Parallel 2

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zoi gy. Parallel 2 .gy. cmene lo zifre samtci be lo nu sidju fi lonu cilre fi la .lojban. bei lo me la'o gy. Windows .gy. skami bei fi'e la .ianis. baturas.

Parallel 2 is a FREE program for parallel reading and listening in two languages. It was written specially for learning Lojban, enabling users to achieve more practical knowledge of the language.

The main idea of the program comes from the approach of implicit learning of foreign languages. Parallel 2 works with modules, i.e. text files in special format containing associated sentences in two languages with links to sound files recorded for each sentence. After opening a module, the user sees the first pair of sentences on the screen, for example:

mi cilre fi la lojban. fu la .PAralel. I learn Lojban using "Parallel".

If the user then presses the designated key, he/she will hear a voice reading that Lojban sentence aloud. After becoming familiar with this sentence, the user goes to the next sentence pair, repeating the process until the end of the module. Sentences can be taken in turn, randomly or be played automatically after an adjustable time delay.

The user may also choose the option to hide Lojban ("target") sentences, leaving only the sound to be listened. This method is for those who want to improve their "heard" Lojban.

There are now five modules for Lojban so far, 172+172+171+167+179 = 861 sentences total. The sixth module is under development.

A separate module demonstrating Lojban pronunciation (better quality) is also attached.

Source code for Windows version of Parallel 2 is available here.

Many thanks to Jorge Llambias (xorxes) for his comments and remarks. He makes the sentences in the modules correct and truly Lojbanic.

Program features

• Allows parallel reading of two texts in any Unicode-supported languages (including Far Eastern languages)
• Allows playing sound files associated with target sentences.
• Direct Source - Target association in one TXT file eliminates problems with correct breaking text into sentences for Lojban language - a typical problem of the traditional bilingual readers such as biReader.
• Very easy way of creating new project (TXT) files for the program - required is only Notepad able to save in Unicode format.
• Extremely small size - an .EXE with size of about 40 KB.

System requirements

• Microsoft Windows 2000, XP or newer.
• Linux version: There's a Linux version available that uses Python, Pygame, and which should be as portable as python/pygame/sdl are. You can help improve that version and thus help in developing this multimedia project.
• Sound card

Version history

• 20081026 Parallel 2, Version 0.4 (no data files), Parallel 2, Version 0.4 + data files (zip file).
  • Version 0.4. Features: 6 different display modes (from manual to full automatic with auto-voice). Full user interactivity (also during auto-modes). Optional on-screen countdown timer with settable speed (for more challenge). Hearing comprehension mode (only hear the lojban text, not see it). Help menu. Code made object oriented and documented for future development. You need the data files from the package below, or you can download it all as one zip file. If you already have the data files from before, easiest is to put the .py file in the same directory as the data files. For hearing sound, mplayer is needed by default.
• 20080530 Parallel 2, data package with oggs. Re-encoded the wavs with ogg vorbis encoding instead of some obscure waveformat that mplayer couldn't read, if sound clips at the end you want this. However this is slightly larger (5MiB) due to overhead in these files.
• 20080530 Parallel 2, Version with support for ogg or mp3-files in the new data package above, Parallel 2, slightly bugfixed version of parallel03.py - use this if you get "audio device busy" errors".

Pending modules - for competent Lojbanists

here are stored the modules (more precisely, textual part of the modules) awaiting to be released.

Everyone competent in Lojban is welcome to post comments, find and point out mistakes/misprints and other stuff. After a certain period (one week) sound is recorded for the corrected version, and then it will be released for download.

Creating new modules - everyone welcome

Creating and sharing modules for Parallel is easy. Instructions here.