6 ms·

Show HN: ListLang – Learn Languages to Fluency

18 points by klin16 4y ago

Depending on the language, the top 1,000 most frequently used words account for ~85% of all speech and text, and the top 5,000 account for ~95%. It’s really important to learn these words. Learning words in context helps you naturally understand their meaning and use cases, while avoiding the rote memorization of definitions. ListLang helps you achieve fluency by learning the 5,000 most frequently used words in context. Most language learning apps never move past beginner level content. This method requires some basic knowledge, but otherwise it should rapidly increase your level past the intermediate level and into the advanced level. I built this app because I studied Spanish and Russian for many years in school, but when I traveled to Argentina and Russia, I realized I didn’t know enough vocabulary to meaningfully communicate with the people there. I hope it will be helpful for you.

evnix 4y ago
literally this! I speak 7 languages, and I could learn another just enough to have a basic conversation in a week or two. opinion: Most language teaching apps and schools are pointless, and most just want you to keep using them. You need to remember how you learnt your language as a kid, you picked up on the basic vocabulary, tried to make elders understand using a single word along with gestures. grammar came much later. Do not ever start with grammar, Grammar is just a set of artificial arbitrary boundaries drawn by linguists with thousands of exceptions and spoken grammar is also very different from written grammar. do not use the apps or schools that teach grammar, they are a waste of your money and time unless you plan to give an exam. If you are a foreigner in a country, the natives wont care if you have bad grammar or no grammar at all as long as you put in the effort and are able to communicate your points. you can literally communicate in any language knowing just the top 100-200 hundred used words along with a bit of English and hand gestures. 1000 words and you understand most of what they are speaking and with 5000 words, people will think you have lived there for a few years.
allanbjorklund 4y ago
This does look like a nice vocabulary builder. But the only complaint I have is when registering it rejected my last name which has an "ö" in it, saying I can only use letters and numbers. (Which is also the case with HN. :-))
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
masukomi 4y ago
it's not clear from the site what languages are supported. It says there are 20 but is the one i want one of those 20? (for any value of "the one i want" )
- klin16 4y ago
  The current language pairs available are Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Czech, Turkish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Persian, Italian, Polish, and Romanian from English. And English from Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, and Polish.
  - FullyFunctional 4y ago
    Chinese: Mandarin or Cantonese?
    - tmtvl 4y ago
      Modern Simplified + Mandarin, so basically standard PRC Chinese.
      - ngcc_hk 4y ago
        Should at least have Taiwan traditional characters. Cantonese is important as well. Given the panda logo … is there some political thing behind this?
        syncbehind 4y ago
        Higher likelihood that pandas are just cute
  - geekfactor 4y ago
    Brazilian or European Portuguese? Latin American or European Spanish?
Agingcoder 4y ago
I've just tried it (japanese). May I suggest adding (optional) furigana for japanese? The problem with kanji is that you can't read a word you don't already know. Edit: it seems like there's quite a bit of colloquial japanese, which is good (at least for me) . How did you build your corpus? Edit(2): there are lots of bad single word translations (the underlined ones). They either change spontaneously between two fingerpresses, or are just plain wrong. Also, I don't mean to be harsh, but I'm not sure what your app brings that duolingo and kitsun don't already do?
- klin16 4y ago
  I agree. The East Asian languages need work to offer different scripts for Japanese and pinyin for Mandarin Chinese. A volunteer sent me the sentence deck for these courses. The single word translations are also in beta and often incorrect for the East Asian languages, because 1) words aren't separated by spaces, and my word segmentation algorithm v1 is crude 2) the words are fed through to Google Translate api and not a dictionary. I hope to improve on these aspects in the future. I mainly tested the app out on the languages I'm studying (Spanish and Russian), and the popular European languages seem to work well based on my experience and user feedback. I made some quick adaptions to get languages like Japanese to work, but as you're seeing, there's a ways to go for those.
  - Agingcoder 4y ago
    Thanks for the explanation, things are now very clear. In any case, I've been using your app more than I expected to, so it's clearly good. I'm looking forward to future updates!
bGl2YW5j 4y ago
Just downloaded the app... so far it seems like the language learning tool I've been wanting for years. This most-common-vocab-first approach is exactly how I've been learning languages, but have had to make do with the decks available on Anki. I love that ListLang includes listening exercises too. Vocab + listening is the way to go! Thank you for this. It's an incredibly polished app so far, very excited to see how it progresses. Ideally you'll avoid Duolingo's heinous use of forced ads. Anki on IOS costs $40 or so. I'd pay that for ListLang provided it proves itself overtime. What would be helpful: 1. An option to use a classic flashcard format, with one word on it. Fill-in-the-blank can feel a bit hand-holdy. 2. Ability to do listening practice only on sentences learnt so far. I want to practice listening as I learn new words. 3. Sentences in listening practice that use learnt words, but new sentences different to the one used in 'Learn'.
- klin16 4y ago
  I'm glad you enjoy it :) Noted - good ideas. They shouldn't be hard to add, but I just want to make sure they're well-integrated to the design of the app.
mhrmsn 4y ago
Looks really awesome at first glance, been looking for something like this! I learned French vocabulary using Anki for a while, but I always found it difficult to remember more abstract words without context or wasn't sure how exactly they are properly used - actually thought about generating an Anki deck with examples with GPT or pulling examples from one of the online dictionaries/wiktionary. Two questions/comments: Are learned words repeated after some time in some manner? Is it possible to change you username (they seem to be public)?
- klin16 4y ago
  There's a spaced-repetition algorithm underneath to schedule reviews at the optimal time for retention. You can send me an email kevin@listlang.com to update your username. I'll do it for you, since there's no way on the app itself.
dzonga 4y ago
downloaded the android app, gonna give it a try. what sold me - was the no ads / free part. and your direct language.
ibdf 4y ago
LOL at this phrase I was just prompted -> https://i.ibb.co/G9j9zGS/IMG-5166.png https://i.ibb.co/G9j9zGS/IMG-5166.png Actual feedback: - this app seems to be for people that already have a pretty good understanding of the language in which they are learning. It does't explain much, it doesn't try to teach you anything. But it's a nice app for practicing. It's also nice to see some well used sentences and phrases you might not see in a workbook. I would encourage adding apple + google login options.
- klin16 4y ago
  Sorry about that, deleted. And yeah it's aimed towards intermediate learners
mdaniel 4y ago
> Uncaught Error: Unsupported operation: Platform._operatingSystem What in the world does that mean?
- klin16 4y ago
  What OS are you using and where are you seeing this?
  - mdaniel 4y ago
    I see it on the browser console due to an otherwise white screen, and Ubuntu 22.04.1 I have never in my life seen a webapp that cares about the operating system
    - klin16 4y ago
      It's because I wrote this app with cross platform software targeting mobile users. Web was an afterthought, so probably one of the packages isn't compatible with web. I put it there mainly for demo purposes. You'll have better success using it on your phone.
leke 4y ago
Will there be support for international auxillary languages? What would one need to do to get one of these languages on the system?
leke 4y ago
It says it's community moderated. Where is the community?

