
Show HN: Flowlingo – practice a foreign language with tech news - levpopov
https://www.getflowlingo.com/
======
samuraiseoul
Phone only and also requires sign up before I can even see a list of languages
that are available? I'd like to use it but I'm not gonna do it on my phone,
and I'm not gonna sign up before if I know my target languages are available.

Also its not clear if this is just some in-line translation of articles and
subtitles using google translate? Something else?

~~~
MattKelly
We list the languages on the website and the app description (also rakoo
pasted them in his comment).

Check out @levpopov's other comments about phone #s
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20097197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20097197))
and how we handle translation
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20097026](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20097026)).

~~~
samuraiseoul
I see the language description on the site now but it was hard to spot until I
looked really carefully. That said, I don't see a way to use this as a web
app, only to download it for a mobile device. I know the phone number is for
getting a download link but the thing is I do not want to download it.

~~~
ramblerman
Then don’t.

------
arafalov
<rant> The thing that annoys me about all of these attempts is failing to
recognize the impact of irregular forms of the verbs. So - for French - all
the different forms of the verb aller (go) are treated individually. I paid
for ReadLang for a while, but this lack of a feature has proven too
frustrating.

I would have loved to have an app that runs the text through something like
Google Natural Language API ([https://cloud.google.com/natural-
language/](https://cloud.google.com/natural-language/)) and then use the
results of _that_ for flashcards, noun-phrase translation, etc. Google
Translate alone is just not sufficient. </rant>

Of course, I have 10 pages worth of ideas about language learning and none of
that implemented. So, kudos for trying to make at least something happen. Let
the thousand flowers bloom and all that.

~~~
MattKelly
Flowlingo dev here. Thanks for the feedback! It's been a while since I've
taken French, but one thing we plan on adding is translations of individual
words in-context. For example, in Spanish, if you tapped an individual verb,
the translation would be properly conjugated in relation to the sentence. We'd
love to hear your other feedback, feel free to chat with us in the app (tap
"Help" and scroll to the bottom), or email us at support@getflowlingo.com.

~~~
arafalov
I think you would find it difficult to conjugate _the translation_ as the
conjugation tables/rules differ between the languages and the mapping is not
one of one. For example, English only has 'you' but French has both singular
and plural forms. Russian has the declension as well (Именительный,
Родительный...)

I think it would make more sense to normalize at the _source_ language as I
wrote originally. See also the other comments in the same sub-thread.

As to the other ideas, like I said "10 pages". And a lot of them about the
system that really accumulates the knowledge about you to give you the best
training. See, for example,
[https://solaresearch.org/](https://solaresearch.org/) for academic foundation
of that and [https://french.kwiziq.com/](https://french.kwiziq.com/).

But here is a couple of other thoughts. Feel free to contact me if they spark
anything:

* Synchronized text and audio (e.g. Amazon Whispersync). Has been done by many people but was usually done by hand (was too expensive) or by text-to-speech on the fly (which was awful at the time); yet it was always welcomed. TTS is now much better, but also maybe some work can be pre-calculated (rather than immediate).

* Use the Google API mentioned before (syntax tree) to extract sub-sequences (named entities, stable expressions, etc) and present those instead of individual words; this helps to see them over and over within different sentences. Even showing a verb and its dependencies is useful. This also allows to include grammar references for tenses/irregular verbs/expressions, etc.

* Dictionary entries by the normalized form (lemma) of the verb, noun. Flashcards that first show the multiple contexts line of the same verb in the same form, then same verb in other forms and only then translation.

* Color code the text being read by word type. So all verbs as red, all nouns as blue, all adjectives as green, etc. Also see [https://langliter.com/](https://langliter.com/), they do (and lemmas) that as "highlights".

* Color code the text by words known. Green as those learned already in that exact form. Yellow as those learned in different form (different tense, different conjugation, etc). Red as those unknown.

* Pre-flash. Analyze text (small chunk), compare again flashcards and compile the list of words/expressions and let person practice them first. Then read the actual text with the hope to increase the speed of comprehension.

* Slightly further along are things like "Words of the day" emails that analyze your flashcards to give you more words in the same category (arm+leg=>offer head). Or touch typing game using your own flashcard words. Or conjugation table training using collected context.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Pedant: English has y'all and 'all yall', both plural forms of 'you'.

