8 ms·

The Whole App is a Blob

164 points by valzevul 10mo ago

culebron21 10mo ago
I learned 5 foreign languages different ways, and the one I'm most proficient in, Italian, I learned the hardest way, doing grammar excercises, where for every of 31 paragraphs of the manual (each paragraph containing 2-3 grammatical phoenomena), I had to articulate ~200 sentences, each from scratch. I abandoned flashcards on the 2nd or 3rd month of learning. I also attended a discussion club, which gave that tiny bit of "coffeeshop" language the author speaks about. 1,5 years into learning, I passed CILS exam for level C (it would be C1 nowadays). My worst language in is German, where every manual is well elaborated in terms of graphical design, but every exercise askss you to insert a word or two into a sentence. Or pick an answer from a set. Basically, Duolinguo sent to printer. So after couple of years of working with teachers and taking intensive courses, my level is B1..2. I can listen to radio and understand something, I can read something. I actually can speak in a shop -- they'll understand my level and speak accordingly -- but I can't do a normal conversation. I couldn't find a teacher that doesn't just drill you through these same fancy books. "A friend who had been learning some language in Duolinguo and then couldn't say a sentence to a native", should be proverbial nowadays. So, despite the app idea being interesting and compelling, this teaching approach, picking correct options from lists, are good for testing (if the subject is given little enough time), but futile at teaching.
- Mikhail_Edoshin 10mo ago
  When I was an adolescent boy, my teacher gave me a beautifully looking "scientific" encyclopedia, translated into Russian from a British original. Graphically it was a masterpiece; I think it was used as one of samples in in Alan Hurlburt's "The Grid". Yet as I tried to read it I was somewhat puzzled and disappointed. Normally as I read a scientific book for my age I could form a coherent big picture. If I could not, then the material was hard, so I had to re-read, write things down, explain to myself and I would finally get it. Yet with this encyclopedia I could not get even a glimpse of the big picture. A factoid here, a factoid there, all very well illustrated, the whole book in full color, which was rare those days, but without any links between those factoids. As a Russian saying goes, it all flew into one ear and flew out from another. Nothing stayed. I've got much more from a modest physics schoolbook where I re-read every topic and derived every formula.
- awesome_dude 10mo ago
  > A friend who had been learning some language in Duolinguo and then couldn't say a sentence to a native, should be proverbial nowadays. I tried to learn Mandarin via Duolingo, and whilst I agree that the "multi choice" style isn't great for learning a language I did notice that I was picking up fragments of what native speakers were saying around me.
- dgfl 10mo ago
  For once, the Italian fascination with grammar and sentence analysis comes useful. For some context, when moving abroad I felt that most other countries don’t really teach grammar and language analysis to the point that we do in Italy. I did attend a language-focused school, which obviously leaned even more towards this tendency; but I get the impression that most competent teens graduating italian schools have a more extensive grammar-related vocabulary than other cultures. It makes sense then that Italian learning books would be more focused on grammar compared to other languages. I felt it extended to how we were taught English as well (i.e. the opposite direction). I don’t think it is the absolute best tactic for language learning, but perhaps it is the best one when restricted to purely written exercises. I’d be curious to know whether you had a similar impression. My evidence is all anecdotal, mostly from talking to various people around Europe.
  - culebron21 10mo ago
    The Italian textbook was actually written by a Russian, Yulia Dobrovoskaya, in 1960s (with refrences to Rodari, Togliatti, and partigiani). But I guess she learnt from the native speakers and the literate culture. (After learning Spanish and Portuguese, the sophistication of Italian speech and writing outshines every other language to me.)
  - darkwater 10mo ago
    > For some context, when moving abroad I felt that most other countries don’t really teach grammar and language analysis to the point that we do in Italy. Yep, I have to agree, as an Italian living abroad. In my case, I now have kids on the verge of finishing primary school and - maybe they will start next year who knows - I haven't seen grammar taught that much. Ironically they have more grammar exercises when studying English than the native tongues. But maybe it's just a "modern school" thing...
  - voidmain0001 10mo ago
    I'm a native English speaker and taught myself Spanish. I focused heavily on grammar and verb conjugation such that I can explain verb tenses and their uses to someone else learning Spanish, yet I struggle to explain the same to an English learner. Either I didn't care enough to pay attention during my English courses or it's not taught.
- actionfromafar 10mo ago
  You could try the opposite angle with German - watch movies and shows in German, no subtitles. Maybe start with something aimed at children. Sprinkle in some Dutch to mix it up. It can be useful in real-world situations, depending on region.
  - Gravityloss 10mo ago
    or have subtitles in German at first. Also helps if you repeat some catch phrases aloud. Especially fun if you're watching together with someone. One cool effect is that your vocabulary can be heavily concentrated on what you're watching. Like police procedures. (in Alte they speak very clear German, can recommend.)
    - culebron21 10mo ago
      The only case for me, when subtitles helped, was watching British TV series, first without subtitles, then with them, and improving listening. But only after all the grammatical heavy lifting.
  - culebron21 10mo ago
    These passive approaches don't work at all. I tried this with Portuguese, French (which I don't consider learnt at all), and German as well. Before I took a good teacher's classes, I had been listening German radio for 2 years, learned nothing of substance. Portuguese, which I do speak, probably even at B2, is the language that I learned through radio, thanks to similarities to Italian and Spanish, and in which I feel the least confident. All my progress with it was when I was actually using it -- spoken or written, looking up dictionaries.
    - actionfromafar 10mo ago
      I think YMMV here. If you watch a movie without subtitles, you are sort of forced to pick up understanding, or you won't get anything out of it. This is maybe not the best way to get started, but it helped me getting to a fluent level when talking to people, specifically the "listening and understanding" part. Before, I could read and write (horribly, but legibly, mostly), but would very often draw a blank when it came to understanding what people said.
