Show HN: Kimchi Reader – Immersive Korean Learning with a Popup Dictionary • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Kimchi Reader – Immersive Korean Learning with a Popup Dictionary

#21

Post by solidsnack9000 » Sun, Oct 29, 2023, 8:41 PM UTC

For the first year or so, pretty much everyone who's learning is going to need the romanization alongside / above the Hangul. It's probably always going to be true that more than 2/3 of your potential customers -- 2/3 of the people who come to the website looking to see if this is for them -- will be in this category.

There is a kind of anti-pattern in tools of this kind where the people building them already know some of the basics and so leave them out. It shows up in tools for Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew... I've studied quite a few languages and so have been the beginner over and over.

Re: Show HN: Kimchi Reader – Immersive Korean Learning with a Popup Dictionary

#22

Post by jwells89 » Sun, Oct 29, 2023, 8:44 PM UTC

handsdown92 wrote: post #17

I would pay so much money for a Chinese and Japanese version of this, absolutely amazing. I've had this idea for ages, so glad someone else built it!

For Japanese, the browser extensions Yomichan[0] (Chrome-clones and Firefox) and 10ten[1] (Safari macOS/iOS, Chrome-clones, Firefox) function similarly. There’s also several community-built tools that are made to work with these extensions like mokuro[2] and subadub[3].

[0]: https://foosoft.net/projects/yomichan/ [1]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/10ten-japanese-rea..., https://apps.apple.com/us/app/10ten-japanese-reader/id157354..., https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10ten-ja-read... [2]: https://github.com/kha-white/mokuro [3]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/subadub/jamiekdimm..., https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/subadub/

Re: Show HN: Kimchi Reader – Immersive Korean Learning with a Popup Dictionary

#23

Post by dan_quixote » Sun, Oct 29, 2023, 8:49 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #11

This looks fantastic. As someone in a serious relationship with a Korean person, this is something I could actually see myself paying for too. But, I would like to see some more about what it offers. Right now it looks like it is a video caption replacer with a dictionary. There are free tools like that that exist. Anki is a plugin and not built in, why? What about those starting learning? Do you have lessons or smal…

I'm in a similar situation - my girlfriend is Korean and speaks perfect English but some of her friends and family do not (and are rather self-conscious about it). I'd like to meet them halfway by getting to a basic conversational level in Korean. Any tips? What has worked well for you so far? I've been working with Duolingo for a few months with mixed results. I just started Anki with the Korean Vocab by Evita deck [1] and it has been really great for vocab at least. I'll be checking this post out later as well.

[1] https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/4066961604

Re: Show HN: Kimchi Reader – Immersive Korean Learning with a Popup Dictionary

#24

Post by voussoir » Sun, Oct 29, 2023, 9:03 PM UTC

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #21

For the first year or so, pretty much everyone who's learning is going to need the romanization alongside / above the Hangul. It's probably always going to be true that more than 2/3 of your potential customers -- 2/3 of the people who come to the website looking to see if this is for them -- will be in this category. There is a kind of anti-pattern in tools of this kind where the people building them already know so…

I absolutely disagree. Romanized Korean is harder to read than Korean itself. The sounds implied by the roman spelling do not match the sounds you're supposed to make, and you lose the syllable boundaries that aid in pronunciation. I feel like a caveman stumbling over my letters when I try to read a romanized word.

A one-page alphabet reference chart would be enough to remind the reader which letter is which without relying on the romanization crutch.

Normally I don't like to make argumentative internet comments but I really passionately think romanization is a detriment to a learning tool.