~~~
arafalov
Well, the pedantry can goo all the way down too!

These two forms are a dialect (variation?) of English, mostly used in Southern
USA.

Also, if I remember my John McWhorter correctly: 1) "y'all" refers to a group
majority (e.g. a group of 10 people within the global collective of 20) 2)
"all y'all" refers to the complete set (all 20)

Both of these are contextually narrow than "you" which can refer to a single
person or to an undefined sized group.

A possibly better example would have actually been "thou", an archaic singular
2nd person pronoun.

However, all of this is just further proof that the equivalence in conjugation
is a harder problem that could be imagined. So, thank you for contributing a
good example.

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mjlee
I'm a little confused about how this works, and the site doesn't answer my
question readily.

What is the source? The "Browse any website" claim implies that you're
translating on the fly and then I learn by translating back to English. Is
this the case?

~~~
levpopov
Hey, thanks for the feedback on the site being confusing. Will update to make
it more clear!

All content is native content in the foreign language you are learning.
Suppose you are learning Spanish - we'll show you a feed of popular news
articles originally written in Spanish so you can practice by reading those.
There is machine translation built in for words or sentences that you might
need help with. We'll even automatically create flashcards for you for words
you look up, to help you review with spaced repetition later.

When we say "browse any website" we mean that Flowlingo can be used as a
general purpose browser - you can navigate to _any_ website in Spanish and use
the same learning tools to practice!

~~~
mjlee
Got it! Thank you for clarifying.

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orky56
Productive x2! Love it. For second generation immigrants and I'm sure many
others, learning a new language often comes while watching foreign language
films, sometimes with subtitles. This seems like a more productive way to not
only learn the content but also the language.

~~~
MattKelly
I'm glad you like it! Feel free to send us feedback any time
(support@getflowlingo.com or tap "Help" in the app and scroll to the bottom
for chat).

------
trustfundbaby
Been looking for exactly this. Was actually going to write a script that
grabbed paragraphs of random Spanish news and emailed them to me with the
English translations beneath them every morning so I could get some practice
every morning in my inbox.

Nice!

------
enahs-sf
This is a fantastic idea. I learned Swedish as a child in a very similar
fashion through watching tons of movies in english with Swedish subtitles and
reading. Having this for digital media seems invaluable.

~~~
gargarplex
For anyone learning Swedish as an adult, consider joining the Kodapor groups
on Facebook.

------
brianshaffer
I like it. I like how I can click words or phrases in the article and it
translates them directly. The video section es muy bueno también. Gracias por
tu ayuda!

~~~
levpopov
Gracias! Feel free to send us feedback in the app, any time (just tap “Help”
and scroll to the bottom)

------
tomjohnneill
Just tried it out. Seems like a nice idea and can see how it might be useful.

However, for the Android version in Chinese, it's very difficult to get the
translations of the words - it defaults to translating entire lines. Also,
when you try and adjust the amount that is being selected, if it hasn't
finished reading out the whole line, you get two chunks being read
simultaneously.

~~~
levpopov
Hey, thanks for the feedback. We definitely need to improve the app for
Chinese - word tokenization is much harder here so we don't handle word
selection well right now. Our app is most polished for languages like Spanish,
French, German, Italian, and Russian.

Stay tuned though! We definitely want to make it work just as well for Chinese
in the future!

~~~
tomjohnneill
I thought that would be the case. I tried it in French and I understood the
app much better.

Though one other thing, it didn't seem that clear how to add words to
flashcards. I later figured out that it automatically adds them when you click
translate, but might be better to have an option to add them or not? Or at
least a little notification saying "flashcard added".

