I'm lazy. But I want to get a lot of stuff done.
The solution is to spent most of my limited energy getting my laptop to do it all for me.
If you're prepared to spend half an hour figuring out how to make your computer do something automatically, you can spend several happy hours sleeping while it does it. For example....
No matter how good you are at anything, there's always a few aspects where you're oddly weak.
I've got one student who's very good on grammar and conversation, but can never remember irregular verbs. Well, I reckon English has 166 irregulars, excluding compound forms like "overthrow", "understand", "redo" and such. There are also 45 which have regular alternative versions, eg. "dreamt/dreamed", "fit/fitted", which, having mentioned them, I'm sweeping under the carpet.
A few months ago I worked out an algorithm for putting them into frequency order. The result looks like this:
001 - be, am, is, are / was, were / been
002 - have, has / had / had
003 - can / could / _____
004 - do, does / did / done
005 - will / would / _____
006 - see / saw / seen
007 - make / made / made
008 - know / knew / known
009 - take / took / taken
010 - come / came / come
011 - go / went / gone
012 - get / got / go
013 - say / said / said
014 - set / set / set
015 - think / thought / thought
016 - give / gave / given
017 - find / found / found
018 - become / became / became
019 - put / put / put
020 - let / let / let
021 - light / lit / lit
022 - show / showed / shown
023 - saw / sawed / sawn
024 - read / read / read
025 - tell / told / told
026 - keep / kept / kept
027 - cost / cost / cost
028 - mean / meant / meant
029 - feel / felt / felt
030 - leave / left / left
031 - run / ran / run
032 - pay / paid / paid
033 - bring / brought / brought
034 - cut / cut / cut
035 - lead / led / led
036 - hold / held / held
037 - fall / fell / fallen
038 - deal / dealt / dealt
039 - meet / met / met
040 - write / wrote / written
041 - speak / spoke / spoken
042 - hear / heard / heard
043 - rise / rose / risen
044 - stand / stood / stood
045 - lay / laid / laid
046 - learn / learnt / learnt
047 - begin / began / begun
048 - spring / sprang / sprung
049 - speed / spe / spe
050 - wind / wound / wound
051 - bear / bore / borne
052 - spread / spread / spread
053 - break / broke / broken
054 - send / sent / sent
055 - sleep / slept / slept
056 - fit / fit / fit
057 - drive / drove / driven
058 - choose / chose / chosen
059 - prove / proved / proven
060 - fight / fought / fought
061 - draw / drew / drawn
062 - seek / sought / sought
063 - build / built / built
064 - lie / lay / lain
065 - grow / grew / grown
066 - buy / bought / bought
067 - cast / cast / cast
068 - eat / ate / eaten
069 - sit / sat / sat
070 - dream / dreamt / dreamt
071 - lose / lost / lost
072 - ring / rang / rung
073 - sell / sold / sold
074 - drink / drank / drunk
075 - strike / struck / struck
076 - hit / hit / hit
077 - forget / forgot / forgotten
078 - teach / taught / taught
079 - spend / spent / spent
080 - arise / arose / arisen
081 - win / won / won
082 - wear / wore / worn
083 - feed / fed / fed
084 - catch / caught / caught
085 - fly / flew / flown
086 - throw / threw / thrown
087 - hurt / hurt / hurt
088 - beat / beat / beaten
089 - shut / shut / shut
090 - blow / blew / blown
091 - split / split / split
092 - ride / rode / ridden
093 - stick / stuck / stuck
094 - sing / sang / sung
095 - hide / hid / hidden
096 - burst / burst / burst
097 - smell / smelt / smelt
098 - thrust / thrust / thrust
099 - wake / woke / woken
100 - burn / burnt / burnt
101 - shoot / shot / shot
102 - hang / hanged / hanged
103 - rid / rid / rid
104 - shed / shed / shed
105 - slide / slid / slid
106 - bid / bid / bid
107 - shake / shook / shaken
108 - spin / spun / spun
109 - sink / sank / sunk
110 - tear / tore / torn
111 - shear / sheared / shorn
112 - bend / bent / bent
113 - quit / quit / quit
114 - swing / swung / swung
115 - spell / spel / spel
116 - bind / bound / bound
117 - lend / lent / lent
118 - bet / be / bet
119 - breed / bred / bred
120 - sweep / swept / swept
121 - bite / bit / bitten
122 - leap / leap / leap
123 - dig / dug / dug
124 - steal / stole / stolen
125 - swim / swam / swum
126 - strive / strove / striven
127 - swear / swore / sworn
128 - shine / shone / shone
129 - freeze / froze / frozen
130 - creep / crept / crept
131 - swell / swelled / swollen
132 - flee / fled / fled
133 - forbid / forbade / forbidden
134 - plead / pled / pled
135 - slit / slit / slit
136 - spoil / spoil / spoil
137 - weep / wept / wept
138 - shrink / shrank / shrunk
139 - dive / dove / dived
140 - tread / trod / trodden
141 - sow / sowed / sown
142 - thrive / throve / thrived
143 - cling / clung / clung
144 - spit / spat / spat
145 - weave / wove / wove
146 - beset / beset / beset
147 - sting / stung / stung
148 - stride / strode / stridden
149 - spill / spill / spill
150 - grind / ground / ground
151 - sew / sewed / sewn
152 - bleed / bled / bled
153 - wed / wed / wed
154 - forsake / forsook / forsaken
155 - kneel / knelt / knelt
156 - fling / flung / flung
157 - slay / slew / slain
158 - sling / slung / slung
159 - forgo / forewent / foregone
160 - stink / stank / stunk
161 - mow / mowed / mown
162 - wring / wrung / wrung
163 - smite / smote / smitten
164 - shall / should / _____
165 - hang / hung / hung
166 - lean / leant / leant
I then used one of the better text-to-speech synthsisers to make mp3s of each verb's forms, and padded the files with silence to ten seconds each. The idea is: Put them on your generic mp3 player device, set it to shuffle, and play - while doing something which requires no intellectual power, like walking, or relaxing with quiet music in the background.
