[HN Gopher] Show HN: Wunderbar - Learn language while working on...
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Show HN: Wunderbar - Learn language while working on your Mac
Hey everyone, I've been living in Germany for a while now and
struggling to pick up German. Even though I finished a B1 level
language course, remembering all the common German words has been
tough. I've tried a bunch of apps, but couldn't stick to any of
them. Last month, I had an idea. I thought, what if I could see a
German word and its meaning on the Menu Bar of my Mac? That way, I
could learn new words while working without needing to set aside
dedicated time. The app uses a spaced-repetition algorithm, so
you'll see the same word multiple times until you've got it down.
And even after you've learned it, you'll still see it again to make
sure you don't forget. After making the app, lots of people asked
me to include other languages, therefore I've added languages like
Spanish, French, Dutch, Swedish, Japanese, and Italian. You can
download the app here ($3.99): https://wunderbarapp.com There's no
subscription or anything like that. You pay once and it's yours
forever. Let me know what you think!
Author : mertbio
Score : 51 points
Date : 2024-04-11 07:05 UTC (1 days ago)
| mertbio wrote:
| For convenience: https://wunderbarapp.com
| miles wrote:
| Thanks for crafting and sharing this, Mert. Noticed the
| relatively small (3.3 MB) size; is a network connection required
| for audio or other features?
| mertbio wrote:
| Thank you! No, not at all. I just use Speech API on Mac for
| that. All the words are also included in the app.
| miles wrote:
| Super - thanks! Please consider adding an option to remove
| the flag emojis and arrows; had to remove the volume,
| battery, and Bluetooth icons before I could see Wunderbar on
| a 13.6" M2 MacBook Air. It just disappeared again, and even
| removing the WiFi icon did not help until it cycled through
| to another word pair.
| mertbio wrote:
| There is already an option to remove the flags. I will try
| to come up with a better solution for this issue.
| miles wrote:
| Sorry to have missed that option; I'd only been able to
| access the options panel once (can't find a way to
| display it when the menu bar words are not displayed).
| Perhaps an option to hide the known-language word (which
| would be revealed in the pop window when clicked) might
| help users on smaller screens.
| tonymet wrote:
| great design approach and thanks. It's refreshing to see apps
| that don't require continuous online access. I wish there was
| a badge for that
| gus_massa wrote:
| [Hi from Argentina!] I was going to ask about words that have too
| tanslations, for example from Spanish to English you have "vino"
| -> "wine" (noun) or "come"(verb). But it looks like you are not
| allowing any combination of languages, so I guess you are doing
| the tranlation table with a lot of curation.
|
| (It would be nice to read more details, just for curiosity.
| Idiomatic examples are difficult. Do you have more than one
| example for each word?)
|
| I expect a bigger market in "Something -> English" instead of
| "English -> Something" that is described in the landing page.
| Wait a minute, is it bidirectional? Perhaps you can edit the
| description to highlight the most common case or explain that it
| can be used in the other direction.
|
| You are using the British flag for English. Do you support
| American English too? I don't remember all the differences, but
| an example is "color" vs "colour".
| mertbio wrote:
| Hey! Thanks for the feedback. The app also supports German or
| Turkish -> English. I'm planning to add more languages but I'm
| prioritizing them based the feedback I receive. When it comes
| to the example sentences, I can add more but I'm also waiting
| for WWDC24 because Apple might introduce an on-device LLM since
| I don't want to have any network request from the app.
| yorwba wrote:
| At 100 bytes per sentence, you could fit 10000 example
| sentences in a megabyte, and compression would increase that
| by a factor of 6 or so. I don't think you need an on-device
| LLM to have enough example sentences.
|
| If you don't know where to get that many sentences other than
| using an LLM, try Tatoeba https://tatoeba.org .
| mertbio wrote:
| I was thinking about adding a button to generate a new
| sentence actually, the size wasn't my concern.
|
| I didn't know about Tatoeba, thanks for sharing it! It is
| not going to only allow me to add more sentences, I will be
| also able to add more languages to the app!
| tonymet wrote:
| great idea. I've found setting device language for MacOS/ Windows
| / iOS into your practice language to be a very helpful way to
| learn. You can easily navigate menus thanks for visual
| familiarity, so you pick up technical words really quickly.
|
| When I was practicing, I would put my devices into Spanish or
| Finnish.
| bsimpson wrote:
| "listen the pronunciations" should be "listen to the
| pronunciations"
| gcheong wrote:
| Or "hear the pronunciations". Would suggest changing "Only Most
| Common Words" to "Only the Most Common Words" as well.
| mertbio wrote:
| Thank you both! I will make the changes tomorrow.
| BalinKing wrote:
| If these sort of corrections are helpful, I'd suggest
| changing "How the spaced-repetition algorithm works?" to
| "How does the spaced-repetition algorithm work?"
