3 ms·

Show HN: Felingua – Language practice by writing pages and reviewing flashcards

31 points by ianjakobs 5y ago

ianjakobs 5y ago
Creator here. As I’m currently learning Spanish, I started reading the Harry Potter books out loud to my partner (a native speaker) a while ago to get exposed to new vocabulary and practice my pronunciation. From this, I then wanted to review those new words as flashcards, and I also discovered I enjoy writing brief summaries afterwards to practice actively producing content without the time pressure I might have when speaking. I built Felingua to help me with that, with the current main features being: 1. Write pages in the language you’re learning and look up translations without having to switch context 2. Get feedback on your writing automatically with suggestions on grammar and spelling and ask a person you know to correct it 3. Create cards both from corrected text and translations and review them with spaced repetition to learn from your mistakes and expand your vocabulary Happy to hear your thoughts or answer any questions!
- jmnicolas 5y ago
  Hello, any idea on the pricing once out of beta? I'd rather not start to use a service now and having to leave once it gets too pricey for me (times are tough).
  - ianjakobs 5y ago
    I have no details to share at the moment, but the idea I have now is to at least always keep a free plan available. One option I'm considering is for a potential paid plan to then have more advanced features, such as fully customizable translations. That said, when that time comes, I believe it only fair to try and keep early users with at least the current functionality available to them.
    - jmnicolas 5y ago
      Thanks. Any idea on an ETA?
      - ianjakobs 5y ago
        Also not yet, unfortunately. I wanted to hold off on that until hearing some more thoughts from users. If you're interested in following along, I try to be open about working on Felingua over on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ianjakobs https://twitter.com/ianjakobs.
petargyurov 5y ago
Looks interesting. I am also learning Spanish at the moment and have tried translating children's stories as a form of exercise but it is a bit of an effort. My biggest problem is that I am never 100% sure whether the translation service I use, Deepl, is accurate enough. For instance, a translation service won't advise me on whether the preterite or imperfect was more suitable, and in fact, that sort of nuance is often conflated to the same translation in English. -- I haven't signed up yet, but I like the look of it so far.
- ianjakobs 5y ago
  Absolutely agree. At the end of the day there's only so much those services can pick up, so at some point you're bound to run into limitations there. To address this with Felingua I've added in two methods of getting corrections on the pages you write: 1. Automatically, by using LanguageTool. 2. Manually, by allow you to request people you know to review. The former is great for spelling mistakes or simple grammatical errors, but the latter is where you'll eventually get the most out of once you're at more of an advanced level. I haven't found any service yet that can substitute that. Feel free to let me know your thoughts if you decide to give it a try!
xvilka 5y ago
Would be nice to see most popular non-latin alphabet languages support: Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Hindi, Russian.
- ianjakobs 5y ago
  Definitely! The main reason I haven't yet added support for any of those languages is just that I'm unfamiliar with them, to be honest, as I'd want to make sure they're _fully_ supported, both in terms of translations and corrections. Is there any language in particular you'd like to see added?
  - loxias 5y ago
    Another vote for Chinese! (can't wait to show this to a friend who's working on their English)
  - drekipus 5y ago
    Chinese for me, but I'm sure there's others needing all 3. What is there to support? You've got to connect it to a translation service? Is there not just a Google API?
    - ianjakobs 5y ago
      It's translations, text-to-speech, and corrections. I'm pretty sure the services I currently use support all this, but there's some things built around that such as word counts for the heat map that will need looking into. I'm certainly interested in adding them though! Will try and look into it soon and let you know.
  - xvilka 5y ago
    Yes, I personally would like to see Chinese and Japanese. I would happily pay for Grammarly-like daily use tool as well, in fact, for Chinese. From what I know, there is no such tool for Chinese language whatsoever.
    - 5y ago
encryptluks2 5y ago
I was hoping this was using a markdown engine to create notes, as it would be nice to have something portable and open.
- ianjakobs 5y ago
  I understand, and that's a fair point. For cards I went with JSON so that I'm able to add structure to translations, e.g. to show alternative translations and example sentences and highlight certain words. That said, I do plan on exposing the API and allowing full data exports, but I haven't gotten to that yet.
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yakkomajuri 5y ago
Looks cool, will try this out
- ianjakobs 5y ago
  Thanks, feel free to let me know what you think!
adamhp 5y ago
Did you take inspiration from Luca Lampariello? He's a polyglot YouTuber and has a similar approach, of written translation to and from L1 and L2. That community on YouTube may offer a source of ideas, and potentially even some marketing for you.
- ianjakobs 5y ago
  I can't say I'm familiar with him, but I just had a cursory look and his approach looks interesting (and indeed similar in some regards)! Thanks for the recommendation.

