Re: Dvorak (& Lojban)

[George Foot <george.foot@MERTON.OXFORD.AC.UK>]

On Wed, 22 Oct 1997, HACKER G N wrote:

>   John Cowan:
> > > But in Latin script, a B is a B, and a C is a C, and if you
> > > have to remember:
> > >
> > >         to type a B with left-2nd-finger-down and C with
> > >         left-3rd-finger-down on QWERTY only
> >
>           Ilya Ketris:
> >         It's not you but your fingers who remember this
> >         once your mind is in the different typing mode.
>
> Yes, I was just thinking, if you had to think out consciously which finger
> went where in just one typing mode, you couldn't type very fast. Whenever
> you learn a new physical skill, there reaches a certain point where your
> body remembers it quite independently of whether YOU do. I often have to
> think about exactly where on the keyboard a QWERTY key is to know it
> intellectually, but if you sit me down on a QWERTY keyboard I can type
> using that key automatically, and at 70 words a minute!

Heh. In fact, when imagining the location of a key, I tend to imagine
pressing it, then think about where my fingers have gone. Sort of like
asking my fingers where it is ;). It seems that not all of our memory is
in our heads...

I know I have to think hard to write out a Lojban keyboard mapping.

> As for the Dvorak keyboard, thanks go to all the people who wrote to me
> telling me how I could configure my own keyboard to Dvorak. I have now
> been experimenting with Dvorak for 6 days including today, and I have
> found and downloaded a set of 29 Dvorak lessons from the Internet - I am
> currently on lesson 6. I was amazed at just how quickly I could pick up
> Dvorak - I had the new letter positions intellectually memorised in the
> first evening! - and as far as being able to maintain both QWERTY and
> Dvorak skills at once, I have from the beginning been concerned with
> using Dvorak only necessarily in lessons, until my speed in it is
> comparable with my QWERTY speed.

I'd suggest that you continue to use both layouts, although others will no
doubt disagree. Doing so will slow down your Dvorak learning, of course,
but a lot of web sites mention that in testing it's been found that after
learning QWERTY, Dvorak is not hard to pick up (given some will to learn);
however, the reverse is not true. After learning Dvorak (as a first
layout), QWERTY is extremely slow to learn. Presumably similarly if one
forgets QWERTY and re-learns it, the process is rather slow too.

[obLojban-related:]

Bringing this back on topic again, is this yet another parallel between
logical language learning and logical keyboard layout learning? I.e., is
it true that Lojban is relatively simple to learn as a second language
(given some degree of dedication), while if one learns Lojban as a first
language, learning other languages is more difficult (than learning Lojban
second)? The above is somewhat confusing; put bluntly, is learning A as a
first language and then Lojban simpler/easier/quicker than learning Lojban
as a first language then A?

I'm making a distinction between [learning Lojban as a first language
followed by another language second] and [having learned some (first)
language, then learning L, then some other language]. Information on the
FTP site/web page indicates that in the latter case, learning the third
language is much faster than learning that language second.

And yes, I realise that there are no native speakers of Lojban yet ;).

> I will type diary entries in Dvorak -
> slowly but surely - but for my uni work I have to use QWERTY still,
> because it's too important to stuff up with a keyboard with which I'm not
> yet fully fluent, obviously. And so far I can say that my speed in Dvorak
> just keeps picking up, but my QWERTY skills have not diminished in the
> slightest! In fact, I think they're a little bit faster and more accurate
> than they were before, because of the extra emphasis I've been giving to
> correct posture and movement of fingers on the keyboard in Dvorak.

I hadn't actually found that to be true for myself; I still type qwerty in
the same haphazard fashion I always did.

--
Regards,

george.foot@merton.oxford.ac.uk