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Launch HN: Issen (YC F24) – Personal AI language tutor

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Launch HN: Issen (YC F24) – Personal AI language tutor

#21

Post by mtalantikite »

This looks great, congrats! As someone that has gone through Assimil courses and done lots of comprehensible input for various languages, language production is typically the weak point that isn't covered well. I've done plenty of lessons on iTalki, but I've been wanting something more structured and this seems like it could cover it. Definitely going to give it a shot!

The feature request I make for all language course makers: please consider Bengali support in the future! It's wild to me that the 7th most spoken language in the world, with a deep culture around literature and poetry [1], gets zero attention from language course makers. I can buy an Assimil course on Breton, spoken by 200k people, and not Bangla, spoken by 284 million.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charyapada

Re: Launch HN: Issen (YC F24) – Personal AI language tutor

#22

Post by drakonka »

anavat wrote: post #20

Thanks for working on this! Language learning really needs a breakthrough. Now, I tried the web app and chose to learn Greek as a beginner. And while I had better experience with your app than with ChatGPT or Gemini voice modes, I still got lost 5 minutes in because the AI tutor doesn't seem to have a plan for me, nor does it "see" my struggles. For example, after asking me about a hobby, it gives me a long sentence…

I had a similar feeling with Swedish just now. It isn't really much different than conversing with ChatGPT in advanced voice mode - it's up to me to drive the conversation and it all feels quite arbitrary (and I find myself instinctively falling back on topics I know how to talk about, which quite defeats the purpose). I was hoping for a more structured learning plan that strategically expands my comfort zone and skills in a guided way.

Re: Launch HN: Issen (YC F24) – Personal AI language tutor

#24

Post by mariano54 »

akshayKMR wrote: post #17

Why not use the Gemini flash voice-api directly instead? Cost? I ask because from the demo, the tutor's voice seems mechanical. I've played with the gemini voice api and it's quite impressive for conversation with low latency, I'd say perfect for your use case. It even switches languages if I say "Okay, let's talk in $foo language". The vocabulary tooling looks neat and well thought out.

Multiple reasons (which also apply to openAIs realtime API): - it's less intelligent than the non voice apis - intelligence degrades even further with lots of context - more expensive - latency is not a free lunch, it comes at the cost of more interruptions from the tutor, which is a really bad UX. We prefer to interrupt less and have higher latency

Also, we prefer the eleven labs voices, but there is definitely varying quality. I'm guessing later this year or next, the voice to voice models will become good enough, and we will switch over.

Re: Launch HN: Issen (YC F24) – Personal AI language tutor

#25

Post by heeton »

I had a go and it failed at the first hurdle I’m afraid. It was hallucinating my responses and inserting phrases that I wasn’t saying.

The teacher kept switching into an American accent when I was trying to learn French and the responses were getting very slow bitty.

Hopefully this is just an initial load of issues because the concept is great.

Re: Launch HN: Issen (YC F24) – Personal AI language tutor

#26

Post by itake »

I'm trying to learn vietnamese, but the lessons are really really rough and borderline bad advice.

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AI: Anh mệt is good if bạn are a man speaking about yourself. You can also say, “Em mệt” if you’re a woman.

this isn't correct. If you are of "older brother" age and are male, you say Anh. Em is for if you are "younger person" (does not matter the gender). Women tend to prefer being called "em" (even if they are older), because women prefer to be identified as younger than their true age... But that doesn't mean you can't call younger men em.

A good tutor would know your age relative to theirs and explain this context.

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It would say english phrases with a vietnamese accent.

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It also would give me really complex vietnamese phrases that I am not ready for. when I prompt for an explaination or translation, it would get off track from the original thing we were learning.

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Way more people in Vietnam (and the globe) speak southern Vietnamese, but the tutors seem to be from north Vietnam.

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The STT also was very forgiving if I pronounced things incorrectly. Or it would confuse english and vietnamese. I would say, "Phai", but it heard "bye"

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I was ready to pull out my credit card, but I can't trust it to teach me the right information. I pay $160/mo for Vietnamese tutoring ($20 per class). This would be way cheaper and I don't have to schedule my classes.

Re: Launch HN: Issen (YC F24) – Personal AI language tutor

#29

Post by mariano54 »

drakonka wrote: post #22
anavat wrote: post #20

Thanks for working on this! Language learning really needs a breakthrough. Now, I tried the web app and chose to learn Greek as a beginner. And while I had better experience with your app than with ChatGPT or Gemini voice modes, I still got lost 5 minutes in because the AI tutor doesn't seem to have a plan for me, nor does it "see" my struggles. For example, after asking me about a hobby, it gives me a long sentence…

I had a similar feeling with Swedish just now. It isn't really much different than conversing with ChatGPT in advanced voice mode - it's up to me to drive the conversation and it all feels quite arbitrary (and I find myself instinctively falling back on topics I know how to talk about, which quite defeats the purpose). I was hoping for a more structured learning plan that strategically expands my comfort zone and ski…

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah we need to improve the beginner experience, it's more tailored towards intermediate/advanced students at the moment.
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