- mzhaase 10mo ago
  Italian is also very easy to learn while German makes absolutely no sense. A turnip is female, the fishmongers wife is neutral, a boy is male, a girl is neutral, the wife is female. Plural of Tür is Türen plural of Öffnung is Öffnungen, plural of Vogel is Vögel plural of Fenster is.. Fenster. Hundreds of unspoken rules regarding word order, some verbs that can be separated and others cannot.. Completely random. And good luck even being able to hear the difference between spucken and spuken if your language doesn't have long vs. short vowels.
  - miroljub 10mo ago
    > Italian is also very easy to learn If your native language is similar, for example, Romanian or Spanish, sure it is. For the others, not really. > while German makes absolutely no sense. Mark Twain also complained about it. > A turnip is female, the fishmongers wife is neutral, a boy is male, a girl is neutral, the wife is female. Plural of Tür is Türen plural of Öffnung is Öffnungen, plural of Vogel is Vögel plural of Fenster is.. Fenster. So as in basically every language that has a grammatical gender. If it's not the same as in your native language, it won't make sense, and you'll need to learn it. After some time, you'll notice the pattern and will be able to guess accurately. > Hundreds of unspoken rules regarding word order, some verbs that can be separated and others cannot.. Completely random. The rules are well understood and clearly written. You just need to learn them. > And good luck even being able to hear the difference between spucken and spuken if your language doesn't have long vs. short vowels. Isn't that the case about every foreign language? I was never able to distinguish or pronounce correctly French diphthongs. I'm pretty sure half of the people here wouldn't be able to pronounce a couple of sounds from my native language even if their lives depended on it.
  - Joker_vD 10mo ago
    To this very day I can't hear the difference between e.g. "sit" and "seat", or "eat" and "it". I can pronounce them no problem, but hearing it? Nope, those two are the same sounds. Well, whatever, the context is always disambiguating enough. But I can hear the difference between short/long (as in, differing in actual temporal duration) vowels just fine, e.g. in Finnish/Latvian ― although those languages kinda overextend it IMHO.
- andrepd 10mo ago
  I've had excellent results for French with a series of books called Grammaire Progressive du Français. Self-contained lessons of grammar. Vocabulary is easier because I already spoke a language with significant cross-pollination with French vocabulary. It's not an "app" and doesn't have a "streak" or an "HP bar", so...
  - fransje26 10mo ago
    And if you really like to suffer, you can do it like the locals and try working through a copy of le "Bescherelle"..
- integralid 10mo ago
  That's a nice story, but I think restricting yourself to exactly one teaching methods is needlessly limited. Yes, you probably need a proper textbook and (ideally) a teacher to learn grammar and the language rules. This is hard work, but IMO gamified apps make users a huge disservice by handwaving this and hoping the user magically figures it all out. But, like the author found out, grammar alone won't make you fluent. I'm personally very fond of flashcards (Anki). Yes, memorizing words is just a part of language learning, but it's important and FSRS is extremely good at it. Way better than repeatedly reading a textbook. I personally hate duolingo for many reasons (it doesn't work for me), but some of my friends use it. This touches another important thing: regularity. Gamified apps and flashcards make it easy to form a habit. You can complete your daily lesson in a bus. And they are (more) fun. Even ineffective learning method is better than nothing. Finally, ymmv and there's no one size fits all. I got pretty good (fluent and communicative) by in Russian by initially just studying flashcards (followed by reading and listening - another very important component) - because grammar is similar to my native (Slavic) language and I could, actually, figure out most of it. Textbooks came much later. It was not as easy with German... PS. worth noting that the author explicitly says that this app is meant to teach you just the very basics and numerals, not for language learning
- thedanbob 10mo ago
  > "A friend who had been learning some language in Duolinguo and then couldn't say a sentence to a native", should be proverbial nowadays. I tried picking up some German via Duolingo once. I thought it was going great, pretty soon I was up to full sentences. Then one day I realized (because my voice teacher sometimes makes me translate the foreign language songs) that I wasn't learning German sentences, I was learning English sentences substituted with German words. German grammar is completely different. I haven't touched Duolingo since.
  - stronglikedan 10mo ago
    At least with Duolingo's Spanish course, the differences in grammar are among the first things they teach. Weird that it would be different with German.
    - thedanbob 10mo ago
      It's been almost 10 years so maybe they do it differently now. I just remember they made a big deal about the gendered nouns but nothing about the fact that sentences weren't even close to correctly structured. And too be fair, maybe that was coming later and they didn't want to overwhelm people, but a quick explanation would have been nice.
  - ponector 10mo ago
    What is your approach to learn German?
    - thedanbob 10mo ago
      I haven't tried since that one attempt. I've picked up a few words from learning German songs as part of my voice training, but otherwise it's not useful enough to me to take the time and effort.
  - kot_manul 10mo ago
    I experienced the same thing with both German and Dutch while trying to learn them via Duolingo over a period of 6 months or so. After all the drilling and gamified lessons I never even started to feel like I was actually _learning_ these languages. With German I figured was just me being stupid or not grokking it properly; it's different enough from English to "feel" very foreign. But Dutch isn't that different. I remember only two sentences from the Dutch Duolingo, maybe because they were constantly repeated: "Ik ben een appel." (I am an apple.) and: "Nee, je bent geen appel!" (No, you are not an apple!) For comparison, I did self-study with Japanese in my teens and learned enough to ace the first 1.5 years of college Japanese instruction without much effort. And I remember taking Spanish classes in high school and to this day can at least fumble my way through a basic conversation. In contrast the only use I would have for what I learned of Dutch via Duolingo would be if I came across someone having a psychotic break. You're _not_ an apple, dude. Granted, I spent more time with both Spanish and Japanese than with any language I tried with Duolingo, but my point is simply that Duolingo just doesn't make languages "click", at least not for me and apparently not for a bunch of others either.
