vestibule
March 3, 2020 |
It took me a day to learn the shapes of letters. I can slowly spell out word walls in-game.
I did this: I took pencil and paper, copied down a few letters, scribed them a dozen times. Then I analysed them, and I used that to distinguish and systematically break apart each letter. Then I followed the alphabet learning page, doing all exercises with dragon letters, and scribing new letters a dozen times. Then I did the section two reading test, practiced the letters I had problems with, then redid the test.
This works for me, because I learn best from doing and writing. You might learn best from seeing/reading, or saying aloud while reading. Try multiple things to find what suits you.
The important part is not to get bored while doing this. Fight boredom with whatever interests you. For me it's analysis, but you might like neatly scribing letters, or pairing a specific shout for each rune ( R - Ro), or something. Switch tasks when bored.
The brain needs some time (and sleep) to deepen gained knowledge, so you might only see improvement over days, not hours.
My analysis:
- (you might learn faster if you follow along by analysing letters)
- all letters are composed of these six subsymbols: a long swipe, a half swipe (half of a long swipe), a small swipe/scratch (it's pointy, so it's not a dot), a dot, a diagonal swipe, and a flat swipe (horizontal). All swipes have a wide end (I call this "head") and a thin end. I draw a swipe starting with the head, like I imagine a dragon would. Swipes vary like so: top (7 shaped), bottom (mirrored L shaped), left-headed, right-headed. I scribe parts in this order, because it helps me remember better: "main" swipe or "anchor" part, dot (if any), secondary swipe(s).
A: right-diag, dot, small
Q: right-diag, dot, half
D: long, dot, half
R: long, small, half
2: right-diag, dot, left-diag
V: right-diag, small, left-diag
U: bottom half, half, long
5: long, bottom half, half. (5 starts the same way as U ends, and partially starts a new U. It's as if we wrote latin UU as the two middle staves: II or JL).
This breakdown is useful to distinguish them and not see them as chicken scratch. Do not rote-learn this, it's horribly inefficient. Instead, to learn a letter, scribe it down a dozen times more more. If needed, use guiding lines, like in first grade.
- some letters are similar to the latin ones. Eg. S is almost shaped like an S: the upper half-swipe is the right end of the S, and the lower half-swipe is the left. Same with D, R, I, P, W. Other dragon letters have a negative space in which latin letters fit in: T, U, M, L, Y (upside down), H (kind of), J (pushing it).
- some letters I find really easy to associate, eg. K, N, L, O, OO, F, Z. I think my brain recognises the same reasonings in strokes, eg the N rune has two long swipes, and the latin N has two long staves. The Z letter is two beams and a staff (2 similars, 1 unique in the middle); the Z rune is two shorts, one long (2 similars, 1 unique in the middle).
- (I'm sure many people discovered this before, with different nomenclature.)
Compare the word walls with the website's font to see some natural variation in scribing the letters. In game, if you have SkyUI, the shout menu is great for spontaneous, short practice. |
