wareya Wrote:The word was front and center in a large font. The sentence was in a very much smaller font and below it. However, every single word that I didn't know by heart, I associated the meaning with the sentence, rather than the word. The only way it could have possibly worked is if I had randomized sentences on the front, at which point they really become a hint, and showing hints by default is bad.

Okay. Try moving them off the screen or hiding them. Randomizing sentences is a waste of time, in my opinion.

wareya Wrote:I'm sure it would work for some people, but we absolutely know that words-only on front will work for everyone. Asking people to put sentences on the front of vocabulary decks is bad advice.

I still don't see how it's bad advice. Saying "this doesn't work for me" doesn't mean that it's bad advice. Ultimately, advice is something that the person receiving it chooses to act upon or ignore. Bad advice would be telling them to read about a million different methods before starting or something dumb like that.
It's kind of assumed that if you're taking advice, what you're already doing isn't working satisfactorily; considering the more 'obvious' format is to only have the word on the front, suggesting that one have the word and a sentence isn't 'bad advice'.

I freely admit that this doesn't entirely solve the problem of remembering the answer because of the sentence instead of remembering the word because of the sentence (I think I've already stated that this happens to me when it's a word that refuses to stick), but I and at least a few others on this board found it far more workable than only having the sentence on the back (I didn't come up with this myself, after all; I copied it from someone else).

I used to do word on front only, but it didn't work well for me when I was starting out. It'd probably be easier now that I read and listen to a lot of comprehensible content in Japanese.

gdaxeman Wrote:

yogert909 Wrote:I've heard people say that they prefer to learn vocab via sentences, but I've never heard people not being able to remember words that were studied via single word cards.

I think Glossika summarizes well the reasoning behind using sentences rather than isolated words; what do you think of this? (Point 3 in particular.)

4 Secrets of the Mass Sentence Method

When learning a foreign language it’s best to use full sentences for a number of reasons:

1. Pronunciation—In languages like English, our words undergo a lot of pronunciation and intonation changes when words get strung together in sentences which is has been well analyzed in linguistics. This may be easy to learn for European students, but for Asian students it can be really difficult. Likewise it is true with languages like Chinese where the pronunciations and tones from individual words change once they appear in a sentence. By following the intonation and prosody of a native speaker saying a whole sentence, it’s much easier to learn rather than trying to say string each word together individually.

2. Syntax—the order of words, will be different than your own language. Human thought usually occurs in complete ideas. Every society has developed a way to express those ideas linearly by first saying what happened (the verb), or by first saying who did it (the agent), etc. Paying attention to this will accustom us to the way others speak.

3. Vocabulary—the meanings of words, never have just one meaning, and their usage is always different. You always have to learn words in context and which words they’re paired with. These are called collocations. To “commit a crime” and to “commit to a relationship” use two different verbs in most other languages. Never assume that learning “commit” by itself will give you the answer. After a lifetime in lexicography, Patrick Hanks “reached the alarming conclusion that words don’t have meaning,” but rather that “definitions listed in dictionaries can be regarded as presenting meaning potentials rather than meanings as such.” This is why collocations are so important.

4. Grammar—the changes or morphology in words are always in flux. Memorizing rules will not help you achieve fluency. You have to experience them as a native speaker says them, repeat them as a native speaker would, and through mass amount of practice come to an innate understanding of the inner workings of a language’s morphology. Most native speakers can’t explain their own grammar. It just happens.

[Source: Google Books]

Agreed. I find sentence cards to be better than isolated vocab cards.

In the worst case scenario you use the sentence to help you understand the word (which isn't bad.. the word is still reinforced and you're using Japanese to learn Japanese) or you memorize the sentence... which is actually exactly what you want. That level of familiarity is how your brain truly becomes accustomed to the language patterns you'll need to construct your own natural sentences.

In the end though it's better not to stress over card format and just do something.

s0apgun Wrote:

gdaxeman Wrote:...

Learn some words then read books.

The bulk of your SRSing will be done before you're at a stage where you can just read a ton of books or get your own massive exposure. Even someone going at a very fast pace will have 20k-30k reviews completed before they can actually get through an adult-level novel in a reasonable amount of time yet alone novels.

