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Show HN: Phrasing – learn every language, to any level

phrasing.app

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Re: Show HN: Phrasing – learn every language, to any level

#81

Post by riffraff »

metayrnc wrote: post #4

I don’t know where the translations are coming from, but the quality of the Turkish/English translation was lacking. Unfortunately, It does not inspire enough confidence for me to use this tool.

the Italian ones are not perfect either, e.g.

> in realtà ad essi sono state dette tre bugie: le cose che sono state insegnate a scuola riguardo al lavoro non sono il vero lavoro;

> actually they've been told three lies: the stuff they've been taught to regard as work in school is not real work;

the first sentence is ok, but the latter is different: the Italian version says "the things they have been told about work is not the actual work".

This is an actually different meaning of the sentence.

And the first Hungarian example is weird too, e.g.

> Kivágnak az iskolából, vagy új utakon jársz?

has some greek translation where "τολμηρά" appears and the english translation gets "boldly carving a new path".

The literal translation would be "you walk new paths", I do not believe there is any boldness or carving involved. These are just different meanings.

Re: Show HN: Phrasing – learn every language, to any level

#82

Post by ivanche »

klipt wrote: post #71
boerseth wrote: post #32

> The hardest part about learning a language is knowing what to learn. I disagree with this. The hardest part about learning a language is finding content and resources in the target language that are both engaging and comprehensible at your current level. It's hard to find books, shows, or conversation partners, all the way through that critical awkward stage from beginner to vaguely proficient. The parts of the lan…

> It's hard to find books, shows, or conversation partners, all the way through that critical awkward stage from beginner to vaguely proficient. Children's books? Children also learn from scratch. I think an adult reading books targeted to progressively higher ages would do reasonably.

As an adult, finding children's books to be engaging is... well, a tad difficult.

Re: Show HN: Phrasing – learn every language, to any level

#83

Post by MostlyStable »

famouswaffles wrote: post #74
klipt wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's hard to find books, shows, or conversation partners, all the way through that critical awkward stage from beginner to vaguely proficient. Children's books? Children also learn from scratch. I think an adult reading books targeted to progressively higher ages would do reasonably.

Children are native speakers. This is something that doesn't quite hit you until you seriously undertake language learning. assuming we are talking about children's content in general (and not content for babies), you will find that it is not much more comprehensible than the adult stuff. a language learning beginner is nowhere near the command or vocabulary of a child.

Yeah, I've been learning German for about a year and a half now through a combination of traditional classes and duolingo. I'm roughly high A2, low B1. I've tried multiple times to start reading children's books (e.g. Die Kleine Hexe, Emil und die Detektiv, Das doppelte Lottchen, Der Räuber Horzenplotz) which are all, supposedly, for readers under 10. They have a surprisingly large required vocabulary and grasp on the grammar.

I think part of the problem is that adult learners learn things in a sequence. They learn one part of grammar, then the next, then the next, so that there are grammar rules and structures that you are almost completely unaware of until pretty far into your learning. Whereas a native child is exposed to the entire language all at once. They don't fully understand everything, but they are aware of all of the different structures. Children's books know this and are written with it in mind, as opposed to things like readers, which restrict their grammar to a particular level. I have a much easier time reading an A2 reader than any actual childrens book.

Re: Show HN: Phrasing – learn every language, to any level

#84

Post by boerseth »

barrell wrote: post #42
boerseth wrote: post #32

> The hardest part about learning a language is knowing what to learn. I disagree with this. The hardest part about learning a language is finding content and resources in the target language that are both engaging and comprehensible at your current level. It's hard to find books, shows, or conversation partners, all the way through that critical awkward stage from beginner to vaguely proficient. The parts of the lan…

I'm not sure we entirely disagree. The idea here is to load your RAM with enough information so you can go and interact with the language, and you have enough critical 'hooks' to start to boot up your GPU. Then once you've done that, you should have some good memories that you can start to commit to long term storage, should you choose (did I go too far with the computer analogies? I feel like it broke down). Either…

No, I think you're doing good with that analogy still. My own spitball was half baked anyway. To some extent, conscious consideration of phrases and meanings of things can and do happen, but learning on it as the primary source for comprehension is so painful. And it's what we do in most grammar-heavy courses, and strategies based on memorizing phrases.

Re: Show HN: Phrasing – learn every language, to any level

#85

Post by nescioquid »

The landing page says the app was built by working closely with "hyperpolyglots" which are described as "people who speak 15+ languages".

For these purposes, what does "speaking" a language actually mean. Fluency? A1 level? Did the Assimil course? Bluntly: are "hyperpolygots" really just beginners in 15+ languages? Why would I want to use an app that caters to them?

The claim seems to be: do what hyperpolyglots do to learn a language. But do these people actually learn the target language and if so, to what level?

