Show HN: I created an app to learn any language without effort for free | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: I created an app to learn any language without effort for free

app.fluent.im

6 pointsachempion7 comments

I moved to Denmark from Russia two years ago. I noticed that it's hard to learn Danish while living in Copenhagen because everyone speaks good English, and it's hard to find friends when you don't speak Danish.

I joined a public language school because it's free to study Danish for the first five years of residency. I didn't learn much because, apart from this public school, I didn't have anyone to practice Danish with.

I've created an app where you can speak with friends you already have, and you can all learn different languages because the app will translate it for you.

You can join the "Show HN" group chat that I created for this post to see how it works: https://app.fluent.im/invite/group/0iNwuVVIyhTc

p.s. I posted the old version of the app here some time ago. It was for solo study only, without chats and friends, which is the main focus of the new version.

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Fantastic execution and concept, well done!

Some things I noticed:

The transcription shows in real time, and shows in one of 3 colors. This must have been very tricky to implement and is implemented well, however, I find it distracting and it breaks me out of a natural flow of speaking.

Similarly the recording widget itself at the bottom is overly complex. Does it even need to be there at all? Can’t it be one/two buttons, and more embedded into the chat flow? When I start recording, it changes into a similar but also complex widget with two ways to delete all spoken so far and a back button that doesn’t work. There’s also a black widget that shows up when speaking english that I assume is following some unsaid convention aimed at aiding the user. Then there is karaoke mode?

Way too complex, you can whittle this all down to two buttons: record and help/hint.

Sometimes (often) I didn’t know what to say but a hint might have helped.

Finally there is no end state, do I just press back when all the objectives are done?

Edit: the topics of conversation can be quite… exotic

> Alex is visiting the zoo when he notices an animal missing from its enclosure. Sam, the zookeeper, needs help finding it.

Are the conversations themselves being generated by AI? I think the topics should be centered around things that happen in daily life.

Edit, it just didn’t pick up that I did already ask where the oranges were. Got the end state

Orange means that the voice recognition model is confident in 50-70% in such word

> The transcription shows in real time, and shows in one of 3 colors

I use Deepgram for voice recognition, and these three colors are the confidence score.

> Similarly the recording widget itself at the bottom is overly complex

It also supports text input if you click the hand emoji on the right side

> Sometimes (often) I didn’t know what to say but a hint might have helped

Yon can click on "Suggest" in such case

> Are the conversations themselves being generated by AI

They are, they were like that at first, but I decided to spice things up every n-th conversation to make things less boring

Also, the main part of the app is the Friends section where you can chat with friends, bots, or just join the "Show HN" chat where everyone can chat in the language of their choice and the communication will be enhanced and translated in every language that participants use

Seems a tad too easy to cheat, but hopefully people wouldn't do that because there is no value in it :) https://i.imgur.com/Y21qW2E.png

But jokes aside, I think it might lean a bit too lenient and accepting of answers that wouldn't really be correct. It's taking the conversation very literally when deciding if you pass or not, and the auto-correct does seemingly a lot of heavy-lifting, maybe even too much.

Really like the overall idea though, simple and could be really effective.

Can't see any cheating in your message. If you can close all goals in one message then why not?

I just realized that I hide like 90% of the app in a menu that no-one checks, in top right corner. What you showed on the screen is a minor feature of the app.

> Can't see any cheating in your message. If you can close all goals in one message then why not?

I'm merely repeating the mission text, not actually performing what should be required. Asking someone "Can you please provide me the availability of an item?" doesn't make sense in real life, you'd ask about a specific item.

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