
Show HN: Learn English with movies and TV Shows - duwip
http://fleex.tv
======
jhuckestein
I'm originally from Germany and moved to San Francisco three years ago, when I
was 21. People are often surprised that I don't have a strong German accent
and I jokingly say that it's because I watched all 10 seasons of Friends a few
times in a row. It's a joke, but I'm convinced it has a lot to do with it.

There's an interview with Max Levchin somewhere in which he says that he
watched some TV show over and over and repeated everything that was said in
order to rebrand himself as a midwesterner after he moved to the US. His
English is really good, too.

~~~
Lewton
Oh if only watching tv was enough to get rid of the accent! As a dane, my
accent at its worst sounds like someone making fun of a deaf person

~~~
jclos
Same here as a french guy. Even worse is that I can usually hide it pretty
well (or at least diminish it) until I have to pronounce the letter 'R'. Damn
R's...

~~~
geekfactor
What would be the equivalent french show for going the other way? I found
Braquo on Hulu and started watching/translating/studying it, but realized
pretty quickly that most of what they say should not be said in good company.

~~~
murbard2
Try "Un gar une fille", it deals with typical, every day situations so it's
good for vocabulary. Unfortunately, it may not be suitable for beginners. The
conversations are fast paced and I haven't been able to find any French
subtitles for it.

------
polymatter
Please don't use flags for disambiguating languages.

([http://flagsarenotlanguages.com/blog/why-flags-do-not-
repres...](http://flagsarenotlanguages.com/blog/why-flags-do-not-represent-
language/)) is a starting point.

Basically

\- some languages are spoken in more than one country (eg. English in US,
Britain, Australia, India)

\- some countries have more than one language spoken in them (eg. see any
large country)

\- you will end up accidentally annoying people when you accidentally get it
wrong. (is Cantonese, Tibetan and Mongolian the same language as Mandarin? You
realise they are not mutually intelligible and come from different language
families?)

I suggest you write the language name in the language itself. If you
desperately need something short use the Unicode language codes.

Edit: Really like it. Definitely continue.

~~~
adamors
This. A lot of European countries are either multilingual or have large
minorities that speak another country's language natively.

~~~
pattisapu
Pardon if this is a dumb question, but what is it that people mean on HN when
they say "This." ?? I've seen it a few times now and I still don't understand.

~~~
crntaylor
It's a piece of internet slang meaning "I strongly agree" and it adds just as
much to the conversation (that is, nothing).

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mtrimpe
Please, pretty please with sugar on top, also add the ability to delay the
subtitles!

From listening to a lot of Pimsleur I know that, for me, anticipation and
correction is one of the most powerful ways to learn a language.

I'm pretty sure that listening to a dialog, trying to work out what is said
and being corrected a few seconds later by the actual translation would have
an amazing impact on a lot of people (although it might be a bit too hard for
beginners.)

~~~
duwip
If you click the subtitles settings button, you'll see there's a tab for that.
You can also dynamically change your subs selection, in case you're unhappy
with the subs fleex auto-selected for you.

~~~
mtrimpe
Cool! Can I sign up to be notified about the Mac version being released? It's
HN username at gmail.

~~~
duwip
Just click the 'MY ACCOUNT' link and create an account. Don't tick the 'no
newsletter' box to make sure you'll get the news when the player is out. We'll
probably post something here as well when it gets out anyway.

------
jwarren
Smart! Any plans to work with multiple languages? I'm an English-speaker, and
I'd love something similar in the other direction.

~~~
duwip
We're focusing on English right now in an effort to stay as lean as possible.
There are 2bn English learners on the planet, so from a rational point of view
it doesn't really make sense to us to expand to other languages just yet...

~~~
whyleyc
... except that you'd have a ready-made market of 2bn if you did !

------
baby
This is how I learned english. I watched all the seasons of Friends and
stopped at (almost) every lines to translate words I couldn't understand (and
make a list).

I also learned chinese this way, and let me tell you it is way more time
consuming and exhausting since I had to draw every characters I didn't know to
get the meaning. A solution like that for non-latin language would be awesome.

~~~
jcampbell1
For Chinese, checkout <http://chinese.yabla.com/> or <http://fluentu.com/>

~~~
baby
Wow! This is truly awesome. Thanks a LOT for that. I know what I'm gonna do of
my time these next weeks now.

