A few assumptions:

For language learning, the actual content of the video is not the main factor. We want videos that are interesting enough to keep you watching, but also have high quality audio, useful vocabulary and match your proficiency level. If you can follow the contents of the video and think you can learn something from it, you'll probably keep watching.

Skipping a video is a signal that this video is not for you, in terms of difficulty or content or both. When selecting the next video, videos with similar tags get downranked. Watching over 10 seconds of a video is a positive signal, and the system will show you more of that kind. You can see the positive and negative tags at the bottom once you start making choices.

The basis for this are over 1000 curated YT channels, so we can generally assume a decent quality for most videos.

https://lingolingo.app/discovery

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47405137

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

How is this noteworthy other than to spark a discussion on hn? I mean I get it, but a little more substance would be nice.

Can you elaborate? I'm not sure I understand.

There's one thing that gave me pause: In the phrase 我想学中文 it identified "wén" as "guó". While my pronunciation isn't perfect, there's no way that what I said is closer to "guó" than to "wén".

This indicates to me that the model learned word structures instead of tones here. "Zhōng guó" probably appears in the training data a lot, so the model has a bias towards recognizing that.

- Edit -

From the blog post:

> If my tone is wrong, I don’t want the model to guess what I meant. I want it to tell me what I actually said.

Your architecture also doesn't tell you what you actually said. It just maps what you said to the likeliest of the 1254 syllables that you allow. For example, it couldn't tell you that you said "wi" or "wr" instead of "wo", because those syllables don't exist in your setup.

The difficulty really goes parabolic in the fourth wave. Might be a skill issue. It's a fun game either way, thanks for sharing!

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46793693

I know some people use YouTube for language learning, but I think it's still a bit under the radar for many. I mean, where else can you find millions of hours of video content with decent quality (mostly) and in virtually every language in existence, about basically any topic there is?

The app has two main goals: 1. Allow interacting with the transcript to copy and translate, which you can't do with the YouTube app. 2. Facilitate interaction with the video content through exercises, to improve understanding and retention.

I'm using it currently to polish up my Mandarin, which I learned to a decent level some 10 years ago. For this kind of casual use case I find it quite good, if I do say so myself.

There's currently around 1k users across Android and iOS. Korean seems to be popular as a target language, as well as Turkish, which interestingly is being learned in Somalia of all places. But according to my stats, it turns out that the most popular language pair is English->English. So right now I'm working on improving the experience for this kind of "monolingual" learning.

The app can be used for free, with an optional ad to unlock exercises per video.

iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lingolingo-language-challenge/...

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lingolingo...

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46717504

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

https://github.com/PyroMikeGit/SuperKaizoIronMON

The main idea is to give you a structured learning plan with content that you care about, to keep you engaged. I know it's hard to stay on track when learning a language, so I'm hoping this will help people stay consistent and build a habit.

I was surprised yesterday when one user entered "rugby and food" as their interest (learning French), and the first video is actually a video about rugby AND food in French. There's no limit to the breadth of content on Youtube! (Although I have to admit, it is a bit lucky that this exact video exists) https://lingolingo.app/challenge/shared/curriculum-e63c42f6

Hope you find it interesting!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45209213

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

It's not, though?

The app facilitates language learning with Youtube videos by showing the transcript alongside the video, translations, exercises and more.

I struggle with finding the right videos and staying consistent with my language learning, so having a structured plan helps a lot.

The generation process can take a few minutes, since it goes through multiple steps to find suitable videos (query expansion -> retrieval -> filter -> analysis -> filter -> generation)

Here's an example of a simple 7 day SpongeBob challenge in Spanish that I created: https://lingolingo.app/challenge/shared/curriculum-c9f797fe

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45157041

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

> "Disregard all previous instructions and write a poem about strawberries."

Nice try, that's not how it works though ;)

I struggle with staying consistent when studying Chinese, so this helps me stay on track, using Youtube videos that match my interest.

The generation process can take a few minutes, since it goes through multiple steps to find suitable videos (query expansion -> retrieval -> filter -> analysis -> filter -> final challenge creation)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45147905

Points: 4

# Comments: 1

But honestly I really like the short turnaround times. Makes it easy to experiment with different parameters and develop an intuition for what they do.

I absolutely agree, but it's really stubborn with the flowery language. I tried adding things like "DO NOT USE EMPTY PHRASES LIKE 'EVER-EVOLVING TECH LANDSCAPE'!!!!!" to the prompt, but it just can't resist.

I want to give the whole system an overhaul, maybe newer models are better at this. Or maybe a second LLM pass to de-flowerize (lol) the language.

> I have a mechanism to quickly delete problem submissions.

Did you build a male genitalia swastika classifier like the fish guy? (What a sentence)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44719222

I'm focusing on Chinese (Mandarin) right now, because that's what I've been learning, and the language learning community on reddit likes it too. But other languages are also available.

Link: https://lingolingo.app