51–60 of 61 posts
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)
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 besid…
For example, I use it to learn from youtube videos, by copying the transcript to the app, which then processes the words, and creates flashcards for the words that I don't already know.
I'm thinking of integrating youtube transcripts, song lyrics, open books such as Grimms stories directly into it. Should not be that much work. But I needed to release and instead of infinitely adding features to my dev build.
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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 besid…
I think a big issue on my part is marketing and UX improvements. It can do much more than "just flashcards" apps. For example, I use it to learn from youtube videos, by copying the transcript to the app, which then processes the words, and creates flashcards for the words that I don't already know. I'm thinking of integrating youtube transcripts, song lyrics, open books such as Grimms stories directly into it. Should…
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…
But I have found a spell checking error, inconsistent use of formal and informal voice and an expression that was not quite right in the context. I wonder about the quality assurance part in the setup.
Details are here: https://paste.chapril.org/?01537019b7d59be5#FVNAMqzsWGmtQTpM...
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 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…
>> "Hendrik nunca le gusta los gnocchis de nadie más" will add the "a" at the begginning! thanks for spotting that.
>> "Siempre dice que faltaba algo" This is a common way of saying things, at least in my region. That makes Spanish harder, there are so many "versions".
>> "he well-known LLMs are surprisingly bad in languages that are not English" So true.
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…
I'm learning Japanese and something like this would be beneficial. > You should be able to tap on a word and get a translation. This functionality is available already on Kindle though :) you have the option of uploading your own dictionaries to it too. That, combined with using https://www.clippings.io/ to manage highlighted text, makes the kindle an all round great tool for learning languages from books, or any tex…
NHK Web News Easy is pretty good. I built a simple browser extension that would hide the furigana and then show it when you clicked on it. If you're interested, I could dig that up. Ultimately, I got sick of splicing together different home-grown tools and different web sites that I started to build my own to provide a more integrated learning experience that adapts to how students want to learn. I am working on a Ja…
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Totally agreed. I'm biased because I learn languages to mostly read texts in original languages. Narratives with well-crafted prose can have hundreds of years of linguistic and stylistic histories, as well as contemporary vernacular, which can tell more about a language than just understanding the plot of the story. I don't think that can ever be fully replaced by an LLM. There are thousands of short stories at every…
>Narratives with well-crafted prose can have hundreds of years of linguistic and stylistic histories, as well as contemporary vernacular, which can tell more about a language than just understanding the plot of the story. This seems like a werid hangup for what is essentially a substitute for graded readers for language learners. You're not getting any of the things you mentioned going the "human" route. No one is sa…
When you're learning a language, your brain is going through a unique process of both attention to small detail and rote memorization. If you see a pattern often enough at an early stage of language learning, you'll most likely carry that with you at later stages. Even if you don't notice it at first.
Would you trust an AI to present you with accurate language patterns--speech, vernacular, etc?