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Show HN: Duolingo-style exercises but with real-world content like the news

app.fluentsubs.com

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Re: Show HN: Duolingo-style exercises but with real-world content like the news

#131

Post by oregoncurtis »

dicytea wrote: post #53

I've checked out the Japanese one, but I'd say that it's definitely no where near "real-world content" IMO. Just the usual tortuously slow-paced, artificially dumbed-down dialogue you'd expect out of classroom recordings. Most of the videos also contain subtitles, which defeats the purpose of the exercises (you can disable the video manually though). Another issue is that some of the words are segmented very unnatura…

I agree, several little issues with Japanese that don't make it currently useful. Cool idea though!

Re: Show HN: Duolingo-style exercises but with real-world content like the news

#132

Post by ph4evers »

hk__2 wrote: post #58

I tried an exercise with Italian, but for some reason one of the words is not in the list to drag and drop ("qualcuno"), so I’m stuck: https://app.fluentsubs.com/exercises/cm8y1r2cv004m8v1pr775ko... Edit: also tried in French, and it shows some words in red (I guess that means "invalid" -- please don’t convey information with color only) although they are correct: https://app.fluentsubs.com/exercises/cm8y1o6d5002s8v1…

Thank you for trying and the feedback!

I'm working on improving the feedback. It is a bit confusing since some words are very similar so you have no idea what went wrong.

I checked the Italian video. But I don't fully understand: https://imgur.com/a/YcF3dnb . It doesn't pick qualcuno as a filler word. Is it still broken?

Re: Show HN: Duolingo-style exercises but with real-world content like the news

#133

Post by matwood »

beardedwizard wrote: post #117
iambateman wrote: post #97

This has a ton of potential! Keep going! Duolingo is tough because they set the expectation that this should be free, so you're walking into a challenging business. But I think the concept is fundamentally better to connect language learning to something entertaining and relevant. If you can make that work, you have a heck of an app. You can do it!

The trick to competing with Duolingo is to _actually_ teach people new languages that they actually learn, rather than giving away the illusion that they are learning a new language on Duolingo.

> rather than giving away the illusion that they are learning a new language on Duolingo

I disagree that it's an illusion. People are learning a new language when using Duolingo, but 5-10 minutes/day means it will take a long time before they are proficient. Someone else linked to the state department website showing 550-690 hours of learning required on the English adjacent languages.

Re: Show HN: Duolingo-style exercises but with real-world content like the news

#134

Post by ph4evers »

annienar wrote: post #122

I tried the japanese one, as an A1, I can't read/don't know kanji yet, would be nice to have an option to see katakana/hiragana only, an option to have furigana and an option to see the kanji. Also would like an option to save phrases and not just a word. but likes it overall

Thank you! It should store the word and the sentence so that rehearsal is always with both.

I focussed a lot on European languages at first so the support for the Asian languages is a bit lacking. The only thing I did so far was changing the font and increasing the font size. There is a lot more to do! Thanks!

Re: Show HN: Duolingo-style exercises but with real-world content like the news

#135

Post by ph4evers »

JackYoustra wrote: post #19

This looks great! A humble request: a more button that I can press to sign up for an email when a language I seek gets added.

Thank you! I'm trying to push new updates to a sub-reddit here: https://www.reddit.com/r/fluentsubs/ . Simply adding support for manually transcribing videos should be quick to add. However, it also greatly depends on how quick these transcription models get better.

Re: Show HN: Duolingo-style exercises but with real-world content like the news

#136

Post by raincole »

yorwba wrote: post #107
raincole wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another issue is that some of the words are segmented very unnaturally I immediately noticed that too. Are the "gaps" generated by an LLM? I think the model might not understand Japanese very well.

It's a bit like segmenting "don't see" into "don't" and "see." ません is the negative of the auxiliary ます just as "don't" is the negative of the auxiliary "do." If you have to split Japanese text into words and want to be principled about it, treating ません as a separate word is not a bad way to go about it. But of course there are other ways, so a "fill in the blank" question with two gaps right next to each other is gen…

The point is not that you can't cut みません into み and ません. The point is that it should be one single gap in the first place.

It's like cutting gaps out of English sentence like this: I'm [go][ing] to beat the shit out of that guy. Sure we know the logical way to break down 'going' is 'go' and '-ing', but it should be one single gap anyway.

Re: Show HN: Duolingo-style exercises but with real-world content like the news

#137

Post by ph4evers »

owenpalmer wrote: post #119

I absolutely love the idea. I would honestly use this. However, when I tried the English learning, it incorrectly marked words wrong several times. Something to check out.

Thank you! It seems that the video is pretty well transcribed but it unluckily selected segments with a few words missing :/

Re: Show HN: Duolingo-style exercises but with real-world content like the news

#139

Post by swyx »

slumberlust wrote: post #138

Would love to see a way to understand the english equivalent of each word. As it stands now you aren't really expanding your vocab if you are just listening and copying what they say without knowing the word's meaning.

my immediate feature request. this project is ALMOST there teaching me.

Re: Show HN: Duolingo-style exercises but with real-world content like the news

#140

Post by throwaway29812 »

matwood wrote: post #133
beardedwizard wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick to competing with Duolingo is to _actually_ teach people new languages that they actually learn, rather than giving away the illusion that they are learning a new language on Duolingo.

> rather than giving away the illusion that they are learning a new language on Duolingo I disagree that it's an illusion. People are learning a new language when using Duolingo, but 5-10 minutes/day means it will take a long time before they are proficient. Someone else linked to the state department website showing 550-690 hours of learning required on the English adjacent languages.

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