Splitting up the points using email type quotes because I feel the need to respond to the points individually. Apologies in advance if this is confusing to anyone trying to follow this line of conversation.

>Okay. Try moving them off the screen or hiding them. Randomizing sentences is a waste of time, in my opinion.

Why would it be a waste of time? If the sentence is only a context clue, and randomizing the sentence among ones that help with that word were to prevent you from making associations with the sentence instead of the word, why is it a bad idea?

Hiding them only shifts the problem behing another action. If I've forgotten the word, I certainly don't want to remember its meaning based on the sentences; I want to lapse the card so that the program drills it into me more. If anything, it's might be worse than having the sentence in the open because it takes up time, and fast flashcards are much better than slow ones. Who knows. It's certainly not something you can make a definitive statement on without testing it on various people.

Putting a static sentence on the back is, practically speaking, very similar to hiding it. You can "lie" to anki and say that you remembered the word if you flip to the back and recognize it from the sentence. That's the same thing; in fact, I would say it's better to do that than have the sentence on the front, because the deck user knows exactly what they're doing: not recognizing the word based on the word.

>I still don't see how it's bad advice.

Clearly it is. There are two options: Do this thing, or don't. It's empirically known that doing it is bad for at least some people. It's universally known that not doing it will work out for absolutely anybody. What kind of advice is it if you're making people roll dice?

>It's kind of assumed that if you're taking advice, what you're already doing isn't working satisfactorily

This is a very bad assumption.

>considering the more 'obvious' format is to only have the word on the front

Who is it obvious to? In what world do we have reason to believe that it doesn't work for everybody, even if to varying degrees?

I have poor rote memorization skills; having only the word on front, despite being the best method for me, still gives poor results.

Just because someone is doing poorly doesn't mean that a change like putting sentences on the front will suddenly make them perform better. Indeed, if one were to make any association, it would be that for people for whom just the word on the front is poor, sentences on the front are even worse than just the word on the front. This is clearly an absurd association; I would certainly never say such a thing.

>I freely admit that this doesn't entirely solve the problem of remembering the answer because of the sentence instead of remembering the word because of the sentence

A randomzied selection of sentences would prevent exactly that. You would only need six or so, by rough intuitive estimation (if someone knows of research on this, please advise)

>I used to do word on front only, but it didn't work well for me when I was starting out.

Yes, and you're perfectly free to share this experience; but when you're presented with a definitive counterexample to the alternate method you found generally being good, please don't continue to act like it must be the general case just because you're biased in favor of it.

Dreambox Wrote:So... should I just scrap what I'm doing and start making my own decks again? ...
Should I make my own deck alongside Nayr's, instead of scrapping it?

I would most certainly -not- scrap it ; you'd only end up later adding back many of those same words when you had to re-learn them because you had stopped reviewing them.

You can change the layout without starting over with a new deck, include the sentence on the front or on the back, play the audio or not and when you want, etc, etc. -- and no matter how much you change, each cards history will remain the same, reflecting to a reasonable degree how well you know the word.

I don't think Core5k is at all an unreasonable amount of frequency-list words. You're going to be encountering the vast majority of them no matter what sort of material you like to read. People like to complain that 'political' words like 大臣 are included when they just want to read manga, but think how much action-adventure fiction in English mentions presidents, senators, and congressmen. (Kidnapping them or plotting to assassinate them seems to be something that fictional villains love to do.) The same kind of thing happens in Japanese - perhaps not quite as often, but often enough.

If you feel like you want a more personal connection with your deck, then you could suspend all the cards that you haven't yet done a first review on, and then when you have a word you want to add to your deck, unsuspend it if it's in Core5k or add a new card if it isn't. That's what I would do anyway.

wareya Wrote:>I still don't see how it's bad advice.

Clearly it is. There are two options: Do this thing, or don't. It's empirically known that doing it is bad for at least some people. It's universally known that not doing it will work out for absolutely anybody. What kind of advice is it if you're making people roll dice?

You keep making this statement when several people (myself included) have already said that single-word vocab works badly for them. My ability to recognize words that I had 'learned' from single-word drills was terrible - much less than 50%. Sure, it was still in my memory somewhere, and sure, after encountering in context a couple of times, looking it up, and going 'oh, I -do- know that word!' ... -then- I learned it properly.