- burkaman 10mo ago
  What was "the manual" that you used for Italian?
- neutronicus 10mo ago
  Hmm. I learned Hebrew in Duolingo and I've in fact spoken many sentences to natives. All the Israeli women we know are always negatively comparing their American Jewish husbands to me, the goy who learned Hebrew from Duolingo. Granted, those natives are either married to me or related to someone who is. So maybe that component is essential.
  - culebron21 10mo ago
    Ok, it may work if you're in the language ambient, IDK. The situation of most learners is different: we live in our countries, there are very few if any speakers of target language, or they're too busy.
esjeon 10mo ago
An interesting story, a tech post with a rich intimate personal story, I enjoyed it pretty much. But, in my first attempt to read it, I got totally lost in the very first part. I had to go back and forth to understand where it was coming from and where it is heading. I think a little bit of guidance at the beginning would not hurt, for example something like: “this is my personal journey related to the design of an app,” maybe in light gray and italic.
dmje 10mo ago
This writing had an interesting effect on me. I went in knowing nothing about the app or author and frankly having no need for whatever it was he might be selling. But by the time I finished reading I was significantly amused and interested that I’m going to go check his stuff out. What I’m trying to say is that this is someone who can really, really write - he’s deeply funny and self deprecating, but obviously also knows his shit, big-time. And that’s a massively powerful skill, maybe as much of a skill as being able to write Swift or make great interfaces or ship an app. > “If you grew up with Tamagotchis, you already understand why this was tempting. Not the “cute pixel pet” part. The part where a device the size of a digestive biscuit turns into a low-resolution hostage negotiator.” This is irritatingly good and it makes me want to buy his products and subscribe to his RSS feed. Great writing is powerful magic.
- nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago
  Yes I would want this person designing my app because it is clear they are very curious and into the craft.
- anonymous908213 10mo ago
  Funny, that was around the point in the article where I was beginning to get irritated reading it because it felt like reading LLM output. LLMs love melodramatic headers ("THE CHILDHOOD TRAUMA"), outlandish and not particularly coherent metaphors ("hostage negotiator"), the overly terse arrow constructions that I've never seen a human write in my life ("something that feels less like “open app → consume lesson” and more like “tap creature → it looks at you → you do a small thing together”"), the segue into a redundant list of bullet points, the pointless not x but y ("The blob wasn’t a mascot here, it was the interface") which poorly establishes a contrast where it doesn't make sense to. The funniest part to me is that I suspect the LLM generated the line about the 4th of July, and the suspected prompter being British, felt the need to insert an explanation for why "they" would reference it, in a voice/cadence that doesn't really match the rest of the article: > "Confetti, fireworks, the whole 4th of July experience (I've seen it only in movies though, not sure why but it's not celebrated in the UK)" I can't definitively say this is LLM-generated, but it resembled it enough so that I still came away annoyed for having read it.
fainpul 10mo ago
From the title, I assumed this is about an app distributed as a binary blob. Regarding learning languages, I'm not a fan of this style of learning. It seems to me this is still Duolingo, just with a different interface. I had good success with https://www.languagetransfer.org/ https://www.languagetransfer.org/
- Cthulhu_ 10mo ago
  Yeah I heard a criticism of e.g. Duolingo the other day; even after two years on it daily, you'll know plenty of words and I suppose simple sentences, but you can't actually speak or comprehend the language, not unlike what the OP mentions. I haven't learned a new language since high school, but I think to learn one you need immersion. Individual words for sure, but the focus should quickly go to reading whole sentences / paragraphs / books, listening to native speakers in their natural environment, and (probably the most difficult one to do on an app) speaking / conversation practice. I only know English well because of daily exposure through media and twenty years of shitposting on the internet.
  - dctoedt 10mo ago
    > (probably the most difficult one to do on an app) speaking / conversation practice. Conversation practice with humans [0] is key: As a child I had complete, native-level fluency in French, because my first few years of school were in the local schools of a farm village in the interior of France (my US Air Force dad was stationed at a nearby air base). All through high school and college back in the U.S., I took French for the easy A. But now mumble years later, when my wife and I watch French TV shows on Netflix, I have to rely on the subtitles because I just can't keep up. I've read comments by people from non-English-speaking countries who say they learned English by watching Friends on TV. I can't imagine how they did it. [0] Maybe someday an AI could substitute for a human native speaker in conversation practice?
- swiftcoder 10mo ago
  > I had good success with https://www.languagetransfer.org/ https://www.languagetransfer.org/ Yeah, I tend to think for the specific case of languages that share a common root, language transfer is unbeatable value (especially since it's entirely free).
mattkrause 10mo ago
I like the idea—I hate freezing up while retrieving something I “know—-but the app itself seems a bit thin. I got to level thirteen having seen only four verbs (aller, faire, être, and parler) and mostly in the present.
- sandblast 10mo ago
  It looks like the developer was so hooked on the idea of making it minimalistic, he forgot to make it a language-learning app. So it's a blob with a backstory. Design with no substance.
tigranbs 10mo ago
This is definitely not applicable to every app, BUT that's a very clever way of solving UX problems with "face"- based animations and expressions, giving users feedback. At the same time, you do stuff in the background. I have seen this for the first time in the Airbnb apps, but only in 1-2 cases, and they use Lottie animations, not directly tied to UI events.
ocean2 10mo ago
This is a great app! I wish it would allow to go through all verb tenses in French. If I can help you with that don't hesitate to reach out to me.
tmountain 10mo ago
