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Comment by pototo666 | Hacker News Reader

Before ChatGPT I spent around 200 usd per month to practice German with German native speakers for 2 months.

Then I use ChatGPT to practice German and I am very happy about the experience. AI can't replace real human yet. But I'm already willing to practice with ChatGPT given my current use case and my budget. It's not 10x better, but 20x cheaper. From my experience, AI is not hype.

Imagine integrating a more fine tuned AI and text-to-speech feature to make a better AI teacher. Such an app already exists, I believe. I'm waiting for a German and Japanese one.

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This is a great example of a concrete use case. It is well known that tutors are far more effective than generalized learning, and everybody’s anecdotal experience is that immersion is the best way to learn a language (suggesting that the interactive effect of tutors is at least as strong in this domain)

A quick Duck Duck Go search suggests that capturing just a fraction of this market is worth >>$1B. To me that feels categorically different than crypto, even if a few grifters are also adding froth to the space.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/257656/size-of-the-globa...

Where did you find these German native speakers to practice with? And you said "such an app already exists", but not for German and Japanese. Do you know the name? I have a lot of experience building language learning services so am very curious to hear what you feel is currently missing in your current tools to learn German/Japanese.

I use iTalki to find native speaker to practice with.

I say such app exists because I just read about Speak: https://www.speak.com/blog/speak-announces-27m-series-b-led-...

It's for studying English.

What I don't like about a real tutor is because it's expensive and I have to book in advance. ChaptGPT is free and I can practice with it whenever I want. Besides, ChaptGPT is not a real human so I don't feel embaraced when I made stupid mistake.

How much does it currently cost you (per session) to book someone on iTalki?

And which would you prefer: a cheaper, on-demand version of iTalki (you get matched with someone already online versus booking in advance), or an AI-based app/service that you can chat back-and-forth with whenever you want?

I pay $15 to $20 per session (around 45 ~ 60 mins), depending on teachers.

The problem with matching with someone already online is that it might not be the right person. There are tutors that are very good, helpful and inspiring. I don't think I want to talk to random person online. A long term relationship with several tutors are helpful because we know each other better and I'm more comfortable speaking in front of them.

So I would prefer AI > random someone

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