Help me make the perfect ANKI deck!

[drp9341]

Hello my fellow forum members!

I think I found the most straightforward way to learn Neapolitan, (The Italian "Dialect").

I found a number of teachers on iTalki, and I asked them about how they "teach" the language. They said they didn't use any formal resources etc. This made me think that during the lesson they would just teach me phrases, so I came up with a better idea:

Create a decent sized Anki deck with English/Italian sentences, (I haven't decided which) and ask a native to type out, and then record the translations of those sentences into Neapolitan.

I am of course going to include the most useful words and expressions that you'll likely hear, but I need to do research into the main differences between Italian and Neapolitan!

I haven't started doing research yet, but I think I will start this week when I get back to my own home. If anyone wants to contribute, please comment below!

This project will probably cost me a decent amount of money for recordings, but I think it would be a great resource to have. If someone already speaks Italian at an advanced level, and then studies this deck and exposes themselves to the language on the radio etc. for a while, I see no reason why this shouldn't be enough to learn to at least understand this language.

Let me know what you guys think, and if you have any templates I can work off of, let me know!
Thanks!

[Stefan]

Have you considered using subs2srs or similar as a starting point without having to pay anyone?

If you decide to hire someone and end up creating your own course/deck, try to make a deal so you can sell it yourself. I doubt there's a huge market but you might be able to get some of the money back if you're creating it anyway. People spend way too much time creating decks only to see them rot on a hard drive - usually because of copyright.

[dampingwire]

Create a decent sized Anki deck with English/Italian sentences, (I haven't decided which) and ask a native to type out, and then record the translations of those sentences into Neapolitan.

I would think a native speaker of Neapolitan will also be a native speaker of Italian, so my guess would be that you'd be better off providing sentences in Italian for them to translate. Less chance of possible confusion that way.

[Axon]

I've used the sentence method for a variety of languages with differing amounts of success. I started with Mandarin, did a little bit for Polish, more for Russian, a little Danish, a good amount for Spanish, and a whole lot for Indonesian.

What I've found is that it works really, really well for syntax but relatively poorly for vocabulary. Therefore it works best in my opinion for highly isolating languages. I imagine Neapolitan has about the same complexity as Italian, maybe a little more?

That hasn't stopped me, though. I found that with Spanish I tended to memorize a new word after seeing it in about three to four different sentences - otherwise I'd only know that word in the context of my example sentence. And I agree with your thought that it's a fast way to pick up some passive knowledge of a related language. Especially if you combine it with other study methods.

I'd recommend that you get someone to translate the sentences from Italian to Neapolitan so that you know they're fully aware of the nuances you want to capture. Then you yourself should create the English sentences. Even though your Italian is very advanced, I'd say the sentence method works best with your native language as the base.

I made a list of 400 sentences that I'm very slowly translating into Mandarin and Indonesian so that I can hire people to translate them again into Chinese dialects and local languages of Indonesia. I made them specifically to cover useful everyday vocabulary and many different syntactic patterns while also being relatively applicable to an immersion environment. If you're familiar with Glossika, I'm basically ripping them off.

Here are some examples. As inane as these sentences may sound when they're all listed out like this, the point is to get you to internalize the basic structures so you can apply it to your own situations later.

Do you know how to drive?
Do you know where my car is?
Do you know where they went last weekend?
Do you recognize that man?
...
I'm really interested in photography.
I'm so embarrassed, I can't remember her name.
I'm sorry, I don't understand.
I'm tired and I want to go home.
...
Would you rather have tea or coffee?
Would you turn on the light for me?
Yesterday it was pretty cold, but today is actually kind of warm.
You can get a good price for meat at the local market.

If you're interested in my full list, just shoot me a PM!

[白田龍]

If you want a method for someone who knows Italian to understand Neapolitan this is way overkill. An Italian speaker should understand most of it without any prior training. It may take some getting used to, but then, you'd probably better get somone to record some texts or audio-books (or Neapolitan Wikipedia articles, if there be none to be found).

[dampingwire]

If you want a method for someone who knows Italian to understand Neapolitan this is way overkill. An Italian speaker should understand most of it without any prior training. It may take some getting used to, but then, you'd probably better get somone to record some texts or audio-books (or Neapolitan Wikipedia articles, if there be none to be found).

Are you sure? It sounds a tad different to me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBMwKBm-ITA

[drp9341]

If you want a method for someone who knows Italian to understand Neapolitan this is way overkill. An Italian speaker should understand most of it without any prior training. It may take some getting used to, but then, you'd probably better get somone to record some texts or audio-books (or Neapolitan Wikipedia articles, if there be none to be found).

I wish you were right. If you're talking about Italian with a heavy Neapolitan Accent, then you're correct, but the actual "Pure Neapolitan" (whatever that means,) is truly a different language. Sure, you can understand some things, but you need to study.

I can understand some Romanian if I stumble upon a Youtube video in Romanian, but that doesn't mean I can learn to understand Romanian just by passive exposure and listening to some recorded text.

[Uncle Roger]

Neapolitan is NOT self-explanatory even for fully born&bred Italian natives. I mean, proper Neapolitan dialect, not just Italian with a Neapolitan accent.

The other problem is that it will be difficult to find strictly spoken Neapolitan. Most Italian dialects have the same syntax/word order of Italian, so continuously switching between the two is typical for speakers. What speakers use is basically a matter of topics and ready-made expressions.
So, unless you are certain that the speaker is really only speaking Neapolitan, you'll always have doubts that it's just slightly napulitanised Italian.

For the rest, I have done something similar before, I don't think recordings will cost you much if you find the right person. The translation, transcription and proofreading, on the other hand, will be expensive. It's much slower work which is likely to require more iterations and probably a couple of professionals for crosschecking.

Try and use frequency lists from Italian to target the words that will yield the most learning.

Also, Subs2SRS is the best thing that happened in my learning life after Anki itself. But I guess finding actual Neapolitan subtitles will be basically impossible.
Maybe the best thing would be to grab sime video material of your liking, create a dummy subtitle file (i.e. only timings, no text in the boxes so to speak) with Aegisub (lovely piece of software) and then get somebody to transcribe each "audio string". The mere transcription should be a job much more enticing for anyone to do compared to timing AND transcription.

P.s. actually, you should be able to find SRT files with decent time marks using, for instance, Gomorrah subs for other languages?