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Foreign Dispatch: Ideas from code editors applied to foreign language writing

harry.vangberg.name

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Re: Foreign Dispatch: Ideas from code editors applied to foreign language writing

#11

Post by shanusmagnus »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #7
turtleyacht wrote: post #5

Great idea. I wanted to use pmd to learn some subtle aspects of Java. Tool-assisted learning. It's either operate on existing code and learn the conventions and techniques, or write hundreds of programs in the language. From a maintenance perspective, it's a superpower.

I thought the idea sounded interesting, but it appears to be very narrowly focused on the problem of "I'd like to write something in [German], but I don't know [German] all that well". I'm more interested in the problem of "I'd like to read something in [German]". The "right way" to solve the problem of knowing how to write something in German is, unfortunately, to read several dozen examples of people writing simila…

The OA, and your comment, made me very excited at the prospect of building a kickass AI-assisted language-learning suite. I think interactive writing is a great foundational abstraction, and your description -- of reading a bunch of examples in the native language saying similar things -- would be a beautiful way to realize it: a write, read, write, read, write REPL. Mix in spaced rep and conversation with a partner (conversations would be much less tedious as part of this loop) and you have a language learning hyper-accelerator.

I'm what people in the Midwest [1] call "good with languages" in that I have learned a host of them to intermediate level, and then run aground on getting to advanced, which I think of as the ability to express yourself colloquially and elegantly on any random topic. An IDE like we're talking about would be a godsend, not least because it would speed things up between ten and a hundred-fold.

Argh, I'm tempted to quit my fucking job and try to make this exist, though I'm not qualified to build it. Maybe someone else will do something comparable -- definitely a "take my money" example :)

[1] I mention being from the Midwest bc, when I was growing up, average small-town people lacked any real access or exposure to (or motivation to acquire) other languages. When I got old enough to travel (also not a thing generally done in my social setting), running into people fluent in 4 languages just by accident of birth, would always make me so jealous :/

Re: Foreign Dispatch: Ideas from code editors applied to foreign language writing

#12

Post by thaumasiotes »

shanusmagnus wrote: post #11
thaumasiotes wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the idea sounded interesting, but it appears to be very narrowly focused on the problem of "I'd like to write something in [German], but I don't know [German] all that well". I'm more interested in the problem of "I'd like to read something in [German]". The "right way" to solve the problem of knowing how to write something in German is, unfortunately, to read several dozen examples of people writing simila…

The OA, and your comment, made me very excited at the prospect of building a kickass AI-assisted language-learning suite. I think interactive writing is a great foundational abstraction, and your description -- of reading a bunch of examples in the native language saying similar things -- would be a beautiful way to realize it: a write, read, write, read, write REPL. Mix in spaced rep and conversation with a partner…

> I have learned a host of them to intermediate level, and then run aground on getting to advanced, which I think of as the ability to express yourself colloquially and elegantly on any random topic.

If this is your standard, then to within rounding error, 0% of people have reached an "advanced" level in their own native language(s). Elegance is difficult.

(Though some people do seem to believe in a similar standard. My sister grew up in the United States, in an exclusively English-speaking household, and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. She joined the state department and took their English ability test (I assume for fun). She scored less than fluent - according to the rubric, not qualified to talk to Anglophone college graduates.

I can attest personally that college graduates don't seem to mind if you, as a foreigner, don't know the specialized vocabulary they learned in college.)

Re: Foreign Dispatch: Ideas from code editors applied to foreign language writing

#13

Post by ichverstehe »

red_trumpet wrote: post #10

I think it should be "Ich ziehe Sauerteig vor." (or in past tense, "Ich zog Sauerteig vor"). "Zuge" is not a word[1]. So yes, a kind of spelling+grammar linter would be great I guess! [1] https://www.duden.de/suchen/dudenonline/zuge

I mixed it up with bevorzugen[1] I think. Will fix it, thanks! :)

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bevorzugen

Re: Foreign Dispatch: Ideas from code editors applied to foreign language writing

#14

Post by ichverstehe »

visarga wrote: post #9
thaumasiotes wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the idea sounded interesting, but it appears to be very narrowly focused on the problem of "I'd like to write something in [German], but I don't know [German] all that well". I'm more interested in the problem of "I'd like to read something in [German]". The "right way" to solve the problem of knowing how to write something in German is, unfortunately, to read several dozen examples of people writing simila…

> I'm more interested in the problem of "I'd like to read something in [German]" Something can be done here. Books with aligned/inlined/popup translations, tracking known/unknown vocabulary, spaced repetition for new words.

It does not seem to be developed anymore, but Readlang[1] does exactly that. It has been very helpful early on as I was learning Spanish and German.

[1] https://readlang.com/

Re: Foreign Dispatch: Ideas from code editors applied to foreign language writing

#15

Post by ichverstehe »

luminouslow wrote: post #3

Love the idea! Are you planning to keep the core tool stack OSS? Would love to contribute to growing the project in the long term. I imagine there could be avenues for monetization while keeping it OSS (e.g. Licence for business use)

No plans to monetize. Contributions very welcome! :)

Re: Foreign Dispatch: Ideas from code editors applied to foreign language writing

#16

Post by ichverstehe »

geza wrote: post #2

Note you might be interested in looking at interactive machine translation systems and the associated research papers - for example Lilt [1, 2] or TransSmart [3, 4] - while those are designed for professional translators rather than for language learners, what they do is very similar to your long-term aims for this project (a specialized MT system that, given a partially written translation to the foreign language an…

Very interesting, I will look into that. Thank you!

Re: Foreign Dispatch: Ideas from code editors applied to foreign language writing

#17

Post by shanusmagnus »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #12
shanusmagnus wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OA, and your comment, made me very excited at the prospect of building a kickass AI-assisted language-learning suite. I think interactive writing is a great foundational abstraction, and your description -- of reading a bunch of examples in the native language saying similar things -- would be a beautiful way to realize it: a write, read, write, read, write REPL. Mix in spaced rep and conversation with a partner…

> I have learned a host of them to intermediate level, and then run aground on getting to advanced, which I think of as the ability to express yourself colloquially and elegantly on any random topic. If this is your standard, then to within rounding error, 0% of people have reached an "advanced" level in their own native language(s). Elegance is difficult. (Though some people do seem to believe in a similar standard.…

I think you and I have a different notion of what "elegance" means. To me, it's not that high a bar. A native speaker who reads for fun and cares about self-expression generally achieves it. It does, however, prove a high bar for a non-native speaker in my experience.
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