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Show HN: Clozemaster – Learn language in context

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Re: Show HN: Clozemaster – Learn language in context

#11

Post by cmmike »

kvakvs wrote: post #6

Substitute a word requires certain language knowledge. This should be tested somehow, so that the application knows the user level. For example, having no prior Spanish knowledge I would not do substitute a word, and i can do listen exercises which show me some common words and already teach me something. This was enjoyable... for the first 3 minutes. After just one run and 3 minutes into the registration it already…

Thanks for the feedback! Adding some kind of testing / assessment of a user's level in a given language is on my to-do list. That said, users can also self-assess and choose the corresponding frequency grouping they'd like to practice for most languages (and I'm working on adding support for the rest). For example, I've been studying French for a while so I like to play the 20,000 Most Common Words grouping.

The core features are free, then there are some advanced features you can pay for. I'm trying make as much free as possible, at the same time I'm bootstrapping everything and need some way to support the site. The cloze-listening is a trial that resets daily.

Re: Show HN: Clozemaster – Learn language in context

#12

Post by ainar-g »

pcmonk wrote: post #7

I really like the format and premise. It doesn't seem, however, to be sufficiently flexible in the various ways to fill in the blank (at least in Russian). For example, when given the sentence Как вы на это ___ with the translation "how did you see that", I tried "увидел", and it told me the correct answer was "смотрите". That's clearly another answer, but I'm not sure it's any more than what I gave. Or perhaps my Ru…

I'm Russian and "Как вы на это увидел" is not correct. In fact, I don't even know what that's supposed to mean, sorry. "Как вы на это смотрите" on the other hand is perfectly normal and basically means "What do you think of that".

Re: Show HN: Clozemaster – Learn language in context

#13

Post by pcmonk »

ainar-g wrote: post #12
pcmonk wrote: post #7

I really like the format and premise. It doesn't seem, however, to be sufficiently flexible in the various ways to fill in the blank (at least in Russian). For example, when given the sentence Как вы на это ___ with the translation "how did you see that", I tried "увидел", and it told me the correct answer was "смотрите". That's clearly another answer, but I'm not sure it's any more than what I gave. Or perhaps my Ru…

I'm Russian and "Как вы на это увидел" is not correct. In fact, I don't even know what that's supposed to mean, sorry. "Как вы на это смотрите" on the other hand is perfectly normal and basically means "What do you think of that".

Thank you. Your translation of "Как вы на это смотрите" makes sense and feels natural. However, the given translation "how did you see that" doesn't seem to match. Would "как вы видил ето" work for that?

Re: Show HN: Clozemaster – Learn language in context

#15

Post by ice109 »

cmmike wrote: post #8
pcmonk wrote: post #7

I really like the format and premise. It doesn't seem, however, to be sufficiently flexible in the various ways to fill in the blank (at least in Russian). For example, when given the sentence Как вы на это ___ with the translation "how did you see that", I tried "увидел", and it told me the correct answer was "смотрите". That's clearly another answer, but I'm not sure it's any more than what I gave. Or perhaps my Ru…

There could certainly be multiple answers that make sense like you mentioned, though at the moment only one answer is accepted by default. There is however the option to add your own alternative answers, http://imgur.com/a/Vl5o4 , and I'd definitely like to come up with some way to support multiple default answers in the future.

one thing about the russian that strikes me (native speaker) as odd is that the voice is female but sometimes uses male conjugations.

Re: Show HN: Clozemaster – Learn language in context

#16

Post by cmmike »

ice109 wrote: post #15
cmmike wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There could certainly be multiple answers that make sense like you mentioned, though at the moment only one answer is accepted by default. There is however the option to add your own alternative answers, http://imgur.com/a/Vl5o4 , and I'd definitely like to come up with some way to support multiple default answers in the future.

one thing about the russian that strikes me (native speaker) as odd is that the voice is female but sometimes uses male conjugations.

Yep that's a known issue - I'd like to eventually implement voice gender to match missing word gender, but it's still a bit down the road.

Re: Show HN: Clozemaster – Learn language in context

#17

Post by cmmike »

halfdan wrote: post #14

This is great. How did you do the frequency groupings for more complex languages like German or Icelandic? Did you use a word stemmer or did you find lists that include noun declensions?

I'm using lists with declined nouns and conjugated verbs, so you should see the more common declensions/conjugations earlier.

Re: Show HN: Clozemaster – Learn language in context

#18

Post by Mithaldu »

cmmike wrote: post #2

Hi Hacker News! My name's Mike. I'm the creator of Clozemaster. Clozemaster is language learning through mass exposure to vocabulary in context. The goal is to fill in the missing word in a given sentence. The missing word is the most difficult word in the sentence according a frequency list for that language, and the sentences are from the awesome dataset at Tatoeba. I started the site just under a year ago to answe…

The multiple choice mode is missing a button for "i don't know". I figured out you can hit enter to get the same, but i don't think everyone would.

E: Gave it a bit more of a try, and i won't be switching this one. The japanese set doesn't seem to particularly try to avoid throwing unknown words at me when giving me new ones and the voice is uncomfortably high-pitched.

Re: Show HN: Clozemaster – Learn language in context

#19

Post by halfdan »

cmmike wrote: post #17
halfdan wrote: post #14

This is great. How did you do the frequency groupings for more complex languages like German or Icelandic? Did you use a word stemmer or did you find lists that include noun declensions?

I'm using lists with declined nouns and conjugated verbs, so you should see the more common declensions/conjugations earlier.

Cool, that makes sense. Are those lists publicly available?

Do you also detect word types? I.e. "Der Mann" (nominative masculine article der) vs. "Das Haus der Frau" (genitive feminine article der) [German] or "að leita að" (infinitive marker að vs. prepositional að) [Icelandic]

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