Re: Dvorak (& Lojban)

[Andrew Sieber <absieber@eos.ncsu.edu>]

Edward Cherlin wrote:
>
> The speed-up has been measured at about 20%, which amply repays the time
> spent learning in short order. I picked up about 10 wpm, which fits that
> claim.
I dearly hope that applies to me as well.  I've taken a long time before
I got around to replying to this message because my Dvorak speed has
been so ridiculously slow.  It's somewhat better now, but I'm not nearly
back to the speed I used to have.  I've been touch typing only in Dvorak
for 16 days now, and purposefully hunt and peck with two fingers when
I'm forced to use a qwerty system (fortunately I rarely have to), and
lately I've found that I actually have to think about the placement of
the qwerty letters, so there's no turning back now.  I guess that that's
a good sign.

> Not in my experience. Professional typists whe have to switch keyboards
> frequently say that they can do it as easily as polyglot speakers switch
> languages. However, if you can stand total immersion, it should take you
> less than a week to become comfortable, and I would expect about two weeks
> total to reach your previous speed.
Unfortunately it's taking quite a bit more time than that.  And my
qwerty touch-typing is gone for good.  Yet I intended the latter.  But I
still have to think about the placement of the Dvorak letters, which is
highly annoying.

> One has the same problems with Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, kana, etc.
> keyboards. I got a Russian typewriter in college, and learned to touch type
> without disturbing my English typing skills. Lots of people use multiple
> layouts all the time. I personally drew the line at a manual Korean
> typewriter with three shifts, and a Chinese typewriter with a box of
> several thousand type slugs. A professor told me that the typewriter repair
> person for the university said that the Chinese typewriter wasn't a
> typewriter at all. According to him, it was a knitting machine.
I'm drawing the line HERE.  I don't ever plan to learn another layout,
and especially not another physical keyboard arrangement!  Dvorak will
be the last layout I learn; I intend to use it for the rest of my life.
Well I've never seen a Korean or Chinese typewriter, but from your
description of it, I'd say it's neither a typewriter nor a knitting
machine.  It's a paperweight.

> To return to Lojban, however, I am hoping that it will eventually speed up
> my math and logic, just as Dvorak speeds up typing. I certainly had that
> experience learning APL, compared with all those poky scalar languages that
> make you write loops and branches even to add the columns in a table and
> choose among the results. Someday I'll have to figure out how to speak APL
> in Lojban.
I am thinking along similar lines:  Improved thought, if nothing else.

--Andrew
absieber@eos.ncsu.edu