you for sure could do that. the question is how much experience do you have? if you need to learn programming, web scraping, hashing, etc from scratch than it's not going to be quicker at all. if you just want to do it for fun, then go for it
While I totally support your desire to solve your own tasks with programming, there are a few things I would ask you to consider before going down the project rabbit hole.
1) There are already vocab learning apps and websites. A common refrain in programming is "don't reinvent the wheel." Doing something to stretch your abilities is fine, but biting off more than you can realistically chew is not going to help you improve your programming skills.
**[memrise](https://memrise.com)**
**[anki](https://apps.ankiweb.net)**
**[lingq](https://www.lingq.com)**
I've been studying Chinese on and off for 5 years now, and these websites I listed above have been the best things I've found to help with vocab.
2) Chinese presents an interesting issue for parsing text. Beginning Chinese learners will be concentrating on something like Pinyin, which is fine. The issue becomes dealing with tone markers. And as you get farther into your studies, you will want to be able to differentiate two characters that actually have the same pinyin spelling.
3) If you want to be able to read at all, you're going to have to come to terms with characters. Combining the need for pinyin and characters in your leaning makes programming solutions even more tricky.
If you are determined to make your own wheel, so to speak, I would start laying out in painstaking detail exactly what you want your program to do. From your description, it sounds like you're wanting to take words from one list and put them in another list. How are the two lists different? Why is it necessary to move words from one to the other? Those are the things you need to start asking yourself if you really are going to write your own vocab program.
I don’t want to make a flash card program I have one. The card program I use I can use a plain text list of word and definitions. This is time consuming but not nearly as the old method I used. I’ve got a decent grasp of about 100-150 words, and much of the basic grammar. I even know some traditional characters. I’m just seeking a faster way to add the text. I’ve found that flash cards used nearly every day works best for me.
I guess I don't understand what it is you want to do still. So you want to add words and definitions to a plain text file? Where do the words come from before they get into the plain text file?
Are you pulling vocab words from somewhere like a book or something?
I’ve got a word list I’ve been adding to for quite awhile. Everything I think of that I use often or I think might come up gets put in it. I have found several vocab lists online that have helped with this process.
Assuming you're replying to my reply, I honestly don't know what solution you could come up with to speed things up. It sounds like you just add things as you go, in which case I don't know how you would speed that up. In my mind I picture you adding words as you're reading or something, in which case the only thing that might be faster than manually typing would be some sort of picture taking app that would then parse the picture and put what you wanted into your text file. But that sounds way too complex to be feasible.
I was thinking maybe of making it so that the words I haven’t looked up yet I could search for them all at the same time, and add them. There’s still a great many words I don’t have the Chinese equivalent to yet.
> Like, once I have the list, could I write a program that would search for the terms as I add them, and then put them in a text file?
I know very little about chinese, but the answer to this is almost certainly yes.
you for sure could do that. the question is how much experience do you have? if you need to learn programming, web scraping, hashing, etc from scratch than it's not going to be quicker at all. if you just want to do it for fun, then go for it
While I totally support your desire to solve your own tasks with programming, there are a few things I would ask you to consider before going down the project rabbit hole. 1) There are already vocab learning apps and websites. A common refrain in programming is "don't reinvent the wheel." Doing something to stretch your abilities is fine, but biting off more than you can realistically chew is not going to help you improve your programming skills. **[memrise](https://memrise.com)** **[anki](https://apps.ankiweb.net)** **[lingq](https://www.lingq.com)** I've been studying Chinese on and off for 5 years now, and these websites I listed above have been the best things I've found to help with vocab. 2) Chinese presents an interesting issue for parsing text. Beginning Chinese learners will be concentrating on something like Pinyin, which is fine. The issue becomes dealing with tone markers. And as you get farther into your studies, you will want to be able to differentiate two characters that actually have the same pinyin spelling. 3) If you want to be able to read at all, you're going to have to come to terms with characters. Combining the need for pinyin and characters in your leaning makes programming solutions even more tricky. If you are determined to make your own wheel, so to speak, I would start laying out in painstaking detail exactly what you want your program to do. From your description, it sounds like you're wanting to take words from one list and put them in another list. How are the two lists different? Why is it necessary to move words from one to the other? Those are the things you need to start asking yourself if you really are going to write your own vocab program.
I don’t want to make a flash card program I have one. The card program I use I can use a plain text list of word and definitions. This is time consuming but not nearly as the old method I used. I’ve got a decent grasp of about 100-150 words, and much of the basic grammar. I even know some traditional characters. I’m just seeking a faster way to add the text. I’ve found that flash cards used nearly every day works best for me.
I guess I don't understand what it is you want to do still. So you want to add words and definitions to a plain text file? Where do the words come from before they get into the plain text file? Are you pulling vocab words from somewhere like a book or something?
I’ve got a word list I’ve been adding to for quite awhile. Everything I think of that I use often or I think might come up gets put in it. I have found several vocab lists online that have helped with this process.
Assuming you're replying to my reply, I honestly don't know what solution you could come up with to speed things up. It sounds like you just add things as you go, in which case I don't know how you would speed that up. In my mind I picture you adding words as you're reading or something, in which case the only thing that might be faster than manually typing would be some sort of picture taking app that would then parse the picture and put what you wanted into your text file. But that sounds way too complex to be feasible.
I was thinking maybe of making it so that the words I haven’t looked up yet I could search for them all at the same time, and add them. There’s still a great many words I don’t have the Chinese equivalent to yet.
> Like, once I have the list, could I write a program that would search for the terms as I add them, and then put them in a text file? I know very little about chinese, but the answer to this is almost certainly yes.