Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Duolingo-style exercises but with real-world content like the news

app.fluentsubs.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 189 posts

Re: Show HN: Duolingo-style exercises but with real-world content like the news

#101

Post by watwut »

pjc50 wrote: post #87
elric wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That meme is such a load of hogwash. In many ways, US English is closer to "traditional" than UK English. They've both diverged somewhat from what they were in the 17th century. Neither form has been "simplified" in any way. As for the Union Jack: the UK has at least 3 rather different languages (English, Gaelic, Welsh), possibly a few more depending on how you count the different kinds of Gaelic. Using a country fla…

It's entirely a joke based on the two different versions of "Chinese" offered on most websites, it's not really meant to be taken seriously. But I've heard that there's an island in New England somewhere whose local accent is closest to Elizabethan English.

Yeah, but there is a real difference between simplified and traditional Chinese characters. Traditional are more ornamental/complicated while simplified are ... simplified/minimalist .

Re: Show HN: Duolingo-style exercises but with real-world content like the news

#103

Post by BalinKing »

pjc50 wrote: post #59
dataengineer56 wrote: post #35

The English icon has the Union Jack flag rather than the US flag, so it automatically elevates the service above Duolingo for me.

English (Traditional) vs English (Simplified)

Honest question, what's the meaning behind this joke? Is it just referencing the fact that American English drops "u" in the spelling of e.g. "color"?

Re: Show HN: Duolingo-style exercises but with real-world content like the news

#107

Post by yorwba »

raincole wrote: post #79
dicytea wrote: post #53

I've checked out the Japanese one, but I'd say that it's definitely no where near "real-world content" IMO. Just the usual tortuously slow-paced, artificially dumbed-down dialogue you'd expect out of classroom recordings. Most of the videos also contain subtitles, which defeats the purpose of the exercises (you can disable the video manually though). Another issue is that some of the words are segmented very unnatura…

> Another issue is that some of the words are segmented very unnaturally I immediately noticed that too. Are the "gaps" generated by an LLM? I think the model might not understand Japanese very well.

It's a bit like segmenting "don't see" into "don't" and "see." ません is the negative of the auxiliary ます just as "don't" is the negative of the auxiliary "do." If you have to split Japanese text into words and want to be principled about it, treating ません as a separate word is not a bad way to go about it.

But of course there are other ways, so a "fill in the blank" question with two gaps right next to each other is generally a bad idea.

Re: Show HN: Duolingo-style exercises but with real-world content like the news

#109

Post by pjc50 »

BalinKing wrote: post #103
pjc50 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English (Traditional) vs English (Simplified)

Honest question, what's the meaning behind this joke? Is it just referencing the fact that American English drops "u" in the spelling of e.g. "color"?

It's primarily a reference to various language selection dropdowns offering "Chinese (Traditional)" (which is used in Taiwan) and "Chinese (Simplified)" (which is used on the Chinese mainland). That difference arises from Mao-era simplification of many of the most common hanzi characters to make them easier to write or distinguish.

Mixed with, yes, the variant spellings and word choices (e.g. chips/crisps/biscuits) that make it apparent to British English readers when something is American.

Post reply on HN