18 points by klin16 4y ago

evnix 4y ago

literally this! I speak 7 languages, and I could learn another just enough to have a basic conversation in a week or two. opinion: Most language teaching apps and schools are pointless, and most just want you to keep using them. You need to remember how you learnt your language as a kid, you picked up on the basic vocabulary, tried to make elders understand using a single word along with gestures. grammar came much later. Do not ever start with grammar, Grammar is just a set of artificial arbitrary boundaries drawn by linguists with thousands of exceptions and spoken grammar is also very different from written grammar. do not use the apps or schools that teach grammar, they are a waste of your money and time unless you plan to give an exam. If you are a foreigner in a country, the natives wont care if you have bad grammar or no grammar at all as long as you put in the effort and are able to communicate your points. you can literally communicate in any language knowing just the top 100-200 hundred used words along with a bit of English and hand gestures. 1000 words and you understand most of what they are speaking and with 5000 words, people will think you have lived there for a few years.

allanbjorklund 4y ago

This does look like a nice vocabulary builder. But the only complaint I have is when registering it rejected my last name which has an "ö" in it, saying I can only use letters and numbers. (Which is also the case with HN. :-))

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

masukomi 4y ago

it's not clear from the site what languages are supported. It says there are 20 but is the one i want one of those 20? (for any value of "the one i want" )

klin16 4y ago
The current language pairs available are Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Czech, Turkish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Persian, Italian, Polish, and Romanian from English. And English from Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, and Polish.
- FullyFunctional 4y ago
  Chinese: Mandarin or Cantonese?
  - tmtvl 4y ago
    Modern Simplified + Mandarin, so basically standard PRC Chinese.
    - ngcc_hk 4y ago
      Should at least have Taiwan traditional characters. Cantonese is important as well. Given the panda logo … is there some political thing behind this?
      - syncbehind 4y ago
        Higher likelihood that pandas are just cute
- geekfactor 4y ago
  Brazilian or European Portuguese? Latin American or European Spanish?

