Learning Vocab with Memrise

[Russell]

http://www.memrise.com/course/58950/cla ... betan-101/

This is a free, very well done site, and for me, a lot of the time, it is the only thing that i am motivated to do when it comes to learning vocabulary! Just something about the way it is organised.

As a side note, this is one of the many transitions there are now from more addictive online activities like computer games, MMOs etc., so if you like playing computer games you could equally put that passion into learning a language or learning accounting or something and actually learn a real (rather than virtual) profession.

[michaelb]

I've been using it for a week now, since reading your post about it last weekend. I quite like it despite its obvious shortcomings and idiosyncracies. It's like flash cards and has helped my reading as well as adding to my vocabulary. I've only done classical tibetan 101 but I might do some more once I'm confident enough with 101.

[Russell]

ok great!
I made this one myself to learn the vocabulary for Translating Buddhism from Tibetan by Joe B Wilson.
http://www.memrise.com/course/237497/tr ... ary-part1/
Enjoy the MEMES !

Also I'm doing a spanish course: http://www.memrise.com/course/79389/lea ... n-spanish/
It's a nicely structured course with the right mix of vocab and short phrases and you can easily learn pronounciation because the audio is constantly repeated to you as you go through it. I never realised how easy spanish was to learn, sentence structure is obvious and most words are easy to remember or just small variations of the english words.

Would be great if the tibetan courses had audio.. cos i can learn a lot with this system cos it pulls you through it all the time.

[michaelb]

I made this one myself to learn the vocabulary for Translating Buddhism from Tibetan by Joe B Wilson.
http://www.memrise.com/course/237497/tr ... ary-part1/
Enjoy the MEMES !

cool. I just had a quick go and I was alright except on "don" I put in "object" as the classical tibetan 101 has and not "meaning,purpose." The memes are great, too. I was thinking of making some up...

Thanks for bringing this up here. It's rekindled my interest in learning more Tibetan. I wish I could get it to work on my phone, but my android phone doesn't seem to be able to render Tibetan scripts (unless anyone knows how I can.)

[Russell]

I added object to the alts for DON, so let me know if you spot anything else worth changing. I'll upload the rest of the vocab if people finish the first part.

And you're welcome.

[michaelb]

For "chos" you have "religion, phenomenon," which is fine but obviously chos is the Tibetan word for Dharma. Just wondered what you thought of translating Tibetan into Sanskit for an English speaking reader. The classical tibetan 101 does this a lot. I think there is an argument for doing it for certain words (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, etc.) but not all.

[Russell]

I allowed dharma as an alt so if you type it in you get it correct. I just didn't show it when learning the word. Problem is if i give 3 words then i think i need to input manually all the different orders people may type them which is too much to do for the whole course. So not sure how to handle this.. I guess when learning a new word in this way you want 1 or 2 maximum things to remember.

And it seems good to to use original sanskrit and tibetan words, but really i have no idea what is best for the future of buddhism in the west. Maybe the downside is translators will get lazy and wont find the best english equivalents and give up and just use the original when actually it would be good to see how far we can push english to be used as a dharmic language.

[michaelb]

oh, I see. thanks.