But I found that I learned words properly in the first place with a high degree of success using sentence on front cards, and had that experience of looking up words I had already learned only a small percent of the time.

I don't know what empirical studies you think exist on this topic, but I would be very curious to see their methodology. It's certainly true that if you both drill single word vocab and practice reading native material, you'll eventually learn all the words... but if the majority of your learning is taking place in the dictionary looking up words you've already drilled, what was the point of the drills?

>You keep making this statement when several people (myself included) have already said that single-word vocab works badly for them.

I didn't say it didn't work badly; I said that it works.

>It's certainly true that if you both drill single word vocab and practice reading native material, you'll eventually learn all the words...

You said it yourself. It will work for anyone.

>I don't know what empirical studies you think exist on this topic

Unfortunately, everything I know of is behind paywalls, so you're going to have to defer to anecdotes outside of your clique to get a critical view. I'd defer to anki's manual, but the complexity statements it makes are kind of a stretch to apply to this.

>but if the majority of your learning is taking place in the dictionary looking up words you've already drilled, what was the point of the drills?

Don't project your experiences onto other people. I certainly don't learn from the dictionary while I read; word only flashcards are my last resort. If I could learn from the dictionary, I certainly wouldn't put up with the pain of spaced repetition.

Part of me thinks that the reason you're better at memorizing now than before is because you reached a critical mass in learning the language. Maybe you simply read so much faster now that the dictionary doesn't trigger your memory to forget things; maybe you simply got better at memorization. Certainly, looking at someone who changed methods in the middle of the learning process isn't as useful as a hypothetical person who uses both at the same time, or a group of people using each alternative method.

Of course, that's hypothetical, and I still think that, probably, sentences on front really are better for you in particular.

However, they absolutely ruined all attempts at memorization for me, beyond a shadow of a doubt. If I saw an example sentence from that deck today, I would remember the meaning of the word that it was for, but I would not necessarily even be able to identify which word in that sentence was being tested on my cards. I really don't think this is an edge case; at least three other people of the language learning community that I consider my primary one have had similarly bad experiences with sentence-on-front vocab cards. Of course, this has nothing to do with real fullblown sentence decks, which I don't believe have such problems.

I really don't think that "put sentences on front" is good general advice. I would only ever give it with a disclaimer, or an express statement to "try it and go back if it doesn't work".

Considering that the only reason I'm arguing is because someone called me out on something along the lines of "If it didn't work for you, you must have done something wrong", I feel perfectly justified in saying these things. It's an interesting conversation to have, but by all means, please don't be so stubborn. It really just does not work for some people. Put two and three together.

I'm not projecting anything on anyone. I'm saying -for people- who have the same learning strengths and weaknesses that I do, doing single word cards was absolutely a waste of time because I ended up learning by looking up stuff in the dictionary. Which was slow and painful. It is true that -now- I learn words quickly by looking them up in a dictionary because I have reached a critical mass and will encounter the word again quickly. It was not true when I first gave up on single-word cards and used sentence cards.

When it comes to learning a language 'works badly' and 'doesn't work' might as well be the same thing because you're likely to give up in frustration if your learning methods 'work badly'.

Telling people not to suggest that others try methods that worked for them is absurd. Claiming that something that works at a tiny percentage 'still works' when it comes to learning methods is also absurd. If it takes me 1 year to learn with method A and 10 years to learn with method B, and you say 'but see, method B works' then I'm going to say you're full of it. That's not 'working' by any meaningful measure, and that's how bad single word cards were for me.

If someone told you that sentences didn't work for you because you did something wrong, I'd say that wasn't right of them at all. People do have different learning styles. You seem to be unwilling to accept that people's learning styles are different enough to even allow people to suggest alternative methods to the one -you- think 'works for everyone' by some very broad definition of 'works', and -that- is where you are in the wrong and the only reason I responded to you.