I built a language app when it first became viable with GPT and also went the avatar as UI route. It presents a unique set of challenges nd constraints, but I spent the most time just trying to get the mouth to sync with the audio. Fun experience for sure. Regarding learning languages, I have stopped building and relying on apps, as I spend too much time mucking with the app and not enough time on the language. The highest potency practice I have found is transcribing podcasts. It’s a major headache, but it really pushes you forward regarding listening, writing, and spelling.
raincole 10mo ago
(Off-topic) I'm convinced that the ideal language learning app should look like this: 1. A HUGH repository of raw materials, both in text and in audio. They are all written/recorded by native speakers, not non-native language teachers. 1.5. (Optional) The materials come with supplemental vocabulary lists and grammar guides. 2. You take a test. 3. It recommends materials for you to read/listen to, according your proficiency level shown in the test. 3.5. (Opt-in) it can read your YouTube history and social media to recommend materials that you might like. 4. Every month or every N hours of reading/listening, you take a new test to recalibrate your proficiency level. That's it. However due to copyright issues, I don't expect to see such an app in near future. What a bummer. (Not-so-off-topic) Personally I consider all the apps that don't resemble the above workflow "dictionary-like" (useful but as a reference tool, not a learning tool) or "Duolingo-like" (a healthier alternative to doomscrolling, but nothing more). The article sounds Duolingo-like.
- amelius 10mo ago
  Immersion is important, so I'd expect AI in there, or video calls with native speakers.
- yorwba 10mo ago
  Yes, the huge repository of raw materials is likely the hardest part. You can try crowdsourced collections ( https://tatoeba.org https://tatoeba.org , https://datacollective.mozillafoundation.org/datasets?q=common+voice https://datacollective.mozillafoundation.org/datasets?q=comm... , https://opus.nlpl.eu/OpenSubtitles/corpus/version/OpenSubtitles https://opus.nlpl.eu/OpenSubtitles/corpus/version/OpenSubtit... ) but you'll quickly run into data quality issues. My personal solution is to do manual data curation on the fly, but I think an app that occasionally throws up garbage and asks its users to pick out the good parts is unlikely to get popular.
  - amelius 10mo ago
    Maybe the free version of the app could do the collaborative filtering part. And in the paid version you'd get the high quality content.
stevoski 10mo ago
What a great writer! Slightly off-topic, but when learning to speak a new language, it is helpful to actually speak the language as often as you can. There are a couple of websites that make it easy to book short conversation practice with native speakers. The one I use to practice Spanish is italki. I find the practice of actually speaking, no matter how badly, helps way more than any app.
- zdc1 10mo ago
  Agreed. I'm learning Chinese and while apps are lovely, nothing will prepare you for the pure amount of variation in accents across the world. Real world immersion becomes important for your brain to get used to mapping certain sounds to certain words. I've also realised it's same for English, except we don't really think about it since we're used to the sounds, but the way we'd say "I went to the market" in daily speech is night and day to how it would be enunciated during an English speaking class (e.g. uh wen tu-th markt vs eye weynt too thee marr-ket). To the unpracticed ear they can just sound like different sentences.
- sureMan6 10mo ago
  The entire thing is mostly AI written transparently
JodieBenitez 10mo ago
> as far as I could tell that day, a collective commitment to not speaking English. Ah... those pesky people speaking their very own language instead of the (ahem...) lingua franca.
- skywhopper 10mo ago
  Yeah, with this line the author completely lost me. What did he expect them to do? Does he think of himself as steadfastly committed to not speaking Japanese, Bantu, Hindi, and Algonquin? (I realize it was (hopefully) meant in jest-ish, but there are better ways to make the point.)
  - kolektiv 10mo ago
    This might be a British humoUr thing - as a local it read very much as a self-deprecating jab at our own English-centric travelling. Taken literally obviously it would be offensive, but it's not meant that way. I note that the author lives in Edinburgh, a place which has a reputation for quite dry, understated and self-deprecating style to start with - understandably, as the only way to stand the hordes clogging the Mile and other picturesque spots.
  - orthoxerox 10mo ago
    He expected them to speak the barest minimum of English, so speakers of Japanese, Bantu, Hindi, and Algonquin do not have to learn more than one foreign language when vacationing abroad. Honestly, I myself learn one emergency phrase in the native language, "I am sorry, please repeat this as if I have a learning disability". Upon hearing this my vis-a-vis would either actually switch to a slow and dumbed-down register of their native language or realize they won't lose face by speaking bad English to me.
    - integralid 10mo ago
      >He expected them to speak the barest minimum of English, so speakers of Japanese, Bantu, Hindi, and Algonquin do not have to learn more than one foreign language when vacationing abroad. Why are speakers of Japanese, Banty, Hindi and Algonquin vacationing abroad a problem of locals who just want to live their own life?... Most people do learn English for one reason or another, but "entertaining tourists" is not one of them.
npodbielski 10mo ago
Idea for an app is quite nice. My kids would love it. I just can't understand how can adult person be so traumatized by silly mistake in a coffee shop, so they will build an entire app to learn a language so this will not happen again. I mean, I understand you made an error and you could not understand native speaker. Happens to me a lot of times with English and British people. But situation that you may not understand someone speaking foreign language abroad is expected. For me at least. How can you call it a humiliation? Just smile and ask politely to repeat because you do not understand. Point at you ear, which should be understand by everyone that you did not hear. Or look at register and check the price. Or just give them much more that you think it really cost and wait for a change. Awkwardly looking at your phone seems a bit rude.
philipallstar 10mo ago
> Your life is allowed to exist I like this article, but statements like this go far too far. An app cannot disallow someone's life. It's not that important.
- swiftcoder 10mo ago
  > An app cannot disallow someone's life Tell that to the folks busy turning every app into a miniature casino...
6510 10mo ago
The concept seems awesome and quite unexplored. Very inspiring.
dangus 10mo ago
Canada is bilingual by law and primary school curriculum, so I would personally not feel embarrassed or that I was imposing on others to converse in English. Cool app though.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]