------
Ecio78
I do this process by downloading subtitles automatically with
<http://subdownloader.net/> or manually from <http://www.opensubtitles.org/en>
and then play the tv series directly on the tv. It's of course less advanced
than this (but more easy/enjoyable). I think this approach could be good at
the beginning of the learning process (i.e. I've just begun studyin' French
and it's too difficult for me to watch a movie with french subtitles only)

EDIT: it's a pity it's Windows-only (Mac in the future) I'd like a Linux
version or better a XBMC plugin :)

~~~
duwip
A Linux version isn't too far away either - there simply hasn't been much
demand for it yet.

~~~
StavrosK
Yeah, I'd pay for something like this (for Linux) for learning Spanish. I
learnt English by watching TV, and it's pretty much one of the best ways to
learn a language.

A small problem is that you'd have to find enough good Spanish (as in Spain)
shows/movies, but I guess there's no dearth of those.

~~~
ghostDancer
You may try to watch dubbed Tv/Films to spanish, easier to find, and you can
find the spanish subtitles <http://www.subtitulos.es/> .

~~~
StavrosK
Oh, that's a good idea! I'll look for some dubbed movies, thank you.

------
Void_
I want this for French.

I couldn't even find TV shows in French with matching French subtitles. Any
ideas where to look?

~~~
Ecio78
Arte TV is a french-german Television that broadcasts movies in both languages
and with both subtitles (unfortunately teletext subs and not DVB subs). I've
seen it on sat (i think on Astra 19.2) but they should have something also
online.

In this precise moment they have problem on their site: <http://www.arte.tv/>
lol

EDIT: it's a cultural channel so don't expect to see Mission Impossible, many
movies are self produced etc..

~~~
Ecio78
PS I'm studying French too because I'm moving to Luxembourg next month. Any
HNers there?

There has just been last week a Startup Weekend event but unfortunately I
couldn't have been there...

------
znq
VLSub plugin for VLC

Search and download subtitles from opensubtitles.org using the hash of the
video currently playing or its title.

[http://addons.videolan.org/content/show.php/VLSub+0.9.4?cont...](http://addons.videolan.org/content/show.php/VLSub+0.9.4?content=148752)

------
onemorepassword
Learn English like a Dutchman and end up with a really confused
British/American hybrid accent... ;-)

Seriously, subtitles are the main reason most Dutch people speak English,
traditional education has very little to do with.

~~~
ronaldx
Thus, what tv would you recommend to learn Dutch? ;)

~~~
vickytnz
I had a discussion with someone about learning Dutch, as I know many
foreigners there who learn to understand it but never speak it as they get
spoken back to in English. One suggestion put up was that the Dutch never get
people speaking their language badly the way that English speakers do, and so
revert to English rather than hear their native language mangled!

------
jaimebuelta
The app sounds great ;-)

But learning english from media is interesting, and curious...

I always say that I learned english from Star Trek and D&D Manuals. That's why
I know quite well what a vorpal sword or a wormhole are. But I had to ask a
few months after I started living in Ireland how you say that thing in the
bathroom where the water came from (a tab)

~~~
duwip
You must mean a tap ;-) You seem all set for the future though!

------
hawkharris
Although this software is marketed to people who are trying to learn English,
it seems to me that, given the fact you can choose a mix between any two
languages, it can also help native English speakers learn other languages.

------
mullr
> Fleex shows you mixed subtitles, so you get the hard parts in your language
> and the easier parts in English.

This seems like a Very Hard Problem. How did you approach it? Do you deal with
polysemous words gracefully?

~~~
w1ntermute
I'm not the author and I haven't tried the software (on account of not having
a Windows machine handy), but I would use a word/collocation frequency list to
hide sentences that only contain words/collocations that have a certain or
greater frequency.

As for polysemous words, I would use contextual analysis to disambiguate as
well as possible, and then just show the words that I couldn't disambiguate
until the threshold for the least frequently encountered meaning has been
passed.

