TL;DR: color coding would nice, even if I could only get it in edited flashcards. Ability to have the display engine automatically tag selected tense/grammar structures would be awesome, but important to be able to turn off selectively; I couldn’t handle the noise of 5 colors at once.
Long form:
(1) When I started learning Spanish, when I was more naive, I thought that if I learned enough “words” everything else would fall into place pretty quickly. So I spent many, many hours on Memrise – generally leading the pack in terms of cramming in words.
But I eventually wised up that (1) too much of the meaning of a sentence was in the phrases, and that knowing the individual words was actually worth almost nothing and (2) that the tenses, at least in Spanish, often twisted the words way beyond my ability to recognize them --much less spell them.
So, I guess I don’t care too much to have every word I run into, which I don’t know, emphasized nor counted; that just doesn’t line up with my actual goal of hearing and speaking very well (which might well be different, if I was more focussed only on reading … or was a linguist or technical reader, which maybe Anna is?). It is very well known that we humans have dramatically different sized vocabularies for (I think I have the order correct): speaking<hearing<writing<reading). I read to learn how to speak & hear, not the other way around, so I am just fine with a lot of words not being retained…if I run into them enough, the context will sink in.
(2) Although I originally stressed, and cursed about “gender”, I’m trying to cultivate not caring if I get that wrong. It just seems like an idiotic idea for nouns to have a gender – something which adds zero, or near zero, to the actual meaning of the communication, but a huge amount to the complexity.
(3) I’m thinking the ability for the display engine to recognize tenses, for color emphasis, might be relatively efficient (algorithmic). And, if so, I would love it (actually, I would love it in any case, but would expect it to be too hard to implement).
I give my eye teeth for something to help me more quickly recognize TENSES, in general.
(4) FWIW, I previously suggested italics when I am editing things. (thinking it shouldn’t mess with the ability of the underlying software to process the words efficiently).
Adding color – even if only after EDITING – would, similarly, help me … even if it weren’t automatic (but even better if it were).
(5) The concern about everything being colored could be addressed by allowing various colors (representing various aspects of tense or grammar) to be selectively turned off…or on. What I think I would do with this feature, for example, is to turn on color for “que” (since, in Spanish, the “QUE” is not optional, when you run into a natural need for “THEN” (cause/effect). And, in particular, the “QUE” is a critical trigger-hint that a SUBJUNCTIVE tense follows. I keep not seeing and thinking in terms of QUE, Color for other tenses troubles would just be awesome – and I expect I would use them selectively so things I am weakest in really grabbed my attention.
If you are going to consider any of this stuff, Steve, I suggest you implement it (a) first in the flashcards as something which can be edited in. (b) Then, maybe, as something which can be maybe supported with a simple (efficient) GREP implementation – again in the individual’s flashcards. (c) I’d love it to be automatic, while reading, but fear the coding complexity and processing overhead. Try it first in manual mode in the flash card editing.
P.S. Great community, here! Anna_Vernerova : I find you and your comments especially interesting! If you don’t mind my asking, what is your native language and language interest? I’m guessing you are a polyglot?