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Show HN: Learner, a German flashcard app

23 points by BillFranklin 12y ago

Red_Tarsius 12y ago
I like it. You could let the user create their own set of cards. Unlike Anki your service is web-based and users would easily share their sets on fb, twitter... sort of "SlideShare meets Anki". EDIT: I didn't know there's already cram.com.
- BillFranklin 12y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. This is more just to scratch an itch, I couldn't find something simple which would help me learn the 1000 most used German words that didn't require me to create an account.
- hammerandtongs 12y ago
  https://ankiweb.net/ https://ankiweb.net/ Lots of shared/syncable content up for anki actually. The biggest problem has more to do with the differences of what people are studying from one say german or math class to another.
  - Red_Tarsius 12y ago
    whoops, I had no clue about the web counterpart.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
smcl 12y ago
I've got something similar in-progress for the grammatical weirdness of Czech @ http://conjugate.cz http://conjugate.cz. I figured Memrise already has the "memorise the meaning" part sewn up, but doesn't seem to work well with anything more complex.
italophil 12y ago
I like the idea. You should look over the capitalization of nouns. The first word term I saw was "Hallo welt!" it should be spelled "Hallo Welt!".
mcbetz 12y ago
German native speaker here. I don't know where you got these words from, but they surely are not the 1000 most used German ones. Within the first 10 rounds, I got "Mitte Kritik" which is nonsense, "uns Stadt" which is grammatically wrong (should be "unsere Stadt"/"our city") and some where the noun must be uppercase ("Hallo welt!" must be "Hallo Welt!" for example). The University of Leipzig has a more reliable list of common words, which you might use with Google Sheets (GoogleTranslate(REF, "de", "en")). http://wortschatz.uni-leipzig.de/Papers/top1000de.txt http://wortschatz.uni-leipzig.de/Papers/top1000de.txt
- BillFranklin 12y ago
  Thank you! This is really useful. Finding a reliable source of words and their translations (that I could turn into a json) was the hardest part of building this.
  - mcbetz 12y ago
    They also have a longer list with 10.000 words. http://wortschatz.uni-leipzig.de/Papers/top10000de.txt http://wortschatz.uni-leipzig.de/Papers/top10000de.txt Google gives you 80% right translations, a more reliable dictionary is PONS (http://de.pons.com/%C3%BCbersetzung http://de.pons.com/%C3%BCbersetzung). It also has an API, but you can only shoot 1000 free queries a month. Another good dictionary is dict.leo.org, but unfortunately there is no API. A last good option is dict.cc; you can download their corpus and use it programmatically with tools like this: https://github.com/cofi/PDictCC https://github.com/cofi/PDictCC
    - BillFranklin 12y ago
      I've changed the list of words to the Leipzig uni list: https://billfranklin.eu/german/data.json https://billfranklin.eu/german/data.json Thanks both!
      - detaro 12y ago
        Better, but still confusing or wrong sometimes. I'd recommend to get a ready-made flash card collection from somewhere and try to import that. Especially for conjugated forms or words that mean different things in different context making good flash cards it gets difficult, there are abbreviations in there, ... EDIT: or add a comment/vote function and hope that many visitors converge to a good set ;)
rambambam 12y ago
I have been thinking of building some flashcard-like app for these English words I come across all the time, but never remember (to give you an idea: "exuberance" for example). Any integration with Google Translate would be cool, because the moment I look up some word, it should be added as a flashcard, together with the translation. Every time I look up a new word, I should be tested for a few old words, to see if I still remember them.
- BillFranklin 12y ago
  Using the Google Translate app is great as it saves the things you translate. You could also check out http://www.cram.com/ http://www.cram.com/ or Memrise as I think they have account features. This is purely a 'show me the top 1k german words' app, I might make it the top 10000 if my German improves and build in other lists for phrases, numbers and other groups.
gabchan 12y ago
This strangely reminds me of rapscript.de Just add music ;)
- BillFranklin 12y ago
  Haha, the music is great! http://rapscript.de/words.html http://rapscript.de/words.html But they don't show you the translations :(
melling 12y ago
I've got a free iOS app for learning German: http://bit.ly/1dpZctq http://bit.ly/1dpZctq In addition to word lists, there are over 1000 pictures and several games.
wongarsu 12y ago
Something that isn't handled well yet are cases where words have multiple meanings. For example you translate "endlich" with "at last", which is correct, but endlich also means "finite" (depending on context). Ideally, you should indicate that both are possible translations.
gabchan 12y ago
Add "suggest better translation" feature please
BillFranklin 12y ago
If anyone would like to help build this or make your own the code is here under MIT license https://github.com/bilbof/Deutsch-app https://github.com/bilbof/Deutsch-app
Tomte 12y ago
Single words aren't too useful, because there are many ambiguities. You'd better use simple sentences. Another thing: Be very careful about capitalization. I just got "Sie means they". Yes. In a way. But the "sie" that you mean is written with a lower-case "s" (unless at the beginning of a sentence, of course). So my immediate reaction was: this must be the form of address "Sie". Of course, had you shown "sie", the first thought would have gone towards "sie" as in "she"… Just use sentences that resolve those ambiguities.

