronics brand name.
That meant in both cases there were no usable images on the first few pages of the search results.
Sometimes too when doing a search for one of the 625 word translations, you might encounter different images than expected. This is because the search engine has defaulted to an alternative use of the word.
I found this when I was looking for a word that I can’t remember what it was now, but there were lots of images of people catching tuna. And the word had nothing to do with tuna.
So the only way round this is to do a search in English for that term in the English version of the google basic to get an image you can use.
Occasionally we have to deviate from the track in order to make the track work.
“It’s Different In South America” OR “It’s Different In Spain”
In the same way that American English is different from British English, so too are there differences between the way Spanish is spoken around the world. “Spanish” Spanish is different from South American Spanish.
Pronunciation is one obvious difference – eg where Spaniards might pronounce the ss sound of c as th but Argentinians will stick with the ss sound.
Different parts of the Spanish speaking world also use different words for the same thing. Or exactly the same word can have a completely different meaning.
How do you keep track of them?
Well I don’t know really yet.
I think the secret is to focus on where you expect to be speaking most of your Spanish and target your learning to that form of the language.
They are so very close that I believe you will be understood and you will be able to understand so it is not the end of the world.
Just be aware of it and take notes where necessary.
I will let you know how I deal with this myself.
Am I Doing Enough?
After pondering for a while, I am getting the sneaking suspicion that I am not really doing enough.
I have worked on my pronunciation and I have started building my working vocabulary.
That means at the moment I am just grinding through creating cards and reviewing them.
Each day there is about an hour set aside to create new cards and about an hour set aside to review the ones that are presented to me by Anki.
But I feel there is more that I can do.
I am sure I can be a little more active in the way I am listening to the radio and the way I am consuming the news to enhance my understanding.
I shall explore.
I Can Speak Some Spanish!!!!
So today whilst reviewing the Anki cards, I stitched together a few of the words I have picked up and said some brand new Spanish.
This was:
“Tengo un dolor en mi espalda”
Which translates to “I have a pain in my back”.
Which is true because I seem to have tweaked something in the upper part of my shoulder.
This is another one of those lightbulb, dopamine hitting moments.
I have created a unique bit of Spanish from the words that I know.
It is coming together. Perhaps I am doing enough?
Just as well it wasn’t a pain in the neck – though I could have said that too:
“tango un dolor en mi cuello”
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