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Comment by smnrchrds | Hacker News Reader

I don't think a native English speaker would benefit much from this feature. But as someone for whom English is a second language, I am sure that I would have appreciated this when I was less fluent in English.

I am now trying to learn French, and I find myself searching to the most trivial sentences in linguee.fr. Learning grammar and vocabulary is one thing; knowing the idiomatic way to express one's message is an entirely different beast. Things that might seem obvious to a native speaker, e.g. the difference between "I'm fine" and "I'm good," are completely unapproachable for a non-native speaker for the first few years of using the language. Now that I am fluent in English, I would find this feature annoying. But I wish I had access to something like this 10 years ago.

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This has been one of the most consistent themes since the first prototypes we tried. It is particularly helpful for non-native speakers, but the large majority of native speakers find it helpful too.

This is why I've taken to watching a lot of TV in languages I'm interested in. Challenges with such:

1. A program I'm actually interested in and with which I can engage. And access to same.

2. Differences between: Spoken and written language. Dialect versus "standard usage".

3. Passive as opposed to active participation. (Also, I seem to have forgotten my original point 3.)

Even when I'm not entirely certain, what I've gained through this gives me a starting point in having an idea of what the/a proper idiom may be, which I can then take to the Web if I need further research/verification.

I wish I'd had access to such resources when I was learning my first languages. Instead, I was largely limited to the classroom and the professor for such exposure. (In most of the U.S., and with other than Spanish and perhaps family and friends, foreign languages are -- were, certainly, a generation ago -- "far away".)

And music. I happened across some that I enjoyed. If nothing else, this helped give me more sense of the sound of the language.

Yes. On a smaller scale, iOS predictive text is helping me learn a new language. Unexpected suggestions become new things to learn about.

Here is something funny. Google's Japanese Input on Android does English dictionary lookup when you're in romaji mode. And, here is the kicker: you have to use exact spelling, or no dice.

The exact spelling for Japanese is a lot more reasonable, though. In English there are lots of spellings for the same pronunciation. In Japanese there is only one spelling for each pronunciation. If you get it wrong, then you are writing a different word and there is very little you can do in the general case.

Of course the problem with romaji is our habit of spelling things wrong :-) To highlight the irony, "romaji" in Japanese is ローマ字 (literally roman (Roma) characters (Ji)). The ロ is "ro", the マ is "ma" and the 字 is "ji". But there is one character left! ー extends the "o" sound for the "ro" for one extra "beat" (Japanese is a rhythmical language). I don't even know the correct transliteration for this other than "rōmaji". For Wāpuro rōmaji I think I would enter "roumaji", but I think this is not actually correct romanisation.

Even to this day I mispronounce that word because of stupid romaji :-)

My comment is about English lookup when the keyboard is flipped into romaji mode, and the user isn't composing kana.

Interesting perspective, but a) I think it mainly draws its word choice from your own past messages anyway, and b) wouldn't an integrated translate button be more useful to this purpose?

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