Also, I would add a something to the UI to allow the user to, in one click,
rewind the video by x seconds (not sure what the optimal value of x would be)
and enable all subtitles until the point at which the video had been rewound.

------
Flimm
Why are you getting the subtitles from? Are they good quality? And have you
licensed the subtitles legally?

~~~
stephengillie
Subtitles have to be licensed? Since when?

~~~
Flimm
Since copyright. What on earth would make you think that subtitles are exempt
from copyright? Song lyrics are copyrighted, screenplays are copyright, so are
subtitles.

------
serkanh
This is awesome.Unfortunately i have been looking for a similar service; which
i am willing to pay for, to improve my Spanish. Movies and music is great
supplements to learn a language.

~~~
StavrosK
You and I are in the same boat. I use Duolingo for now, but I'm looking for
more movies/shows in Spanish. If anyone knows any good Spanish (as in Spain)
shows, please recommend!

------
forgingahead
Congrats! Why aren't you charging for this? $9 a download is very reasonable
for someone serious about using it, and you'd get some runway to build out and
support this product.

------
vis52
First time posting here at HN, long time reader though.

I am fluent in English and German with no accent and I never had any formal
education in either. Well that's not completely true as I did have standard
English classes in primary and high school but that doesn't count because that
stuff was pretty useless.

I learned both languages by watching endless hours of English and German TV,
first cartoons as a kid and then the rest later on. Actually for English it
was pretty much Cartoon Network so in a sense Cartoon Network taught me
English.

One thing that surprises most people is that all of this was completely
without subtitles. I'm not sure how one goes from not knowing a word of a
language to speaking it fluently by watching and listening to a foreign
language with no reference points but that's how it went for me.

------
adamzerner
The market you're after is people who want to learn a new language. The want
they have, is to learn a new language. The question then, is "will this be
something people learning a new language will want?"

I don't think this is the best way to learn a new language. Learning requires
you to push yourself slightly beyond your comfort level/what you know. If you
push too far beyond what you already know, learning will be ineffective. The
success of a learning system is dependent on how well it is able to push you
selectively. This seems like it'll be pushing people "too far".

This does seem like a good technology though. I think it can be coupled with
another language instruction system. Mostly for people who've already done a
lot of learning, but are looking to solidify their knowledge.

~~~
duwip
I get your concerns - this is precisely why we added adaptative subtitles as
one of our first features. So people could say: "I'm a beginner, keep 80% of
the subtitles in my native language", vs. "I'm a more advanced speaker, let's
go ahead and put 100% of the subtitles in English".

~~~
Dewie
That sounds like a great feature. The most frustrating thing about learning
languages is that it is so hard to ease into it, and you have to have a
relatively solid vocabulary to go beyond canned phrases, but this sounds like
it could help with that.

------
Swizec
Brilliant! This is exactly how a lot of us exposed to US and UK culture since
a young age learned English.

Although I've noticed that as I age, I have far less patience to watch
television in an unknown language than I used to. Tried learning German this
way and it was just annoying.

~~~
vis52
Quite the coincidence...the comment I wrote actually had another part but I
deleted it because I didn't want to appear as someone giving out advice that
nobody requested.

Basically what it said is that if you want your kids to learn a foreign
language you should put them in front of the TV at a young age because once
they are a bit older and actually know that they have a choice they won't want
to spend a lot of time looking at a screen where characters are going on about
something that they can't understand. As you said it is "just annoying.

So if you want to do this for your kids you basically need to do it when
they're clueless to the fact that they can actually change the channel. Once
they know they have a choice and are actually bothered by not understanding
the language they will surely change to an English channel, one that they can
actually understand.

------
digitalengineer
Very nice! Love this! Using the TV to learn another language actually works
really well. (I learned English as a kid watching British Fun Factory cartoons
in the '80s). Downside is you also learn a lot of 'inside' things. just the
other day my collegues looked at me like _I was crazy_ , because I said "they
were drinking (our clients) Kool-Aid". Nobody here knew what I was trying to
say. Also, when I was with friends in France they told me I talk French like
an American. Too much American TV I suppose.