23 points by BillFranklin 12y ago

I like it. You could let the user create their own set of cards. Unlike Anki your service is web-based and users would easily share their sets on fb, twitter... sort of "SlideShare meets Anki". EDIT: I didn't know there's already cram.com.

BillFranklin 12y ago
Thanks for the feedback. This is more just to scratch an itch, I couldn't find something simple which would help me learn the 1000 most used German words that didn't require me to create an account.
hammerandtongs 12y ago
https://ankiweb.net/ https://ankiweb.net/ Lots of shared/syncable content up for anki actually. The biggest problem has more to do with the differences of what people are studying from one say german or math class to another.
- Red_Tarsius 12y ago
  whoops, I had no clue about the web counterpart.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

smcl 12y ago

I've got something similar in-progress for the grammatical weirdness of Czech @ http://conjugate.cz http://conjugate.cz. I figured Memrise already has the "memorise the meaning" part sewn up, but doesn't seem to work well with anything more complex.

italophil 12y ago

I like the idea. You should look over the capitalization of nouns. The first word term I saw was "Hallo welt!" it should be spelled "Hallo Welt!".

mcbetz 12y ago

German native speaker here. I don't know where you got these words from, but they surely are not the 1000 most used German ones. Within the first 10 rounds, I got "Mitte Kritik" which is nonsense, "uns Stadt" which is grammatically wrong (should be "unsere Stadt"/"our city") and some where the noun must be uppercase ("Hallo welt!" must be "Hallo Welt!" for example). The University of Leipzig has a more reliable list of common words, which you might use with Google Sheets (GoogleTranslate(REF, "de", "en")). http://wortschatz.uni-leipzig.de/Papers/top1000de.txt http://wortschatz.uni-leipzig.de/Papers/top1000de.txt

BillFranklin 12y ago
Thank you! This is really useful. Finding a reliable source of words and their translations (that I could turn into a json) was the hardest part of building this.
- mcbetz 12y ago
  They also have a longer list with 10.000 words. http://wortschatz.uni-leipzig.de/Papers/top10000de.txt http://wortschatz.uni-leipzig.de/Papers/top10000de.txt Google gives you 80% right translations, a more reliable dictionary is PONS (http://de.pons.com/%C3%BCbersetzung http://de.pons.com/%C3%BCbersetzung). It also has an API, but you can only shoot 1000 free queries a month. Another good dictionary is dict.leo.org, but unfortunately there is no API. A last good option is dict.cc; you can download their corpus and use it programmatically with tools like this: https://github.com/cofi/PDictCC https://github.com/cofi/PDictCC
  - BillFranklin 12y ago
    I've changed the list of words to the Leipzig uni list: https://billfranklin.eu/german/data.json https://billfranklin.eu/german/data.json Thanks both!
    - detaro 12y ago
      Better, but still confusing or wrong sometimes. I'd recommend to get a ready-made flash card collection from somewhere and try to import that. Especially for conjugated forms or words that mean different things in different context making good flash cards it gets difficult, there are abbreviations in there, ... EDIT: or add a comment/vote function and hope that many visitors converge to a good set ;)

rambambam 12y ago

I have been thinking of building some flashcard-like app for these English words I come across all the time, but never remember (to give you an idea: "exuberance" for example). Any integration with Google Translate would be cool, because the moment I look up some word, it should be added as a flashcard, together with the translation. Every time I look up a new word, I should be tested for a few old words, to see if I still remember them.

BillFranklin 12y ago
Using the Google Translate app is great as it saves the things you translate. You could also check out http://www.cram.com/ http://www.cram.com/ or Memrise as I think they have account features. This is purely a 'show me the top 1k german words' app, I might make it the top 10000 if my German improves and build in other lists for phrases, numbers and other groups.

gabchan 12y ago

This strangely reminds me of rapscript.de Just add music ;)

BillFranklin 12y ago
Haha, the music is great! http://rapscript.de/words.html http://rapscript.de/words.html But they don't show you the translations :(

melling 12y ago

I've got a free iOS app for learning German: http://bit.ly/1dpZctq http://bit.ly/1dpZctq In addition to word lists, there are over 1000 pictures and several games.

wongarsu 12y ago

Something that isn't handled well yet are cases where words have multiple meanings. For example you translate "endlich" with "at last", which is correct, but endlich also means "finite" (depending on context). Ideally, you should indicate that both are possible translations.

gabchan 12y ago

Add "suggest better translation" feature please

BillFranklin 12y ago

If anyone would like to help build this or make your own the code is here under MIT license https://github.com/bilbof/Deutsch-app https://github.com/bilbof/Deutsch-app

Tomte 12y ago

Single words aren't too useful, because there are many ambiguities. You'd better use simple sentences. Another thing: Be very careful about capitalization. I just got "Sie means they". Yes. In a way. But the "sie" that you mean is written with a lower-case "s" (unless at the beginning of a sentence, of course). So my immediate reaction was: this must be the form of address "Sie". Of course, had you shown "sie", the first thought would have gone towards "sie" as in "she"… Just use sentences that resolve those ambiguities.