164 points by valzevul 10mo ago

I learned 5 foreign languages different ways, and the one I'm most proficient in, Italian, I learned the hardest way, doing grammar excercises, where for every of 31 paragraphs of the manual (each paragraph containing 2-3 grammatical phoenomena), I had to articulate ~200 sentences, each from scratch. I abandoned flashcards on the 2nd or 3rd month of learning. I also attended a discussion club, which gave that tiny bit of "coffeeshop" language the author speaks about. 1,5 years into learning, I passed CILS exam for level C (it would be C1 nowadays). My worst language in is German, where every manual is well elaborated in terms of graphical design, but every exercise askss you to insert a word or two into a sentence. Or pick an answer from a set. Basically, Duolinguo sent to printer. So after couple of years of working with teachers and taking intensive courses, my level is B1..2. I can listen to radio and understand something, I can read something. I actually can speak in a shop -- they'll understand my level and speak accordingly -- but I can't do a normal conversation. I couldn't find a teacher that doesn't just drill you through these same fancy books. "A friend who had been learning some language in Duolinguo and then couldn't say a sentence to a native", should be proverbial nowadays. So, despite the app idea being interesting and compelling, this teaching approach, picking correct options from lists, are good for testing (if the subject is given little enough time), but futile at teaching.

Mikhail_Edoshin 10mo ago
When I was an adolescent boy, my teacher gave me a beautifully looking "scientific" encyclopedia, translated into Russian from a British original. Graphically it was a masterpiece; I think it was used as one of samples in in Alan Hurlburt's "The Grid". Yet as I tried to read it I was somewhat puzzled and disappointed. Normally as I read a scientific book for my age I could form a coherent big picture. If I could not, then the material was hard, so I had to re-read, write things down, explain to myself and I would finally get it. Yet with this encyclopedia I could not get even a glimpse of the big picture. A factoid here, a factoid there, all very well illustrated, the whole book in full color, which was rare those days, but without any links between those factoids. As a Russian saying goes, it all flew into one ear and flew out from another. Nothing stayed. I've got much more from a modest physics schoolbook where I re-read every topic and derived every formula.
awesome_dude 10mo ago
> A friend who had been learning some language in Duolinguo and then couldn't say a sentence to a native, should be proverbial nowadays. I tried to learn Mandarin via Duolingo, and whilst I agree that the "multi choice" style isn't great for learning a language I did notice that I was picking up fragments of what native speakers were saying around me.
dgfl 10mo ago
For once, the Italian fascination with grammar and sentence analysis comes useful. For some context, when moving abroad I felt that most other countries don’t really teach grammar and language analysis to the point that we do in Italy. I did attend a language-focused school, which obviously leaned even more towards this tendency; but I get the impression that most competent teens graduating italian schools have a more extensive grammar-related vocabulary than other cultures. It makes sense then that Italian learning books would be more focused on grammar compared to other languages. I felt it extended to how we were taught English as well (i.e. the opposite direction). I don’t think it is the absolute best tactic for language learning, but perhaps it is the best one when restricted to purely written exercises. I’d be curious to know whether you had a similar impression. My evidence is all anecdotal, mostly from talking to various people around Europe.
- culebron21 10mo ago
  The Italian textbook was actually written by a Russian, Yulia Dobrovoskaya, in 1960s (with refrences to Rodari, Togliatti, and partigiani). But I guess she learnt from the native speakers and the literate culture. (After learning Spanish and Portuguese, the sophistication of Italian speech and writing outshines every other language to me.)
- darkwater 10mo ago
  > For some context, when moving abroad I felt that most other countries don’t really teach grammar and language analysis to the point that we do in Italy. Yep, I have to agree, as an Italian living abroad. In my case, I now have kids on the verge of finishing primary school and - maybe they will start next year who knows - I haven't seen grammar taught that much. Ironically they have more grammar exercises when studying English than the native tongues. But maybe it's just a "modern school" thing...
- voidmain0001 10mo ago
  I'm a native English speaker and taught myself Spanish. I focused heavily on grammar and verb conjugation such that I can explain verb tenses and their uses to someone else learning Spanish, yet I struggle to explain the same to an English learner. Either I didn't care enough to pay attention during my English courses or it's not taught.
actionfromafar 10mo ago
You could try the opposite angle with German - watch movies and shows in German, no subtitles. Maybe start with something aimed at children. Sprinkle in some Dutch to mix it up. It can be useful in real-world situations, depending on region.
- Gravityloss 10mo ago
  or have subtitles in German at first. Also helps if you repeat some catch phrases aloud. Especially fun if you're watching together with someone. One cool effect is that your vocabulary can be heavily concentrated on what you're watching. Like police procedures. (in Alte they speak very clear German, can recommend.)
  - culebron21 10mo ago
    The only case for me, when subtitles helped, was watching British TV series, first without subtitles, then with them, and improving listening. But only after all the grammatical heavy lifting.
- culebron21 10mo ago
  These passive approaches don't work at all. I tried this with Portuguese, French (which I don't consider learnt at all), and German as well. Before I took a good teacher's classes, I had been listening German radio for 2 years, learned nothing of substance. Portuguese, which I do speak, probably even at B2, is the language that I learned through radio, thanks to similarities to Italian and Spanish, and in which I feel the least confident. All my progress with it was when I was actually using it -- spoken or written, looking up dictionaries.
  - actionfromafar 10mo ago
    I think YMMV here. If you watch a movie without subtitles, you are sort of forced to pick up understanding, or you won't get anything out of it. This is maybe not the best way to get started, but it helped me getting to a fluent level when talking to people, specifically the "listening and understanding" part. Before, I could read and write (horribly, but legibly, mostly), but would very often draw a blank when it came to understanding what people said.
mzhaase 10mo ago
Italian is also very easy to learn while German makes absolutely no sense. A turnip is female, the fishmongers wife is neutral, a boy is male, a girl is neutral, the wife is female. Plural of Tür is Türen plural of Öffnung is Öffnungen, plural of Vogel is Vögel plural of Fenster is.. Fenster. Hundreds of unspoken rules regarding word order, some verbs that can be separated and others cannot.. Completely random. And good luck even being able to hear the difference between spucken and spuken if your language doesn't have long vs. short vowels.