------
ssw1n
I am not a native speaker, and I learned English from movies and TV shows
available to me. It is very interesting to see that this idea is being
commercialized only now.

It would be really great if options for other languages are available too. I
am looking forward to learn French and German. I tried Duo Lingo, but it did
not help me much in speech department. From my past experience, it has to be
the movies, and TV shows to assimilate the speaking part.

~~~
crazysaem
You could also try <http://board.tv4user.de/> for german subtitles of _many_
US/UK TV Shows. It's made for german users who understand little english but
still want to see shows as soon as they come out (So the site itself is in
german, but finding shows shouldn't be hard). The community is pretty great
and very fast when a new episode comes out.

------
crazysaem
Great idea - It seems a lot of people already use TV Shows/Movies to learn
English, as did I.

This reminded me when I was re-watching a few of my favorite TV Shows, were
the Dub/Sub transitions as following from early to later seasons:

1) German Dub – No Subtitles

2) English Dub – German Subtitles

3) English Dub – English Subtitles

4) English Dub – No Subtitles

Interestingly I moved away from German and to English for most of the media I
consume and watching German TV at a friend’s house actually sounds really
foreign to me now.

------
heatherph
I really like this idea. Native language media is so useful in learning to
speak a foreign language. I'm a little jealous of English learners because
there is so much available out there. I have had a much harder time getting my
hands on good, native language media in the languages I'm learning. I'd love
to see a tool like this expanded to other languages.

------
nekopa
Great idea, I just have one question, how will you make money? You have a
great idea which I could use, and I'd hate to see it go away...

As an English teacher (9 years experience) from an IT background (25 odd
years, but not all of it active), here are a couple of ideas I thought you
might like to look at:

1: Hook it up to a lesson planning system. I use videos a lot in my classes,
and also try to set them for homework. Currently I use TED.com, as their older
videos have full text transcripts available (the feature where you can click
on a word and it takes you directly to the point in the video they say it is
priceless), as well as subtitles in various languages. Think of a way a
teacher could set up a simple worksheet (PDF or online) for students to use
with the video. This worksheet could include pre-watching questions, including
pre-teaching of difficult language that may come up in the video, and then
some language activities to do after watching to reinforce anything they
learn. Bonus points if you could hook this into an online learning platform
such as moodle so that it would integrate with a language course. Set up
social sharing in two areas, one for teachers to share lesson ideas based on
vids, and one for students watching the vids and you basically could make your
own video learning platform. English teachers have no money and are pretty
badly paid, (I make my extra cash consulting, but I just love teaching) so you
can't target teachers directly, but, make it free for individuals, build
evangelists among them, then target schools and universities with extra
features such as participation reporting, gradebooks, enhanced cryptographic
security (the EU has pretty tough Data protection laws), institution branding
and so on.

2: Integrate it with Hulu or Netflix, and make it a value add for both sides.
Hulu or Netflix can add an extra "learn with us" feature, and people could
choose to add it to certain shows either on an episode by episode basis or for
whole seasons. Again add options for social integration, and, if you do point
1 from above, have 'featured' teachers who make lessons based on your
_platform_ and also get a cut of the pie. Conversely you could speak to rights
holders and negotiate with them directly (e.g. I see a lot of people on this
thread talking about "Friends", so more popular shows could garner higher
rates for learning from them)

3: Building on points 1 and 2 above: segment your market - shows with legal or
business vocabulary could charge more. Military shows (band of brothers etc)
could be marketed to NATO etc, etc. Along with social you could integrate
gamification, which I think would work well in this kind of situation, with
the added benefit that you could work with language examining bodies to match
your 'badges' with real world targets of language learning. Although good luck
working with those arrogant assholes from Cambridge :)

4: No clear money with this idea, this is just for cool factor- do something
similar to hiphop genius and crowd source language interpretations and
meanings. They figured out how to get funding, so can you. (This actually
would be really cool, as I can see linguists arguing with people who actually
use the language :)

So I am an 'idea guy' and this doesn't fly on HN. But this time I feel that I
finally have enough domain expertise to comment, and I am actually trying to
implement some of these ideas at the moment, I just don't have the tech chops
(or hardware to be honest) to deal with working with video on this scale. But
I am working on language points (I have an idea about your 'secret sauce', but
don't worry, your secret is safe with me Batman ;) as I am in the midst of
running an online language course for an EU project at the moment and creating
all the materials from scratch, by hand, and it is a pain!

I would love to chat with you guys if you are serious about making money from
this, my email is in my profile (it's basically my HN username @ gmail).
Meanwhile, I have over a hundred students who I need to email with a link to
your site and I need to figure out how I can integrate your work with _my axe_
(I mean _my teaching_ :)

