Field notes / Sample post — replace with your own
Learning Kannada with spaced repetition (and shameless mnemonics)
This is a sample post — replace it with your own version of the story. It exists so you can see how a lighter, personal post looks in the same template as a professional one.
Moving to Bengaluru gives you two options: stay inside the English-Hindi bubble forever, or learn Kannada. I chose option two, and because I can't do anything without turning it into a system, the project immediately acquired a three-stage Anki deck, review metrics, and a backlog.
The system
- Core vocabulary — the few hundred words that carry most daily conversations.
- Grammar suffixes — Kannada does with suffixes what other languages do with entire clauses.
- Real-world sentence chunks — full phrases you actually say at the market, not textbook sentences nobody has uttered since 1974.
The mnemonics are not dignified
The single biggest retention boost came from absurd mnemonics. The dumber the mental image, the better it sticks — this is documented memory science and also a personal embarrassment. I will not be sharing examples. My review stats will speak for me.
Streaks are a vanity metric. Retention rate is the KPI. The auditor in me insists on this distinction; the human in me still checks the streak first.