- miroljub 10mo ago
  > Italian is also very easy to learn If your native language is similar, for example, Romanian or Spanish, sure it is. For the others, not really. > while German makes absolutely no sense. Mark Twain also complained about it. > A turnip is female, the fishmongers wife is neutral, a boy is male, a girl is neutral, the wife is female. Plural of Tür is Türen plural of Öffnung is Öffnungen, plural of Vogel is Vögel plural of Fenster is.. Fenster. So as in basically every language that has a grammatical gender. If it's not the same as in your native language, it won't make sense, and you'll need to learn it. After some time, you'll notice the pattern and will be able to guess accurately. > Hundreds of unspoken rules regarding word order, some verbs that can be separated and others cannot.. Completely random. The rules are well understood and clearly written. You just need to learn them. > And good luck even being able to hear the difference between spucken and spuken if your language doesn't have long vs. short vowels. Isn't that the case about every foreign language? I was never able to distinguish or pronounce correctly French diphthongs. I'm pretty sure half of the people here wouldn't be able to pronounce a couple of sounds from my native language even if their lives depended on it.
- Joker_vD 10mo ago
  To this very day I can't hear the difference between e.g. "sit" and "seat", or "eat" and "it". I can pronounce them no problem, but hearing it? Nope, those two are the same sounds. Well, whatever, the context is always disambiguating enough. But I can hear the difference between short/long (as in, differing in actual temporal duration) vowels just fine, e.g. in Finnish/Latvian ― although those languages kinda overextend it IMHO.
andrepd 10mo ago
I've had excellent results for French with a series of books called Grammaire Progressive du Français. Self-contained lessons of grammar. Vocabulary is easier because I already spoke a language with significant cross-pollination with French vocabulary. It's not an "app" and doesn't have a "streak" or an "HP bar", so...
- fransje26 10mo ago
  And if you really like to suffer, you can do it like the locals and try working through a copy of le "Bescherelle"..
integralid 10mo ago
That's a nice story, but I think restricting yourself to exactly one teaching methods is needlessly limited. Yes, you probably need a proper textbook and (ideally) a teacher to learn grammar and the language rules. This is hard work, but IMO gamified apps make users a huge disservice by handwaving this and hoping the user magically figures it all out. But, like the author found out, grammar alone won't make you fluent. I'm personally very fond of flashcards (Anki). Yes, memorizing words is just a part of language learning, but it's important and FSRS is extremely good at it. Way better than repeatedly reading a textbook. I personally hate duolingo for many reasons (it doesn't work for me), but some of my friends use it. This touches another important thing: regularity. Gamified apps and flashcards make it easy to form a habit. You can complete your daily lesson in a bus. And they are (more) fun. Even ineffective learning method is better than nothing. Finally, ymmv and there's no one size fits all. I got pretty good (fluent and communicative) by in Russian by initially just studying flashcards (followed by reading and listening - another very important component) - because grammar is similar to my native (Slavic) language and I could, actually, figure out most of it. Textbooks came much later. It was not as easy with German... PS. worth noting that the author explicitly says that this app is meant to teach you just the very basics and numerals, not for language learning
thedanbob 10mo ago
> "A friend who had been learning some language in Duolinguo and then couldn't say a sentence to a native", should be proverbial nowadays. I tried picking up some German via Duolingo once. I thought it was going great, pretty soon I was up to full sentences. Then one day I realized (because my voice teacher sometimes makes me translate the foreign language songs) that I wasn't learning German sentences, I was learning English sentences substituted with German words. German grammar is completely different. I haven't touched Duolingo since.
- stronglikedan 10mo ago
  At least with Duolingo's Spanish course, the differences in grammar are among the first things they teach. Weird that it would be different with German.
  - thedanbob 10mo ago
    It's been almost 10 years so maybe they do it differently now. I just remember they made a big deal about the gendered nouns but nothing about the fact that sentences weren't even close to correctly structured. And too be fair, maybe that was coming later and they didn't want to overwhelm people, but a quick explanation would have been nice.
- ponector 10mo ago
  What is your approach to learn German?
  - thedanbob 10mo ago
    I haven't tried since that one attempt. I've picked up a few words from learning German songs as part of my voice training, but otherwise it's not useful enough to me to take the time and effort.
- kot_manul 10mo ago
  I experienced the same thing with both German and Dutch while trying to learn them via Duolingo over a period of 6 months or so. After all the drilling and gamified lessons I never even started to feel like I was actually _learning_ these languages. With German I figured was just me being stupid or not grokking it properly; it's different enough from English to "feel" very foreign. But Dutch isn't that different. I remember only two sentences from the Dutch Duolingo, maybe because they were constantly repeated: "Ik ben een appel." (I am an apple.) and: "Nee, je bent geen appel!" (No, you are not an apple!) For comparison, I did self-study with Japanese in my teens and learned enough to ace the first 1.5 years of college Japanese instruction without much effort. And I remember taking Spanish classes in high school and to this day can at least fumble my way through a basic conversation. In contrast the only use I would have for what I learned of Dutch via Duolingo would be if I came across someone having a psychotic break. You're _not_ an apple, dude. Granted, I spent more time with both Spanish and Japanese than with any language I tried with Duolingo, but my point is simply that Duolingo just doesn't make languages "click", at least not for me and apparently not for a bunch of others either.
burkaman 10mo ago
What was "the manual" that you used for Italian?
neutronicus 10mo ago
Hmm. I learned Hebrew in Duolingo and I've in fact spoken many sentences to natives. All the Israeli women we know are always negatively comparing their American Jewish husbands to me, the goy who learned Hebrew from Duolingo. Granted, those natives are either married to me or related to someone who is. So maybe that component is essential.
- culebron21 10mo ago
  Ok, it may work if you're in the language ambient, IDK. The situation of most learners is different: we live in our countries, there are very few if any speakers of target language, or they're too busy.

