←back to thread

Show HN: Duolingo-style exercises but with real-world content like the news

(app.fluentsubs.com)
456 points ph4evers | 2 comments | 01 Apr 25 05:46 UTC | HN request time: 0.463s | source

I've been working on a little side project that combines Duolingo-like listening comprehension exercises with real content .

Every video is transcribed to get much better transcripts than the closed captions. I filter on high quality transcripts, and afterwards a LLM selects only plausible segments for the exercises. This seems to work well for quality control and seems to be reliable enough for these short exercises.

Would love your thoughts!

Show context
dataengineer56 ◴[01 Apr 25 08:54 UTC] No.43544384[source]▶
The English icon has the Union Jack flag rather than the US flag, so it automatically elevates the service above Duolingo for me.
replies(6): >>43544397 #>>43544495 #>>43544886 #>>43545537 #>>43546232 #>>43546368 #
1. JimDabell ◴[01 Apr 25 12:55 UTC] No.43546232[source]▶
This really isn’t a positive point. Flags represent nations, not languages, and it can be quite offensive to equate the two.

To use your example, there are plenty of Irish people who speak English but would resent being forced to identify with the Union Flag.

For another example that is very relevant today, there are plenty of Russian-speaking Ukrainians who hate Russia. Using the Russian flag to represent them would at best be distasteful.

replies(1): >>43546320 #
2. coldpie ◴[01 Apr 25 13:03 UTC] No.43546320[source]▶
That's actually a really good point that seems obvious, but I hadn't considered before. I wonder what a better solution is. ISO language codes[1], I guess?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ISO_639_language_codes