600 verbs, but not all of them matter equally. Camaleón works through them with you in the order that counts in real Spanish.
A classic verb database treats ser and tambalear alike – both are entries, both come up at random. Yet ser is one of the most frequent words in the entire Spanish language, while tambalear might show up in ordinary conversation once a year. Learn at random and you may spend hours on rare verbs before the important ones have even appeared.
Camaleón uses frequency lists based on the Plan Curricular del Instituto Cervantes (PCIC) – the reference framework of the world’s largest Spanish institute. Every verb carries a frequency rank. New verbs are not worked through strictly by rank but selected by Zipf weighting: the most frequent verb has roughly ten times the weight of the tenth – but the tenth can still appear at any time. Practice stays varied without losing focus on what matters.
The weighting only applies to new cards. As soon as you have seen every form of a verb in a tense, it drops out of the selection – and the next candidate moves up. With every verb learned you work systematically through the Spanish that is actually used.
The more frequent a verb is in Spanish, the more often it turns up while practising –
but every verb stays in the game.
Shown are the relative weights by Zipf’s formula (weight = 1 / rank). Once a verb has been fully learned, the next candidates move up.
Ser, hacer, ver, tener, decir – the first verbs you see are the ones that appear in every conversation. No chance, no lottery.
Zipf weighting means frequent verbs come up more often, but rare ones still appear. Practice stays varied.
Once you have seen every form, the verb drops out of the new-card selection. The next candidate moves up – automatically.
Frequency weighting is on by default. You can turn it off in the settings under “New verbs”.
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