Hacker News in Slow Italian • Hacker News Board

Re: Hacker News in Slow Italian

#11

Post by thiagoeh » Thu, May 25, 2023, 9:26 PM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #6

lakySK wrote: post #2

Let me know in here if there is a particular language you'd like to see for this! Not gonna lie, the costs run in order of dollars per episode, so if you are keen on listening to this, let me know, otherwise it would be a waste of money :)

I'd really love to hear Portuguese. What else did you do to immerse yourself in the language you are learning? I have trouble to even force youtube to give me content in Portuguese.

Take a look in the content backlog from Fabio Akita YouTube channel. Mostly of it is related to software development

https://www.youtube.com/@Akitando

Re: Hacker News in Slow Italian

#12

Post by lakySK » Thu, May 25, 2023, 9:28 PM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #6

lakySK wrote: post #2

Let me know in here if there is a particular language you'd like to see for this! Not gonna lie, the costs run in order of dollars per episode, so if you are keen on listening to this, let me know, otherwise it would be a waste of money :)

I'd really love to hear Portuguese. What else did you do to immerse yourself in the language you are learning? I have trouble to even force youtube to give me content in Portuguese.

I can try and get a Portuguese episode generated for you later today or tomorrow.

It’s really tough to find such content indeed. I’ve found Netflix shows in Italian and some Italian podcasts and music on Spotify.

One thing that also helps is to find a subreddit focused on learning the language (like r/italianlearning). When I searched the subreddit for books / movies / podcasts / youtubers, I found a lot of fun stuff. Many are not targeted for language learners though, so are a hit tough to follow. And the ones targeted to language learners are often quite generic and not that entertaining. Hence, this effort.

Re: Hacker News in Slow Italian

#13

Post by lakySK » Thu, May 25, 2023, 9:29 PM UTC

CamelRocketFish wrote: post #10

lakySK wrote: post #2

Let me know in here if there is a particular language you'd like to see for this! Not gonna lie, the costs run in order of dollars per episode, so if you are keen on listening to this, let me know, otherwise it would be a waste of money :)

This is great! I didn’t see an option to slow the playback down to 0.5 as 1.0 is still fast for a beginner.

Hm, good point. Perhaps I need to use a different podcast platform for that. Might look into that!

Are you learning Italian as well? What have you tried so far?

Re: Hacker News in Slow Italian

#14

Post by CamelRocketFish » Thu, May 25, 2023, 9:36 PM UTC

lakySK wrote: post #13

CamelRocketFish wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great! I didn’t see an option to slow the playback down to 0.5 as 1.0 is still fast for a beginner.

Hm, good point. Perhaps I need to use a different podcast platform for that. Might look into that! Are you learning Italian as well? What have you tried so far?

Yep I’m also a beginner but I haven’t found anything similar to this project. In terms of learning materials I found classes that follow the CEFR system (A1, A2, B1 etc) have been more helpful than Duolingo and also this free resource https://www.languagetransfer.org/

Re: Hacker News in Slow Italian

#15

Post by Alles » Thu, May 25, 2023, 9:41 PM UTC

antirez wrote: post #8

It's a shame that Play.ht quality is so bad for Italian, compared to English voices.

yeah, you can hear some english pronunciation forced in sometimes but overall is pretty good

Re: Hacker News in Slow Italian

#16

Post by hugs » Thu, May 25, 2023, 9:59 PM UTC

lakySK wrote: post #2

Let me know in here if there is a particular language you'd like to see for this! Not gonna lie, the costs run in order of dollars per episode, so if you are keen on listening to this, let me know, otherwise it would be a waste of money :)

I would love this for French. How do you want to handle modifying the code for other languages on GitHub? A new separate project fork per language, or a pull request to the current one? Slightly problematic that "Italian" is in the top level project name if it's going to be configurable for other languages.

Also, add a tip jar somewhere so we can chip in!

Re: Hacker News in Slow Italian

#17

Post by lakySK » Thu, May 25, 2023, 10:01 PM UTC

manuelmoreale wrote: post #7

Unrelated to the product but if you ever want to practice your Italian while chatting about web related stuff hit me up. More than happy to help.

Thanks a lot! That's an amazing offer. What web related stuff are you most interested in? I've been playing with React a bit, but not sure if I could have a conversation in Itaian on it yet :D I'd be happy to chat on GPT and ML as well.

Re: Hacker News in Slow Italian

#18

Post by lakySK » Thu, May 25, 2023, 10:04 PM UTC

hugs wrote: post #16

lakySK wrote: post #2

Let me know in here if there is a particular language you'd like to see for this! Not gonna lie, the costs run in order of dollars per episode, so if you are keen on listening to this, let me know, otherwise it would be a waste of money :)

I would love this for French. How do you want to handle modifying the code for other languages on GitHub? A new separate project fork per language, or a pull request to the current one? Slightly problematic that "Italian" is in the top level project name if it's going to be configurable for other languages. Also, add a tip jar somewhere so we can chip in!

Good question! Haven't thought that far ahead :D

I'd be happy to rebrand it if there's interest. The main issue is that generating an episode is around $3 roughly (~$1 on GPT4 APU, ~$2 on text-to-speech). So doing a daily episode in multiple languages might be a bit costly.

But if there's enough interest, I might be happy to fund it to get it going for a bit and see how it ends.

Re: Hacker News in Slow Italian

#19

Post by lakySK » Thu, May 25, 2023, 10:07 PM UTC

CamelRocketFish wrote: post #14

lakySK wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, good point. Perhaps I need to use a different podcast platform for that. Might look into that! Are you learning Italian as well? What have you tried so far?

Yep I’m also a beginner but I haven’t found anything similar to this project. In terms of learning materials I found classes that follow the CEFR system (A1, A2, B1 etc) have been more helpful than Duolingo and also this free resource https://www.languagetransfer.org/

Heard great things on Language Transfer and started listening to it.

I've mostly been doing Duolingo, recently some tutored classes on Preply. Trying to get to a level where I can converse with my Italian partner.

And I think GPT has tremendous potential for this. Seen a few projects exploring this besides mine. Can't wait to see where it goes. It would be a shame if we can't figure out some great ways to use the new generative AI algos for education!

Re: Hacker News in Slow Italian

#20

Post by lakySK » Thu, May 25, 2023, 10:08 PM UTC

antirez wrote: post #8

It's a shame that Play.ht quality is so bad for Italian, compared to English voices.

Oh, 100%

And this is already the best one I've found. Trust me, you don't want to hear some of the Italian text-to-speech stuff I've come across during this search...