
How to learn a language from your news feed (and win a Facebook hackathon) - oni0n56
http://quizlet.com/inside-quizlet/how-quizlet-won-facebook-hack
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computator
Having studied a foreign language (Brazilian Portuguese) as an adult, my
experience is that learning written and spoken language are separate skills.
Just because you know a written word doesn't mean that you will recognize it
when it is _spoken_.

My experience is that I had to learn every word twice: once as text and again
as audio.

This was despite the fact that Brazilian Portuguese is much more regular than
English in mapping sounds to letters.

Quizlet and similar ideas look fine for _written_ vocabulary, and helping you
read, but don't kid yourself: you're not going to be able to listen and speak
by mastering this tool.

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personlurking
Having been in the same boat as user 'computador', I second what was said. As
an American who has lived in Brazil and Portugal, though, even getting the
spoken component down does not always mean full comprehension (as I found out
in Portugal). I find myself, sadly, glazing over when Continental Portuguese
is spoken because it seems like one long, run-on sentence, spoken inward (if
that makes sense, as opposed to Brazilian Portuguese which is spoken outward).
It's rather frustrating to be fluent in Brazil (in all ways that matter) but
handicapped in Portugal.

~~~
nandemo
If it makes you feel better, spoken Continental Portuguese can be somewhat
hard to understand even for us Brazilians. Roughly speaking, it's like the
difference between a Southern US accent and a (non-RP) British or Scottish
accent.

Although, to be fair, Brazilian dialects too vary a lot in terms of
pronunciation.

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coopdog
What a great use of attention. Someone needs to integrate this with anki.

Although making sentences relevant to the learner is also a big part of
language learning, and the FB part does help there. It's almost killing two
birds with one stone.

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hazelcough
Someone should use this concept to make a browser extension that transforms
words in your entire newsfeed into flashcards while you browse.

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mmanfrin
There's an extension that does this for all sites:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/language-
immersion...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/language-immersion-
for-ch/bedbecnakfcpmkpddjfnfihogkaggkhl?hl=en)

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ianstormtaylor
Really awesome idea guys! This is the coolest unlock screen concept I've
seen—and the Android unlock screen really could use some help :p

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Kiro
So can I use this? If so, where do I download it? I connected to their site
with Facebook but I see nothing about a lock screen.

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chanind
I really like the idea of using the lock screen as more than just a simple way
to get into the phone. I would love to use something like this to force me to
spend a few seconds learning something every time I want to get into my phone.

~~~
nthitz
I recently installed DashClock
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.nurik.roma...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.nurik.roman.dashclock&hl=en)
and while it's not strictly a 'learning' tool you could likely write an
extension for it to do what you are looking for. I like it so far, better than
normal lock screen anyway.

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MadMaddie
Has anyone noticed they're showing the Portuguese flag instead of the Spanish
one on the opening page? (I do prefer the Portuguese flag, but I would have
thought they would get this kind of thing right..)

~~~
asuth
I believe it's the Mexican flag

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phazmatis
I wonder if this works in parts of the world that don't even have 2G...

~~~
voltagex_
They'd be much better served by an offline app or a dead-tree book, but that
wasn't the point of your comment.

