Hacker News Reader

Comment by GuiA | Hacker News Reader

Similarly, movie subtitles specifically for language learning could be devised.

For example, you'd have 3 lines: the original line, a translated line, and a "learning" line in between that would have the verbs in their non conjugated form, etc.

Example with your sentence:

Mata 8 dragónes verdes

Matar 8 dragón verde

Kill 8 dragons green

This probably isn't the ideal configuration, but I think the general idea has a lot of potential and would greatly help with language learning. It would also really shine for languages with different alphabets - eg for japanese the top line could use kanji/hiragana/katakana, and the middle line romaji.

I thought of this recently while watching a Japanese movie- my Japanese is very rudimentary, and having romaji+English subtitles while listening to the movie in Japanese would make me learn super fast.

View on HN

From what I recall, subtitles were indeed tremendously helpful when I was learning English - English subtitles only, though. Being able to read along took the stress out of having to cope with enunciation and understanding meaning at the same time. Translated subtitles on the other hand were just a distraction. My brain would end up reading them and start ignoring the English, rather than make any connections.

So I don't think trying to have two languages active concurrently and constantly translating forth and back works well. However, having audio and text in the same language active concurrently helps with instilling an audio representation of the language in your head, which is crucial in e.g. improving reading speed, because you really need to be able to actually speak in your head instead of working with abstract symbols.

Yes, you need an effort-reward loop to learn something.

I knew a German exchange student in HS that said he learned a lot of his English from watching US TV and having the German subs until he could understand spoken English well enough then he switched to the English subs to get better at reading it as well. I've l've always considered trying to grab some TV shows with foreign audio tracks and English subs and giving it a go. The problem is a lot of the TV I "watch" is in the background while doing something else.

I've tried the TV method but never really felt like it worked. In contrast, after a session or two with Rosetta Stone, I'd walk away with some basic Spanish or Arabic kicking around in my head. It's really pretty amazing, but as I said before the issue is that people (including myself) always quit RS because it's still a chore.

I guess the upside to TV is that it's not a chore and people would be less likely to quit.

Have you tried apps like Duolingo? I personally have not tried them (past 1-2 days of playing around) but I have friends that speak highly of it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com