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Show HN: Learn Spanish quickly while reading
- freeatnet 5y agoThat's a pretty cool approach! Alas, the interface seems to have gotten stuck on step 9 for me.
- Phillip98798 5y agoThanks, yeah. I wanted to see what HN thought before I took the time to finish it. Looks like I will.
- troydavis 5y agoOne more vote of support. I'm reading it now. I've always wished that Kindle had this. One can buy a Kindle translation (and some popular books have communities around translations: https://tinwhiskers.net/post/harry_potter_spanish https://tinwhiskers.net/post/harry_potter_spanish, https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/9229774/Harry-Potter-in-Spanish https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/9229774/Harry-Potter-in-S...) as well as a translating dictionary, but one must find a book that's very close to the reader's level or reading will be impossibly slow (highlight word, click to translate, repeat). Your contextual translations and next/play button are way faster.
- sammyo 5y agoReally interesting approach. I've bookmarked the page. You should consider gathering emails to give updates. This should be the new killer app for e-readers. That tech is generally closed with too low powered processors due to power requirements for it to be implemented in any current generation. But it is just right for this kind of reading/learning. Are you doing the translation?
- Phillip98798 5y agoThanks, I used Google Translate at first. I have a family member that does it professionally so I may work with him going forward.
- cko 5y agoI also bookmarked as I have been learning spanish on and off. I like that it starts with english, so that I have to try to guess what the Spanish is first. I missed the 'de' in 'de cuyo nombre' and now I don't think I'll easily forget.
- napier 5y agoThis is really very promising and well executed. Any plans for additional texts and languages in the future?
- Phillip98798 5y agoI can see doing les mis for French and other seminal works of their respective languages. I guess I’ll try and finish this one first.
- knubie 5y agoI’d like to check it out but on my phone the top and bottom of the pop up is cropped and I can’t scroll or close it.
- Phillip98798 5y agoThanks, will fix.
- logikblok 5y agoThis is a great start. Obviously an MVP but perhaps you might want to consider highlighting the sequential changed word. For example: In a lugar de La Mancha might be a nice add to emphasise the change and reinforce lugar = place etc?
- Phillip98798 5y agoGood idea
- feiss 5y agoThis is great, amazing idea! However, I don't understand why you chose don quixote. That's not modern, normal, everyday prose, it was written 400 years ago.. any spanish kid would have trouble understanding it. Any other modern (less than 100 years) and famous novel would be much adequate for learning spanish.
- Phillip98798 5y agoI agree it’s not very prosaic. I guess it has marketing value being a notorious story. Hopefully I can wrap it up and do a more modern novel. Any suggestions?
- cko 5y agoIs Love in the time of cholera both notorious and prosaic enough?
- anthk 5y agoModern as in classical modern or today's thrillers?
- ivanmaeder 5y ago100 Years of Solitude?
- anemoiac 5y agoThis is what we used for reading & translating long passages in my American high school’s Spanish 5/AP Spanish course. I don’t have much to compare it to, but it seemed like a good choice at the time.
- varispeed 5y agoIt would be fun to go to Mexico or Spain and talk 400 years old Spanish like it's normal.
- mikewarot 5y ago
- lonesword 5y agoOh I'd definitely love to see this completed. I don't speak Spanish, so I'm not sure if this would be a problem here - are all sentences in Spanish guaranteed to have an almost one-one translation to English? In other words, what happens when the word order changes? This would be a huge deal in German.
- Phillip98798 5y agoThanks, no the order differs in Spanish as well. That’s why it’s going to take me a while as I’m going over the Spanish and English translations and trying to make it work. I will try to honor the Spanish order more than the English, even if that makes the English sound weird. The idea is you know English, so it doesn’t have to be very understandable on the English side. Just enough to give you the context.
- vinay427 5y agoGerman would definitely be problematic but it's still likely to be one of the least affected, especially in the English -> German direction, and nearly every word would at least has a clear translation. Virtually any sentence in an SOV (or less common, OSV) language would be essentially unworkable while maintaining word order.
- bobthepanda 5y agoGerman SV2O is still very jarring to me as a language learner; I just can‘t get used to looking forward in the sentence to decipher the verb, as compared to English.
- vinay427 5y agoDefinitely, as a fellow German learner. The "flexibility" or unpredictability of word order, largely due to the greater inflection based on grammatical case, makes it much more challenging unless one is a native speaker who can probably more intuitively decipher the roles of each word.
- 5y ago
- whenlambo 5y agoCannot get past slide 19 on iOS Safari. “Next” button does nothing.
- Phillip98798 5y agoThanks, yeah it’s an MVP. Was trying to gauge interest before I complete the whole translation.
- guidedlight 5y agoIt’s a good idea. But the book is a bad choice. “un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero”, is a great example of why this is the case.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y agoNicely done OP. If you guys liked this, then there are similar solutions posted for the problem 'Teach me vocabulary without spending extra time'[1] on my problem validation platform. As the problem title implies, it's about integrating language learning as part of our regular reading efforts. OP, You're welcomed to share your work there as well. [1] https://needgap.com/problems/169-teach-me-vocabulary-without-spending-extra-time-language-education https://needgap.com/problems/169-teach-me-vocabulary-without...
- animal531 5y agoI always thought this a great way to learn a language (from reading fiction such as Shogun where you're introduced to a lot of words from another language). I imagine another way to do it would be to go more slowly. Start in all English and then transition to the target language so that the reader never has to press anything or re-read parts, so that by the end of the book it is all in the target language.
- gandalfian 5y agoAlways mean to try a Assimil course. Which is a similar idea I believe of reading along to an audio books.
- Andrew_W 5y agoThis is awesome! Good job on it :) Wish you had a mailing list signup - I don't want to forget about this! I took a one month Spanish class in Mexico a few years ago. It was amazing for giving me a solid base, and your tool would be perfect for getting regular practice in and learning new things. Definitely agree with the other comments that a more modern book would be better. For me, probably a children's book haha. I can't imagine how much time it takes to translate though! Idea: - Create a list of a few books you could translate. - Allow users to donate and select the book it would go towards. - When donations reach the threshold, they're charged and you write it. Like Kickstarter for book translations haha. Or maybe Patreon or something has that feature.
- Andrew_W 5y agoI also took a peak at your code and saw the manifest. This would be a pretty awesome PWA :) I hope you keep at it!
- mlok 5y agoThis is really good, but I think learners would benefit a lot if English had one color and Spanish another, so we can distinguish which is which. (Disclaimer : I am not a native English speaker)
- sweetheart 5y agoHahha wow! This is so funny, I was going to be posting my Show HN today which is a platform for teaching Spanish through reading, and I saw this! You beat me to it for today, I think. I'm so glad to see there are other folks interested in teaching Spanish through input. Would you have any interest in exchanging info to talk about what we are each doing? I bet we could both learn from each other! My email is in my profile, in case you're down :) Anyway, congrats on the launch, and the best of luck to you!
- kwdc 5y agoInteresting MVP. I'm interested in how this progresses further.
- camkego 5y agoYou might consider Platero and I and the rights allow it.
- hadleycode 5y agoLove the concept! Do you have any numbers or stats on its impact on language learning? Is it more or less effective than just learning a vocab list? What base level should one have before using it? etc...?