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Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
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Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
#102am rusty chinese speaker. randomly assigned to converse on Furniture & Locations.
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Quazel: 告诉我吧!你是如何安排你的家具的？
Me (in halting, broken chinese): 窗户旁边有一个沙发，中间是电视和桌子。我的工作就是在这里.
Quazel: 所以你的沙发是面向窗户的？那真的很好。我敢打赌，这样你会得到很多自然光。沙发后面是什么呢？
translated
Quazel: How do you arrange your furniture?
Me: There is a couch next to the window, with a TV and table in the middle. This is where I work.
Quazel: So you have your couch facing the window? That's really nice. I bet you get a lot of natural light that way. And what is behind the couch?
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holy. shit. its like a very very patient language teacher who doesnt judge you, who understands objects and context.
Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a common misconception. It probably does not match your and others' experience simply because it is conventional wisdom, and most people are taught to do this. But just because most people do something a certain way does not make it the most efficient way. There are a number of reasons why you would want to focus on input early on. For starters, with very little exposure to a language, you have very little id…
I think more importantly, most people find the _communication_ part exciting. Listening to 1000h of $LANG language podcasts is dramatically less enjoyable than the sense of cultural connection you get from conversation. That's all muddied by AI/programmed learning (how much connection do you get from Duolingo?) now but I think the kernel is still true. People largely learn languages to talk, not to listen, it's no wo…
Not if it is a movie or a tv series. Best (enjoyable) way would always be to watch something you like in a language you want to learn with subtitles for a longer term. Things like binge watching won't work though because the brain gets tired and tunes out.
Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
What? This is a conversation partner that's available 24/7, this is the dream app for any language learner.
Seconded, I want to speak openly without fear of judgement first with the AI so when I do speak to real people I'm much more confident. I know people who are confident/shameless (a positive trait in this case) who don't mind making mistakes when speaking to real people but that's not me. My only concern is how "correct" the tool or the AI is.
100% this. Children make mistakes all the time, but they're not afraid to, especially at the stage they're first acquiring the language. But by the time you're an adult, you're much more cautious about appearing dumb, so you hold back.
Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a common misconception. It probably does not match your and others' experience simply because it is conventional wisdom, and most people are taught to do this. But just because most people do something a certain way does not make it the most efficient way. There are a number of reasons why you would want to focus on input early on. For starters, with very little exposure to a language, you have very little id…
Clearly the common way is more efficient than the original suggestion, given that people achieve useful fluency in a language much quicker than spending 40 hours a week for 7 years listening to it, and only then starting to consider speaking in it.
I can only assume that the OP misspoke when they said 15,000 hours. In reality, when and what you output is dependent on your “input fluency”, as opposed to some arbitrary number of hours. In other words fluency is not an on/off switch. You will develop pockets of fluency as you acquire the language, and those pockets become suitable for output.
Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
#106In my opinion the issue with most language programs is that they focus too early on speaking when listening should be the focus early on. Really speaking shouldn't even come into the picture until exposure of about a year and something like 15,000 hours of good comprehensible input.
That seems like an extremely inefficient way of learning a language, and does not match at all my experience nor the experience of the people I know fluent in multiple languages, and it seems to go straight against a common advice which is to speak and practice early and often, as 'producing' language is much more efficient to learn it than 'consuming' it. What makes you think 15000 hours of listening would improve a…
I was guessing about about 15,000 hours I just think it has to be a lot time.
I'm sure speaking helps most people who study languages simply by exposing them to more input more frequently then they would otherwise be exposed to. I just don't think it is as efficient as focusing on listening first. It will lead to having an accent, grammer issues and pauses to think about how to say things.
That being said good luck finding any program that doesn't focus on speaking early.
Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
#107First, I’d like to say I really love this product. Thanks for making this. Second, where are the companies that are doing this type of thing for NPC dialogue in games. Imagine playing Mass Effect or Skyrim but where you get to ask whatever and the NPC responds with something that fits within the space of possible answers based on the prompt that defined their existence.
If it were free text, sounds like a thing I would use once for the novelty then forget about, because it's not an entertaining gameplay feature. Maybe an AI could generate incidental dialog, things NPCs yell out in reaction to things around them, to keep it from always being from the same list of two or three reactions. Just my two cents. I want to play a well written and fun game, not a chat bot.
Why not a bit of both. Feed dialogue options in and have the AI generate a response that matches their character.
Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
#108In my opinion the issue with most language programs is that they focus too early on speaking when listening should be the focus early on. Really speaking shouldn't even come into the picture until exposure of about a year and something like 15,000 hours of good comprehensible input.
That seems like an extremely inefficient way of learning a language, and does not match at all my experience nor the experience of the people I know fluent in multiple languages, and it seems to go straight against a common advice which is to speak and practice early and often, as 'producing' language is much more efficient to learn it than 'consuming' it. What makes you think 15000 hours of listening would improve a…
I have to disagree. The only two benefits of making output early is 1) to have more comprehensible input from interculators, and 2) to have constructive feedback. If you have neither of these, benefit of producing output is questionable.
Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think more importantly, most people find the _communication_ part exciting. Listening to 1000h of $LANG language podcasts is dramatically less enjoyable than the sense of cultural connection you get from conversation. That's all muddied by AI/programmed learning (how much connection do you get from Duolingo?) now but I think the kernel is still true. People largely learn languages to talk, not to listen, it's no wo…
Not if it is a movie or a tv series. Best (enjoyable) way would always be to watch something you like in a language you want to learn with subtitles for a longer term. Things like binge watching won't work though because the brain gets tired and tunes out.
IMO subtitles are not that effective as you brain just stays in read-mode and you don't actually process any of the spoken language. When most languages grammar are not 1:1, so hearing "house red is mine" but reading "my house is red" isn't helpful - more true with real sentences that tend to have more than 4 words in them. Language listening skills require a fair amount of attention and focus.
Though I do think there is value in watching tv series or movies you've already seen in another language _without_ subs. You're able to focus more on the dialog and pair it against your knowledge of the story structure without getting distracted. You can't only do that however, which I don't think you're suggesting. You need to have studied the language to know what words you can pick out/know/dont know.
Re: Show HN: Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI
#110After transcribing the speech into text, it seems to first translate it into English before send it over the GPT-3 (davinci). I wonder if that will lead to a bunch of mistakes, can't GPT-3 handle Mandarin directly?
I did some experiments and using the same prompt but without translating it seem to lead to better results.