
Show HN: Maspeak, learn words in a foreign language - ebellity
https://maspeak.com
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Nadya
I'm going to be a little harsh, as language learning is something I feel needs
to be done right and with a bit of care. Teaching the wrong things, especially
through trying to automate translations in some fashion, leaves people worse
off. It's good that you started off with a few Core listings for some
languages - as it gives some content for people to test/use.

I would suggest presenting words then testing on them - as otherwise the
chances of a user stumbling across a word they know is very slim. Having to go
through the entire course (it seems like?) to possibly see a word again means
it does a poor job of teaching new words. This is where copying other SRS
programs like Anki or Memrise might come into play, but you'd have to sell
people on more than what Anki/Memrise offers.

A few minor nitpicks:

1\. Allow a short trial use to funnel into signing up for an account, no need
to track the not well/well/good for users who aren't signed in - but they can
still "test" on cards.

2\. If a user gets an error the styles get a little ugly on the signup form

3\. The Getty Image embeds are probably meant to help as mnemonics but I found
them distracting and often quite unrelated to the word being presented

4\. The Edit Profile page doesn't exist

[1] For those who want to test. email: no@mailinator.com password: noidont

[2] [https://i.imgur.com/xyAGlO8.png](https://i.imgur.com/xyAGlO8.png)

[3] [https://i.imgur.com/r8QGnVH.png](https://i.imgur.com/r8QGnVH.png)

[4] [https://maspeak.com/editprofile](https://maspeak.com/editprofile)

~~~
ebellity
Hi Nadya, thanks a lot for the feedback and taking the time to test and upload
screenshots, I appreciate !

About your first comment (words you know not coming back often enough) I think
it's because most of the datasets I've added are too large. For Hebrew (which
is the language I'm trying to learn at the moment - and why I made this
website in the first place) there are smaller libraries with 30-50 words and
the experience is much better. One thing I can do in the future is add ways to
select smaller subsets of a dataset of just a few dozen words and just "play"
with those.

1\. I agree, I just implemented that 2\. I had not noticed that, thanks, will
improve 3\. Yeah that's a tough one. It works ok for some nouns and not great
for some other words / prepositions / adjectives. I plan to build something on
top of it where users can say if pictures are not relevant / not helping, or
they can vote on good pictures, perhaps upload or create another mnemonic.
Perhaps adding exemples of sentences in context could help as well. 4\. Just
fixed it!

------
ebellity
If anyone has feedback, don't hesitate !

~~~
mcbetz
I leave every app where I have to log in before I can do anything. Please make
something available for non-logged in users, it will help you spread your
website.

~~~
ebellity
I have just implemented a non-logged in way to use the website. There are a
few features that will require a login (choosing its "preferred languages" and
being able to see words you already said you don't know well, basically a
better algorithm for displaying the next words

