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Show HN: Glossarie – a new, immersive way to learn a language

glossarie.app

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Re: Show HN: Glossarie – a new, immersive way to learn a language

#141

Post by altruios »

SamBam wrote: post #99

I have to admit I don't quite understand this. Does it just replace words on a word-by-word basis? But the ordering of words in English is different from the ordering of words in other languages. How is this not going to teach you terrible grammar? Looking at one of the screenshots, for instance, it translated "they had met their dead father" as "they had recontré leur mort father." But in French "mort" would come af…

I understand your complaint, but I consider this a feature.

Learning vocabulary and learning grammar can be split apart.

I'd prefer it go the other way, to translate the current language's grammar into the other language's grammar. If you are learning Japanese, for example, having the English grammar match the grammar of Japanese would be a smoother learning experience (I think) than flipping grammar at the translation point.

But in any case, I would want the grammar to match if I am learning vocabulary. I don't want to have to guess, or presuppose the rules of the grammar.

Re: Show HN: Glossarie – a new, immersive way to learn a language

#142

Post by jonathanb88 »

sunnybeetroot wrote: post #132

Why the developer doesn’t make this app available in all regions beats me. If you’re reading this, please do so so I can download it.

I'll look to make it available in more regions soon. I just need to check the copyright limitations for the eBooks made available in the app.

Re: Show HN: Glossarie – a new, immersive way to learn a language

#143

Post by notfed »

SamBam wrote: post #99

I have to admit I don't quite understand this. Does it just replace words on a word-by-word basis? But the ordering of words in English is different from the ordering of words in other languages. How is this not going to teach you terrible grammar? Looking at one of the screenshots, for instance, it translated "they had met their dead father" as "they had recontré leur mort father." But in French "mort" would come af…

> How is this not going to teach you terrible grammar?

Because it's not teaching grammar? It's teaching words. I already know English grammar: I already am going to have trouble with grammar conversion. But before I get there I need to learn a basic set of nouns and verbs.

Re: Show HN: Glossarie – a new, immersive way to learn a language

#144

Post by jonathanb88 »

dr_kiszonka wrote: post #112

I tried that app and it looks good. It was a bit hard for me to decide what book to choose. Question: do users later get quizzed on the words they looked up?

Not currently, but it's definitely something I want to add soon.

Re: Show HN: Glossarie – a new, immersive way to learn a language

#145

Post by ConSeannery »

rgovostes wrote: post #109
Onawa wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That dude needs more money to support development, because his method is amazing. The other amazing method I love and used to learn Spanish was "Fluent Forever". Stick to the book there though, the author tried to grow his empire too big and the apps aren't that great in my opinion.

I used the Fluent Forever app to acquire about 1,000 Italian words in one year. Agree that it wouldn't win awards for polish (maybe Polish), but it fairly faithfully implements the method described in the book, which is roughly: make your own flash cards, using memorable imagery, from curated word lists designed for forming a wide range of sentences, and then study these using spaced repetition. You also get the ear…

Not to take a dig at you but to set some context for other language learners reading this, 1000 words in a year is awful progress. It would take you 10 years to have just a semi-fluent vocabulary in a simple (for native English speakers) language like Spanish, Italian, or French, and that's not including grammar. This is the main problem with feel-good apps like Duolingo, giving all sorts of positive feedback for what amounts to very little progress.

Anki + a frequency dictionary + 34 new words/day (with 80% retention due to spaced repetition) is easily doable by our brains to get to semi fluency (~10k words) in a year. Or, take a month to cram the first 2000 words and you're well on your way versus other wastes of time.

