Memorizing things (Sanskrit or otherwise)

When I started studying Sanskrit I made flashcard sheets in Apple’s Pages app, printed them out, and cut them by hand (PDFs are archived here). I stopped doing that when I discovered ProVoc.

ProVoc is free software for OS X. If you have a Mac and you need or want to memorize things, I recommend it. It is, basically, smart flashcards, and it is very customizable: quiz yourself from either “side” of the card, make it multiple choice or not, change the number of choices, make a delay before the choices appear, and so on. It will keep track of which cards you consistently get right and which you consistently get wrong, and you can adjust your studies accordingly. It will keep shuffling the cards you get wrong back into the pile until you get them right some given number of times. It’s really excellent. And it will let you print paper flashcards if you really want to.

I stopped bothering with paper flashcards altogether when I discovered iVocabulary for the iPhone. It replicates all of the major functionality of ProVoc in an iPhone app, and it can take all of your data directly from ProVoc. All your flashcards, all the time, in your pocket. Have a minute in line or in a waiting room? Quiz yourself real quick. It’s currently $5.99 on the App Store, and it’s a steal.

And in case anybody out there wants to use my Sanskrit materials:

The following files are viewable with ProVoc or iVocabulary, and they follow the order of introduction in Beginning Sanskrit: A Practical Course Based on Graded Reading and Exercises, second edition, by Dermot Killingley.

First, all of the vocabulary, with Sanskrit in Devanagari.

Second, I created a transliterated version (IAST) for use with iVocabulary, since the implementation of Devanagari on the iPhone—which renders the characters beautifully—is just flawed enough to be maddening. I hope Apple fixes it soon. (I also put up a test page to check quickly if a system is making this mistake or not.)

Lastly, I made one just with the Devanagari characters (no words) as a sample, which might be useful to anyone just learning the script.

I do emphatically recommend the software regardless of what you’re studying.

UPDATE: New versions of iOS have fully implemented Devanagari, which is now rendered as it should be. If your iPhone or iPad or iPod Touch is messing up Devanagari, do an OS upgrade through iTunes. I’ll leave the transliterated file here in case anybody has further use of it, but it’s no longer necessary as it was.