[HN Gopher] Show HN: Glossarie - a new, immersive way to learn a...
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Show HN: Glossarie - a new, immersive way to learn a language
Hi HN, For over two years I've been working on an App to learn
languages (currently French, Italian and Spanish), together with my
partner, a language teacher. I think it is finally ready to share
with this community! The idea is to introduce vocabulary and
grammar whilst you read eBooks in your own language. I've found
that it is easier to remember vocabulary 'in context' and with
regular repetition. Plus you don't have to carve out dedicated time
for language learning. Other apps require you to build a habit
around various exercises or 'games', whereas lots of people already
read books. From testing with early users so far it's proving
effective for building a basic understanding of a language and
quickly getting to the point where you can read and broadly
understand text in the target language. It's even better in
combination with other apps that help with listening/speaking like
Pimsleur. There were lots of technical challenges making this. It
turned out to be (reassuringly) hard to get accuracy to an
acceptable level, requiring a rabbit-hole into machine translation.
There was a lot of testing required to optimise the engine that
chooses the translations to show and to reduce the friction when
reading books. And the backend to support uploading books is a
beast in itself. I'd love to share details if there is interest.
Roadmap - Accuracy - 100% accuracy is the target, but at present
there can be errors. Feedback from users will be important here so
that accuracy issues can be generalised and solved at scale. Errors
can be reported within the app - please do so if you spot anything!
- Dynamic difficulty - rather than have a progression of difficulty
levels I'd prefer to introduce vocabulary and grammar automatically
in response to user progress, balancing against the friction of
seeing unfamiliar words. There's a lot 'under the hood' to manage
this today, but plenty of room to improve. - More practice
features - to reinforce vocabulary/grammar and support writing,
listening and speaking. - Better eBook support - improving the
formatting of eBooks within the app and providing more methods for
finding good books to read. Use of AI - LLMs provided a step
change in accuracy and have enabled a feature that explains
translations and grammar to the user - vastly improving the
utility versus a year ago. - I believe apps like this, which use
AI to enhance or scale functionality rather than simply acting as a
wrapper over APIs, will be the major beneficiaries as LLMs improve.
Take a look, and let me know your thoughts or questions!
Author : jonathanb88
Score : 153 points
Date : 2024-03-24 15:43 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (glossarie.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (glossarie.app)
| harshitpdoshi wrote:
| Bummer, it's not available in my country.
| sinuhe69 wrote:
| Not in my App Store, too. I wonder why not release it
| worldwide?
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| Because I'm making public domain books available within the
| app (from Project Gutenburg), I have to limit the territories
| it is launched in, as some countries may have copyright
| limitations.
|
| I will expand the app into more countries once I'm happy none
| of the books have copyright restrictions there. Feel free to
| message me with the country you reside in and I'll take a
| look soon.
| troydavis wrote:
| I'd use this if it had a book I wanted to read. A while back, I
| tried Prismatext (https://prismatext.com/). It only offered old
| classics that had come out of copyright (ie, Project Gutenberg)
| and a handful of poorly-reviewed modern novels.
|
| If you can license a modern book that someone would actually
| choose to read on their own, I'd pay for it. Bonus if I can
| sort/browse the available books by Goodreads (or similar) score.
| Prismatext makes it tedious to discover that readers didn't care
| for their modern books.
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. One of the features allows users to
| upload an epub to use in the app. Although I realise that a
| better method is needed, as it has become harder to find
| legitimate places to buy epub formatted books.
| mdaniel wrote:
| Do you require the epub to be drm stripped first?
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| The app doesn't do anything to remove DRM, so it'll only
| work with DRM-free files.
| throwaway81523 wrote:
| I've bought a few epubs (English only) from
| https://www.humblebundle.com/books and
| https://www.fanatical.com/en/bundle/books . I'm still
| skeptical of this proposition though: to learn a language by
| listening to a TTS? Better to go talk to people. The language
| starts to solidify after the sounds and non-verbal cues start
| matching up.
| troydavis wrote:
| You're welcome for the feedback. I saw the epub import and
| thought it was novel, but as you said, I don't know of
| anywhere to buy modern fiction in epub. If you know of legal
| sellers and linked to them from the site, that would probably
| be enough for me as a customer.
|
| That said, I'd gladly pay you/the site to handle that for me
| (by paying more than the book's retail price). Hopefully the
| translation would also be better than anything I imported.
|
| (Two sibling replies linked to sites that sell technical non-
| fiction. That is a very hard way to learn :-) )
| parentheses wrote:
| I'd love to see this on top of audible. Game changer for language
| learning!
