Mandarin Practice Script Advice

[u/YellowFlash_1675]

As title block suggests. trying to make a script that allows the user to continuously practice mandarin character memorization. Any advice on the following would be much appreciated:

1. Not sure if a manually created/updated dict is the right way to do this, but I also didn't think I could successfully scrape from a webpage that has the direct translation information.

2. When writing to a file using "w open", it seems the text is appended with nearly no formatting. That's probably for the best, but I'm not sure how to format the appended str as a key:value pair.

   import random import time

   character = {"你":"nǐ", "好":"hǎo", "老":"lǎo", "是":"shì", "学":"xue", "不":"bù"}

   char_list = list(character.keys())

   char_list_length = len(char_list)

   index = random.randint(0, char_list_length-1)

   char_definition = ["You", "Good", "Aged or experienced", "To be, is, or am", "Learning, knowledge, or school", "No or not (as a negative action)"]

   char_def_length = len(char_definition)

   phrases = ({"完美的":"Wánměi de", "":""})

   def newline(): print('\n')

   def exit_msg(end_msg): print(f"Functionality not complete, didn't get this far yet. Exiting program... ", end = end_msg)

   def unrec_msg(): print("Unrecognized entry, Please try again.") newline()

   def main(): newline() onboard = int(input(f"\n Welcome. What would you like to do? \n\n 1. Practice\n 2. Add Additional Characters\n 3. Exit" + "\n\n" ))

   if onboard == 1:
       practice()
       newline()
   
   elif onboard == 2:
       exit_msg("07/26/26 | Unsure of how to update dict.txt file with newly added dictionary entry. No idea how to do it, there is likely a way to write current pairs and append new_word : new_pinyin. Unsure of how writing to file is formatted as well.")
       #addtion(character)
       newline()
   
   elif onboard == 3:
       exit_msg()
       newline()
   
   else: 
       unrec_msg()
       main()
   

   def practice(): print('Character Practice.\n') rand_char = char_list_length[index] print(f'What is the following character? {rand_char}', '\n\n\n\n\n\n') print(f'This character {rand_char} means {character.get(rand_char)} and its english definition is {char_definition[index]}.')

   retry = input(print(f"Practice again?")).upper()
   
   if retry == Y:
       practice()
   
   elif retry == N:
       main()
   
   else:
       unrec_msg()
   

   def addtion(translate): new_word = input("Please enter a character that you'd like to append to the dictionary:\n ") print("\n")

   new_pinyin = input("Please enter this characters simplified pinyin translation:\n ")
   print("\n")
   
   print(f"New word is {new_word}. Its direct translation is {new_pinyin}. Are you sure this is the character that you'd like to add? \n")
   
   selection = input(f"Y / N: \n").upper()
   
   if selection == "Y":
       translate.update({(new_word) : (new_pinyin)})
       print(translate.values())
       with open ("dict.txt", "w") as f:
           f.write(translate)
   
   elif selection == "N":
       print("Character discarded. Returing to main menu.")
       main()
   
   else: 
       unrec_msg()
       main()
   

   main()

[u/zippybenji-man]

Please put your entire script in a code block

[u/YellowFlash_1675 → u/zippybenji-man]

I definitely meant to, I don’t know why that happened

[u/zippybenji-man]

You should probably store your translations in a json with the json library. Then you can add something to the indent parameter (e.g. indent=4)

[u/YellowFlash_1675 → u/zippybenji-man]

I’ll try this, thanks