Klaus Bung: Hindi-Urdu Numerals Workbook 19

First published in Great Britain by rtcBOOKS

rtcBOOKS is an imprint of

Recall Training Consultants Ltd

68 Brantfell Road

Blackburn BB1-8DL

Lancashire, UK

t: 01254-261 009

w: www.dynamic-language-learning-dr-bung.com

Front cover design: Mohi Hashmi, c/o rtcBOOKS

This is Beta Test Version 0.9
published on 2010-02-26

We apologise for any remaining errors and inadequacies and will gratefully receive any criticisms and suggestions for improvements.

Also available

Associated materials, an essay on how to practise foreign language numerals in daily life, more information about Hindi-Urdu numerals and their links to European languages, and contact information can be found on the website:

· w: www.dynamic-language-learning-dr-bung.com

· e:

êzxcv

Transliteration

· "aa, ii, uu" are long vowels.

· "a, i, u" are short vowels.

· "a" (the shwa-sound) (unlike "aa") is pronounced like the last syllable in "mother"

· "â, ê, î, û" are nasals.

· "e" is pronounced like "e" in French "chez" or German "geht".

· "c" is pronounced like "ch" in "church".

· "ch" is an aspirated "c" (sometimes transliterated by others as "chh"; like "church" plus aspiration).

· "T" and "R" are retroflex sounds.

· "t" is dental, "r" is alveolar.

· "th" is aspirated "t", "Th" is aspirated "T".

Tabulating the rows

Learning sequence:
Row 70, 80, 90, 30, 40, 20, 60, 10, 50

Tabulating the columns

Learning sequence:
Column 14, 12, 16, 11, 13, 15, 18, 17, 19

How to use this workbook

Study the matrix so that you see how the numerals are connected with each other horizontally and vertically. Then study the chart for rows and the chart for columns so that you recognise the regularities in each group of numerals. These regularities, such as they are, will be important memory aids.

Initial learning / Initial mastery

Practise Exercise 1 to 37 using the "simplified technique" of DYNAMIC LANGUAGE LEARNING. This simplified version is not the most effective but it is the easiest to learn and easiest to explain. The professional version will be published on the website within a month or two.

We will call the numbers "questions" and the numerals "answers".

Fold an A5 sheet of paper so that it is no longer transparent. Cover Exercise 1 at the very top. The open end of the folded paper must point upwards. Slowly slide down the folded paper, until the first question (but not the answer) becomes visible. Guess (or remember) the answer and write your best bet on the folded paper. Slide the paper down to reveal the model answer.

If your answer was right, move down to the next item (the next question).

If your answer was wrong, cross out the wrong letters or the whole wrong word on your folded paper and copy the correct answer, concentrating on your mistake and trying to learn from it.

Do not cheat. Be strict with yourself. Even if one letter is wrong, that answer counts as wrong by the rules of this game (DYNAMIC LANGUAGE LEARNING). If the correct answer contained a "T" (retroflex sound) and you wrote a "t" (dental sound), that counts as a mistake.

Before starting the exercise again, fold the paper back so that your previous answers are no longer visible. Move the paper to the very top again and cover the whole exercise. Make sure you cannot see any of the items while you are moving the paper from the bottom of the exercise to the top of the exercise. In DYLL you never look at the answer, except immediately after having made a written guess and having committed yourself. If you do not follow that rule, you defeat the system, and its promises are no longer valid for you.

It is essential that you WRITE your answers and corrections. Just saying them or doing them mentally is not effective. If you want to be successful, follow the instructions to the letter.

Tackle one item after another until you reach the end of this exercise. If you managed to get through it without a single mistake, then, for this exercise, you have reached the first landing of learning, "Initial Mastery".

Initial mastery does not mean that you will remember the numbers tomorrow or next week, it just means that you have made a start. You are in first gear, and the engine might stall again any minute, unless you do something to prevent it. Or, to put it differently, you are in a helicopter. If you do not keep the propeller running, you will crash. In language learning you keep the propeller running by doing the prescribed revisions.

Proof of mastery on any one day (be it in initial learning or revision) is "10 items correct in succession". Continue doing the whole exercise from beginning to end until you have "mastered" it, exactly as defined.

The DYLL Retention Algorithm

To ensure retention and to do it efficiently and without the frustration of never ending mistakes, you have to apply DYNAMIC LANGUAGE LEARNING's Retention Algorithm.

Here is a simplified version of it. Revise this exercise (and each exercise) at exactly specified intervals, as follows:

· R1 (revision 1): after 15 minutes

· R2 after 1 hour

· R3 in the evening of the same day, immediately before going to bed

· R4 first thing the following day. Each revision will take only a minute or so, since you will make hardly any mistakes IF YOU FOLLOW THIS REVISION SCHEDULE.

· R5 after 2 days (always counting from last revision)

· R6 after 4 days

· R7 after 1 week

· R8 after 2 weeks

· R9 after 1 month

· R10 after 2 months

· R11 after 4 months

Here endeth the chain of revisions.

You will need a special diary to keep track of your revisions. This diary will turn out to be the best investment you have ever made.

On the appropriate date write the number of the exercise and the level of revision (R1, R2, ...) in to your Revision Diary. For example, if on 14 March 2011 Revision R9 of Exercise 3 is due, write into your diary: "Ex3(R9+1m)". This means that this is Revision 9, and the next revision must be entered 1 month later. Writing down the revision level and the distance of the next revision helps you to keep track when writing the entries into your diary.