31 points by ianjakobs 5y ago

Creator here. As I’m currently learning Spanish, I started reading the Harry Potter books out loud to my partner (a native speaker) a while ago to get exposed to new vocabulary and practice my pronunciation. From this, I then wanted to review those new words as flashcards, and I also discovered I enjoy writing brief summaries afterwards to practice actively producing content without the time pressure I might have when speaking. I built Felingua to help me with that, with the current main features being: 1. Write pages in the language you’re learning and look up translations without having to switch context 2. Get feedback on your writing automatically with suggestions on grammar and spelling and ask a person you know to correct it 3. Create cards both from corrected text and translations and review them with spaced repetition to learn from your mistakes and expand your vocabulary Happy to hear your thoughts or answer any questions!

jmnicolas 5y ago
Hello, any idea on the pricing once out of beta? I'd rather not start to use a service now and having to leave once it gets too pricey for me (times are tough).
- ianjakobs 5y ago
  I have no details to share at the moment, but the idea I have now is to at least always keep a free plan available. One option I'm considering is for a potential paid plan to then have more advanced features, such as fully customizable translations. That said, when that time comes, I believe it only fair to try and keep early users with at least the current functionality available to them.
  - jmnicolas 5y ago
    Thanks. Any idea on an ETA?
    - ianjakobs 5y ago
      Also not yet, unfortunately. I wanted to hold off on that until hearing some more thoughts from users. If you're interested in following along, I try to be open about working on Felingua over on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ianjakobs https://twitter.com/ianjakobs.

petargyurov 5y ago

Looks interesting. I am also learning Spanish at the moment and have tried translating children's stories as a form of exercise but it is a bit of an effort. My biggest problem is that I am never 100% sure whether the translation service I use, Deepl, is accurate enough. For instance, a translation service won't advise me on whether the preterite or imperfect was more suitable, and in fact, that sort of nuance is often conflated to the same translation in English. -- I haven't signed up yet, but I like the look of it so far.

ianjakobs 5y ago
Absolutely agree. At the end of the day there's only so much those services can pick up, so at some point you're bound to run into limitations there. To address this with Felingua I've added in two methods of getting corrections on the pages you write: 1. Automatically, by using LanguageTool. 2. Manually, by allow you to request people you know to review. The former is great for spelling mistakes or simple grammatical errors, but the latter is where you'll eventually get the most out of once you're at more of an advanced level. I haven't found any service yet that can substitute that. Feel free to let me know your thoughts if you decide to give it a try!

xvilka 5y ago

Would be nice to see most popular non-latin alphabet languages support: Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Hindi, Russian.

ianjakobs 5y ago
Definitely! The main reason I haven't yet added support for any of those languages is just that I'm unfamiliar with them, to be honest, as I'd want to make sure they're _fully_ supported, both in terms of translations and corrections. Is there any language in particular you'd like to see added?
- loxias 5y ago
  Another vote for Chinese! (can't wait to show this to a friend who's working on their English)
- drekipus 5y ago
  Chinese for me, but I'm sure there's others needing all 3. What is there to support? You've got to connect it to a translation service? Is there not just a Google API?
  - ianjakobs 5y ago
    It's translations, text-to-speech, and corrections. I'm pretty sure the services I currently use support all this, but there's some things built around that such as word counts for the heat map that will need looking into. I'm certainly interested in adding them though! Will try and look into it soon and let you know.
- xvilka 5y ago
  Yes, I personally would like to see Chinese and Japanese. I would happily pay for Grammarly-like daily use tool as well, in fact, for Chinese. From what I know, there is no such tool for Chinese language whatsoever.
  - 5y ago

encryptluks2 5y ago

I was hoping this was using a markdown engine to create notes, as it would be nice to have something portable and open.

ianjakobs 5y ago
I understand, and that's a fair point. For cards I went with JSON so that I'm able to add structure to translations, e.g. to show alternative translations and example sentences and highlight certain words. That said, I do plan on exposing the API and allowing full data exports, but I haven't gotten to that yet.

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yakkomajuri 5y ago

Looks cool, will try this out

ianjakobs 5y ago
Thanks, feel free to let me know what you think!

adamhp 5y ago

Did you take inspiration from Luca Lampariello? He's a polyglot YouTuber and has a similar approach, of written translation to and from L1 and L2. That community on YouTube may offer a source of ideas, and potentially even some marketing for you.

ianjakobs 5y ago
I can't say I'm familiar with him, but I just had a cursory look and his approach looks interesting (and indeed similar in some regards)! Thanks for the recommendation.