Re: Show HN: Kimchi Reader – Immersive Korean Learning with a Popup Dictionary

#25

Post by dumbhndown » Sun, Oct 29, 2023, 9:25 PM UTC

voussoir wrote: post #24

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #21

For the first year or so, pretty much everyone who's learning is going to need the romanization alongside / above the Hangul. It's probably always going to be true that more than 2/3 of your potential customers -- 2/3 of the people who come to the website looking to see if this is for them -- will be in this category. There is a kind of anti-pattern in tools of this kind where the people building them already know so…

I absolutely disagree. Romanized Korean is harder to read than Korean itself. The sounds implied by the roman spelling do not match the sounds you're supposed to make, and you lose the syllable boundaries that aid in pronunciation. I feel like a caveman stumbling over my letters when I try to read a romanized word. A one-page alphabet reference chart would be enough to remind the reader which letter is which without…

We don't need to be this divisiveabout this. There is no right way as to how people learn

As someone that knows and can read Hindi, Gujarat, Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic and beginner at Hangul and Hiragana, romanization absolutely helps anchor the sound. The actual sound when speaking is going to change anyways as your converse with more people. But at least, romanization helps recall and focus on the actual word that you are learning.

Re: Show HN: Kimchi Reader – Immersive Korean Learning with a Popup Dictionary

#26

Post by csa » Sun, Oct 29, 2023, 9:59 PM UTC

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #21

For the first year or so, pretty much everyone who's learning is going to need the romanization alongside / above the Hangul. It's probably always going to be true that more than 2/3 of your potential customers -- 2/3 of the people who come to the website looking to see if this is for them -- will be in this category. There is a kind of anti-pattern in tools of this kind where the people building them already know so…

> For the first year or so, pretty much everyone who's learning is going to need the romanization alongside / above the Hangul.

For folks who are learning Korean, hangul is maybe two days to get the basics and maybe a week or less to be able to get comfortable with it.

For super-casuals who just want a ballpark representation, you might be right, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to design around these super-casual folks — when they decide to get serious about learning Korean, Hangul will come quickly.

Hangul, as a phonetic representation, has about the same difficulty as learning hiragana, which takes about the same amount of time to learn.

Maybe if you are referring to older Korean texts that had Chinese characters in them, then I could understand.

> … It shows up in tools for Japanese, Chinese, Hebrew

Kanji (not a syllabary or alphabet), hanzi (not a syllabary or alphabet), and no vowels respectively.

These languages need some romanization support much more than Hangul, imho.

Re: Show HN: Kimchi Reader – Immersive Korean Learning with a Popup Dictionary

#27

Post by godelski » Sun, Oct 29, 2023, 10:02 PM UTC

dan_quixote wrote: post #23

godelski wrote: post #11

This looks fantastic. As someone in a serious relationship with a Korean person, this is something I could actually see myself paying for too. But, I would like to see some more about what it offers. Right now it looks like it is a video caption replacer with a dictionary. There are free tools like that that exist. Anki is a plugin and not built in, why? What about those starting learning? Do you have lessons or smal…

I'm in a similar situation - my girlfriend is Korean and speaks perfect English but some of her friends and family do not (and are rather self-conscious about it). I'd like to meet them halfway by getting to a basic conversational level in Korean. Any tips? What has worked well for you so far? I've been working with Duolingo for a few months with mixed results. I just started Anki with the Korean Vocab by Evita deck…

Ooofff fuck, no I __need__ tips lol. Though I'm short of time right now (PhD + a job) so language learning has been on the back burner. I never found Duolingo helpful except in learning characters but Anki being better. But I have no better tips than that. I tried learning Chinese a few years back and found a language book and getting an iTalki tutor were infinitely better than any apps or any self study. I don't think you can do it without some tutor (even your gf).

Re: Show HN: Kimchi Reader – Immersive Korean Learning with a Popup Dictionary

#28

Post by godelski » Sun, Oct 29, 2023, 10:07 PM UTC

alaanor wrote: post #13

godelski wrote: post #11

This looks fantastic. As someone in a serious relationship with a Korean person, this is something I could actually see myself paying for too. But, I would like to see some more about what it offers. Right now it looks like it is a video caption replacer with a dictionary. There are free tools like that that exist. Anki is a plugin and not built in, why? What about those starting learning? Do you have lessons or smal…

Hey thanks for the comment! I have read your entire feedback and love it. Yes there are free tools that does the same job (I have noted that on the description of the post). The main difference is that Kimchi is capable of recognizing words correctly (ofc not 100%, but better than other tools. If you think there are better tools out there, I would love to see it!). As for Anki, I don't want to rebuild a whole SRS on…

I was just thinking including Anki as part of it. Ship with it. That's all. Not rebuild.