So the entries in brackets after the exercise numbers will always be one of the following:

(R4+1d)
(R5+2d)
(R6+4d)
(R7+1w) / (R8+2w)
(R9+1m)
(R10+2m)
(R11+4m)

Every revision follows exactly the same procedure: You do every item from top to bottom, in writing, until you have done 10 items in succession without the smallest mistake ("mastery") . Then you proceed to the next exercise.

Priorities

If you are short of time, the following rules apply:

1 Revision is more important than learning new material. If you skip revisions in order to learn new material, you will remember neither the old nor the new material. You will always be on slippery ground. So you might as well learn a little (the old material), but actually know it and be able to use it, rather than knowing nothing. Most people, when they say they "know" something, mean that they have heard it once, not that they can reproduce, explain or perform it.

2 The early revisions (R1, R2, R3 etc) are much more time-sensitive than the later revisions. Therefore if you delay R1 by 15 minutes (= 100%) you will make noticeably more mistakes (i.e. have forgotten more) than you will if you revise on time.

By contrast, a longer delay, e.g. two days, at R7 or R10 has less serious consequences. In the case of R7 a two-day delay is 29%, and in the case of R10 a two-day delay is 3%, whereas in case of R1 a delay of 15 minutes (i.e. revising after 30 minutes instead of after 15 minutes as prescribed) is 100%. The seriousness (in terms of forgetting) is equivalent to these percentages. A higher percentage of delay means a higher percentage of forgetting.

Therefore, if you have to postpone revisions because of shortage of time, delay the Revisions with high R-numbers (R11, R10, etc) rather than those with low R-numbers.

If you follow these instructions to the letter, your retention rate will be extremely high and you will make hardly any mistakes. Revision times will therefore be very short. It all depends on the timing. A 100% delay does more harm than a 30% delay.

A re-interpretation of cheating

Warning: It is essential that you do *** not *** look at the workbook exercises at any time except while doing a test/revision in writing and following all its rules. You and the system need to obtain a written and reliable record of all your mistakes after a specified interval so that the system can respond appropriately.

If (as you might do before an official exam) you look at an exercise five minutes before doing a prescribed written revision in order to get a better score during the revision/test, this is cheating, for you will mislead the system. The system will have no true information about your length of retention for each item, and it will therefore be unable to tell you correctly what to do next.

You will suffer as a result. Cheating bears in itself the seeds of your punishment: future failure. The theory behind this observation can be found on the Internet in the following paper: "Klaus Bung: Dynamic Learning Algorithms".

Reason: Let's assume there is an item which your memory has stored at a retention level of one day. This means that, if you test after two days (prescribed revision time), you will get that item wrong.

It is important that you actually make that mistake, in writing, because this will tell you and the system (in its professional version) that the revision intervals for this item have to be shortened. You therefore have to be grateful for this mistake, because it reveals an important truth with practical consequences. It has nothing to do with you being clever or otherwise but only with what to do next.

By contrast, if you try to improve your test results by looking at the exercise five minutes before doing it in writing, you will get that item right. The system, assuming that you followed the rules, that you did not cheat, sees the correct answer as evidence that this item was stored at the two-day retention level, as desired. It will therefore now increase the revision interval to four days, assuming that this item will, as a result of this revision, now move to the four-day retention level. Since this is the wrong decision by the system, the chances are that you will get this item wrong again next time around, and your results will get worse and worse as time goes by. More and more such not known items will accumulate. You will become as stupid as your mates.

The 90 per cent retention promised by DYLL will not be kept because you have not been using the system.

Therefore follow the rules to the letter. Do *** not *** use your intuition about the best thing to do. Your intuition, if it deviates from the DYLL rules, is bound to be wrong.

Follow the rules to the letter. Do all revisions in writing, at the prescribed times. Do not look at exercises at any other time. Also do not look at any item during a revision, except after you have written down an answer and marked it as right or wrong.

You must not even catch a glimpse of an item while sliding your folded paper up and down. Be very diligent about that.

Paradox: Try to expose your ignorance. Make your mistakes apparent since, if you do, they can be corrected. If you hide them, e.g. by cheating, they will fester undetected and spread like a cancer and lead to premature death, i.e. the collapse of learning, skill and knowledge.

Homing in (focussing) on the details

To learn certain words correctly can take a long time, even with DYLL, and you have to be prepared for this. This is in the nature of things, and there is nothing you can do about it except plod on patiently and follow the rules until, eventually, you remember every detail.

For example, there are such stinkers among the Hindi-Urdu numerals (say the number 25, or 50), where you do not only have to learn whether a certain element is "pac, pacc, pic, pan, van, caas", or "tiis, ttiis, iis" which, after a while, with the help of DYLL, you will pick up. After a while, after many mistakes and many revisions, you will have figured out and remember that, for a certain numeral, "pan, van, caas" are *** not *** appropriate. This is definitely progress, even though you are still making, and recording, mistakes. Even wrong answers can be viewed as successes, if they are less wrong than previous answers.

You will now, and only now, have spare energy to concentrate on the question which of the remaining variants is correct for this numeral: "pac, pacc, pic". After a while, and more revisions, you will have cottoned on to the fact that "pic" is not correct for the numeral in question.

You are now poised for the final battle and your definitive victory: You have two learn whether the wanted variant is "pac" or "pacc", for only one of them is correct in this case, the other one is wrong. This can be very hard to learn, but to get there you had to move all the other learning points out of the way.

You have to expect this sort of thing and know that it is natural. It has nothing to do with your being stupid or the language being perverse and difficult. These are things which occur in any language and which can happen to any learner.

The answer is: Be prepared for it, smile, remain unemotional, follow the rules of DYLL and continue as long as it takes. The only question always is: what to do next. DYLL always has an answer for that question.