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| Long term audio is something I'd look at, either audio books or
| podcasts. AR is another long term ambition.
| jgtor wrote:
| Then can I shamelessly plug Tembo - Bilingual Stories
| (iOS/Android) to you. We offer audiobooks for some of our
| titles, so you can listen and learn simultaneously. It's a big
| undertaking to editing them all in-house, but we have
| audiobooks available for about 30 stories across our courses.
|
| https://www.tembo.app
| AnonHP wrote:
| What's the planned business model? Neither the website nor the
| app page mention "free". There is no pricing link or an FAQ page
| on the website about the business model. Clarity in this area
| would be helpful. Until then, I wouldn't want to spend too much
| time on it. Thanks.
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| Right now I see this as an MVP to get feedback and see if there
| is interest. I have no plans to charge for any of the current
| features.
| petemir wrote:
| I second this! Obviously I wouldn't expect it to be free
| because of the different technologies (either current or
| planned) involved, but the lack of clarity in all the
| descriptions makes me doubt investing time/effort on it.
| gleenn wrote:
| This such an awesome and unique new way to learn a language. I
| use both Pimsleurs and DuoLingo but it's always kind of a chore.
| Will definitely give this a shot. Really refreshing take on
| learning too, everyone basically has variants of flash cards
| which gets tedious. And it's free! Thank you!
| jasonjmcghee wrote:
| It's definitely a cool project, but this same concept has been
| around quite a while. Many chrome extensions do this.
|
| https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/readlang-web-reade...
|
| If OPs project is using LLMs, it could definitely be much
| higher quality when it's swapping out more than a few words.
| mft_ wrote:
| Love the idea; can I kindly ask if you're expanding to include
| German?
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| Thanks! At some point I may add it, but the difference in
| grammatical structure might limit how well it works. I'll try
| to start testing it soon.
| barrenko wrote:
| seconded
| stonedge wrote:
| Thirded
| jgtor wrote:
| I actually built 'Tembo - Bilingual Stories' while learning
| German myself, so hate to plug it on this thread, but we've got
| lots of German content, maybe you'll find something that
| interests you?
|
| https://www.tembo.app
| kebsup wrote:
| Hi, if it would be sufficient for you to read websites, I'm
| building https://vokabeln.io, though the concept is a bit
| different, focusing more on flashcards and spaced-repetition.
| dabreegster wrote:
| This is super cool, thank you for building it! Two small UX
| ideas:
|
| - a scrollbar and search for the Online Library would be helpful
|
| - switching difficulty levels in the middle of reading could be
| helpful. Or if you keep that on a separate page, returning
| automatically to the last open position. (I was floating between
| beginner levels to find the right amount of challenge)
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback! I'll look at adding those.
| foundry27 wrote:
| This looks really cool. I'd have loved to give it a try as
| someone interested in improving my French, but I wasn't able to
| download the app since it's pinned to the latest version of iOS
| only.
|
| Are you using APIs that are unavailable on iOS 16 and under, or
| is it a matter of testing? My understanding was that about 25% of
| iPhone users aren't on iOS 17 (myself included!) so it's a fairly
| large demographic
| internetter wrote:
| Obviously, I do not know about this app, but as an iOS
| developer, my apps are pinned to iOS 17 as well. SwiftUI is way
| too infant to not have the latest features at your disposal, in
| fact, I'd describe it as 'unusable' before iOS 16.
| dmattia wrote:
| +1, my device is unfortunately too old to upgrade to iOS 17 and
| I wouldn't imagine this app would use too many new features
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| I think it is SwiftData that meant I had to limit to iOS 17. I
| will double check because it might be a limitation I can solve
| easily enough.
| Alexito wrote:
| This is a beautiful idea and easy app to use, thanks for the
| work!
