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

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

#171

Post by thaumasiotes »

koakuma-chan wrote: post #57
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 think the point here is for you to practice (i.e. develop "muscle memory" for speaking), not to learn .

As far as using language goes, those aren't different things.

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

#172

Post by fode »

Ok, in over a decade on HN I've never commented on a product but this one is awesome! I just signed up!

I currently pay $99 a month to learn Spanish from a live tutor 30 mins a day, and this is far superior if you ask me.

The element that stands out to me is that the AI Tutor is consistent and concise!

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

#174

Post by thaumasiotes »

dataviz1000 wrote: post #151
b3orn wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (I had ChatGPT fix my grammatical errors and now this comment doesn't sound like me, sorry.) And it didn't correct "distrupted" to disrupted?

Nope https://imgur.com/a/m3svUky

> https://imgur.com/a/m3svUky

That's an image of text. Is it supposed to provide more evidentiary value than the word "Nope" above it would by itself?

I'll bet you I can show you a screenshot where "ChatGPT" says whatever your heart desires.

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

#175

Post by thaumasiotes »

iandanforth wrote: post #117
antonaf wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I can understand and empathize with your experience. Quite honestly our current focus is more for B1+ students. That 0 -> 1 / bootstrapping of the language is much better served by traditional material that is less talking / listening-heavy.

This is demonstrably false. Natural language acquisition is almost entirely listening and talking. The fastest and most consistently effective way to learn a language is immersion. The reason traditional material doesn't attempt immersive techniques is because it is much much easier to print a static book than it is to produce interactive and adaptive content. The promise and potential of LLM based language learning…

> The reason traditional material doesn't attempt immersive techniques is because it is much much easier to print a static book than it is to produce interactive and adaptive content.

No, that's not correct.

First off, you can provide immersion with static books. A common favorite here on HN is Lingua Latina per se illustrata ["the Latin tongue explained by itself"].

Second off, there are two reasons that traditional material doesn't do this. The biggest one is student demand; people are afraid of immersion. The second is that the traditional approach is faster. It's lower quality, and it tops out well below the level you hope to reach, but it's faster, not slower. It takes babies a year to learn to say they're hungry. It takes an elementary school class studying a foreign language less than a day.

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

#176

Post by magackame »

mpeg wrote: post #126
carstenhag wrote: post #121

Haven't tested the functionality yet, but some feedback: - the name is bad. Issen? I (German, Spanish speaker) don't know how to pronounce it. - use correct flags. Catalan speakers will be rightfully pissed when you use the Spanish flag for their language. - in a language learning focused app, it is not acceptable to have a badly translated app. I'm using it in German and while the intro does not have typos, I can te…

Catalan, the language, does not have a flag. As a native speaker (of a dialect) who is not from Catalonia I would much rather the language be represented by the Spanish national flag. Although people from Andorra might also not love that. Languages and flags don't mix well.

I wonder if anyone ever came up with logos or at least emoji codes for languages?

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

#177

Post by tanushv »

This might be the most obvious question regarding this, but how are you planning on competing with the entrenched competition for mindshare, namely Duolingo. This is probably technically superior, but from a user standpoint, it might not be so. Happy to be proven wrong

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

#178

Post by AndyKelley »

tanushv wrote: post #177

This might be the most obvious question regarding this, but how are you planning on competing with the entrenched competition for mindshare, namely Duolingo. This is probably technically superior, but from a user standpoint, it might not be so. Happy to be proven wrong

Every serious language learner already considers Duolingo to be trash. It's not real competition.

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

#179

Post by mariano54 »

tanushv wrote: post #177

This might be the most obvious question regarding this, but how are you planning on competing with the entrenched competition for mindshare, namely Duolingo. This is probably technically superior, but from a user standpoint, it might not be so. Happy to be proven wrong

Our market is different - ISSEN is more focused on intermediate and advanced students, and especially those that are willing to use a more difficult app in order to learn faster.

Also, having the AI voice tutor as our main feature allows us to iterate quickly, and be well positioned for future improvements in AI models.

As for marketing and GTM, we're in the super early stages, and there is definitely a lot of competition out there, it won't be easy.

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

#180

Post by Alex-Programs »

ghostpepper wrote: post #136

I also use chatGPT to translate phrases idiomatically and to ask questions about etymology, synonyms, homophones etc. I'm not sure I would want the entire language-learning process to be driven by talking with an AI so maybe I'm not the target audience for this app but these are the places where I think an AI can be uniquely useful in language learning. I recently discovered www.lingq.com and it's by far the best lan…

You might like my tool. It has the same general principle as LingQ - learning from content you actually want to read - except it applies it to all web browsing. It's a browser extension that finds sentences in webpages, scores them by difficulty, then translates the ones that are right at the edge of your knowledge.

https://nuenki.app

I haven't added Anki integration, though. A few people have asked for it, but it's a big time investment for something relatively niche.

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