New in-browser language app, lang.guru

[sonia]

My friend, who is a computer programmer and a linguist, wrote a whole new language-learning app that works in the browser. It's in open beta right now and free to join. It has the usual suspects of Spanish, German, French, some Asian languages, Hebrew and Arabic, a bunch of Slavic languages (I know her from Balkan choir), and more.

If you're tired of the gamification of Duolingo, give it a try! https://lang.guru .

If you do try it, let me know what you think, and I can pass along any comments, bugs, or feature requests.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

In the Get Started account creation block, the password field isn't browser-recognizable as one. After a slightly dizzy-making spinner comes and goes, a list of languages appears, but there's no page title to cue what the user does there. It's been a little while since I did a11y assessments--pretty sure the spinner thing breaks WCAG, though.

I tried the Korean module's Foundation (topmost option) and was surprised that many of the dozen or so short sentences I viewed are very informal. One wouldn't have any use for speaking (or listening) in that way unless one planned only to address small children with whom one's already socially familiar, or only to be semi-insulted by a much older individual. If you already had close same-age friends with whom to speak so casually in Korean, you wouldn't need the beginner module.

Then I reached one that's wrong, in that the English translation is too loose. The English says, "Hello?" but one would never use "누구 없어요?" to greet someone. It's more like "Who's there?"--even that is loose; 없어요 = it's lacking, there isn't any. The app's hint text is lacking, heh. It displays I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I (truncated thus), which seems more like an error--couldn't retrieve something on a lookup, perhaps?

I tried beginner German, and on the second or third one I noped out. "Ich verstehe" is rendered above the Previous link as "I see." Selecting "verstehe" shows the possible meaning above the lemma field (correct--"to understand"). But no one says "ich verstehe" organically--it's usually used with a direct object or with "nicht" (not).

For fun, I tried beginner Spanish. Though I can kind of read it from Latin and other things, I actually sat in a normal classroom as a teen for my start at Spanish. The second phrase the app offered was "Considerando lo siguiente," which is translated as "Whereas: ". Does the app lift phrases randomly from other sources?

Based on those dips in, I'm not sure of the audience. Someone who knows any of these three languages well enough to correct for the app's content glitches doesn't need those beginner modules. I'm not a Duolingo fan, but in my experience it doesn't offer two translations at once or set up the learner to insult people accidentally. :)

Please feel free to pass this along as general feedback, if you'd like.

[sonia]

Thank you for the thorough investigation and comments! She's using an existing corpus of translations, and I'll pass along your full feedback that it's not as reliable as she might hope.

[runpunkrun]

I took a peek at the Japanese foundation module, and the language is very informal as well. It's so casual you'd only use it with close friends or family, and not for beginners.

[runpunkrun]

Okay, I logged back in to delete my account, but that doesn't seem to be an option, and I didn't receive a confirmation email when I signed up. Those are two things I'd expect from any service I gave an email/password to.

And when I logged back in it gave me that huge wall of languages rather than giving me a dashboard of the languages I was learning, which would be preferable.

[sonia]

Thanks for taking a look and the account & usability comments! I'll pass them along.

[thistleingrey]

Ah, good to know about not being able to delete one's account! I was going to try that today. I think CCPA (USA > California) and GDPR (EU) require that it be possible.