I think adding collocations and particles to cards is useful/a necessity unless we're talking about very unambiguous words such as "犬" or "食べる". They don't have to be full sentences, though!

wareya Wrote:bias... empirical evidence... [my way is better than your way because reasons]

Tell me how this isn't, at the very least, the pot calling the kettle black... You have no empirical evidence, I have no empirical evidence; you have one anecdote, I have at least two (I know there are more, but just in the confines of what I want to confirm at five in the morning).
If you want to claim such anecdotes on one side are worthy of consideration, you must accept that both are. Even if you have empirical evidence that vocab only will 'always' work (sure, and using a brick as a chisel will get you somewhere eventually...), you have no empirical evidence that using sentences will not work (some people can't use a chisel very well, doesn't mean it doesn't work better than a brick for others). You don't even have anecdotal proof that it doesn't work for you, just that it doesn't work well for you. Sound familiar?

My biggest problem with accepting your claim is that I can't understand your perception. For instance, you say that the user will 'know' that they actually got the card wrong if they only use sentences on the back; this is only true if the user spent a significant amount of time trying to remember the word, if they did, either format will let the user know that they didn't know the word by itself. I say this because, if you do reviews fast enough that only words you know perfectly have time to be recalled, then while you're still thinking about that word, you'll switch to the back of the card and register the answer and (other) sentences; you'll have no idea if you would have been able to recall the word without them.

You say that randomizing sentences would help, I say it's a waste of time. Why? Spending excessive time making cards takes away time that you could be studying or reading. Copying example sentences isn't studying.

RE: hints.
Hints are not bad. Figuring something out based off of a hint is far better than just giving up and looking at the answer.

wareya Wrote:Considering that the only reason I'm arguing is because someone called me out on something along the lines of "If it didn't work for you, you must have done something wrong", I feel perfectly justified in saying these things.

No, I asked you a serious question. As I said, I see no way for someone to look at a word on a card, realize they don't know it, read a sentence with the word in it, and say "Oh, I know the answer because of the sentence, that must mean I know the word too", without being the kind of person who'll say that anyway (if you're lying to yourself about your reviews, then why are you doing them in the first place? I mean, sure, there's still some benefit, but only for the words you can already remember...).
If you don't like people asking you questions about your opinions, experiences, or whatever, why are you on this kind of board?

I specifically asked about formatting because, frankly, the majority of people suck at formatting information (there's a reason they make you take classes for that if you want a job that has anything to do with data management); it's something that has to be learned. As a new member of this forum, I have absolutely no idea of what you might and might not know, so I decided to approach you as if you were the average person. If you took that as me saying "You're wrong because I say so"... well, there's a reason it's phrased 'you took that as'.

RE: only word on front is the 'obvious' format
It's the obvious format to anyone who's ever gone to school and hasn't actually learned much about learning to know that this isn't always the case.

RawrPk Wrote:Just wondering how your clozed delete setup actually looks like? I'm having trouble trying to imagine it.

The markup for 学校に通う becomes:
{{c1::学校[がっこう]::学校}}{{c2::に}}{{c3:: 通[かよ]う::通う}}

That generates the following three card fronts, all attached to the same note:
[学校]に通う
学校[...]通う
学校に[通う]

Clever use of the kanji vs furigana tags, a part of the Japanese Language Support plugin, lets the furigana show only on the answer side. I also have glosses and grammar notes on the back. Also since these cards are a single note in Anki it will make sure you don't see the same sentence on the same day. So you don't end up repping all three cards back-to-back.

Seeing a single sentence might be a bit boring but my notes are generally long paragraphs and I just make as many closes as necessary to cover new vocabulary, old words used in new ways, or new/interesting grammar. These days I rarely close particles unless I am specifically trying to fix a bad habit. (This is strictly because fully closed fill-in-the-blank cards take more time to rep.)

I also try and delete cards that aren't working out. Sometimes I've added things but later feel its vague or uninteresting and so I've deleted them. (For example I used to have a bunch of dictionary definition cards and those are mostly gone now.)

>No, I asked you a serious question

Yes, you asked me a serious question, which was loaded with possibilities of ineptitude. Now, after confirming that I was "doing it right", you're continuing to tell me that it can't be bad. Take a look at yourself.

Please don't act so nice about twisting the semantics of my last posts to seem hypocritical when you refuse to acknowledge your own tone.

>you have no empirical evidence that using sentences will not work

If you actually read my posts you would clearly understand that this is not what I'm saying at all. Please don't argue with me if you can't even understand my position.