| bsimpson wrote:
| I err on the side of making grammar suggestions anyway,
| because my foreign friends seem to appreciate it.
|
| I think they're especially helpful in this case. Grammar
| mistakes on a language learning app may undercut
| someone's confidence in what the app is teaching.
| mertbio wrote:
| Thanks! I will also change that.
| ssbash wrote:
| I love the idea. Is there any way you could add in the
| functionality for the user to upload a dictionary for a specific
| language? I would gladly pay $20+ for a pro version.
|
| I've been trying to learn Kannada, a South Indian language that
| my parents speak. Most apps like Duolingo and Babbel don't
| support Kannada, so it's been hard to be consistent.
| mertbio wrote:
| Thank you! In the short term, I feel like that might require
| too much work comparing to adding new languages but in the long
| term, I might add a functionality for that.
| katspaugh wrote:
| Great idea! I've bought the app. Could you add Hindi please?
|
| Also, is there any way to hide the British flag but keep the
| target language flag?
| mertbio wrote:
| Thanks! I will add Hindi into my list.
|
| Right now, there is no setting for that but I'm planning to add
| a different section for the settings since it grew quite fast.
| Then, I can also add this option there.
| tehnub wrote:
| Love the idea. You might want to consider adding a profanity
| filter. joder -> to fuck just popped up for me, and if I put this
| on my work computer, which I would like to, I'd have to turn it
| off before screen sharing.
| mertbio wrote:
| Thank you! Sorry for the problem. I will check it out.
| Crowberry wrote:
| Looks great! Could you add serbo-croatian by any chance?
| mertbio wrote:
| Thank you! I'm going to add it into my list but I can't promise
| right now.
| stephenitis wrote:
| Is there a way to make this available to older versions of mac
| os? I'm 1 version behind 13.4 but would love to buy this.
|
| I'm not upgrading due to breaking compatibility issues with
| plugins in my audio workstation software
| mertbio wrote:
| Unfortunately, that would require too much work for me because
| I'm new to macOS development and I've used the latest APIs for
| the app, like SwiftData and so on. :(
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I think it would be better to just show "[flag] [word]" in the
| menubar. (The flag to remind you why there's a random word like
| "gozar" in the menubar, heh)
|
| The problems with showing the translation to your native language
| are:
|
| 1. Takes up too much space. On a 16" Macbook Pro I already had to
| remove various apps from the menubar just for Wunderbar to appear
| (Apple could handle that better). "complementario <->
| complementary" takes up half of the menubar space.
|
| 2. Doesn't actually test whether you know the word or not. It's
| very easy to think you know a word when you see it along with its
| translation, yet when you hide the translation, you realize it's
| only at the tip of your tongue. It's why flashcard are so
| humbling.
|
| I think it'd be better to click the word to summon the popover
| that reveals the translation + sentences and then answer "I
| did/didn't know this word".
| mertbio wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback! I'm going to add this as an option in
| the next version.
| yoavm wrote:
| Sometimes I feel a little sad for Mac users for that they live in
| an ecosystem where everything is a product.
|
| Using Sway & Waybar, I have this script that puts a new random
| Swedish word on my bar every minute, and its translation on
| hover: #!/bin/env python import json
| import random def read_file(file_path):
| with open(file_path, "r", encoding="utf-8") as file:
| return [line.strip() for line in file] file_path
| = "/home/bjesus/Notes/live/swedish.md" lines =
| read_file(file_path) line = random.choice(lines)
| text, tooltip = line.split(":") data = {"text": text,
| "tooltip": tooltip} print(json.dumps(data))
|
| To make it clear - this is nothing against Wunderbar or anything
| like that - I wish it all the best and clearly I agree with the
| use case, and for sure it does a few more things than the above
| script.
| guessmyname wrote:
| > _Sometimes I feel a little sad for Mac users for that they
| live in an ecosystem where everything is a product._
|
| No need to feel sad.
|
| macOS users can do exactly the same, for free, with an app like
| xbar [1] or bitbar [2].
|
| [1] https://github.com/matryer/xbar
|
| [2] https://macmenubar.com/bitbar/
| netfortius wrote:
| Can't tell from the web site or FAQ: what is the minimum macos
| version required? I'm stuck with Monterrey.
| mertbio wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback! I'm going to add this information into
| the FAQ. The minimum required version is 14 because of the APIs
| that I've used in the app.
| surrTurr wrote:
| Does it have Anki integration?
| mertbio wrote:
| No, not right now.
| souvlakee wrote:
| I just purchased the app, but I thought it supported Russian. I
| would be happy to have it, but otherwise, I will have to learn
| Swedish.
| mertbio wrote:
| Thanks for buying it. I might add Russian in the future, please
| check the changelog page time to time.
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(page generated 2024-04-12 23:01 UTC)