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Show HN: Learn Japanese contextually while browsing

lingoku.ai

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Re: Show HN: Learn Japanese contextually while browsing

#41

Post by Tor3 »

skeledrew wrote: post #29

Interesting. I'd love to get something like this into things I use frequently. Primary issue for me is, though I often browse HN for example, I only do so using an app. Generally I rarely use the browser for anything beyond research and linked articles.

After a certain age many people, and I'm definitely one of them, stop using phones for anything serious. Too small screen, unreable fonts, or alternatively zoomed-out fonts make pages unreadable anyway. So I'm basically back to using phones for, well, calls.. and a tablet or, if more than just casual, a real PC with a huge monitor if I want to actually spend some time on the net.

In short - I'm definitely now in the "browser for everything" group, I don't use apps if I can avoid it, and definitely not on phones.

Re: Show HN: Learn Japanese contextually while browsing

#42

Post by Tor3 »

FuturisticLover wrote: post #24

Is there a similar tool/extension that can show the Japanese word in romaji rather than hiragana or katakana?

It's a very good investment to spent a week or a month (typically depending on age) to really learn hiragana. Learn hiragana and katakana in parallel. Use an app like 'Kana mind', for example, to enforce memorization.

Using romaji will, due to how the brain works, forever keep you out of learning kana properly, even when you see both at the same time. Learning kana is a small effort for a lot of gain.

Re: Show HN: Learn Japanese contextually while browsing

#43

Post by englishcat »

madmod wrote: post #34

This looks really cool but I can't justify using it because of privacy concerns. Running this with a local ai and a strongly worded guarantee of no tracking/reselling of my metadata is something I would pay for.

I can totally understand your concerns.

At the moment, Lingoku browser extension does send text to LLms for processing, we don't sell user data, but i agree that simply saying 'trust us' isn't sufficient.

Supporting local LLM is something we are actively considering, though there are still real constraints on the user experience.

Re: Show HN: Learn Japanese contextually while browsing

#45

Post by Tor3 »

jz391 wrote: post #9

Interesting. The voice used for the pronunciation sound seems to be using the wrong language though (FYI using Firefox).

I'm using the Chrome extension in Vivaldi, and I hear no sound. Yomitan and the older Yomichan work fine.

BTW, is there a way to remove the romaji? Having both hiragana and romaji together is not good.

Edit: And for some words there's _only_ romaji.. :-(

Re: Show HN: Learn Japanese contextually while browsing

#46

Post by sebastiennight »

This is amazing. I was planning to build exactly this for movie subtitles yesterday!

I'm unsure however what you mean by

> No Ads · No Social · Zero Privacy Trace

and

> Web data is used only for real-time AI parsing, transmitted via SSL encryption, and the server never stores any original content.

Because the APIs for commercial LLMs, if you're not hosting the models yourself, definitely grab and store everything.

Re: Show HN: Learn Japanese contextually while browsing

#48

Post by tmtvl »

laurieg wrote: post #15

Have you done any work on trying to make the opposite? Injecting English words into Japanese text to make it easier to read? I find that students of Japanese often have enough grammar to read widely after finishing a couple of beginner textbooks, but they are completely held back by vocabulary.

Isn't that what the Rikai line (10ten, Yomitan) of add-ons are for?

Re: Show HN: Learn Japanese contextually while browsing

#49

Post by jbstack »

madmod wrote: post #34

This looks really cool but I can't justify using it because of privacy concerns. Running this with a local ai and a strongly worded guarantee of no tracking/reselling of my metadata is something I would pay for.

You could always run it in a sandboxed browser (e.g. a Firefox profile) and limit the use to just language learning (e.g. reading neutral articles online). The data you would leak wouldn't be much different than what you risk any time you browse any website.
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