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Looking for a co-founder to change language learning forever

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Re: Looking for a co-founder to change language learning forever

#11

Post by solarmist »

pejrich wrote: post #10

I could be interested. My app is currently translation based(word alignments, sense disambiguating) but had planned to venture into assisted writing for people who need translation assistance, but not 100% help, then giving them a score regarding how much help they needed, or how accurate their portion was. Then using that to help give advice on what they struggle with. Language is hugely complex so I’m currently foc…

I'd love to chat; even if it doesn't lead to anything, please shoot me an email.

Yes, translation is what all the tech is focused on but, it's really hard to make it useful for language learners. Because translating requires many more skills than just being bilingual. The most fundamental issue is that most native-sounding translations require being non-literal in many places.

Re: Looking for a co-founder to change language learning forever

#12

Post by pejrich »

solarmist wrote: post #11
pejrich wrote: post #10

I could be interested. My app is currently translation based(word alignments, sense disambiguating) but had planned to venture into assisted writing for people who need translation assistance, but not 100% help, then giving them a score regarding how much help they needed, or how accurate their portion was. Then using that to help give advice on what they struggle with. Language is hugely complex so I’m currently foc…

I'd love to chat; even if it doesn't lead to anything, please shoot me an email. Yes, translation is what all the tech is focused on but, it's really hard to make it useful for language learners. Because translating requires many more skills than just being bilingual. The most fundamental issue is that most native-sounding translations require being non-literal in many places.

I agree. That’s why my focus is not on being native sounding but conveying meaning. If I say “I want to buy a seal.” The most native sounding translation that says “I want to buy a gasket” is useless if my meaning was “I want to buy a (marine animal).” Obviously that’s a blatant use of an ambiguous word but there’s a surprisingly large number of words we don’t think about as being ambiguous but translators can alter the meaning.

Re: Looking for a co-founder to change language learning forever

#13

Post by jlavine »

solarmist wrote: post #9
jlavine wrote: post #8

I've studied a few languages and have long wished for / thought of making software roughly along the lines of what you're suggesting here. While tackling a text, looking up words one-at-a-time can be painfully inefficient and break the flow. Digital dictionaries are quicker than paper ones, but don't resolve the fundamental problem. Nothing as advanced as natural language processing crossed my mind, but I did imagine…

Thank you for the thoughtful response. I completely agree on all points. Yeah, my first idea was automatic Anki cards, but once you try to use sentences and track words, it's intractable for Anki. It's a complex graph problem even before you get to the level of word vs. form disambiguation. For dictionaries, my initial source is Oxford bi-lingual dictionaries and a few others. Re: words. Yup. This was one of the top…

I can see the difficulty of integrating with Anki if you're trying to implement a sophisticated system for tracking a user's progress, however I would definitely want some way of studying vocabulary with spaced-repetition flashcards I could have on my phone for something like this, Anki or otherwise. I've personally found traditional flashcards and (even more so) writing words with pen on paper to be the most effective ways of absorbing vocabulary. I've found that I don't ultimately absorb vocab as well using other self-quiz methods like multiple-choice / fill-in-the-blank / matching / etc. in Duolingo and similar apps (though I've had the false impression of learning from these methods). Just my personal experience.

It seems we're on the same page regarding specific word-meanings, comprehensive linguistic information provided along with a word, and using good dictionaries.

I would suggest including at least the option of viewing the full conjugation / declension / etc. associated with a word, and not just that used in the context of the text. I don't know any Japanese (though I recognize the example character you provided from the little Chinese I've studied), but something like this full conjugation of that verb is roughly what I'd want to see for any conjugated/declined language: http://www.japaneseverbconjugator.com/VerbDetails.asp?txtVer....

I understand parsing and matching up parallel texts is difficult, but I thought NLP would help with that, and if the software fails at matching up individual words, you could default to matching up clauses or sentences, which the user could study (with flashcards or something similar) alongside the individual words taken from the dictionary.

I took a look at the app, but I see the currently-available demo is only English-Japanese, and I'm also consistently getting "API Error: Request failed with status code 412" in multiple browsers.