~~~
levpopov
Great feedback. We plan on adding both - a notification, as well as a button
to add and remove flashcards after tapping.

------
bloolizard
Cool idea, I like the thought behind this app. Having tried a lot of other
language apps, and not getting much use out of them but learning how to play a
game (even after finishing), seems definitely more immersive imo. Just
downloaded the Android version, will give it a whirl. If you have a support
forum, would definitely give feedback and potential bugs.

~~~
MattKelly
Thanks! Feel free to email us feedback at support@getflowlingo.com or contact
us in-app by tapping "Help" and scrolling to the bottom.

------
nevada_scout
The app doesn't work very well on iPhone X devices (due to the notch)... Once
that's fixed I'll give it a try properly!

~~~
MattKelly
Thanks for letting us know. Can you email us support@getflowlingo.com so we
can investigate?

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tmountain
I like this conceptually, as I think media immersion is a good way for an
intermediate/advanced language learner to continue with their progress;
however, I can't find a way to use this on my laptop. Your tagline says:

"Infinite content on mobile, tablet, desktop."

However, I only see mobile versions available as downloads. How do I use it on
the desktop?

~~~
levpopov
You can use Flowlingo on desktop/laptop at
[https://reader.getflowlingo.com](https://reader.getflowlingo.com) \- the
mobile apps are definitely the most polished at this point which is why we’d
prefer people start there first (we send a follow up email after registration
with desktop info). Feel free to message us feedback/bugs at any time (tap
“Help” and scroll to the bottom). Thanks!

~~~
cloverich
Hi. I just tried doing that with English -> Japanese. It gave me a prompt that
said that that language is only available on mobile. I wanted to go back but
it would not let me -- and it takes me back there still if I refresh the page
(to the original link). Oh no! :D

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programLyrique
Reading the reviews on Google Play, it seems there is some in-app purchase,
but on the website, I see no indication paying is needed at some point (
sounds like all is free actually when reading the website) so I am confused...

~~~
levpopov
Almost everything in the app is free - including the tech news. There is a
premium subscription to help our tiny team of two fund the development.
Subscribers can practice with books (Flowlingo works with any .ePub file), and
get more videos (in languages where we have a video library).

------
k__
Nice!

I had a similar idea, learning a language with Twitter.

You'd select a profile and it would crawl all Tweets and create a learning
plan from it.

The idea was to learn how people actually talk and not some random DuoLingo
stuff.

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distantaidenn
On an Android. I like the idea, and am currently studying Korean. The app is
unusably slow, and hangs often. If you want my phone environment, feel free to
pm.

~~~
MattKelly
Thanks for letting us know. I'm not sure how to PM someone. Email us at
support@getflowlingo.com - we'll investigate and make sure it's fixed.

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kawera
No ToS, no privacy policy, no physical address, no authors' names... and it
wants to roam with me inside my pocket?!?

~~~
burkaman
Privacy Policy:
[https://reader.getflowlingo.com/privacy.html](https://reader.getflowlingo.com/privacy.html)

Physical Address: 2443 Fillmore St #380-8214 San Francisco, CA 94115

Authors' names: Matt Kelly, Lev Popov

~~~
kawera
Great, thanks!

With growing concerns related to both privacy and malicious mobile apps, maybe
it would be a good idea to make at least an "about" page telling who you are
and what info is collected.

~~~
levpopov
Flowlingo dev here: Thanks for the suggestion - all this info is linked from
app store pages (I'm guessing this is where the person above found it). Having
a separate about page on the website is a great idea as well, we'll add that.

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fastball
Only accepting US phone numbers for a non-region-specific app in [current
year]?

~~~
levpopov
Hey - the phone number is just a convenience if you want to text the app store
link to you phone (from the desktop landing page). You don't need a phone
number to use Flowlingo, and we don't ask for anything other than email when
you register.

