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Show HN: 100K sentences mined from Wikipedia to help non-native English learners

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Re: Show HN: 100K sentences mined from Wikipedia to help non-native English learners

#21

Post by projectorlochsa »

cschmidt wrote: post #4

I went to an interesting talk once at the Boston Python meetup, where a guy figured out how to order sentences so could learn them in an order where you already knew the "other" words in the sentence. Basically, making a directed graph of vocabulary. He was doing it to learn Latin, but you could do it for any language.

There's a very good book for Latin that uses that trick.

Goes from zero to extremely complex Latin. Whole book is in Latin, no translations.

https://www.amazon.com/Lingua-Latina-Illustrata-Pars-Familia...

The only requirement is knowledge of orthographic alphabet and how each sound is produced. Latin, fortunately, has very simple sounds compared to English or Swedish.

It took me about 2 years to go through both parts and I was amazed at how easy the journey was. Could speak and write Latin fluently without issues.

Re: Show HN: 100K sentences mined from Wikipedia to help non-native English learners

#28

Post by sidegrid »

dominotw wrote: post #19
baby wrote: post #12

1. I don't really understand what this is about. Having a description on the landing page would help. > Barron's 800 Words list with example sentences who is this Barron? 2. Please can you add pronunciation :D 3. words need a definition as well, not sure what some of these means even with the examples.

>who is this Barron? I think if you are asking that question you are probably not the target audience for this website.

I'd like to know who or what Barron is too.

Re: Show HN: 100K sentences mined from Wikipedia to help non-native English learners

#29

Post by camillomiller »

projectorlochsa wrote: post #21
cschmidt wrote: post #4

I went to an interesting talk once at the Boston Python meetup, where a guy figured out how to order sentences so could learn them in an order where you already knew the "other" words in the sentence. Basically, making a directed graph of vocabulary. He was doing it to learn Latin, but you could do it for any language.

There's a very good book for Latin that uses that trick. Goes from zero to extremely complex Latin. Whole book is in Latin, no translations. https://www.amazon.com/Lingua-Latina-Illustrata-Pars-Familia... The only requirement is knowledge of orthographic alphabet and how each sound is produced. Latin, fortunately, has very simple sounds compared to English or Swedish. It took me about 2 years to go through both parts…

Is any book like that available for contemporary languages?

Re: Show HN: 100K sentences mined from Wikipedia to help non-native English learners

#30

Post by camillomiller »

miles wrote: post #13

This list is to help non-native English learners? Many native English speakers might have trouble with a few of these: abeyance, abscission, accretion, amalgamate, anodyne, antediluvian, apposite, arabesque, atavism, and avuncular.

As an Italian native with a classical studies background, this kind of words are easy for me. They're almost all Latin-derived and they usually sound very similar to the Italian equivalent. You wanna know what's hard for us? The street talk. You know like when you shoot the breeze before you really spill the beans about your shenanigans while riding shotgun on a friend's old jalopy.
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