encara no ho he decidit

In short

Why it looks that way

Literally "I have not decided it yet": the perfect here is honest — the decision is not taken even now. Encara — still: the word of all procrastinators

A word with a story stays in memory longer than one learned as a “spelling — translation” pair: memory holds on to meaning, not to a string.

In a live sentence

A single word almost never appears alone in conversation. A sentence shows where it fits and what stands next to it.

• On anem a l'estiu? Encara no ho he decidit

  Where shall we go in summer? I have not decided yet

Nearby words: time, days and hours

Today, tomorrow, in the morning, at six. You cannot arrange to meet without these — let alone understand the answer.

• el matí

  morning

  Its own word — unlike Spanish, where the morning hides inside mañana. Al matí — in the mornings: this is how any day's story begins
• el dia

  day

  Masculine despite the -a: el dia, bon dia. One of the main gender exceptions
• avui

  today

  Stress at the end: uh-BOO-ee. Avui en dia is "these days", not "today at noon"
• demà

  tomorrow

  From the Latin de mane, 'from morning': tomorrow is what arrives with the new morning. The morning itself is el matí, a word of its own
• ahir

  yesterday

  Stress at the end: uh-EER. Abans-d'ahir — the day before yesterday, literally 'before yesterday'
• la tarda

  afternoon

  Tarda stretches from lunch to dark: the second half of the day and the early evening. After dark, la nit begins
• la nit

  night

  It starts at dark, so a ten o'clock dinner is already a la nit. Hence bona nit too
• l'hora

  hour

  Both the hour as a measure and the time on the clock: quina hora és? And 'one o'clock' is already la una, feminine
• primer de tot

  first of all

  Literally "first of everything": the counting of thoughts begins. Second of all is already near — en segon lloc
• en segon lloc

  secondly

  Literally "in second place": thoughts line up by places, as on a podium. Next: en tercer lloc — if the arguments last

Test yourself

Five questions from the same set — “time, days and hours”. Recalling a spelling from meaning is harder than knowing a familiar word on sight, and therefore more useful.

How not to forget this word

Reading a word and remembering it are different jobs. A day later, little survives of a single reading — and that is not bad memory, that is how memory works.

• This has been tested on foreign words too. The difference shows up most when you test yourself a few days later rather than straight away.checked many times
  Kim & Webb, 2022, Language Learning 72(2) · 48 experiments, 3,411 participants, 98 comparisons.
• Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many times
  Adesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
• An answer you worked out yourself sticks better than one handed to you.checked many times
  Bertsch et al., 2007, Memory & Cognition 35(2) · 86 studies, 445 comparisons, d = 0.40.

Next

• Time, days and hours11 words on the topic
• el destí — fatenoun
• començar una vida nova — to start a new lifephrase
• canviar de feina — to change jobsphrase
• marxar a l'estranger — to move abroadphrase
• All Catalan wordsIndex by topic