>You have no empirical evidence, I have no empirical evidence

How is "it was actively destructive for me" not empirical evidence that it can be a bad thing? How is the existence of a black swan not proof that black swans exist?

>you have one anecdote, I have at least two

Actually, I have three, because both OP and another poster on the first page both identified the problem I said exists with sentences on the front.

I'm not going to bother responding to the whole post when you're so inconsistent with reality. Please regress your tone and focus to reasonable levels so that I can talk to you instead of responding to angry lines.

[s0apgun]

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:I don't think Core5k is at all an unreasonable amount of frequency-list words.

It's true. The reality is you're going to need more than 10,000 words if you want to call yourself fluent. I think its better to get it over with it and get those words into your head so you can move on to reading. Once you can read, you'll learn the usages and common patterns aka the living breathing language.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:If you feel like you want a more personal connection with your deck...

Make another deck. I have a 10k core deck and a personal reading vocab list deck. The latter has thousands of words that don't even show up in my core deck but I would still consider them fairly common.

@wareya
To the contrary, you're the one who has completely departed from reality. Anecdotes are NOT empirical evidence for either of our positions.

If you have a problem having safe assumptions made about your ability level, then please provide a life history of yourself somewhere; then you can point to it and say "here's where I got experience in data formatting". Of course, no one in their right mind would do this, so quit being so butt hurt about innocent questions on the Internet. Whining about your treatment when I asked a question based on fair assumptions is completely unproductive. You're acting like a child because I don't just 'listen and believe' your experience to be universal truth.
Oh, as for the 'possibilities of ineptitude', have you ever tried to explain anything related to computers to someone who's never used one before? Before computers were popular tools (and even now), it was common for people to not have a damn clue how any of it worked; SRS is (and probably always will be) in the same situation, because it's a niche system. The 'possibilities of ineptitude' you read into were me assuming your level of knowledge out of convenience (or do you want a back-and-forth about your prior knowledge and abilities every time someone asks you a question about your methods?). I feel like I've been having to say this a lot recently, but "offense is taken, never given".

After "confirming you were 'doing it right'", the point switched to the current one, that you're claiming your limited experience to be undeniable proof that putting sentences on the front in any form is definitely less effective than only having the word on the front. You don't have a sample size anywhere near large enough to make a claim like that.

Re: my continued denial of the validity of your position.
Maybe you don't know what you said?

Quote:It's empirically known that doing it [sentences on front] is bad for at least some people. It's universally known that not doing it will work out for absolutely anybody.

You are absolutely incorrect with this one, because you claim that having that sentence there is so bad, that, for people that don't get benefit from it, it will completely prevent learning. Meanwhile, you claim that not having the sentence there is only beneficial and that, even for people who don't do well with it, it works.
However, you've provided absolutely no evidence that the former is true, you've merely stated that, by your own limited experience (which you claim is invalid evidence for my position), the latter is completely and undeniably the worse format of the two. Do you not see the problem with that?

You yourself described both of our formats well enough when you said this:

Quote:I didn't say it didn't work badly; I said that it works.

(Rather, in my case, I claim that it works better for me, and it might work for others, but I see no way for it to not work at all.)
It's when you claim this to be universally true for word-only, and not true at all with sentences, that you lose me. How do you know that sentences completely failed you? How do you know that it wouldn't have "worked badly" for you if you'd kept it up? You don't; you don't know the answer to either of those questions, and you know it.

Re: tone
And you haven't looked at yours? I'm frustrated with your continued misrepresentation of your situation, the hypocrisy of your position, and your negative assumption of my motives in asking you a simple question; you're angry that not everyone agrees with you (hint: drop the absolutes if you're making claims based on personal anecdotes), and it shows; you were completely dismissive of different perspectives from the first post I responded to.

>Anecdotes are NOT empirical evidence for either of our positions.

How is "there exist cases where it's bad" not empirical evidence for bad cases existing?

>If you have a problem having safe assumptions made about your ability level

"safe assumptions" about my ability to format a flash card? Get a load of yourself.

>Whining about your treatment when I asked a question based on fair assumptions is completely unproductive.

Insisting that your assumptions were fair is the most narcissistic thing you could be doing right now.

