Show HN: LLM grammar explainer and flash card maker for Japanese | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: LLM grammar explainer and flash card maker for Japanese

goginko.com

Goal was to make it easy to jump from textbook learning into immersion. I wanted to play video games in Japanese, and started by using LLMs and a notebook, but figured it would be easier to streamline it all in an app.

- You input a sentence in Japanese (easier on mobile where you can handwrite kanji you don't know) - App translates the sentence, explains the grammar, and gives you a list of flash cards - You choose some flash cards to save for studying later - You input a question about the explanation for more information - App explains some more and gives you more flash cards - Repeat

And then you can review the flash cards later with the built-in SRS system.

There's a video to explain the UI on the front page.

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The sentence --> into flashcard is exactly what I was hoping for. If this is high quality I'd happily pay $60/year (something comparable to what I pay AnkiApp pro / Univerbal subscription).Here's some feedback so you can consider if you want to invest.

I tried the app but on the first few attempts it gave an error 404 in console.

The example long paragraph I put in from an email gave me only 4 flashcards, two of them was on Arigatou, when I wanted to focus on the other words: ショップからの回答: [Re] 947912984 につきましてご連絡ありがとうございます。ご返送のお手配、誠にありがとうございます。ご返送品が到着いたしましたら、再度ご連絡致します。この度は、お手数、ご迷惑をお掛け致しまして誠に申し訳ございません。恐れ入りますが、よろしくお願いいたします。

Also I couldn't figure out the UI initially, it took me like 10 seconds to think to try the "chat" feature to input into the LLM.

Let me reclarify - I really want this app. I tried RemNote (as they say it's easy to convert notes to flashcards) but it doesn't support hand-drawing on othe iPad, and is just really unintuitive to me still. The flashcards I couldn't figure out back-->front as it's always front-->back.

LLM question --> flashcards is exactly the workflow I want. I ask ChatGPT to do a lot of breakdowns of the grammar and the furigana and the words, being able to consolidate that with spaced reptition flash cards just makes a ton of sense. I don't know how hard it is to make this product really high quality, but happy to pre-pay you $10 for example no strings attached (I'm moved to Japan since 6 months ago)

Thanks, your feedback is worth way more than $10! I have been typing in one line or a couple sentences at a time. Your use case of inputting a whole email sounds very useful though.

I'm wondering if that would require a different UI or if... Say it just broke up the email for you into separate sentences and input them separately. Then you could click through the sentences one at a time in the existing chat carousel, would that work?

Reversing the flashcards wouldn't be much work, but I've heard that's less useful for learning, since for the English text there's be many ways to say it in Japanese. Happy to add features people will use though.

Added reverse cards (only applies to new cards, no backfilling). There's a toggle now in the user settings page (inside the top bar user icon) to enable it. It shows the first sentence of the english text as the front of the card.

My quick fix is to set an input length limit on the chat text. Testing out your input, it seems like around 70 is the limit for getting decent output from the LLM.

OK. I don't mind shorter inputs. Also I hope to have one place for my flashcards i.e. make flash cards directly without LLM too. I hope to write kanjis on my iPad to make flashcards - I can't seem to figure out how to create new cards directly?

Email is just an odd case today since I was refunding an item. I usually want to focus on phrases everywhere, my yoga/pilates class, baseball team, sometimes TV, sometimes what I hear on a podcast, sometimes on a magazine, and get a detailed breakdown. It's not usually in formal, nor long.

I personally like both flash card directions because it allows me to practice how to write kanji for example instead of just recognizing, or in the context of phrases, it helps me practice active recalling rather than just passive recognition.

And thank you very much for making this app, I'm excited to see how it progresses and help you get more users and customers.

I tried so many apps, and was debating whether to build it myself. But it's impossible for me to build - no time and no creative juice left from my main job.

Did you shut down the website? It's not accessible now.

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