Hi all,
I want to learn Dutch and by experience I know I learn better when talking with native speakers.
From your experience, is there a good AI I can converse with in Dutch? It would be even better if I could see the transcription in Dutch.
Gliglish (https://gliglish.com) looks good but is more for speaking than for learning. I'd like to be able to set a situation (negotiating a job offer, calling a supplier ...).
It uses OpenAI's realtime API to simulate either a tutoring session (the speaker will revert to English to help you) or a first date or business meeting (the speaker will always speak the target language)
You can see the AI's transcriptions but not your own, limitation of the current OpenAI API but definitely something I can fix.
The prompts are like this: https://gist.github.com/jc4p/d8b9d121425ec191d62602d8720eeed... and the rest of it is a Nextjs app wrapped around the WebRTC connection.
I'm not fully in love with the app so I'd love any feedback or hearing if it works well for you -- It doesn't have a lot of features yet (including saving context) and if you bump into the time limit just open it up in incognito to keep going.
The "next level" feature would be to get it to speak even simpler, with some hints about how to reply, for the beginners. I don't know how that would ideally look, but maybe a button to pop up some "key words" or phrases that one could use? (Even so, I found myself using the little I know, so it's obviously somehow working even though my knowledge is extremely basic.)
This is one of the places where I feel LLM's can do something good for the world, giving a safe playground for getting experience with speaking new languages without the anxiety of performing badly in front of other people – and hopefully make it easier to connect with real people in that language later.
One small piece of feedback… There were a couple times where I asked to learn something, and it asked me to repeat a phrase back, which was great. But when I repeated it back, I know I didn’t quite nail it (eg perhaps said “un” instead of “una”) and rather than correcting me, it actually told me I did it perfectly. Maybe there’s some tuning with the prompts that may help turn down the natural sycophancy of the model and make sure it’s a little more strict.
Keep up the great work!
"write as if you are a person from {{REGION}}. Modify your language to proficiency level {{PROFICIENCY_LEVEL}}"
that way I could for example, speak as if it's someone using Mexican Spanish vs Madrid Spanish vs Chilean Spanish, etc.
Secondly, you could include the user's speech transcribed as part of the conversation window
I've learned Japanese a while back but haven't practised in a long time.
1. it would be awesome if this could transcript what I just said in japanese to be sure that it got me
2. I don't know kanjis that well, so reading is hard, having a button to have the AI repeat the sentence would be quite useful.
Other than that, I could definitely use something like that for practice
Curious because I’m trying to learn Romanian, and since it’s a less common language there are fewer resources available. So I wasn’t sure if you added Dutch with minimal amount of effort following the poster’s request.
That said, I gave your app a try with Spanish and it looks pretty good! But I didn’t see a Help page to clarify how I’m “supposed” to interact. Eg I tried saying in English “I don’t understand” (even though I know how to say that in Spanish) and it responded in Spanish which may be hard for absolute beginners. Although full immersion is much better way to learn.
I can try playing around more with it to give you some feedback.
I tried to use ChatGPT as a "live" translator with my in laws and I noticed it is extremely bad at language "consistency" or at understanding your intent when it comes to multiple languages.
It will sometimes respond in English when you talk to it in the foreign language, it will sometimes assume that a clear instruction like "repeat the last sentence" needs to be translated, etc.
I don't know how the person above is approaching the problem but your experience is consistent with mine and I don't think GenAI models (at least OpenAI ones) are suitable for the task.
Please let me know if it works, and I'll definitely work on adding in instructions for the expected interactivity, thank you!
I tried practicing some verb conjugations. The trainer displayed some fill-in-the-blank sentences like "she ... home after class", asking me to conjugate "to walk" in that sentence. However, the audio actually pronounced the full sentence "she walks home after class", giving away the answer.
I will probably use something like this for language practice.
I've used the realtime API for something similar (also related to practicing speaking, though not for foreign languages). I just wanted to comment that the realtime API will definitely give you the user's transcriptions -- they come back as an `server.conversation.item.input_audio_transcription.completed` event. I use it in my app for exactly that purpose.
If the language is correct, a lot of the times the exact text isn't 100% accurate, if that's 100% accurate, it comes in slower than the audio output and not in real time. All in all not what I would consider feature ready to release in my app.
What I've been thinking about is switching to a full audio in --> transcribe --> send to LLM --> TTS pipeline, in which case I would be able to show the exact input to the model, but that's way more work than just one single OpenAI API call.
Dead Comment
This is what I have to supplement my Chinese and it is incredibly helpful.
Look at the comments already - Everyone is building a simple wrapper to do this very thing but charge you $20 per month for the privelege. These are souless, most likely vibe coded garbage. Avoid.
The Duolingo CEO copped a lot of criticism for it, but I think he is right that LLMs play a huge role in the future of education, though he probably ragebaited everyone by overselling it and calling teachers babysitters. But ChatGPT as it is now is a better language learning tool than their hand crafted app is. Rather than clicking on word blocks, you can actually have a free form conversation and get feedback like "Yes your sentence is understandable but sounds unnatural, you could try ___"
That is a very polarizing way to phrase it.
If I don't use ChatGPT for other purposes it seems like same prices to me, without the hassle of setting it up and tweaking. Or am I missing something?
https://chatgpt.com/g/g-erkTp2LNZ-learn-korean-with-gpt
I'm not sure how it works though. Just a canned prompt?
https://www.univerbal.app
Looking over this post, there's a problem here. Where are the posts that disagree? That are negative but provide constructive criticism, the very thing that provides value.
I see 62 replies here, and this isn't a new question, and there are many caveats which easily come to my mind when learning languages, and yet no ones saying a thing. It begs some serious questions about the environment you are asking in.
OP, I would suggest that before wasting your time listening to yes-people, you need some not-so-nice answers for perspective if you really want to solve that problem in an expedient way.
That should necessarily include can AI solve that problem for you really? What are the risks of learning language improperly in a professional environment where reputation is important? What are the risks of improperly conveying meaning you didn't intend?, and so forth; you get the gist of the line of questions you should naturally come up with when seeking the truth of things.
I'm reminded of all the Japanese anime fans that pick up phrases without understanding the meaning, which is what you are learning to convey when you learn a langauge: like men using watashi (instead of boku), using improper honorifics (-kun, -sama, diajo, aniki), and other aspects that while cute in an entertainment show reflect very poorly on the person if conveyed in reality.
The format forces me to just use my voice and listening skills - in other words, I'm forced to not touch my phone. It's also rather challenging because I'm doing two things at once and the hope is that I won't actually spend much brain power overthinking my responses - something I tend to do if I was talking to myself instead which typically turns into more of a rehearsal format.
The interface is specifically made for advanced learners that want to simulate a conversation as close as possible to a real one (in terms of latency and without pushing any button). Learning to respond fast in a new language is important, so we're trying to keep a natural pace.
We support audio or video-calling the characters (with subtitle translations), guided conversations and we recently added mini games to learn vocabulary.
You can see a quick intro and demo video here: https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1013961
We don't have a Dutch speaking character in the default character list, but you can follow this link https://app.callannie.ai/a/mhLnHflAyf1Ygb0D0wm6 after installing the app to use a custom character speaking Dutch (or you can create a custom character).
If you'd like to try it, check out: callannie.ai . I would love to get your feedback (here or francesco a t callannie.ai) and suggestions - we're trying to solve this speaking practice use case.
Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iSIVnLR-nM Website: https://app.toughtongueai.com/
I would imagine Dutch to be in the same camp, unless a native Dutch speaker reviews some of your conversations and tells you otherwise. My native Finnish wife has given me the marginal all-clear with the vanilla models.