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Building an app to learn languages with short stories

purplehoisin.com

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Re: Building an app to learn languages with short stories

#41

Post by steveridout »

Nice start! I love the idea of an AI assisted learning experience structured around stories.

I make a tool in the same space (readlang.com). I started it before the current LLM wave but I've recently added LLM-generated explanations and several users have been uploading LLM generated texts to read (including me!). I've been considering adding LLM based practice too, similar to what you've done with the comprehension questions, but haven't got around to that yet.

Feel free to reach out if you'd like a chat :-)

Re: Building an app to learn languages with short stories

#42

Post by probably_wrong »

I picked a random story in Spanish [1], which is my native language.

First, and maybe up for discussion, "gnocchi" in spanish is written "ñoqui". See [2] for a commercial example or check the story's title.

Second, the sentence "Después de aprender a hacer gnocchis con su abuela, Hendrik nunca le gusta los gnocchis de nadie más" is wrong: the part after the comma should read "a Hendrik nunca le gustaron los ñoquis de nadie más". I'm also unhappy with "Siempre dice que faltaba algo" as it makes a funny mix of present and past tenses.

Third, I think the last paragraph is incoherent as Hendrik learns the nutmeg trick twice (learns from grandma about nutmeg -> finds other gnocchis lacking -> learns about nutmeg).

The well-known LLMs are surprisingly bad in languages that are not English. I'm not sure I would trust them just yet.

[1] https://webbu.app/l/spanish/story/los-%C3%B1oquis-de-la-abue...

[2] https://www.pastasgallo.es/productos/noquis-de-patata-seca/

Re: Building an app to learn languages with short stories

#43

Post by SamBam »

probably_wrong wrote: post #42

I picked a random story in Spanish [1], which is my native language. First, and maybe up for discussion, "gnocchi" in spanish is written "ñoqui". See [2] for a commercial example or check the story's title. Second, the sentence "Después de aprender a hacer gnocchis con su abuela, Hendrik nunca le gusta los gnocchis de nadie más" is wrong: the part after the comma should read " a Hendrik nunca le gustaron los ñoquis d…

I think the "nutmeg trick" was ok -- it didn't say Hendrik learned the trick from his grandmother the first time, only that there was a trick. Hendrik only learns it later when trying to recreate them.

I agree, though, that a human writer would have probably made this clearer. It would have been made explicit that Hendrik missed the trick the first time around.

Re: Building an app to learn languages with short stories

#44

Post by Draiken »

probably_wrong wrote: post #42

I picked a random story in Spanish [1], which is my native language. First, and maybe up for discussion, "gnocchi" in spanish is written "ñoqui". See [2] for a commercial example or check the story's title. Second, the sentence "Después de aprender a hacer gnocchis con su abuela, Hendrik nunca le gusta los gnocchis de nadie más" is wrong: the part after the comma should read " a Hendrik nunca le gustaron los ñoquis d…

Anecdotally I've noticed new generations struggle a lot more with language and writing. Imagine the future when they all learn from badly generated AI grammar. Even the good grammar generated writing is still generic AI writing.

That makes me sad...

Re: Building an app to learn languages with short stories

#45

Post by wahnfrieden »

modo_ wrote: post #9

This is really great. Congrats on shipping it! You might find https://www.lingq.com helpful as a source of inspiration. I think it's a fairly similar concept. LingQ's killer feature for me is that as you click on words (or phrases - which I find really helpful btw) to translate them, they are added to your vocabulary list. It will automatically create flashcards for you from this list for SRS. Plus when you're readin…

I built that feature for Japanese: https://reader.manabi.io will bring to more languages soon and more platforms beyond iOS/macOS

Re: Building an app to learn languages with short stories

#46

Post by wahnfrieden »

kebsup wrote: post #40

Warning: shameless self-promotion I'm currently working on German vocabulary learning app, https://vokabeln.io/ , which uses LLMs in a similar way. The app allows you to paste text and extracts the vocabulary to learn. The vocabulary is then repeated with spaced repetition, audios are generated and users can generate infinitely more examples. I might have made something that works only for me, as getting users seems…

How popular is German?

It's quite difficult to get attention just off flashcards. Anecdotally my flashcard app gets 1/10 the traffic/interest of my "learn by reading native texts" app which integrates with the flashcard app but also lets people use their preference; a lot of people like to avoid using more than one flashcard app and might already have settled on one, but may be open to other learning techniques besides flashcards or that can extend their existing flashcards system/data

It's also hard to charge money just for flashcards when there are so many free options and the paid options can be pretty good already

Re: Building an app to learn languages with short stories

#47

Post by yorwba »

bavarianbob wrote: post #39
zeta0134 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's any claim you could make about the language model, factual or otherwise, that would resolve my primary hangup. As a non-native learner of a new language, I do not have a trained bullshit detector for that language. I cannot, by virtue of still being a novice, determine if the sentence structure sounds "weird," and I certainly can't determine if that weirdness is a limitation of the language mode…

Really great food for thought here, I'm going to have linger on it some more. I don't know enough about LLMs to know how to counteract hallucinations, but I wonder if you could construct an LLM against a vetted corpus (much like Anthropic does with Claude) in which it solves for the problem of generating robotic speech patterns. I do agree with you a lot on the "sound" problem because I don't think I'd advise a non-n…

Once you have a vetted corpus large enough to train an LLM on, I don't think there's any need to generate even more text with the LLM, since you can use the corpus directly.

Re: Building an app to learn languages with short stories

#48

Post by wahnfrieden »

bavarianbob wrote: post #39
zeta0134 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's any claim you could make about the language model, factual or otherwise, that would resolve my primary hangup. As a non-native learner of a new language, I do not have a trained bullshit detector for that language. I cannot, by virtue of still being a novice, determine if the sentence structure sounds "weird," and I certainly can't determine if that weirdness is a limitation of the language mode…

Really great food for thought here, I'm going to have linger on it some more. I don't know enough about LLMs to know how to counteract hallucinations, but I wonder if you could construct an LLM against a vetted corpus (much like Anthropic does with Claude) in which it solves for the problem of generating robotic speech patterns. I do agree with you a lot on the "sound" problem because I don't think I'd advise a non-n…

yes llm can be deployed simply to search for material, to synthesize it, cite it, etc instead of being used to generate more similar material

Re: Building an app to learn languages with short stories

#49

Post by dang »

It looks like great stuff but I've taken Show HN out of the title because (1) blog posts can't be Show HNs - please see the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html; and

(2) it had a Show HN a few months ago:

Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35713852 - April 2023 (119 comments)

Re: Building an app to learn languages with short stories

#50

Post by leanable »

dang wrote: post #49

It looks like great stuff but I've taken Show HN out of the title because (1) blog posts can't be Show HNs - please see the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html ; and (2) it had a Show HN a few months ago: Show HN: Learn German with Short Stories - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35713852 - April 2023 (119 comments)

Hi dang, is this account shadow banned? Comments and posts from this account are not showing at all.
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