This program lets you learn foreign alphabets. It includes Cyrillic, Hebrew, Katakana, Hiragana, Kanji, Farsi, Greek, IPA, Thai, Cherokee, and Inuktituk (Inuit).

Select the desired lesson and then click on the right answer. The "direction" menu item reverses the sense of which are questions and which are answers. When you get an answer correct, it is displayed at the bottom for review.

The source is here and the Pilot files are here.

Several people have asked how to create your own lessons. First, get the Java conversion program: makealpha.class and makealpha.java. Next, you need to create an input file, for example, learngreek.txt. This file has the following format:

• First line specifies the name of the lesson
• Multiple characters, each specified by the following lines:
  • The text to go with the character.
  • A bitmap for the character, built out of *'s and .'s.
  • The three characters ### to indicate the end of the bitmap.

I've also made a Perl program to convert a .pdb file into a source input file. This program is getsource.perl.

I obtained from someone (whose name I lost) some Hindi files, and a Windows program to create Learn Alpha files. These are available here.

Also see my Java version of Learn.

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Copyright 2000 Ken Shirriff. Last updated 3/13/2001. Java and other Java-based names are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. and refer to Sun's family of Java-branded technologies. PalmPilot is a trademark of 3Com. Use of this software is subject to the terms of the license agreement.