How I know the flag of South Sudan

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On the wall of my kids' bedroom is a world map. It has all the up-to-date political borders including the world's newest country: South Sudan. So, if I wanted to see what the flag of South Sudan was, I could put on my glasses, get down on my hands and knees and find it nestled in between Sudan and Suriname.I could do this, but I don't have to. I already know South Sudan's flag because last year I decided to finally improve my Catalan.

And what exactly does improving my Catalan have to do with South Sudan? Let me explain.

After some limited research on optimum language learning techniques, I stumbled upon a recommended app called AnkiApp (Anki is Japanese for memorisation). It's a learning support app that works on the principle of a spaced repetition system (SRS), and its strength lies in its ability to help you focus on what you want to learn as often as you need to.

The idea, like all good ideas, is powerfully simple. You learn from user-friendly flashcards that are shown to you by the app on the basis of how well you remember them. If you can't remember the right answer, the card is brought back in a few moments. If a card is easy to remember, it's brought back after a much longer time.

But rather than trying to understand my explanation, why not check it out yourself? After all, the app is free. That's exactly what I did when I heard about it last year.

When you download the app, you can start to make your own flashcards or you can use a wide selection of prepared flashcard sets on a whole range of subjects—from languages and constellations to first aid and car maintenance. And one of the first free samples I came across was 'Flags of the World'. So I thought 'why not? It's a good conversation starter'. Thus, I started the steady process of learning all 249 of them. I'm still not perfect but it got me a Trivial Pursuit 'cheese' last Christmas by correctly answering 'Which of the following flags doesn't have a dragon on it. Wales, Bhutan or Mongolia?'

Thanks to AnkiApp I’ve increased my vocabulary by about 300 words including a few of my favourites such as sovint (often), aleshores (in that case), and fart (one who eats in excess), as well as scores of useful (and not so useful) expressions that we might be exploring sometime later.

So, if you're keen to improve your Spanish or Catalan vocabulary then check out AnkiApp. The common expression used to be that you learn something new every day. With SRS apps such as Anki, that's just been multiplied by ten and you never know what you might be learning next!

Good luck and happy learning.