A few months ago I wrote about αბц (Alphabets, pronounced Alphabaytz), a simple alphabet learning application for iOS, focusing on the Georgian and Armenian alphabets. Well in a few days I’ll be landing in Western Georgia and taught it’d be a good idea to revisit this idea.

Recall that αბц has learning/testing and practice modes, where practice mode displays a Georgian word and the user must select the correct transliteration (or vice versa). From testing, one of my main critiques with this mode was that it was too easy: all you needed to know was one or two letters, and you could identify the correct answer. Of course this could rectified by supplying similar answers, varying, in say, a letter or so between. One other complaint is that it is passive and there isn’t any incentive to continue.

Taking a break from studying Russian, I thus devised the following game:

every round a Georgian word is displayed and the user is required to type the corresponding latin transliteration.
if the user is correct, they move to the next round, otherwise back a round.
the length of this word is equal to the current round number
there is a time limit.

So we start off with a single letter

and progressively get longer

and longer…

Overall I think the idea is interesting and more effective than the method seen in the iOS version. Presently random, non-sensical words are generated (I don’t know Georgia, can just read it) so clearly real words would be useful for those learning the language, but then it would be just a basic word learning app.

Presently each letter is given 1.5 seconds, so level 1 must be completed with 1.5s, level 4 within 6s etc. It is actually quite difficult and I was proud to reach level ten to complete it!