esjeon 10mo ago

An interesting story, a tech post with a rich intimate personal story, I enjoyed it pretty much. But, in my first attempt to read it, I got totally lost in the very first part. I had to go back and forth to understand where it was coming from and where it is heading. I think a little bit of guidance at the beginning would not hurt, for example something like: “this is my personal journey related to the design of an app,” maybe in light gray and italic.

dmje 10mo ago

This writing had an interesting effect on me. I went in knowing nothing about the app or author and frankly having no need for whatever it was he might be selling. But by the time I finished reading I was significantly amused and interested that I’m going to go check his stuff out. What I’m trying to say is that this is someone who can really, really write - he’s deeply funny and self deprecating, but obviously also knows his shit, big-time. And that’s a massively powerful skill, maybe as much of a skill as being able to write Swift or make great interfaces or ship an app. > “If you grew up with Tamagotchis, you already understand why this was tempting. Not the “cute pixel pet” part. The part where a device the size of a digestive biscuit turns into a low-resolution hostage negotiator.” This is irritatingly good and it makes me want to buy his products and subscribe to his RSS feed. Great writing is powerful magic.

nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago
Yes I would want this person designing my app because it is clear they are very curious and into the craft.
anonymous908213 10mo ago
Funny, that was around the point in the article where I was beginning to get irritated reading it because it felt like reading LLM output. LLMs love melodramatic headers ("THE CHILDHOOD TRAUMA"), outlandish and not particularly coherent metaphors ("hostage negotiator"), the overly terse arrow constructions that I've never seen a human write in my life ("something that feels less like “open app → consume lesson” and more like “tap creature → it looks at you → you do a small thing together”"), the segue into a redundant list of bullet points, the pointless not x but y ("The blob wasn’t a mascot here, it was the interface") which poorly establishes a contrast where it doesn't make sense to. The funniest part to me is that I suspect the LLM generated the line about the 4th of July, and the suspected prompter being British, felt the need to insert an explanation for why "they" would reference it, in a voice/cadence that doesn't really match the rest of the article: > "Confetti, fireworks, the whole 4th of July experience (I've seen it only in movies though, not sure why but it's not celebrated in the UK)" I can't definitively say this is LLM-generated, but it resembled it enough so that I still came away annoyed for having read it.

fainpul 10mo ago

From the title, I assumed this is about an app distributed as a binary blob. Regarding learning languages, I'm not a fan of this style of learning. It seems to me this is still Duolingo, just with a different interface. I had good success with https://www.languagetransfer.org/ https://www.languagetransfer.org/

Cthulhu_ 10mo ago
Yeah I heard a criticism of e.g. Duolingo the other day; even after two years on it daily, you'll know plenty of words and I suppose simple sentences, but you can't actually speak or comprehend the language, not unlike what the OP mentions. I haven't learned a new language since high school, but I think to learn one you need immersion. Individual words for sure, but the focus should quickly go to reading whole sentences / paragraphs / books, listening to native speakers in their natural environment, and (probably the most difficult one to do on an app) speaking / conversation practice. I only know English well because of daily exposure through media and twenty years of shitposting on the internet.
- dctoedt 10mo ago
  > (probably the most difficult one to do on an app) speaking / conversation practice. Conversation practice with humans [0] is key: As a child I had complete, native-level fluency in French, because my first few years of school were in the local schools of a farm village in the interior of France (my US Air Force dad was stationed at a nearby air base). All through high school and college back in the U.S., I took French for the easy A. But now mumble years later, when my wife and I watch French TV shows on Netflix, I have to rely on the subtitles because I just can't keep up. I've read comments by people from non-English-speaking countries who say they learned English by watching Friends on TV. I can't imagine how they did it. [0] Maybe someday an AI could substitute for a human native speaker in conversation practice?
swiftcoder 10mo ago
> I had good success with https://www.languagetransfer.org/ https://www.languagetransfer.org/ Yeah, I tend to think for the specific case of languages that share a common root, language transfer is unbeatable value (especially since it's entirely free).

mattkrause 10mo ago

I like the idea—I hate freezing up while retrieving something I “know—-but the app itself seems a bit thin. I got to level thirteen having seen only four verbs (aller, faire, être, and parler) and mostly in the present.

sandblast 10mo ago
It looks like the developer was so hooked on the idea of making it minimalistic, he forgot to make it a language-learning app. So it's a blob with a backstory. Design with no substance.

tigranbs 10mo ago

This is definitely not applicable to every app, BUT that's a very clever way of solving UX problems with "face"- based animations and expressions, giving users feedback. At the same time, you do stuff in the background. I have seen this for the first time in the Airbnb apps, but only in 1-2 cases, and they use Lottie animations, not directly tied to UI events.

ocean2 10mo ago

This is a great app! I wish it would allow to go through all verb tenses in French. If I can help you with that don't hesitate to reach out to me.

tmountain 10mo ago

I built a language app when it first became viable with GPT and also went the avatar as UI route. It presents a unique set of challenges nd constraints, but I spent the most time just trying to get the mouth to sync with the audio. Fun experience for sure. Regarding learning languages, I have stopped building and relying on apps, as I spend too much time mucking with the app and not enough time on the language. The highest potency practice I have found is transcribing podcasts. It’s a major headache, but it really pushes you forward regarding listening, writing, and spelling.

