language_practice

Flashcard terminal app with spaced repetition

Languages supported

While any language with gender or verb aspect can be used, declension/verb conjugation charts are currently only supported for Ukrainian, Russian and French.

Installing

Minimum Python version

This application relies heavily on the TOML format so Python 3.11 is the minimum supported Python version.

Pip

Run pip install --user language-practice.

From source

Download the repo and run pip install --user . in the top level of the repo.

Running the program

Run language-practice path/to/toml/file.toml to start the program. This may take some time if you are using conjugation or declension charts as it will pull them in parallel from the internet. An internet connection is only required for this part of the execution.

Command line options:

• -t/--traceback: useful for bug reporting, bubbles the Python exception up to the terminal
• -r/--reset: Redownload the entire cache and current information about what words you have guessed correctly/incorrectly
• -f/--file: Path to the file containing the flashcard information
• -d/--dir: File is a directory and all TOML files in the given directory should be loaded by the application

Run ctrl-C to exit the program and save your progress

File format

The file format is TOML.

Top level options

• lang: Accepts uk, ru and fr as values if you would like to pull conjugation or declension charts from Wiktionary. Not specifying this value does not pull charts and runs in flashcard-only mode.

Words

Put each word under a [[words]] heading.

Supported keys are:

• word: required, vocabulary word to learn in another language
• definition: required, definition of the vocabulary to learn in your language, this will be displayed to you for you to guess the word to help recall
• aspect: aspect of the verb, displayed with the definition to differentiate between perfective and imperfective verbs if the language you know does not have them
• usage: arbitrary usage note about the word entry
• part_of_speech: used to differentiate between relational adjectives and nouns and similar cases where the part of speech is not clear in your language from the word itself
• charts: add custom inflection chart where not available on Wiktionary

Commands

Type:

• e to show the initial side of the flashcard you first saw with the word in your language
• d to show the the word in the language you are studying
• y to mark a word as correctly recalled
• n to mark a word as incorrectly recalled
• c to see the declension or conjugation chart
• u to see usage information
• r to refresh the downloaded cache for the current entry

Spaced repetition

This app will show you words you get right less and less frequently and words you get wrong more and more frequently until you get them right.

The exact algorithm is rather simple and could potentially be improved.

num_right is number of times guessed correctly.

num_wrong is number of times guessed incorrectly.

num_wrong_since is the number of times you have gotten it wrong since 10 correct answers. This is used to balance out words that you sometimes get correct and sometimes get incorrect to keep it in less frequent but current rotation until you consistently guess it right.

num_right and num_wrong are mutally exclusive. If one is non-zero, the other will be set to zero.

The card will be repeated n cards later where n is num_right * max(15 - num_wrong_since, 1) or max(15 - num_wrong, 1).

Contributing

Please open bugs and request features on Github! I would love to make this more useful to others.