Langotto

Learn a language the right way

1 follower

Learn a language the right way

1 follower

Langotto.com is the language learning app I wanted when I started learning Spanish. It allows you to upload snippets of text as learning goals and then learn just the words you need to start getting immersed in a language.

Launch tags:Languages

Launch Team

Dropbox Sign APIBuild eSignatures into your app with less work.

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Interesting approach - I can definitely see the value in drawing the words from source material of use/interest to the learner rather than spending forever on the generic sample sentences courses "for everyone" start you with. Could probably use a brief overview/tutorial for the workflow - is there any facility for exercising/demonstrating that you know something, or just self-certifying by checking "known"?

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6yr ago

Langotto

Maker

@murchadh Thanks for the feedback! I've added a section on the learning page which provides the workflow I've been using. Currently there isn't a facility for demonstrating you know something but there will be in the future. I'm still trying to come up with a nice way of doing it where the user is honest with themselves about how much they know. I feel like a lot of other language apps feels like you're trying to trick the app to make it think you know more than you do (e.g multiple choice but it's clearly not the three other options). I'm currently leaning towards the flashcard approach (similar to Anki) but I haven't settled yet. If you have thoughts on this I'd love to know them

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6yr ago

@daniel_slater - yeah, some sort of flash card approach would probably be the most straightforward. There may be ways to make multiple choice better than is usually bothered with - picking only alternatives that are the same part of speech, not proper nouns (or only proper noun when the item being considered is one) etc. More fun might be to take the English versions of all the things you're trying to learn and use WordNet semantic distances to power only showing somewhat-close stuff and antonyms.

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6yr ago

Langotto

Maker

@murchadh I've implemented the flashcard approach for now and might look more at the WordNet semantic distances soon. My main fear with something like that is that currently the program makes no assumptions about language which is what allows it to work with so many different languages so I'm being very conscious about adding features that would break that.

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6yr ago

@daniel_slater Yeah, I wouldn't compromise on supporting learning between two non-English languages. I think you could still use WordNet, but you'd need to round-trip both source and target language words through English to use WordNet, which could produce some comical errors, no doubt.

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6yr ago

Langotto

Maker

@murchadh Yeah I was wondering about that, I'll definitely keep it in mind for future updates. Even if some were terribly wrong it would probably still be fine as it would display 2 other results with that... so as long as not all suggestions are terrible it'll work. Thanks for the great tip!

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6yr ago

I can definitely see the potential in this. I think the best approach is with flash cards. I use flash cards as my number 1 way of learning new vocabulary and it is what makes things stick the most. The best approach would be some sort of Anki implementation. You can take a look at Speechling for some ideas. I would also like to see an option to turn on word highlighting. That way I can see the words I already know highlighted or maybe all of the words I don't know being highlighted. This doesn't really matter which way. I really like the idea here and think it could be super helpful in language learning. It sort of reminds me of Lingq.

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6yr ago

Langotto

Maker

@john_hayes2 Thanks for the flashcards feedback, I'll start looking into that more seriously now. Interesting idea with highlighting unknown words but I'm not too sure what the purpose would be? Is it to get a visual gauge of how much you know, or just to see which words you need to learn?

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6yr ago

Langotto

Maker

@john_hayes2 Thanks for the recommendations! I added flashcards just now so let me know how that works for you. Speechling and Lingq both look pretty awesome!

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6yr ago

Langotto

Maker

This is the language learning app I always wanted to use and I'm super excited to release this to the world! Check it out and let me know what you think!

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6yr ago

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