
Show HN: An “automatic” way to learn Chinese - wilonth
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gupik.autolang.zh
======
ecqiu
Enjoying the lessons and really liking the idea of the vocabulary rank, that's
probably something that would keep me using the app daily.

Some Feedback:

Is there a way to turn off the sound? At the moment it automatically repeats
any answer I select which would stop me from using it on the train to work.

Also when I started practice, went away and started practice again the
practice questions seem to freeze after one question.

~~~
wilonth
Thanks a lot for the feedback, I'll fix the issues as soon as I have the time.

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nandkeypull
Also worth checking out is
[https://www.clozemaster.com/](https://www.clozemaster.com/), which is
centered around this idea of "sentence mining" and has a very polished
interface.

I'm interested in seeing how this compares to it.

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sarabande
I'm trying it out, and am pretty excited. Nice work! This should help a lot
with out-of-HSK vocabulary for me (I'm studying for the HSK using traditional
materials/anki).

It'd be helpful for me to see the character in a much larger font somehow,
perhaps even with stroke order, because I don't know how to write every
radical correctly yet and at that font size can't necessarily recognize them
all. For example, 蟹 was a new one I got and if I increase the font size, I can
figure out there's 角， 刀， 牛， 虫, but not at the font size currently in the app.
I also like to practice writing the characters to reinforce (which I'll do on
paper, but still need to see what it's made up of).

~~~
wilonth
Thanks for checking out, I'll definitely look into the font size issue. I
would also want the writing feature myself but just haven't got around to
implementing it, hard to figure out where to put it too.

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catherd
I have no idea how many others like me there are out there, but if you could
make a pinyin-only setting that would be really cool. I'm learning mandarin
but not learning characters and it makes of a lot of study apps non-useful to
me if they only use hanzi.

~~~
wilonth
I think you should try learning the characters for once, maybe this time you
won't have so much difficulty remembering them.

~~~
jiaweihli
This feels uncharitable. Pinyin is a lot easier to learn coming from a western
background. It's also used by many people as the primary input method for
typing, and it's reasonable that the parent poster might not have a current
need to learn characters. There's no reason to shame people for learning.

~~~
wilonth
I certainly have no intention of shaming or talking him down, just trying to
suggest an option, if it comes across that way, my bad.

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pcr0
It's like Anki but with a nicer UI, dynamic questions and progress tracking.
Nice!

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knownastron
I'd love to use your app (even pay for it) if you ever get it out on iOS!

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resurge
There seems to be a maximum length on the email address field when
registering? (32 characters) My email address is longer than that.

After registering (with a different email :)) the sound didn't seem to work.

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Micoloth
Cool! I basically completed the Duolingo course, which I loved but whose
vocabulary is a bit limited. I was just wondering where to go next, so I could
really use this.

Do you have plans to ever release this on ios?

~~~
wilonth
The ios version is actually ready right now, I'm just putting off filling the
"paperwork" and some tiny fixes. You can try it out through expo:
[https://expo.io/@haint/autolang-zh](https://expo.io/@haint/autolang-zh)

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gabeochoa
When you click on the underlined blank, it opens the dictionary and gives you
the answer. Not sure if that's an I feature

~~~
wilonth
Oops that's a bug, thanks for spotting.

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dattanin
Is English interface available on iOS ? I see only Vietnamese interface by
default.

~~~
wilonth
Oops my mistake, I'll push out an update soon.

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snaky
Isn't it a little too much for small app?

[https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/reports/40782/](https://reports.exodus-
privacy.eu.org/reports/40782/)

~~~
wilonth
The app uses Expo, those libraries just come with Expo by default and can't be
excluded, but they are unused and not enabled. Only Google Analytics is in
use.

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carlmr
Will this app cost money in the future? (I'm ok if it does, I just want to
know before if it becomes an expensive subscription service or a reasonable
one time payment)

~~~
wilonth
I don't have a long term plan but I can assure you that it won't ever be
expensive (I'm from a third world country anyways) and early adopters today
will never be charged. It's going to be free for a long while though.

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gcb0
is china promoting those apps? android has a dozen with million of downloads
(and very good quality) but all started less than a year ago.

~~~
wilonth
Not sure what those apps are but I'm not from China and actually started
coding this app to learn Chinese myself.

~~~
nikofeyn
what is your fluency? do you speak chinese every day? i am just curious about
the accuracy of the app's contents. :) thanks for posting this.

~~~
wilonth
Don't worry the contents are all automatically generated from example data
(Tatoeba) and the dictionary, nothing is hand crafted. I sure wouldn't trust
myself writing correct Chinese sentences hehe.

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chaigh
I just tried to create an account but clicking the 'create an account' button
doesn't work

~~~
wilonth
That's strange, haven't heard of such an issue. What's your device and android
version? You can try reinstalling the app or test it on another phone.

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Choque
Any plans on doing the same for japanese? At least for Hiragana and Katakana?
Would be pretty neat!

~~~
wilonth
No plans for now, I'm having a bit too much to work on atm, no teammates :(

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homarp
hi, do you have your other app (autolang "english") in other languages than
vietnamese ?

and second question, why forcing a registration from the beginning ?

~~~
wilonth
Unfortunately none at the moment. For the second question, it's just the
simplest, most straightforward design to me.

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wimgz
Also worth checking: Skritter.com

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du_bing
Who want to invest in China, contact me.

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shanghaiaway
Very nice. Will be using this for HSK prep if it's possible to choose
vocabulary from different HSK levels. Does it allow for that?

~~~
wilonth
Not for now, it only has a calibration quiz on entry to find out where you are
in the vocabulary by-character rank (that probably correlates with HSK levels
somehow) and start from there.