Agingcoder 4y ago

I've just tried it (japanese). May I suggest adding (optional) furigana for japanese? The problem with kanji is that you can't read a word you don't already know. Edit: it seems like there's quite a bit of colloquial japanese, which is good (at least for me) . How did you build your corpus? Edit(2): there are lots of bad single word translations (the underlined ones). They either change spontaneously between two fingerpresses, or are just plain wrong. Also, I don't mean to be harsh, but I'm not sure what your app brings that duolingo and kitsun don't already do?

klin16 4y ago
I agree. The East Asian languages need work to offer different scripts for Japanese and pinyin for Mandarin Chinese. A volunteer sent me the sentence deck for these courses. The single word translations are also in beta and often incorrect for the East Asian languages, because 1) words aren't separated by spaces, and my word segmentation algorithm v1 is crude 2) the words are fed through to Google Translate api and not a dictionary. I hope to improve on these aspects in the future. I mainly tested the app out on the languages I'm studying (Spanish and Russian), and the popular European languages seem to work well based on my experience and user feedback. I made some quick adaptions to get languages like Japanese to work, but as you're seeing, there's a ways to go for those.
- Agingcoder 4y ago
  Thanks for the explanation, things are now very clear. In any case, I've been using your app more than I expected to, so it's clearly good. I'm looking forward to future updates!

bGl2YW5j 4y ago

Just downloaded the app... so far it seems like the language learning tool I've been wanting for years. This most-common-vocab-first approach is exactly how I've been learning languages, but have had to make do with the decks available on Anki. I love that ListLang includes listening exercises too. Vocab + listening is the way to go! Thank you for this. It's an incredibly polished app so far, very excited to see how it progresses. Ideally you'll avoid Duolingo's heinous use of forced ads. Anki on IOS costs $40 or so. I'd pay that for ListLang provided it proves itself overtime. What would be helpful: 1. An option to use a classic flashcard format, with one word on it. Fill-in-the-blank can feel a bit hand-holdy. 2. Ability to do listening practice only on sentences learnt so far. I want to practice listening as I learn new words. 3. Sentences in listening practice that use learnt words, but new sentences different to the one used in 'Learn'.

klin16 4y ago
I'm glad you enjoy it :) Noted - good ideas. They shouldn't be hard to add, but I just want to make sure they're well-integrated to the design of the app.

mhrmsn 4y ago

Looks really awesome at first glance, been looking for something like this! I learned French vocabulary using Anki for a while, but I always found it difficult to remember more abstract words without context or wasn't sure how exactly they are properly used - actually thought about generating an Anki deck with examples with GPT or pulling examples from one of the online dictionaries/wiktionary. Two questions/comments: Are learned words repeated after some time in some manner? Is it possible to change you username (they seem to be public)?

klin16 4y ago
There's a spaced-repetition algorithm underneath to schedule reviews at the optimal time for retention. You can send me an email kevin@listlang.com to update your username. I'll do it for you, since there's no way on the app itself.

dzonga 4y ago

downloaded the android app, gonna give it a try. what sold me - was the no ads / free part. and your direct language.

ibdf 4y ago

LOL at this phrase I was just prompted -> https://i.ibb.co/G9j9zGS/IMG-5166.png https://i.ibb.co/G9j9zGS/IMG-5166.png Actual feedback: - this app seems to be for people that already have a pretty good understanding of the language in which they are learning. It does't explain much, it doesn't try to teach you anything. But it's a nice app for practicing. It's also nice to see some well used sentences and phrases you might not see in a workbook. I would encourage adding apple + google login options.

klin16 4y ago
Sorry about that, deleted. And yeah it's aimed towards intermediate learners

mdaniel 4y ago

> Uncaught Error: Unsupported operation: Platform._operatingSystem What in the world does that mean?

klin16 4y ago
What OS are you using and where are you seeing this?
- mdaniel 4y ago
  I see it on the browser console due to an otherwise white screen, and Ubuntu 22.04.1 I have never in my life seen a webapp that cares about the operating system
  - klin16 4y ago
    It's because I wrote this app with cross platform software targeting mobile users. Web was an afterthought, so probably one of the packages isn't compatible with web. I put it there mainly for demo purposes. You'll have better success using it on your phone.

leke 4y ago

Will there be support for international auxillary languages? What would one need to do to get one of these languages on the system?

leke 4y ago

It says it's community moderated. Where is the community?