~~~
duwip
Nekopa,

These are all good ideas, that we've of course considered and been pondering
for quite a while now. There are various difficulties associated with them, at
various degrees. Personally I tend to think that in most cases, ideas are
relatively cheap: finding the right way to implement them in a way that's
highly scalable really is the hard part.

We can of course chat sometime this week - as a teacher, we'd of course love
to hear what you have to say. Could you maybe send us an email (see our
contact page) with your availability?

~~~
nekopa
Thanks for replying!

Yes, indeed, ideas are cheap.

But I have to point out one thing: implementation can also be cheap; get it
working first, then think about scale. I know everyone aims for the hockey
stick, but before you can get _there_ , do something to monetize, even if it
is small scale. For example, point 1 above, I am already doing it. I am
already thinking how to make a simple document I can send to my students along
with a link to your site that would make the learning experience worthwhile
for them. Make that simple for me to do and you have a way to money. If you
need to think about how to implement: to start, just put out ideas (use cases
but in a simplified form that users can understand) of how people can use your
service. Maybe throw up a couple of PDFs or blog posts with basic outlines of
how teachers or students can use your service. Think of them as help files.
Set up a forum where people can discuss what they are doing with your site and
share ideas. Both of these ideas are simple to implement (simple PDF
downloads/wordpress and a forum with simple moderation). From there you can
gather data to move onto monetization (I hate that term, monetization, can
anyone offer a better word?) I will email you via your contact form, but
honestly, I want to compete with you!

~~~
duwip
That's fine. Competition is a healthy thing ;-)

------
muraiki
Very cool. When I was in Japan I met a man who had taught himself English
mostly from watching movies and tv shows. His proficiency not only exceeded
that of my Japanese friends who were studying English in college (although the
state of English education in Japan is a whole other story), but he also
sounded very natural.

------
jczhang
Where do the subtitles come from? Are there chinese subtitles available? I
always recommended learning English through tv series since you learn about
american culture as well, but I wonder if there is a good source of chinese
subtitles for english tv series.

------
illyism
It crashed two times when I first tried to use it so I tried another file
which didn't have subtitles. When I finally loaded a movie and downloaded my
own subtitles that I imported it kept loading and didn't show any subtitles
after which I've uninstalled.

~~~
duwip
Now that's annoying - if you're so inclined, could you maybe reach out to us
through our contact page? We'd love to try and understand what's causing the
problem.

The player stuff is pretty new for us, so we're still in bug-hunting mode...

------
hk__2
Why is it Windows-only, since it’s based on VLC which is available on
Windows/Mac OS/Linux/…?

~~~
apoint
We need the web plugin of VLC for fleex with the windowless mode. The plugin
shipped with the 2.0.6 version of VLC works great on PC but have strong
performance issues on the mac (in windowless mode). The VideoLAN team is
working on it and as soon as this problem is fixed, fleex player will also be
available for iOS. As for linux, we're just ignorant... We're looking for
someone to package the app for us.

~~~
duwip
I think Alex meant OSX, not iOS here. As for Linux, he's right that it's
mostly a matter of packaging - which I think puts the prospect of a Linux
release closer than that of an OSX release.

------
rajanikanthr
I am from India and until high school studied in non english medium..though I
am able communicate well in English thanks to eslpod.com podcasts, preparation
for GRE/TOEFL (increased vocabulary) and lots of english movies.

------
xamdam
Being mostly American, I will much applaud an effort to do this in reverse, to
learn other languages. As a matter of fact I've been thinking this would be a
good business idea for a few years now. Do it or I will!

------
dysoco
So let's say I have some movie without any kind of subtitles and I play it via
Fleex... will it fetch automatically the English or Spanish subtitles? Or that
only works with DVDs that include subtitles?

