Show HN: Term Typer – Learn a language by typing (termtyper.com)
Hey HN! I'm from Brazil and I created Term Typer to help my little brother learn other languages while practicing his keyboard typing skills. We've found it super helpful and fun. Feel free to try it out and let me know your thoughts and feedback. Thanks a lot!
100 comments
[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 176 ms ] threadConstructive feedback:
* the 'typed' word should be discarded in a few cases if you change the L1/L2
* No 'success' feedback after submitting my email for notifications
As a feedback, would be nice to have a button to skip to the next word, and some sort of gamification as rounds of words to have a sense of progress.
Could you consider adding Romanian language ? Multumesc!
I totally thought it meant computer language too, but that's likely the context of viewing it here!
Anyway, great job with this tool, whether or not you can add computer languages!
> There is no disc included with the book. All the code printed on the page will have to be typed in, by you. This is deliberate. Typing is sloppy, but programming is precise, and it is imperative that you develop attention to detail if you are to program successfully. The intent is that you develop increasing attention to detail along with the programs in the book, which are in order of increasing complexity.
It's a very large ask but I do look forward to other (spoken) languages being expanded. Could definitely use this for Japanese practice.
OR let me know and I update it. Thanks!
I have a much harder request : Chinese with both the characters and Pinyin That would be very helpful
I'll take a look into that hahah
Anyway, cool stuff. I once learned some latin by coding a simple program in C for terminal usage, basically just asking what is this word called, the wordlist file was specified as a command line argument. It was great and highly effective to memorize small chunks of words at a time. I still remember all those complex terms, so at least for me this type of learning works. This looks promising.
And... maybe ignore typos, spaces, commas etc in the non main word? The main word is important for sure but the rest is less, just forces you to focus on what you're learning.
De qualquer jeito, o projeto tá top. Mandaram bem demais, boa sorte!
The project was made in 2 days, so there are a lot of things to improve.
Thank you so much parceiro!
Minor bug report: the pronunciation button pronounced Spanish "adaptar" as "ajaptar".
It worked here, what's your browser?
* spellcheck
* autocorrect (Safari non-standard)
* autocapitalize
* autocomplete
Also, I would appreciate if the word & its description is automatically pronounced (or maybe there's a setting to do so). This way I would be able to train audio perception, which is oftentimes challenging with French.
Right now, clicking the "speaker" icon speaks out the word, not definition, and also steals focus from the input field.
1: https://github.com/agencyenterprise/Term-Typer-Words/blob/ma...
Thanks for the feedback! If you click on definition, it will speak (I need to improve the ux here)
I wish that you wouldn't automatically move to the next word when I finish typing. I want to read it over again and process, then move forward.
(1) European Portuguese usually fully preserves "tu" (including distinctive verb forms), while in Brazilian Portuguese, it's often only used in oblique forms "te" and "ti", or regionally as a subject but often with the third person verb form. For example, in much of Brazil you would see "você tem" (even when speaking to a close friend or family member); in some parts of Brazil, like in Rio Grande do Sul, you would see "tu tem"; and in Portugal you might see "tu tens".
(2) European Portuguese uses "a" + infinitive where Brazilian Portuguese uses the present participle: "estou a fazer" versus "estou fazendo", or "está a falar" versus "está falando". This distinction is very strong and consistent.
(3) Pronunciation can be very different. The first thing you would notice is that the <d> before <e> and <i> is not pronounced as /dʒ/ and the <t> before those letters is not pronounced as /tʃ/. So for example <diabo> 'devil' or <diagonal> 'diagonal' start with /dʒ/ in Brazil but with /d/ in Europe, or <sede> 'thirst' ends with /dʒi/ in Brazil but /dɨ/ in Europe. Or especially the adjective ending <-mente> will be /'mẽtʃi/ in Brazil but /'mẽtɨ/ in Europe.
The word-final vowels in European Portuguese often seem to get dropped entirely (or to be pronounced very softly or briefly), so you might even hear that adverb ending as /mẽt/ (approaching French!!).
I found it fairly challenging as a non-native speaker.
All your points are correct! Awesome observation!
I'm from south Brazil, living in Rio, and I have some weird situations following people from the north when they talk fast. I need to spend more energy paying attention or ask again the same question, but it's a nice exercise.
It's closely related to the immigrations, for instance the city I lived in the south had a bigger immigration from Azorians, along with different proportions of europeans on the entire state, including my (grand)grandparents from Poland.
When I started looking at the cultural origins it made more sense, it's also a beautiful topic to look at.