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| Thank you!
| mertbio wrote:
| > Other apps require you to build a habit around various
| exercises or 'games', whereas lots of people already read books.
|
| Shameless plug: I've identified the same problem and built an app
| that shows a new word every minute on the Menu Bar so I can learn
| a new word while working:
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wunderbar-learn-language/id647...
| Jeaye wrote:
| Thanks for building and sharing this! As a feature request, which
| would likely be the decider for me using this, would you please
| consider an integration into koreader? As far as I know, koreader
| is the #1 open source app for ereaders. If anyone using their
| ereader can use this, you can expand your userbase outside of
| those who just read on mobile. I don't think I'm alone in never
| wanting to read an actual book with my phone. At any rate, best
| of luck and great work getting this shipped!
| petemir wrote:
| > I don't think I'm alone in never wanting to read an actual
| book with my phone
|
| Although a koreader integration would be great, there are
| tablets with both Android and iOS, as well as eReaders with the
| former.
| visarga wrote:
| This "new" idea I implemented for myself 15 years ago.
| kazinator wrote:
| An idea generally becomes new to the world when it is
| published.
|
| If you claim that you privately had the idea 15 years ago, it's
| possible; you just need credible, and credibly dated evidence.
| unhammer wrote:
| Is there a waiting list for Android? :)
| david_allison wrote:
| From the site, there's a Play Store link:
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.glossarie....
| vaughnegut wrote:
| This leads to a not found page, was the app taken down?
| david_allison wrote:
| Works for me
| Zenul_Abidin wrote:
| Sounds great. Any plans for a visionOS app? I think this would be
| the perfect use case for it.
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| Something I'd love to look at longer-term. I think an overlay
| onto the real world that slowly immersed you in a new language
| would be a really powerful way to learn.
| darthrupert wrote:
| Thank you for the effort.
|
| I tried the practice a bit, and the explanations (generated by ai
| I guess?) were very nice. I met a bit of an unfair situation in
| one question. The sentence started with "They" and the options
| were Ils and Elles. However, the sentence in English didn't hint
| towards a gender, and I failed the 1d2 and got what felt like a
| sarcastic explanation.
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback! Admittedly the practice feature needs
| a bit more work. Helpful to know the issues you are
| experiencing.
| revskill wrote:
| Which languages do you support ?
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| English eBooks, with French, Italian and Spanish as the target
| languages to learn. I will also start looking at integrating
| German.
| yaj54 wrote:
| I hate browser plugins - but this needs to be a browser plugin.
| Then I would use it while reading HN. ;-)
|
| I would suggest tackling dynamic difficulty and algorithmic
| selection of what words to learn, when, and how often, and then
| let improving LLMs handle accuracy improvements.
| OJFord wrote:
| That would be amazing, not everyone reads eBooks (whether
| because they don't read books, or just prefer physical) but
| everyone whose a potential user anyway does browse websites.
|
| Also because while I absolutely love the idea for seamless
| Hinglish style integration (as opposed to say a side bar which
| just told you what some words would be in a different language)
| it does mean that I'm no longer really reading the book, I'm
| reading the content but not the author. I don't personally read
| anything that I'd want to alter like that, but I can imagine
| for others it might limit its use to 'trashy novella read while
| travelling' or something.
|
| Tldr the idea is brilliant, but for me too it needs to not be
| for eBooks.
| Player6225 wrote:
| AFAIK, I think the most popular version of this idea is
| https://readlang.com
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| Definitely an idea on the roadmap. I know most people do most
| of their reading in a browser and not eBooks.
|
| I'll see how easy it is. I get palpitations thinking about
| developing on another new platform. Java and Swift were a
| challenge enough to learn!
| igeligel_dev wrote:
| https://jointoucan.com/ - hope you enjoy it
| spidersouris wrote:
| Not available on Firefox.
| xendipity wrote:
| Just tried Toucan and it can't be disabled on localhost, a
| major pain for using it during work as an engineer. For those
| that haven't used toucan, it's an extension that translates
| words/phrases inline on a page with various levels of
| replacement frequency and complexity based on your
| proficiency with the language.
| vaughnegut wrote:
| Looks great! I'd like to try it but the play store link has this
| error:
|
| > We're sorry, the requested URL was not found on this server.