Your player recites the conjugations in random order, leaving a gap of six or seven seconds between each repeat, which according to the theory I read years ago, should help 'fix' them in your long-term memory.
Students often ask me: "Is this word always a noun, or is it a verb too?" Or "It has a meaning as an adjective, but does it have a different meaning as a noun?". Etc.
Well, over a year ago I set an old laptop to get the complete list of words and classifications from the digital Shorter OED, coming to around 65,500 root words. It actually took seven complete days, which tells you just how old the laptop was. After removing those entries which were both spelling-duplicates and sound-duplicates, it came to 51,446.
I've also got 18 months worth of BBC subtitles, which after word-frequency analysis, contains 97,539 individual words. Which means I can now reveal, the ten least common words transmitted by the BBC are:
neurotoxins
meisner
naguib
enshrining
centralising
oilmen
evang
losey
westergaard
Now, excluding non-root words - that is, excluding words from the BBC list which aren't in the SOED list - and then excluding those which aren't categorised as nouns, verb, or adjectives...we get 27,635 words. Which I re-arranged alphabetically, and put into a chart, showing which ones are nouns, which nouns and verbs etc.
I tried to post it on the blog I keep for stories and this sort of thing, but the new enhanced super-capable Blogger choked on such a large table. But here's an except:
| Word | N | V | A | Word | N | V | A |
| begin | X | narcolepsy | X | ||||
| beginning | X | narcosis | X | ||||
| begonia | X | narcotic | X | X | |||
| begrudge | X | nares | X | ||||
| beguile | X | narragansett | X | ||||
| begum | X | narrate | X | ||||
| behalf | X | narrative | X | X | |||
| behave | X | narrow | X | X | X | ||
| behaved | X | narrowband | X | ||||
| behaviour | X | narthex | X | ||||
| behavioural | X | narwhal | X | ||||
| behead | X | nary | X | ||||
| behemoth | X | nasal | X | X | |||
| behest | X | nascent | X | ||||
| behind | X | nasogastric | X | ||||
| behindhand | X | nasopharynx | X | ||||
| behold | X | nasturtium | X | ||||
| beholden | X | nasty | X | X | |||
| beige | X | natal | X | ||||
| being | X | natality | X |
So I've got my list of 65,500 or so words, And I often need to translate words into Arabic, and I've got google translate. Which has some quite egregious mistranslations, but is a lot better than nothing.
Unfortunately, I've also got wi-fi that doesn't work a lot of the time, so an offline version would be useful. I paste my SOED list into the English window, and copy what comes up in the Arabic window. I filter out the words which have no translation, leaving 16,898. I make a version of the Arabic list with letters listed right-to-left, but with the letters in 'isolated' form, so they're easier to read. I do another version with the Arabic transliterated into ASCII equivalents.
I put the four columns together and the result after a week's work is...completely and utterly unusable. Here's a sample:
| blueprint | مخطط | م خ ط ط | mxt.t. |
| blues | البلوز | ا ل ب ل و ز | alblwz |
| bluestocking | امرأة مثقفة | ا م ر أ ة م ث ق ف ة | amr?aa mTqfa |
| bluestone | أزرق | أ ز ر ق | ?azrq |
| bluet | الهصطونية | ا ل ه ص ط و ن ي ة | alhs.t.wnja |
| bluetongue | اللسان الأزرق | ا ل ل س ا ن ا ل أ ز ر ق | allsan al?azrq |
| bluey | مزرق | م ز ر ق | mzrq |
| bluff | مخادعة | م خ ا د ع ة | mxadG.a |
| bluing | الصبغة الزرقاء | ا ل ص ب غ ة ا ل ز ر ق ا ء | als.bGa alzrqa? |
| bluish | مزرق | م ز ر ق | mzrq |
| blunder | تخبط | ت خ ب ط | txbt. |
| blunderbuss | الأبله | ا ل أ ب ل ه | al?ablh |
| blunge | جبل الطين | ج ب ل ا ل ط ي ن | Zbl alt.jn |
| blunt | ثلم | ث ل م | Tlm |
| blur | شىء ضبابي | ش ى ء ض ب ا ب ي | Sj? d.babj |
| blurb | دعاية مغالى فيها | د ع ا ي ة م غ ا ل ى ف ي ه ا | dG.aja mGalj fjha |
| blurt | أفشى من غير تفكير | أ ف ش ى م ن غ ي ر ت ف ك ي ر | ?afSj mn Gjr tfkjr |
| blush | استحى | ا س ت ح ى | astx.j |
| blusher | أحمر الخدود | أ ح م ر ا ل خ د و د | ?ax.mr alxdwd |
It doesn't matter how clever your data processing, garbage in will always give you garbage out.