>You're acting like a child because I don't just 'listen and believe' your experience to be universal truth.

This is extremely hypocritical.


>After "confirming you were 'doing it right'", the point switched to the current one, that you're claiming your limited experience to be undeniable proof that putting sentences on the front in any form is definitely less effective than only having the word on the front.

Stop. Read my posts. I really, honestly, do not claim that putting sentences on the front is definitely less effective than merely having a word on the front. You are at fault here. You are arguing with a position that does not exist. Stop. Get a hold of yourself. Read the actual words that I have already written down. It cannot be so hard to understand the position that I hold. I do not, not, not claim that putting sentences on the front "in any form" is "definitely less effective" than only having the word on the front. This is, beyond means, not what I have said.

>Maybe you don't know what you said?

>You are absolutely incorrect with this one, because you claim that having that sentence there is so bad, that, for people that don't get benefit from it, it will completely prevent learning.

No. You apparently refuse to understand basic prepositions. "It's empirically known that having sentences on front is bad for at least some people". How could you possibly parse this into a general statement? You are insane.

>Meanwhile, you claim that not having the sentence there is only beneficial and that, even for people who don't do well with it, it works.

Apples and oranges. I say that to only have a word on the front will always work. This does NOT mean that it will always work better. Even worse, the things I have said after that point would directly contradict such a statement. You are at fault in understanding here. Please accept the position that I actually hold as being the position that I actually hold and stop arguing against a strawman that does not exist.

>However, you've provided absolutely no evidence that the former is true

See first point.

>you've merely stated that, by your own limited experience (which you claim is invalid evidence for my position)

One black swan existing is proof that black swans exist. White swans existing is not proof that black swans do not exist. Induction 101. Get a grip.

>Re: tone
>And you haven't looked at yours?

How else am I supposed to respond to someone who insists that I believe things that I don't believe? How would you react to someone that followed you around calling you a member of the KKK? I take legitimate offense to being told that I believe and say things that I don't believe or say. You're the person who is acting inappropriately here. I'm defending myself from being misrepresented in a public forum.

>I'm frustrated with your continued misrepresentation of your situation, the hypocrisy of your position

Oh my god, please stop. You cannot even understand the person who you're arguing with, and yet you accuse them of literally all the things that you are doing. This is absolutely absurd.

wareya Wrote:>Re: tone
>And you haven't looked at yours?

How else am I supposed to respond to someone who insists that I believe things that I don't believe? How would you react to someone that followed you around calling you a member of the KKK? I take legitimate offense to being told that I believe and say things that I don't believe or say. You're the person who is acting inappropriately here. I'm defending myself from being misrepresented in a public forum.

>I'm frustrated with your continued misrepresentation of your situation, the hypocrisy of your position

Oh my god, please stop. You cannot even understand the person who you're arguing with, and yet you accuse them of literally all the things that you are doing. This is absolutely absurd.

I'm sick of reading your shit. Go grow up, get some self insight, learn that you're not the center of the universe and pure good, read over your shit and see where you went wrong (apparently, I went wrong just by talking to you), and quit misrepresenting my message on a public forum. You're a ******* hypocrite, get over yourself.

EDIT: (Blocked out profanity in case the following edit inadvertently breaks the rules regarding the circumvention of the profanity filter.)
To entertain your bird analogy:
Rather than me ignoring a black swan among white swans, this whole thing is more like you looking at two zebras and saying that one is a white zebra with black stripes and the other is a black zebra with white stripes. Whereas I'm saying both of them are just zebras.

wareya Wrote:Get a load of yourself. ...
... most narcissistic thing you could be doing right now...
extremely hypocritical...
... You are at fault in understanding here ... Get a grip...

Oh my god, please stop. You cannot even understand the person who you're arguing with, and yet you accuse them of literally all the things that you are doing. This is absolutely absurd.

Okay it's not like personal attacks aren't going on already and -already- out of line, but,

sholum Wrote:I'm sick of reading your shit. Go grow up, get some self insight, learn that you're not the center of the universe and pure good, read over your shit and see where you went wrong (apparently, I went wrong just by talking to you), and quit misrepresenting my message on a public forum. You're a ***** hypocrite, get over yourself.

