[godelski]

This looks fantastic. As someone in a serious relationship with a Korean person, this is something I could actually see myself paying for too.

But, I would like to see some more about what it offers. Right now it looks like it is a video caption replacer with a dictionary. There are free tools like that that exist. Anki is a plugin and not built in, why? What about those starting learning? Do you have lessons or small references?

What's your plan for ML? Honestly, the largest benefit I see is for pronunciation feedback. This is a thing a lot of apps get wrong, because it is important to learn how to pronounce things from the beginning. This usually isn't as big of a problem for someone learning English but tones are a bit more important in Korean though not as much as say Chinese (this is part of why it's typically easier to understand someone in English with a very heavy accent than understanding Chinese with a very heavy accent). But a self learner is going to have an incredibly difficult time getting verbal feedback while a native or more traditional learner has this feature built in because there's another person there to give them feedback.

[famouswaffles]

I've been learning korean for a while now. I'll give my 2 cents.

It's not just a dictionary but a grammar parser, see also mirinae (https://mirinae.io/), the grammar parsing tool for Korean. Korean and English are so distant that a good grammatical parsing is infinitely more helpful than a dictionary and/or translator alone.

There actually isn't any other option, free or otherwise that combines all this "easy reading and watching" tools with a good parser.

Mirinae is great and better than the tool used here but is standalone and no longer lets you view grammar explanations for free.

GPT-4 also gives good parsings but it's even more cumbersome to use individually at scale (copy/paste, ask etc)

2. another big thing here is convenience. I'm not exaggerating when i say you can cut studying time in half at least having everything in one place.

[alaanor]

Hey thanks for the comment! I have read your entire feedback and love it.

Yes there are free tools that does the same job (I have noted that on the description of the post). The main difference is that Kimchi is capable of recognizing words correctly (ofc not 100%, but better than other tools. If you think there are better tools out there, I would love to see it!).

As for Anki, I don't want to rebuild a whole SRS on my side if that what you were thinking. I think Anki is an awesome software and does its job extremely well. So using it instead of recreating the wheel sound much more interesting.

For the content, I don't have anything right now indeed. I would love to build a customized content recommendation later matching with the knowledge you marked in Kimchi. But I don't plan producing material myself and I don't think I have level to do so anyway.

And finally for ML. I think I should use it where it make the most sense. I definitively want to use it! But I also don't want to use for the sake of using it. I wanted the foundation to be without, then ML can always be slapped on top of it. As you said, there's plenty of scenario where I could use it, be pronunciation, ocr for webtoon, translation with context for when you understand each word and grammar but still don't get the sentence, whisper, tts for making audiobook on the fly, etc.

[godelski]

I was just thinking including Anki as part of it. Ship with it. That's all. Not rebuild.

I'd probably focus less on the content recommendation. But I'm not seeing the big utility as specifically a language learning app. Unless it is purely about language learning content, not just youtube and netflix videos.

For ML, as an ML person I'm glad to hear you say this. I hate when it's hamfisted into bullshit things. The ideas you have seem good though but most are probably handled better by other products which you could integrate. But I am not aware of a good product that helps with pronunciation (at least to any passable degree), though I am aware of ones that do this for singing. I'd see this as a killer feature but it'll cost you some compute to get there.

[dan_quixote]

I'm in a similar situation - my girlfriend is Korean and speaks perfect English but some of her friends and family do not (and are rather self-conscious about it). I'd like to meet them halfway by getting to a basic conversational level in Korean. Any tips? What has worked well for you so far? I've been working with Duolingo for a few months with mixed results. I just started Anki with the Korean Vocab by Evita deck [1] and it has been really great for vocab at least. I'll be checking this post out later as well.

[1] https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/4066961604

[csa]

> I'd like to meet them halfway by getting to a basic conversational level in Korean. Any tips?

Not op, but…

Start with memorized words and phrases — salutations, meal time commentary, celebration terms, etc.

Then move to short, simple sentences — emphasis on short and simple. You might not understand any replies, but that’s ok.

Over time, these might progress into short and simple conversations as you become better able to understand their responses (and they probably learn how to simplify for you), and your vocabulary grows.

Once you get this far, you will have more specific questions to ask regarding gaps you want to address.

Korean is one of the harder languages for native speakers of English to learn, so don’t expect a quick ramp up time like you might have with Spanish or French.

One of the challenges with Korean is the S-O-V order. This is like Japanese, so Korean is quite a bit easier to learn if you already know Japanese.

[godelski]

Ooofff fuck, no I __need__ tips lol. Though I'm short of time right now (PhD + a job) so language learning has been on the back burner. I never found Duolingo helpful except in learning characters but Anki being better. But I have no better tips than that. I tried learning Chinese a few years back and found a language book and getting an iTalki tutor were infinitely better than any apps or any self study. I don't think you can do it without some tutor (even your gf).