Managing languages
Phrasing is built with native support for multiple languages. With Phrasing, you can give each language a different language speed, and Phrasing will intelligently schedule reviews to match your goals.
Adding languages
To start learning a language in Phrasing, all you have to do is Extract or Bookmark any Expression in that language. Phrasing determines the languages to teach you based off the languages in your library.
This can be done in three ways:
Open Sterling, choose Import Expressions, Generate Expressions, or Attach Files. Where you are asked to choose a language, look for the plus button. Click plus, choose your language, and continue creating the Expression.
Open Sterling, and ask it to generate an Expression in a given language. This is less reliable, but should work for most languages. For dialects (such as in Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, and Chinese) it's recommended to use the picker from option 1.
Open the application, and look for the Onboarding card. You can repeat the onboarding process as many times as you'd like. This will walk you through the process of choosing languages, present some free Expressions you can bookmark, and generate some tailored Expressions.
Configuring language speeds
In any of the review modes, you can tap on the flag in the header to open up the language configuration. There you can easily toggle between different learning speeds for each language. We will go over these options now from left to right.
Reference language
The leftmost toggle (with an anchor) is a toggle for whether this language can be used as a reference language. Every Review will display a target language (a language you are learning) and a reference language (a language you ostensively know to be used as a reference).
Let's say you're an English speaker learning French. In the beginning, you will have English as a reference language. Later, after you've learned French, you decide to learn Italian. You can now opt to make French a reference language, to essentially learn Italian via French.
In the above scenario, you can still have French as a target language while using it as a reference language. One does not exclude the other. If you do not want to study your reference language, then you must also set the learning speed to pause.
Pause
Pause will remove this language from consideration as a target language in your reviews. If you have the language marked as a reference language, it will still appear in reviews as a reference language.
Important note: If you pause a language, and enable focus mode, you will be shown the "no expressions" error. Pause supersedes Focus at the moment
Maintain
Maintain will continue showing you reviews in this language, but stop showing you new words.
You can tap on maintain multiple times to decrease the frequency of the reviews in this language.
Learn
Learn will show you reviews and new cards at the standard rate.
Accelerate
Accelerate will show you reviews and new cards at an accelerated rate.
You can tap on accelerate multiple times to increase the frequency of the reviews in this language.
Focus
Focus will toggle focus mode, showing only reviews in this language. Multiple languages can have focus mode enabled at the same time, which will result in an even distribution of reviews across the languages. Focus is also review mode specific, so flashcards, clozewords, & shadowing can have distinct focus selections.
Language smoothing
Configuring the languages does not guarantee you will see that distribution of languages. Some languages will have high priority reviews, while other languages only have low priority reviews that day. Some languages might have thousands of Expressions, while other languages only have 3 or 4.
This is where language smoothing comes in. Phrasing will bias the spaced repetition system to match your configured learning speeds in accordance with the language smoothing option. By default, Smooth will be enabled, striking a balance between review priorities and language priorities. I prefer Silky, as it guarantees I will see at least a few reviews in all of my languages every day, at the expense of a little efficiency. Coarse will all but turn off the language smoothing, optimizing first and foremost for efficiency.