Exactly what parts of the app are you looking for someone else to work on?

Re: Looking for a co-founder to change language learning forever

#14

Post by solarmist »

jlavine wrote: post #13
solarmist wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the thoughtful response. I completely agree on all points. Yeah, my first idea was automatic Anki cards, but once you try to use sentences and track words, it's intractable for Anki. It's a complex graph problem even before you get to the level of word vs. form disambiguation. For dictionaries, my initial source is Oxford bi-lingual dictionaries and a few others. Re: words. Yup. This was one of the top…

I can see the difficulty of integrating with Anki if you're trying to implement a sophisticated system for tracking a user's progress, however I would definitely want some way of studying vocabulary with spaced-repetition flashcards I could have on my phone for something like this, Anki or otherwise. I've personally found traditional flashcards and (even more so) writing words with pen on paper to be the most effecti…

The current demo version of the app uses heavily cached 1 Gb data files at the limits of the instance's memory, so, unfortunately, it crashes a lot.

I've been waiting to update until I had UI for exercises implemented. They will be something like flashcards, including SRS for scheduling.

Well, two things mentioned in your reply are things that need to be implemented.

* Consuming and parsing the Oxford Dictionary's API and transforming that into Parsnip's data models is one thing.

* Building statistics pages showing a user's progress/knowledge. Instead of an information firehose, I'm leaning towards only showing conjugations in the user's library. That way, the user can immediately see usage examples for those forms.

Re: Looking for a co-founder to change language learning forever

#15

Post by dtdynasty »

migueloller wrote: post #6

What are your thoughts on the Fluent Forever method, specifically the part that going through the effort of creating your own study materials is an integral part of recall and internalizing new words/knowledge? It's definitely attractive to have a lot of the "manual work" be automated, but maybe it's a necessary effort to cross the chasm that is intermediate language learning and perhaps most people stay at intermedi…

If you're looking for something like this for Japanese, Kou, has been doing great work on https://jpdb.io/ which contains many of the concepts OP's app is trying to accomplish specifically for Japanese.

In particular it has the SRS, parallel text for words, assisted study and % of content you already know.

Re: Looking for a co-founder to change language learning forever

#16

Post by solarmist »

dtdynasty wrote: post #15
migueloller wrote: post #6

What are your thoughts on the Fluent Forever method, specifically the part that going through the effort of creating your own study materials is an integral part of recall and internalizing new words/knowledge? It's definitely attractive to have a lot of the "manual work" be automated, but maybe it's a necessary effort to cross the chasm that is intermediate language learning and perhaps most people stay at intermedi…

If you're looking for something like this for Japanese, Kou, has been doing great work on https://jpdb.io/ which contains many of the concepts OP's app is trying to accomplish specifically for Japanese. In particular it has the SRS, parallel text for words, assisted study and % of content you already know.

Yeah, I'm familiar with this and it's a great resource.

The key difference is that it is still flashcard based. And you have to choose between a word or sentence cards that conflate the context with the word being studied.

By actually parsing the text, when you are studying the word "eat": "Where are we going to eat?", "I wanna eat a burrito the size of my head!", "No way. You just ate that ice cream cone."

* You separate the target of studying from the context/presentation. You can create an exercise from any of the many sentences using eat, ate, eating, etc. And change examples for every study repetition.

* You can focus on individual conjugations or overall knowledge of the word.

* You have an objective right/wrong signal instead of a subjective 0-4 scale.

* You can attach definitions to not only the target word but all of the words in the sentence on demand.

* You can track learning across all 25 of the words from my examples simultaneously. And those sentences can be used to generate exercises for any one of those 25 words.

Re: Looking for a co-founder to change language learning forever

#17

Post by ipnon »

akprasad wrote: post #2

> mostly language learners, teachers, and tech people, but finding people, perhaps unsurprisingly, have a lot of trouble seeing past the curse of knowledge. Respectfully, how do you know that you're making something people want?