Re: Show HN: Glossarie – a new, immersive way to learn a language

#146

Post by ConSeannery »

phiresky wrote: post #66

Neat! I had a very similar idea recently: https://seamlang.app/ (the sign up button doesn't work yet) The main difference seems to be that I start with text in the foreign language, and then translate the difficult vocabulary back to the known language (English). That way you always ensure you have the correct grammar of your goal language even if you don't know most of the vocabulary yet. This can be a bit confusing…

This approach makes a lot more sense than OP's. Vocabulary is dead simple to brute force learn with Anki and a frequency dictionary (shared deck), grammar/natural flow of language is a lot harder without a ton of practice

Re: Show HN: Glossarie – a new, immersive way to learn a language

#147

Post by phailhaus »

SamBam wrote: post #99

I have to admit I don't quite understand this. Does it just replace words on a word-by-word basis? But the ordering of words in English is different from the ordering of words in other languages. How is this not going to teach you terrible grammar? Looking at one of the screenshots, for instance, it translated "they had met their dead father" as "they had recontré leur mort father." But in French "mort" would come af…

I don't think OP understands languages or language acquisition. They seem to believe that vocab and grammar can be "learned separately", and is considering a rules-based approach for implementing language grammars.

Re: Show HN: Glossarie – a new, immersive way to learn a language

#148

Post by jonathanb88 »

phailhaus wrote: post #147
SamBam wrote: post #99

I have to admit I don't quite understand this. Does it just replace words on a word-by-word basis? But the ordering of words in English is different from the ordering of words in other languages. How is this not going to teach you terrible grammar? Looking at one of the screenshots, for instance, it translated "they had met their dead father" as "they had recontré leur mort father." But in French "mort" would come af…

I don't think OP understands languages or language acquisition. They seem to believe that vocab and grammar can be "learned separately", and is considering a rules-based approach for implementing language grammars.

It's not primarily rules based as that would be impossible to scale. Where rules are helpful is to provide principles for when a longer or shorter phrase is chosen.

Optimising the tradeoff between more frequent repetition of vocabulary versus better quality grammar examples is where a lot of the work is.

Re: Show HN: Glossarie – a new, immersive way to learn a language

#149

Post by jonathanb88 »

jonathanb88 wrote: post #148
phailhaus wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think OP understands languages or language acquisition. They seem to believe that vocab and grammar can be "learned separately", and is considering a rules-based approach for implementing language grammars.

It's not primarily rules based as that would be impossible to scale. Where rules are helpful is to provide principles for when a longer or shorter phrase is chosen. Optimising the tradeoff between more frequent repetition of vocabulary versus better quality grammar examples is where a lot of the work is.

I'll actually expand on this, because I think it gets at an interesting point, and at a fundamental 'bet' I'm making.

The approach I use should work if there are sufficient 'scaleable' ways to improve accuracy and choose the right phrases. Language analysis, NLP, LLMs etc all help here, and there are many methods I can still use and will add over time. I'm very much at a proof of concept stage right now!

This approach won't work if accuracy improvements quickly reach diminishing returns and an explosion of rules and/or human proofing to handle edge cases are required.

I'm hoping for the former!

Re: Show HN: Glossarie – a new, immersive way to learn a language

#150

Post by jcul »

ximeng wrote: post #128
jcul wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks interesting and I'm going to try it out. Curious about what differentiates it from something like pimsleur courses, other than price of course.

He starts out with shared vocabulary between English and the target language whereas I think Pimsleur focuses more on useful phrases for e.g. travel.

I listened to the initial few lessons and I was really surprised.

I've already got a almost conversational level of Spanish but coincidentally have been wanting to focus on improving it, rather than jump into learning the absolute basics of another language.

It's quite different to courses or classes I've tried before. Often there is a focus on keeping everything in Spanish (for example) and not using English at all. This is the complete opposite, completely leveraging the similarities between the language.

I found it really enjoyable how he spoke about the shared Latin roots (even though English is primarily Germanic). I have a hobbyist interest in linguists so I found this and the etymology bits really entertaining.

I hesitated to listen to the Spanish, fearing they would be too basic, but I think already I have learned things I hadn't fully realized and have improved my pronunciation.

You can tell the instructor is a lover of languages and linguistics, you can hear the passion in the lessons.

Going to continue with the Spanish course and I'm excited to see his take on Arabic after (of which I know zero).

Planning on donating and recommending this.

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