I'd probably focus less on the content recommendation. But I'm not seeing the big utility as specifically a language learning app. Unless it is purely about language learning content, not just youtube and netflix videos.

For ML, as an ML person I'm glad to hear you say this. I hate when it's hamfisted into bullshit things. The ideas you have seem good though but most are probably handled better by other products which you could integrate. But I am not aware of a good product that helps with pronunciation (at least to any passable degree), though I am aware of ones that do this for singing. I'd see this as a killer feature but it'll cost you some compute to get there.

Re: Show HN: Kimchi Reader – Immersive Korean Learning with a Popup Dictionary

#29

Post by csa » Sun, Oct 29, 2023, 10:33 PM UTC

dan_quixote wrote: post #23

godelski wrote: post #11

This looks fantastic. As someone in a serious relationship with a Korean person, this is something I could actually see myself paying for too. But, I would like to see some more about what it offers. Right now it looks like it is a video caption replacer with a dictionary. There are free tools like that that exist. Anki is a plugin and not built in, why? What about those starting learning? Do you have lessons or smal…

I'm in a similar situation - my girlfriend is Korean and speaks perfect English but some of her friends and family do not (and are rather self-conscious about it). I'd like to meet them halfway by getting to a basic conversational level in Korean. Any tips? What has worked well for you so far? I've been working with Duolingo for a few months with mixed results. I just started Anki with the Korean Vocab by Evita deck…

> I'd like to meet them halfway by getting to a basic conversational level in Korean. Any tips?

Not op, but…

Start with memorized words and phrases — salutations, meal time commentary, celebration terms, etc.

Then move to short, simple sentences — emphasis on short and simple. You might not understand any replies, but that’s ok.

Over time, these might progress into short and simple conversations as you become better able to understand their responses (and they probably learn how to simplify for you), and your vocabulary grows.

Once you get this far, you will have more specific questions to ask regarding gaps you want to address.

Korean is one of the harder languages for native speakers of English to learn, so don’t expect a quick ramp up time like you might have with Spanish or French.

One of the challenges with Korean is the S-O-V order. This is like Japanese, so Korean is quite a bit easier to learn if you already know Japanese.

Re: Show HN: Kimchi Reader – Immersive Korean Learning with a Popup Dictionary

#30

Post by solidsnack9000 » Sun, Oct 29, 2023, 10:50 PM UTC

csa wrote: post #26

solidsnack9000 wrote: post #21

For the first year or so, pretty much everyone who's learning is going to need the romanization alongside / above the Hangul. It's probably always going to be true that more than 2/3 of your potential customers -- 2/3 of the people who come to the website looking to see if this is for them -- will be in this category. There is a kind of anti-pattern in tools of this kind where the people building them already know so…

> For the first year or so, pretty much everyone who's learning is going to need the romanization alongside / above the Hangul. For folks who are learning Korean, hangul is maybe two days to get the basics and maybe a week or less to be able to get comfortable with it. For super-casuals who just want a ballpark representation, you might be right, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to design around these super-casual f…

Potential customers for an app like this don't neatly segment into "...folks who are learning Korean..." and "...super-casuals who just want a ballpark representation...". There is a continuum, and the continuum is weighted towards the casual side. Honestly, if most people only learn a little Korean from this app and it broadens their world only a little bit, it's still done tremendous good. Most people are not going to learn Korean, Japanese, Chinese, &c, &c.

I don't think you'll be able to find empirical support for the idea that romanization is unhelpful after the first week of someone's taking up Hangul in a serious way; or for the idea that Hangul is as simple as Hiragana.

Many people say things like this -- "two days to get the basics" and "a week or less to be...comfortable" -- but I doubt there is any empirical support for figures like that. I suspect that a review of the literature will show that people are still referring back to the romanization for the first two years of their studies, across a wide array of language families, if their first language uses the Roman alphabet.

Hebrew has vowel marks. They are little used but they are very helpful, as well.