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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

#101

Post by MostlyStable »

pflenker wrote: post #90
MostlyStable wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's probably what I get for asking my older German-speaking relatives for book suggestions, haha. Thanks for the recommendation!

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

#103

Post by chankstein38 »

barrell wrote: post #96
chankstein38 wrote: post #65

So what does it actually do to youtube videos? The landing page doesn't cover this. Should I expect that the video I watch will be in my target language now? As in, it'll be dubbed in the new language? That'd be super useful but I'm unclear and I'm not paying $10 to find out. A time-limited example or something similar would be really useful. Maybe just one that you pick. Whatever it may be, I'd love to see how it ac…

We're definitely going to get there! For what it's worth, nobody has been signed on yet without receiving a tour and demonstration of the product, and nor would I expect anyone to pay money without having seen the product. Sometime this week or next we will work on recording videos of the whole experience, and making them available. Then another thing to do this quarter is automatic payments, payment portals, trials,…

Sounds great! I'm excited to see what y'all end up having to offer! For what it's worth, if you can pull off auto-dubbing in the language I choose in a natural way I'd be on board 100%

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

#104

Post by mderazon »

ricardobeat wrote: post #98

Looks really interesting, unfortunately your sign up page is throwing a “Email rate limit exceeded” error, and the e-mail field is painfully slow to type in (iPhone), guessing some kind of React state recursion gone wrong.

Same on Android. The UI on that page is very sluggish

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

#105

Post by the_third_wave »

triyambakam wrote: post #68
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…

Nicely said. It seems like you're familiar with Krashen's Comprehensible Input Hypothesis? My daughter speaks German and Swedish very proficiently just from watching hours and hours over a few years of ZDF/ARD/usw (German tv networks) and Barnakalan (Swedish kids network) on the iPad. I can't say it was a wise to let her be on the iPad for that many hours a day, but it did work, she did acquire the languages.

> Barnakalan

Barnkanalen (Barn = children, kanalen = "the channel")

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

#107

Post by rsanek »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #99
steve1977 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well for one thing, Anki is using an ancient SuperMemo algorithm. I wouldn’t take Anki as a benchmark in terms of spaced repetition effectiveness.

anki doesn't use the ancient sm algo anymore anki uses fsrs but afaik it still "punishes" you for taking breaks

It does still use SM2 by default -- you have to turn on FSRS manually. https://docs.ankiweb.net/deck-options.html#fsrs

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

#108

Post by gwd »

barrell wrote: post #86
pech0rin wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

It sounds like you've gone massively for breadth, at the expense of any depth. "We need users to help us grade the languages" sounds like you're asking people to pay you for the privilege of working for you. Why would I pay $10/mo, much less $100/mo, if I have to figure out for myself what content is good and bad?

What I want as a learner is for someone else to give me good, accurate content; I definitely want to avoid any content in the target language which isn't native-sounding, because who knows how long it will take those bad habits to break.

One idea I had for content was something like this:

1. Start with two languages; say, English and Chinese (the first of which I'm a native speaker, the second of which I'm learning); and focus on English speakers who want to learn Chinese, and Chinese speakers who want to learn English.

2. Start with some basic content in both languages; from Tatoeba, from wikipedia, whatever. And hire a few native speakers of both languages to review, validate, and rate content.

3. Give new users some amount of credit for free; enough for them to use it for a few months.

4. Once they're out of credit, they have two choices: They can either pay a flat monthly fee, or they can contribute back to the content: Writing new content, reviewing & validating content, rating content, etc. And people could do whatever mix they want.

5. Expand to other languages as you grow.

I definitely see the attraction of trying to use automation to expand as far and wide as possible, but I think that ultimately it's more important to start by doing a few things well than by doing 50 things poorly.

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

#109

Post by boerseth »

triyambakam wrote: post #68
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…

Nicely said. It seems like you're familiar with Krashen's Comprehensible Input Hypothesis? My daughter speaks German and Swedish very proficiently just from watching hours and hours over a few years of ZDF/ARD/usw (German tv networks) and Barnakalan (Swedish kids network) on the iPad. I can't say it was a wise to let her be on the iPad for that many hours a day, but it did work, she did acquire the languages.

Yes! I'm a big fan, and have even tested the theory out on myself to great effect. I learned French using the series "French in Action", along with certain other sources of input. I was watching and rewatching each episode, and listening on repeat to its audio which I downloaded. Less than a year in I was listening to the radio, and now, two years in, I can listen and read to almost anything online. I'm behind on more casual speech and slang, but am planning to move to France so that I may finally get it.

Meanwhile, I have hardly ever had the chance to speak or write it. I seriously doubt that I've "output" more than a hundred sentences. Perhaps I've spoken some gibberish sentences now and then on my my way to work, but never for any practical purpose. Yet my comprehension is doing okay!

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

#110

Post by jarrett-ye »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #99
steve1977 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well for one thing, Anki is using an ancient SuperMemo algorithm. I wouldn’t take Anki as a benchmark in terms of spaced repetition effectiveness.

anki doesn't use the ancient sm algo anymore anki uses fsrs but afaik it still "punishes" you for taking breaks

You can set easy days via the FSRS4Anki Helper add-on: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/759844606

And it also supports to postpone your backlog.

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