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| A few people have raised this. I'll take a look. Unfortunately
| the App isn't available in all locations.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| Got the same. Was about to sign up for a month to check it
| out
| kazinator wrote:
| Rather, with this, you can learn to speak English like a
| Frenchman.
|
| For any English word that came from French, use the French
| cognate, and pronounce it in the French way. Or at least the
| latter.
| Player6225 wrote:
| Oh great timing! I was just starting to play with building a toy
| project (https://github.com/bpevs/multireader) for practicing
| Spanish while reading books with my e-reader, but frankly, I'm
| just building it because I haven't found an app that works for
| me, and I'd rather spend time actually actually learning
| language...
|
| Just playing with your app for a bit, and it's pretty cool! had a
| few questions though:
|
| 1. Wondering about the decision of using English books and
| translating pieces into other languages vs starting with (for
| example) a Spanish book, and translating the other way? Also,
| would something like this be a future thought of plan? Because
| currently I'm trying to read more popular books in my target
| language, rather than English books (right now, my toy app is
| just highlight arbitrary text -> send to azure translate). I
| tried to upload my book into your app in Spanish, but I guess it
| only works rn if the source is in English? Basically, a mode for
| even more immersion would be killer (Ala either full-target-
| languge mode or upload target language books).
|
| 2. The practice mode is pretty cool! I like this format of
| "complete the sentence". It looks like it's not based on book
| content at all, right? Would be cool to practice based on what
| I'm reading.
|
| 3. I'm reading on an e-reader, so I'd reeeeally like a no-
| animation/no-scroll mode. On an e-reader, the paginated page
| refreshing can help to reduce ghosting. Even better if there
| could be an e-reader mode that can flash the screen to further
| reduce ghosting issues on those devices.
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback!
|
| 1. I would love to get it to work all the way from a few
| translations in the target language to a full translation, with
| a sliding scale in between. 2. It's not connected to the book
| content. One idea I have is an optional quiz at the end of a
| session to reinforce new vocabulary/grammar seen. 3. I'll see
| if I can remove the animation when using the page ahead/back
| buttons on Android.
| bomewish wrote:
| Wasn't this idea an ACX post? I am absolutely sure Scott wrote
| that someone should create this.
| tremarley wrote:
| It only works with iOS 17.0+
|
| Could you make it work with any versions lower than 17.0?
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| I'll take a look. I think there were a couple of features that
| required 17.0+, but I may be able to solve with an earlier
| version.
| exe34 wrote:
| I definitely don't want to learn another language by reading
| English. I've seen comments about people who learnt a language
| using Google translate from English, and they end up sounding
| like Google translate.
|
| I prefer to learn by reading in the target language and
| translating to English as I go along.
| JulianWasTaken wrote:
| Yeah I was gonna provide essentially the same feedback (so I'll
| just tack on here).
|
| I definitely didn't see what I expected when opening a book for
| the first time -- I can already read or watch content in
| Italian. What I do today is pause (or stop reading) when I
| encounter a word I don't know.
|
| What I expected when picking a level was definitely to see all
| Italian, though in retrospect I can imagine it's near
| impossible to do that without lots of paraphrasing.
|
| But to me personally (much as I think this space needs more
| things, and that you OP are awesome for sharing it) that I'd
| not personally use something which wasn't entirely in my target
| language, as I find the way I've learned languages best so far
| to be similar to my current workflow, and over time I have to
| look up fewer and fewer words.
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| I agree - the dream would be to bridge from beginner level
| vocabulary all the way to a full translation in the target
| language.
|
| The limitation now is getting consistently high accuracy for
| whole sentences - but something I'll keep working on as the
| underlying technologies improve.
| whycome wrote:
| Can you clarify what the "upload" ability does? Is it putting my
| epub on your server? Does it remain there?
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| It gets automatically deleted after 24 hours.
| toddmorey wrote:
| "I believe apps like this, which use AI to enhance or scale
| functionality rather than simply acting as a wrapper over APIs,
| will be the major beneficiaries as LLMs improve."
|
| Can you elaborate a bit more? Are you training your own model? Or
| do you mean this is a task that uniquely needs AI to solve and
| couldn't be accomplished with traditional APIs?
| jddj wrote:
| I think they were differentiating themselves from their
| competitors by hinting that they put more work into this than
| just coming up with a UI and prompt for gpt4.
