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

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456 points ph4evers | 2 comments | 01 Apr 25 05:46 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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!

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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.
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pjc50 ◴[01 Apr 25 09:58 UTC] No.43544886[source]▶
English (Traditional) vs English (Simplified)
replies(2): >>43545694 #>>43546842 #
BalinKing ◴[01 Apr 25 13:56 UTC] No.43546842[source]▶
Honest question, what's the meaning behind this joke? Is it just referencing the fact that American English drops "u" in the spelling of e.g. "color"?
replies(1): >>43547208 #
1. pjc50 ◴[01 Apr 25 14:28 UTC] No.43547208[source]▶
It's primarily a reference to various language selection dropdowns offering "Chinese (Traditional)" (which is used in Taiwan) and "Chinese (Simplified)" (which is used on the Chinese mainland). That difference arises from Mao-era simplification of many of the most common hanzi characters to make them easier to write or distinguish.

Mixed with, yes, the variant spellings and word choices (e.g. chips/crisps/biscuits) that make it apparent to British English readers when something is American.

replies(1): >>43548810 #
2. BalinKing ◴[01 Apr 25 16:37 UTC] No.43548810[source]▶
I think my confusion is more from the implication that variant spellings imply "simplification"—even at a glance, simplified and traditional hanzi differ greatly in complexity, whereas I don't see how "chips" is any simpler than "crisps", even as a joke....

EDIT: Of course, it doesn’t matter one bit in the grand scheme of things—feel free to ignore my pedantry over a silly joke :-)