If you've every completed a Duolingo just to realize you can barely string a sentence together you will have shared my pain. Language acquisition is a long, confusing and lonely road. It's clear that OPs vision for NLP augmented language learning will be the norm one day sooner or later. Dictionaries, endless books and tutors is just too much time and money for most people.

Re: Looking for a co-founder to change language learning forever

#18

Post by akprasad »

ipnon wrote: post #17
akprasad wrote: post #2

> mostly language learners, teachers, and tech people, but finding people, perhaps unsurprisingly, have a lot of trouble seeing past the curse of knowledge. Respectfully, how do you know that you're making something people want?

If you've every completed a Duolingo just to realize you can barely string a sentence together you will have shared my pain. Language acquisition is a long, confusing and lonely road. It's clear that OPs vision for NLP augmented language learning will be the norm one day sooner or later. Dictionaries, endless books and tutors is just too much time and money for most people.

Oh, I completely agree on the problem, and I think any technological solution to that problem will require NLP (perhaps tautologically so). But to my mind, the open questions are (a) what does that mean specifically? and (b) is a tool like that compelling enough to motivate a venture-backed startup in 2022?

To expand on (a), I think a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer [1] that generates interesting level-appropriate content on the fly is extremely compelling, and it's aligned pedagogically with principles like extensive reading [2]. Leaving aside its feasibility, such a primer is clearly providing NLP-augmented language learning --- but at the same time, it's a very different vision from what OP describes.

More broadly, tools more aligned with communicative language teaching (CLT) would almost certainly rely on NLP without reaching too deeply for dictionaries, exercises, spaced repetition, and grammatical explanations, all of which seem to be in scope for OP.

There's a lot of room here, which is why I maintain that the critical question is a simple one: is OP's specific solution to the problem something people want?

[1]: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/The_Young_Lady%E2%80%99s_Ill... [2]: https://erfoundation.org/wordpress/

Re: Looking for a co-founder to change language learning forever

#19

Post by solarmist »

akprasad wrote: post #18
ipnon wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've every completed a Duolingo just to realize you can barely string a sentence together you will have shared my pain. Language acquisition is a long, confusing and lonely road. It's clear that OPs vision for NLP augmented language learning will be the norm one day sooner or later. Dictionaries, endless books and tutors is just too much time and money for most people.

Oh, I completely agree on the problem , and I think any technological solution to that problem will require NLP (perhaps tautologically so). But to my mind, the open questions are (a) what does that mean specifically? and (b) is a tool like that compelling enough to motivate a venture-backed startup in 2022? To expand on (a), I think a Young Lady's Illustrated Primer [1] that generates interesting level-appropriate c…

Huh? I don’t follow. Parsnip is a tool to highlight and surface unknown words to directly enable easier extensive reading and comprehensible input. One of the key parts of it is a reader app.

Just because we can’t see the steps needed to build the primer doesn’t mean we shouldn’t create anything.

It seems like you find something about my idea distasteful, but I’m having trouble understanding what, if anything, your objection is?

Is it too “mechanical” of an approach to you? If so I hope you realize what I’m describing is “how the sausage is made” not what the user experience will be like. Computers are here to enhance human experiences not make us more mechanical.

Also, Duolingo and quizlet are both billion dollar companies, so I believe that proves VC interest. Language learning is a nearly universal desire, but most people give up on it in their teens.

Re: Looking for a co-founder to change language learning forever

#20

Post by kennycoding »

I think it is a solid method to learn a language by reading a lot and taking notes on words and expressions. I learned french this way in the past year and now I can read entry level texts including news sites like lemonde.fr.

The method I was using is similar to what you described, but less automatic and integrated.

To save dictionary time, I used the google translate extension, I configured it to pop up automatically when I select some words. It worked like a charm.

I didn't have a good tool for review. But I usually read the article again to check if I remember the new words. Recently I came across lingonote.com, which seems targets the material collection and review problem as well.

I myself is also building a language learning app, but more focused on listening and speaking. I am not reaching out for cofounder per se, but I am very happy to see your post and would like to offer my encouragement.

I also checkout the Parsnip app the other day. nice try:)

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