This is absolutely out of line.
The both of you seem to have completely forgotten that this thread was started to answer the questions of one of our more beginner members, who was still asking followup questions amidst this debate.
When things go like this in a simple discussion of study methods, it's going to make people feel like they're better off not to ask question here, which is the real shame.

SomeCallMeChris Wrote:This is absolutely out of line.
The both of you seem to have completely forgotten that this thread was started to answer the questions of one of our more beginner members, who was still asking followup questions amidst this debate.
When things go like this in a simple discussion of study methods, it's going to make people feel like they're better off not to ask question here, which is the real shame.

Indeed, I have gone too far (but wareya is no better). Thus, I will no longer contribute to this shit-flinging that started out as a purely motivated attempt to figure out the source of a problem.

As long as you don't patronize me or tell me that I believe things I don't believe, I don't care what you do. I would talk nicely about flashcards if you were to respond to what I say instead of what you think. I've said some bad things and I have a couple of confusing sentences. If we could stop, it wouldn't have to be like this. Your last edit still doesn't reflect the position I hold. If we could somehow work out for you to understand or accept what I said in the first place, then, and only then, could we have a civil conversation. Don't pretend that telling me what I think is supposed to be part of solving any of my "problems" (which I have no idea how you divined that I was supposed to be part of).

wareya Wrote:If we could stop,

The way to stop a flame-war is to stop posting, or to simply post politely with a sentiment along the lines of 'I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree'. Throwing more oil onto the flames never helps, and trying to provoke someone who has just said they are done with the thread is -quite- likely to make them go back on their word... but what kind of victory is that, if you actually want it to stop?

If you don't know what I mean by oil here, you are accusing sholum of patronizing you, claiming you believe things you don't believe, and so on. These are very inflammatory terms. If someone is misunderstanding your position, perhaps you might want to clarify your position, but accusing them of telling you that you believe things you don't believe is just provoking a fight. If someone is answering you as if you hold a position that you don't hold, it's far better to assume they misunderstand you than to assume they are twisting your words out of malice. Indeed, what malice -could- anyone hold towards you on this forum? We don't know each other at all, the responses people give are answers to what you have said, and have no other relationship to you as a person. If your statements are emotional and provocative, then expect emotional and provoked responses. If you want to have clear and rational debate, then make clear and rational explanations of your position.

>trying to provoke someone who has just said they are done with the thread

Insincerity isn't met like that, and I'm not provoking them.

>perhaps you might want to clarify your position

And when I do, and they continually don't accept it, and continue to say it? I'm not going to walk away from that.

>it's far better to assume they misunderstand you than to assume they are twisting your words out of malice.

I never said anything about malice. Quite the opposite, patronizing is seen as a good thing from the perspective of the person doing it.

>If your statements are emotional and provocative, then expect emotional and provoked responses.

Being rude when one's on the defensive is no excuse for the offensive to act in kind.

wareya Wrote:Being rude when one's on the defensive is no excuse for the offensive to act in kind.

Please review all your posts in this thread with that in mind.

Do you have anything constructive to say? The first outright rude post between me and him was his second post on this page. In terms of content as well, I'm the one that's on the defensive here, considering that I spent so much effort trying to stop a misinterpretation of something that should not be controversial at all.

wareya Wrote:Do you have anything constructive to say? The first outright rude post between me and him was his second post on this page. In terms of content as well, I'm the one that's on the defensive here, considering that I spent so much effort trying to stop a misinterpretation of something that should not be controversial at all.

Didn't you just say ... no maybe you didn't.

Actually, I'm not at all sure what you said. The lack of clarity in what you say likely has a lot to do with why this has escalated.

Anyway, there is no excuse for escalating the level of rudeness. I don't care if you're on the offensive or the defensive or whatever. Being on 'the defensive' is not an excuse to behave rudely any more than being 'on the offensive' is a reason to behave rudely.

The kinds of personal attacks that you have directed at anyone who disagrees with you is simply unacceptable. I don't care who started it, the pair of you have completely derailed this thread into a flamewar that makes it entirely impossible for the original poster to receive the kind of advice that he came to this forum seeking. Do you care about that at all, or recognize at all that -that- is the entire purpose of this thread existing in the first place?

[s0apgun]

LOUD NOISES.

Topic closed.