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| Some apps rely upon ongoing LLM API calls for their core
| functionality. Some require a lot of human editorial work up
| front. i.e. either high variable cost or high fixed cost
| economics.
|
| This app lies in a sweet spot where no ongoing API calls are
| required, everything is pre-calculated (at moderate expense!),
| but LLMs can scale some of the more 'human' work like
| explaining translations or checking accuracy. Albeit with the
| quirks and inconsistencies inherent with the current generation
| of models.
| whycome wrote:
| UX things.
|
| Let me click anywhere to close the popup. Having to target a
| small button when reading means I have to stretch my thumb to
| reach it as it can be far from the word I clicked. Don't make me
| have to think about the targeting. Eg when reading I never want
| to think about HOW to turn a page or where I need to swipe.
|
| Make the scroll bar stay visible or at least make it big enough
| to easily grab!
|
| Not sure why the reflow is causing a horizontal scroll.
|
| Can you retain chapters from the original epub?
|
| Text size options.
|
| Hide the bottom logo and percentage when reading if I want.
|
| Its possible to convert html to epub but it would be better if
| you handled web pages natively.
|
| This is a really great language app!
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback, very helpful!
|
| I'll look to fix the first tomorrow, and add the rest to my
| list.
| KomoD wrote:
| Google Play button on the site leads to a 404.
| ximeng wrote:
| Shout out for an app called Language Transfer that I just came
| across via Reddit (https://www.languagetransfer.org/). It teaches
| languages speaking first through a simple audio course. Developed
| by one guy, completely free and without ads.
|
| From what I've seen so far has a very clear focus on quickly
| getting up to speed with a different angle than other courses. It
| talks about how to build vocabulary by looking at general
| patterns for shared vocabulary between languages.
| phiresky wrote:
| Neat! I had a very similar idea recently: https://seamlang.app/
| (the sign up button doesn't work yet)
|
| The main difference seems to be that I start with text in the
| foreign language, and then translate the difficult vocabulary
| back to the known language (English). That way you always ensure
| you have the correct grammar of your goal language even if you
| don't know most of the vocabulary yet. This can be a bit
| confusing at first because you have mostly English text with
| Spanish word order, but just trying it a bit it works pretty
| well. It also makes the difficulty an easier problem because the
| grammer stays the same.
|
| I haven't gotten around to finishing it yet, especially judging
| which vocabulary to translate and ensuring each translated word
| still makes sense in context isn't easy.
| igeligel_dev wrote:
| This looks nice and similar to toucan [1]. I have built something
| similar but a bit different for the web [2]. Happy, to share the
| code in a non-so-permissive license with you if you plan to build
| out web support.
|
| [1] https://jointoucan.com/
|
| [2] https://github.com/igeligel/tooltipr-extension
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| Thanks, I'll take a look!
| archsurface wrote:
| Curious to hear the reasoning behind using the US flag for
| English, given there's a country called England.
| thalesmello wrote:
| That's based on relevance.
|
| Same goes for: Portuguese -> Brazil flag; Spanish -> Mexico
| flag; German -> Austria flag; Italian -> Switzerland flag
|
| ;)
| aae42 wrote:
| It's the 3rd most populous country in the world, and it's
| filled with English speakers?
| heyest wrote:
| If those are the metrics we should be using the Indian
| flag.
| tomstoms wrote:
| And you would prefer the English flag then - not the flag of
| the UK?
| anotherevan wrote:
| https://jakubmarian.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2015/10/english-t...
| shakesbeard wrote:
| https://www.flagsarenotlanguages.com/
| tidojo wrote:
| I've been wanting to get back my faded ability to read French
| after having neglected this skill for far too long. This is a
| pleasant way to ease me into this, I am loving this app!
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| Thanks!
| trelliscoded wrote:
| The LLM based explanations were the key thing about this app for
| me. It's hard for me to fit foreign vocabularies into context for
| long-term recall without etymologies and comparisons to common
| roots in Latin, and I've already had several ah-ha moments due to
| those explanations. Thanks.
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback!
|
| Whilst there are some, often amusing, quirks with the LLM based
| explanations, I agree that the utility of the app is much
| higher with them.
| davidshepherd7 wrote:
| In case it's useful to anyone: another implementation of this
| idea is Weeve https://shop.weeve.ie I bought one of their books
| (a study in scarlet) but it wasn't great. Lots of mistranslation,
| especially later on in the book. The general idea seemed to work
| well though, with better implementation I think it could really
| help my french.
|
| I'll give this one a try, being able to add my own books is
| particularly exciting.
| jonathanb88 wrote:
| Many thanks for all of the positive feedback today, lots of good
| ideas for me to get working on; what a great community!
|
| Side-note: A few eBooks are causing errors on the backend that
| don't appear to be DRM-related. I will prioritise getting this
| fixed.
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