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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
(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.
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/
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Not only is it pretty obvious why US independence day is not celebrated in the UK (although maybe that was tongue-in-cheek?), but we do have a fireworks night on a different date.
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.
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.
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.
Ah... those pesky people speaking their very own language instead of the (ahem...) lingua franca.
(I realize it was (hopefully) meant in jest-ish, but there are better ways to make the point.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I got to level thirteen having seen only four verbs (aller, faire, être, and parler) and mostly in the present.