~~~
duwip
Fleex doesn't work with DVDs yet, but your first scenario is fully covered.

~~~
dysoco
That's great!

I'm Argentinian, yet I can't stand films that are in Spanish: I normally watch
them in English although sometimes I have some problems understanding some
words (Mainly with American films).

So this will add automatically subtitles to it? That's amazing!

------
wordreference
Hey! It is great to see good use of our API. (The WordReference translation
API, you see the WR translations when you click on a word.) This is the type
of application that we created it for.

Congratulations!

~~~
duwip
Glad to hear that, and thanks for letting us use your awesome work in such a
convenient way! WordReference rocks ;-)

------
nshm
To speedup learning one could give user a feedback, not just show him the
subtitles. Something like <http://englishcentral.com> is doing.

------
dschiptsov
Classic Hollywood movies with English subtitles?)

The first few seasons of The X-Files and Twin Peaks together with Scorsese
movies (in which characters talk a lot) were my choices.)

------
schme
Any idea if there's similar sites for different languages? I'm learning
russian, but audio/video material with english (or finnish) subtitles is hard
to find.

~~~
gdy
Russian here. AFAIK, there aren't many Russian movies with English subs,
although I've seen some, like Russian version of Sherlock Holmes. At the same
time there are loads of (pirated) American and British movies and TV series
with both English and Russian audio tracks and subtitles, I could help you
find them if you like.

------
ergest
I learned Italian while watching Italian TV and movies with subtitles in
Albanian. After a while, you pick things up without any conscious effort.

------
chiph
Well, at least people aren't learning English by listening to Howard Cosell.

( _Better Off Dead_ is one of John Cusack's best films, IMO. Even if he hates
it.)

------
robleclerc1
Cool, looks like BabbleFlix, which I tried starting in 2009, but ran out of
runway. Check out the videos on YouTube for so possible improvements.

------
duwip
For any of you having some technical issues with the player, and for some
willing to upgrade, v1.1.0 is out. Link on our home page!

------
cvanderlinden
And plans for doing this for other languages?

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bambax
Login to play => ??? => uninstall.

------
wiradikusuma
Interesting! But it's annoying to see "Coming soon on Mac OS X" while the
teaser video is showing a Mac app!

------
taproot
What about going the other way? I'd love to learn another language form movies
/ tv shows.

------
KevinBongart
Great idea!

Does it work with DVDs or is it limited to the (usually illegal) video files
available online?

~~~
duwip
We've thought about DVDs, but this isn't implemented yet. We're pondering it
as DVD doesn't necessarily seem like a platform with much future...

------
tdiggity
What languages are supported? I'm on a mac, so I didn't install the player.

------
abecedarius
Can one practice lipreading this way? English subtitles only, but delayed.

------
melkisch
Are you planning to provide the service in different languages?

~~~
duwip
The app currently supports 29 languages

------
coob
How does the idiom detection work? Big DB of them in English?

------
louisdorard
Does fleex determine how tricky sentences are automatically?

~~~
duwip
This is indeed part of our secret sauce ;-)

~~~
louisdorard
Would love to hear more about the technological innovations at Fleex —
depending on how much you're willing to share!

------
ymn_ayk
What a cool idea! I'm very exited. Good luck

------
codecool
Waiting for the Mac version!

~~~
gingerjoos
s/Mac/Linux :)

------
kzim
Similar idea: explain.cc

------
seyz
Awesome idea, kudos!

------
leoplct
looking forward Mac version (or web version)

~~~
duwip
You can check out the streaming part of the site at fleex.tv/Home/Streaming.
We have a large selection of videos, from TED talks to web series to web-
produced movies.

------
jmotion
This is awesome!

------
gawenr
Brilliant.

------
tschellenbach
awesome!

------
Dewie
This is what happened organically for me* growing up in a country with a
native language that has no international traction, and being over-saturated
with American pop-culture.

Personally I would like something similar for Spanish.

*and with stuff like video games, the Web(!!)...