Re: Show HN: Phrasing – learn every language, to any level

#86

Post by barrell »

pech0rin wrote: post #80
barrell wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I would not recommend it for Japanese/Chinese atm. We're aware the quality there is really not good. We'll have to spend a couple months dedicated to these languages specifically to clean them up. Still, we don't want to stop our users from learning any language with it, even if it's not well supported. But I've been very transparent with any of our beta testers that Chinese/Japanese are not going to be a g…

I'm also an advanced Japanese learner and find this disappointing. It would be great if your marketing materials said which languages you support and which you don't. It says "learn any language", but I see a lot of comments in here about oh it doesn't work well with this or that language. It makes sense to focus yourself on the languages that you actually do support. Over promise and under deliver is not the way to…

To clarify, there’s nothing stopping you from learning Japanese with it. Almost all of our beta testers are polyglots, studying 5+ languages, most of them studying at least Japanese or Chinese. It’s just that the alignments don’t work well with Hanzi/Kanji - the app itself still function fine, just with a bit more manual effort

We’ve made sure to be transparent with any of our beta testers about the limitations. We also agree that more docs would be better, and they will be coming. We been discussing internally a way to grade languages… but any conversation we’ve had in that area ends up in the same place: we need users to help us grade the languages.

We very specifically do not want to focus in on just a couple languages. There are hundreds of tools out there dedicated to individual languages, and we don’t feel we have anything unique to contribute there.

Sorry if it came across disingenuous! That was not our intention. As we work with beta testers, and learned of all these languages, we will develop more documentation around the precise limits :)

Re: Show HN: Phrasing – learn every language, to any level

#87

Post by barrell »

boerseth wrote: post #84
barrell wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure we entirely disagree. The idea here is to load your RAM with enough information so you can go and interact with the language, and you have enough critical 'hooks' to start to boot up your GPU. Then once you've done that, you should have some good memories that you can start to commit to long term storage, should you choose (did I go too far with the computer analogies? I feel like it broke down). Either…

No, I think you're doing good with that analogy still. My own spitball was half baked anyway. To some extent, conscious consideration of phrases and meanings of things can and do happen, but learning on it as the primary source for comprehension is so painful. And it's what we do in most grammar-heavy courses, and strategies based on memorizing phrases.

A recent example that comes to mind is I wanted to refresh my Italian by watching my favorite TV show in an Italian dub. Even though I can converse in Italian, and quite the show by heart, I couldn’t really follow the program.

Loading it up into Phrasing tells me that the most important words to the episode were: conservitorship, inheritance, deep submerge vehicle, treason, philanthropies, ransom, nerve gas, and anaphylactic shock.

If I’m going to spend any time on flashcards or SRS, these are the cards I want to learn. Once I know these words, not only could I follow half the episode even if I didn’t speak Italian, but the other 99% of the language in the episode has something to “latch onto” while I’m passively watching it.

I fully expect 95% of my progress in Italian to come from watching the tv show. But I expect to be able to significantly improve the speed of that progress with Phrasing.

Re: Show HN: Phrasing – learn every language, to any level

#88

Post by filleduchaos »

"Every language" sounds like a massive stretch. Then again I come from a country of 200+ different languages, so maybe my expectations are a tad higher than most.

Unfortunately, given the reliance on machine translations, I don't expect it to be a useful learning tool for most of those languages any time soon.

As an aside I'm curious about your voices, especially for highly tonal languages like Yoruba that also don't necessarily have a lot of easily trainable material available.

Re: Show HN: Phrasing – learn every language, to any level

#89

Post by gxonatano »

Impressive project, but the tagline says "learn every language," and yet there are some very glaring omissions. Just a few off the top of my head: Haitian Creole, Breton, Taiwanese, Shanghainese, Scots, and Yoruba. But probably the biggest omission is Esperanto, the world's most popular auxiliary language, which is often used as a bridge to other languages. If you learn Esperanto as your first foreign language, it's much easier to learn other languages, so it should be front-and-center in any language learning app.

Re: Show HN: Phrasing – learn every language, to any level

#90

Post by pflenker »

MostlyStable wrote: post #83
famouswaffles wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Children are native speakers. This is something that doesn't quite hit you until you seriously undertake language learning. assuming we are talking about children's content in general (and not content for babies), you will find that it is not much more comprehensible than the adult stuff. a language learning beginner is nowhere near the command or vocabulary of a child.

Yeah, I've been learning German for about a year and a half now through a combination of traditional classes and duolingo. I'm roughly high A2, low B1. I've tried multiple times to start reading children's books (e.g. Die Kleine Hexe, Emil und die Detektiv, Das doppelte Lottchen, Der Räuber Horzenplotz) which are all, supposedly, for readers under 10. They have a surprisingly large required vocabulary and grasp on th…

I am a native speaker in German and I can tell you that while all the books you listed are children’s books, they are all quite old, and the words and phrases they use are weird, to say the least. Maybe grab a Lustiges Taschenbuch? They’re available almost everywhere, fun to read also for adults and since they are comics, the accompanying images provide context.
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