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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

#241

Post by mariano54 »

masspro wrote: post #199

I don't think I can trust TTS for language learning. I could be internalizing wrong pronunciation, and I wouldn't know. One time I tried Duolingo for Japanese already knowing a bit. To their credit I assumed it was recorded clips, until it read 'oyogu' as something like 'oyNHYAOgu', like it concatenated two syllable clips that don't go together. If I didn't already know, would I be trying to study and replicate that…

Minimax's new model is quite good. We use their voices for some of our Japanese tutors. The pitch accent is almost perfect.

There are incorrect reading or Chinese readings occasionally, but you can tell when that happens due to the furigana being different

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

#242

Post by drakonka »

mariano54 wrote: post #92
drakonka wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean that the experience is meant to have more structure if you pick the intermediate or advanced level? (fwiw I did pick intermediate for my Swedish level in the app). My thinking is - I can have unstructured conversations with Advanced Voice Mode or in real life here in Sweden. What I'd really appreciate is a guided learning experience taking me up from intermediate/slightly above intermediate to fluent in t…

There is a structured curriculum that gets generated after the intro lesson (if you responded yes to the curriculum question). This is available for all proficiencies. It's just much harder to talk for hours in a new language as a beginner. It's usable but requires more effort.

I see it now, thank you! This looks like what I was hoping for. I wonder if there's some way to communicate very clearly that you'll need to talk for around n minutes to get a structured curriculum prepared - and maybe even show a progress bar of some sort so the user can have an idea of when they're going to get to "the good stuff"?

Another thing is that the trial period seems incongruent. To me the structured curriculum is what I really want to _try_. I want to see what the planned lessons are like, how guided they are, etc. But the trial runs out and tries to make me pay right after the unstructured more all-over-the-place feeling introductory conversation, and I'm not prepared to pay at that point since I feel like I haven't gotten to evaluate the main part of the product at all. I would suggest leaving the trial unlocked to maybe the first three structured lessons of the learning plan. Let the user really experience what they'll be paying for.

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

#243

Post by famahar »

This looks similar to Speak. I took part in their Japanese language beta and enjoyed it. It's an interesting use of AI and I did learn a lot fast. My biggest problem with these are that they feel like magic until it suddenly doesn't. Weird pronunciation and strange replies. It comes nowhere close to replacing a tutor or speaking partner yet. I am optimistic as the tech improves fast.

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

#245

Post by yorwba »

mariano54 wrote: post #241
masspro wrote: post #199

I don't think I can trust TTS for language learning. I could be internalizing wrong pronunciation, and I wouldn't know. One time I tried Duolingo for Japanese already knowing a bit. To their credit I assumed it was recorded clips, until it read 'oyogu' as something like 'oyNHYAOgu', like it concatenated two syllable clips that don't go together. If I didn't already know, would I be trying to study and replicate that…

Minimax's new model is quite good. We use their voices for some of our Japanese tutors. The pitch accent is almost perfect. There are incorrect reading or Chinese readings occasionally, but you can tell when that happens due to the furigana being different

If you have the correct furigana, you could even detect when the TTS model picked the wrong reading and regenerate.

But how do you know the furigana are correct? Unless you start out fully human-annotated text, you need some automated procedure to add furigana, which pushes the problem from "TTS AI picked the wrong reading" to "furigana AI picked the wrong reading."

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

#246

Post by artur_makly »

OMG this app f'n rocks. My convo with my Argentine mujer is soooo fluid and smooth.

I've been living in Buenos Aires for over 18 years now, so my pronunciations and accent is quite good. It's just that I never had the proper early fundamental foundations of grammar ..so I have a bunch of embarrassing holes that need filling -- this app is quite precise when it comes to focusing on those aspects.

Te felicito!

Ps my only nit pick so far is the UX on ios > the Settings modal > when opened there is no clear CTA to close it. Because the click-state of the settings button is 97% the same color as the non-click state.

Solution : 1 - add a close X button to the top right (standard accessibility)

2 - change the click-state Color of the settings button to a reverse color or accent color.

Want more UX tear-downs? Dm me artur at visualsitemaps.com

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

#247

Post by glandium »

runarberg wrote: post #220
glandium wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somewhat more important, but as someone with decent Japanese who knows about pitch accent but can barely hear the difference in real time, and never actively learned it except for the few well known examples like bridge/chopstick, I don't think it matters all that much. Yes, you'll sound foreign. But you'll be understood nevertheless, in the vast majority of cases.

Speaking of bridge/chopsticks, I created a video to try to spot the difference my self a couple of months ago: https://imgur.com/KJXanqc

Here's the problem: pitch accent is easy to hear in isolation and/or in comparison. Under real life conditions, in the middle of a sentence, it's a completely different experience. But then you're saved by context. Because candy is most likely not falling from the sky. Homophones that are still ambiguous in context are possible, but a rare occurrence in my experience.

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

#249

Post by cpursley »

Twey wrote: post #139
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…

Also on the controversial flags side: using the British flag to represent Welsh

Or American ;)

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

#250

Post by Alex-Programs »

55555 wrote: post #236
55555 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you, I will try it, although I'd prefer to translate entire sentences into Thai randomly. Perhaps you can add this advanced mode. Actually, I saw your app before while looking for an alternative to Toucan that supported Thai, but at that point in time you hadn't added support yet. Thanks for doing so.

Okay I installed it and this is pretty great. Although I think your extension doesn't work for Thai the way you think it does. Because there's spaces between sentences instead of between words in Thai, it's translating entire sentences even with the "words only" setting enabled. This is what I want anyways, but will be too difficult for most learners. I have written misc Thai learning softwares and just so you know y…

Translating entire sentences is the idea - I'm not sure what setting you mean with "words only"? I really ought to make the settings clearer, but it's hard to do when you know what they "ought" to express.

"Translate Isolated Words" allows it to translate "sentences" of only one word, but it doesn't disable full sentences.

And yeah, atm it word splits by spaces for the dictionary. I hadn't thought to do it with LLMs, though that's a good idea. There's a somewhat related problem when doing Furigana, where it has a hashmap of strings-to-pronunciations, and it starts with a 4-character sliding window looking for matches, then a 3 character, etc.

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