raincole 10mo ago

(Off-topic) I'm convinced that the ideal language learning app should look like this: 1. A HUGH repository of raw materials, both in text and in audio. They are all written/recorded by native speakers, not non-native language teachers. 1.5. (Optional) The materials come with supplemental vocabulary lists and grammar guides. 2. You take a test. 3. It recommends materials for you to read/listen to, according your proficiency level shown in the test. 3.5. (Opt-in) it can read your YouTube history and social media to recommend materials that you might like. 4. Every month or every N hours of reading/listening, you take a new test to recalibrate your proficiency level. That's it. However due to copyright issues, I don't expect to see such an app in near future. What a bummer. (Not-so-off-topic) Personally I consider all the apps that don't resemble the above workflow "dictionary-like" (useful but as a reference tool, not a learning tool) or "Duolingo-like" (a healthier alternative to doomscrolling, but nothing more). The article sounds Duolingo-like.

amelius 10mo ago
Immersion is important, so I'd expect AI in there, or video calls with native speakers.
yorwba 10mo ago
Yes, the huge repository of raw materials is likely the hardest part. You can try crowdsourced collections ( https://tatoeba.org https://tatoeba.org , https://datacollective.mozillafoundation.org/datasets?q=common+voice https://datacollective.mozillafoundation.org/datasets?q=comm... , https://opus.nlpl.eu/OpenSubtitles/corpus/version/OpenSubtitles https://opus.nlpl.eu/OpenSubtitles/corpus/version/OpenSubtit... ) but you'll quickly run into data quality issues. My personal solution is to do manual data curation on the fly, but I think an app that occasionally throws up garbage and asks its users to pick out the good parts is unlikely to get popular.
- amelius 10mo ago
  Maybe the free version of the app could do the collaborative filtering part. And in the paid version you'd get the high quality content.

stevoski 10mo ago

What a great writer! Slightly off-topic, but when learning to speak a new language, it is helpful to actually speak the language as often as you can. There are a couple of websites that make it easy to book short conversation practice with native speakers. The one I use to practice Spanish is italki. I find the practice of actually speaking, no matter how badly, helps way more than any app.

zdc1 10mo ago
Agreed. I'm learning Chinese and while apps are lovely, nothing will prepare you for the pure amount of variation in accents across the world. Real world immersion becomes important for your brain to get used to mapping certain sounds to certain words. I've also realised it's same for English, except we don't really think about it since we're used to the sounds, but the way we'd say "I went to the market" in daily speech is night and day to how it would be enunciated during an English speaking class (e.g. uh wen tu-th markt vs eye weynt too thee marr-ket). To the unpracticed ear they can just sound like different sentences.
sureMan6 10mo ago
The entire thing is mostly AI written transparently

JodieBenitez 10mo ago

> as far as I could tell that day, a collective commitment to not speaking English. Ah... those pesky people speaking their very own language instead of the (ahem...) lingua franca.

skywhopper 10mo ago
Yeah, with this line the author completely lost me. What did he expect them to do? Does he think of himself as steadfastly committed to not speaking Japanese, Bantu, Hindi, and Algonquin? (I realize it was (hopefully) meant in jest-ish, but there are better ways to make the point.)
- kolektiv 10mo ago
  This might be a British humoUr thing - as a local it read very much as a self-deprecating jab at our own English-centric travelling. Taken literally obviously it would be offensive, but it's not meant that way. I note that the author lives in Edinburgh, a place which has a reputation for quite dry, understated and self-deprecating style to start with - understandably, as the only way to stand the hordes clogging the Mile and other picturesque spots.
- orthoxerox 10mo ago
  He expected them to speak the barest minimum of English, so speakers of Japanese, Bantu, Hindi, and Algonquin do not have to learn more than one foreign language when vacationing abroad. Honestly, I myself learn one emergency phrase in the native language, "I am sorry, please repeat this as if I have a learning disability". Upon hearing this my vis-a-vis would either actually switch to a slow and dumbed-down register of their native language or realize they won't lose face by speaking bad English to me.
  - integralid 10mo ago
    >He expected them to speak the barest minimum of English, so speakers of Japanese, Bantu, Hindi, and Algonquin do not have to learn more than one foreign language when vacationing abroad. Why are speakers of Japanese, Banty, Hindi and Algonquin vacationing abroad a problem of locals who just want to live their own life?... Most people do learn English for one reason or another, but "entertaining tourists" is not one of them.

npodbielski 10mo ago

Idea for an app is quite nice. My kids would love it. I just can't understand how can adult person be so traumatized by silly mistake in a coffee shop, so they will build an entire app to learn a language so this will not happen again. I mean, I understand you made an error and you could not understand native speaker. Happens to me a lot of times with English and British people. But situation that you may not understand someone speaking foreign language abroad is expected. For me at least. How can you call it a humiliation? Just smile and ask politely to repeat because you do not understand. Point at you ear, which should be understand by everyone that you did not hear. Or look at register and check the price. Or just give them much more that you think it really cost and wait for a change. Awkwardly looking at your phone seems a bit rude.

philipallstar 10mo ago

> Your life is allowed to exist I like this article, but statements like this go far too far. An app cannot disallow someone's life. It's not that important.

swiftcoder 10mo ago
> An app cannot disallow someone's life Tell that to the folks busy turning every app into a miniature casino...

6510 10mo ago

The concept seems awesome and quite unexplored. Very inspiring.

dangus 10mo ago

Canada is bilingual by law and primary school curriculum, so I would personally not feel embarrassed or that I was imposing on others to converse in English. Cool app though.

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