hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr2625.txt

Episode: 2625
Title: HPR2625: My thoughts on language learning communication applications.
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2625/hpr2625.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 06:43:19

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This is HBR episode 2625 entitled, My Thoughts on Language Learning Communication Applications.
It is hosted by the ODDW and in about 16 minutes long, and carry my clean flag.
The summary is, I discuss some of my thoughts regarding using chat programs in language learning.
Today's show is licensed under a CC Zero License.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by an honest host.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15, that's HBR15.
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Hello, this is the ODD dummy with today's episode for Hacker Public Radio, and this episode
is a second in a series on My Thoughts on Language Learning.
The first episode was, I talked just a little bit about what I thought made sense to me from
kind of the traditional language course.
This episode, I want to talk about some applications that I think maybe could be useful.
I haven't seen this kind of application, so it very well might exist, and I tried
to google it a little bit, and I didn't see anything that has this, but maybe it does.
I haven't looked too much, but at any rate, I haven't seen this kind of application, so
if it does exist, well, wouldn't be the first time I wasted my time, hopefully I didn't
waste years.
So my thoughts are one of the things that if for people like me, and I kind of said this
in the first episode, so I'll just kind of recap quickly.
I'm the kind of guy who I'm interested in languages, but not interested enough that I
would put a ton of effort into learning one.
I don't really need one for my job, and even though I have a lot of friends and family
who speak another language natively, almost all of them speak English well enough that
I don't really need to learn the other language.
That's changing a little bit now with my step children.
Speak English, but they don't really speak it much, but they're learning it in school
when they don't really speak it too much.
So maybe that part's changing a little bit, we'll see.
But nevertheless, having an interest in languages, even if they might not use the language
in a day-to-day basis.
So they might not have people to practice with, and maybe the dual language, the thing
where you, or is it live mocha, is that what it is?
But the thing where you have somebody in another part of the world, and you're talking
to each other like through something similar to Skype.
And your ideas, you speak their language, they speak your language, you need to teach
each other.
For me, I can never find anyone who doesn't know English way better than I do.
So it ends up being a chore for me to speak their language, and typically what ends up
happening is I would just try to teach them English.
So anyway, that's kind of the, like I don't need it, a new language for my job or anything
along those lines.
Well, but what I do a lot is I channel mine, and specifically text chat.
I don't do text messages, but this would apply.
And I first thought about this probably six, seven years ago, it's been a pretty long
time.
But it occurred to me that chat programs, specifically the ones you type, so text or chat, could
help in language learning by specifically, I'll just talk about hex chats, the chat I
use most of the time.
But they usually have, then the reason that's interesting to me is because it's open source.
So I think it's one of the canoe licenses, which is actually free software, better than
open source.
And my thinking was that the, and oh, what's the other thing?
The other thing to notice in my mind, at least in the earlier parts, vocabulary is more
important than grammar and sentence structure.
But okay, let's get to it.
So my idea was that you could start a chat, you could modify a chat current chat right
now, to add another dictionary.
And so you could tell it, I'm, my native language is English, and I want to learn Spanish.
And so the IRC client, or the chat client, text client would somehow learn, or maybe it
would progress, get progressively harder.
And what I mean by that is, let's say to start off with maybe only no one word.
And you know the word for I, and the target language, the language you want to learn.
And you, so you start off, you say I, and the other language.
And it passes spell checker, so let's say you say I went to the store, or I'm going
to the store, you only know I, so you say I, and I in the source language, I'm going
to the store in English.
And all of that passes spell checker, because it's using both spell checkers.
Now at some point, either you would tell it like I want to go to level, you know, I want
to go to the next level, or you could learn based on what you've already typed.
But at a certain point, it realizes that you know I, in the target language.
And so it removes I, from the spell, from the spell checker dictionary, on the native
language.
So from that point on, you can't say I, in your source language, you can only say it
in the language you want to learn.
And there's a lot of different options in ways this could be done, but I would think
that like one possibility would be to not let things that don't pass spell checkers
through.
So after you learn, after it knows you know I, in the new language, and then it would give
a spell checker, if you said I, in the source language, and not send it.
Now of course, you could also say, okay, don't send it, but unless I override that.
So maybe you could say, hey, you got to air, are you sure you want to send it?
And then so over time, the, the ideal is over time, the, your native language dictionary,
the pleats.
And then, well, I don't know that the source language would increase because maybe, maybe
you're not going to know somebody source language, or target language words that, that you
need to update the dictionary.
But over time, the, the native language dictionary goes down.
And so the ideal being an eventually, your, your typing and sending messages only in,
in the new language.
And the person that you would be talking to would conversely be doing the same thing.
And that would be the, that would be the ideal.
So in my first thinking would be that this would just be between two people, or maybe in
a chat room where there's only those two languages.
And I don't know if it would work with more than one, but that would be the ideal you,
the, the room you're in or the person you're, the people you're talking to, of course,
they could be in your own language too, they, but the ideal, those are the two languages
that, that, that chat, chat room would expect people to talk to and support.
And it, you know, I, it could be two if you're doing it this way, you know, like if you
did a chat room, you could be doing it by subject matter too.
So maybe you get into, if you're in the, the canoe software, then maybe you're in a canoe
software chat room for that specific language, or maybe if you're in cars, you're in a car,
so the ideal being that maybe if you're in a, in a room where the subject interests
you, maybe, and like I said, my, one of the problems I'm trying to solve is to help people
learn languages.
It don't have a burning need or desire to learn language.
It's just kind of a hobby kind of thing.
And it would be great if they learn a new language, but it's not like they're not willing
to put a whole lot of resources towards it.
And so maybe if the topic is interesting, it makes it a little less of a chore to learn
a new language.
And originally I was only thinking about vocabulary, which of course, well, if you know anything
about another language, almost any other language, you'll know that a lot of times the grammar
in the case, the sentence structure really quite different, like in some languages instead
of saying on the table, they would say the table on.
So the book table on instead of the book is on the table.
And just lots of, I mean, there's tons and tons of variations.
So I think grammar and sentence structure is important, but to me it's a secondary one
at this point, because the goal here, again, with the same, with the first one, maybe this
one's a little bit harder of a goal, but really the first major goal is to get where you
could type or chat and text maybe the first grade level.
And then the ideal being, once you get to that point, you can kind of use applications
at a normal person and that other language would use.
So you don't need a learning tool per se.
You can just kind of do whatever beginning lane, you know, person at the beginning language
isn't that country or that language would normally do.
So maybe the goal here is to get you to where you can chat like a six year old, or maybe
a little bit higher.
And then from there, you can just take on and you don't need something specifically that's
for training, is the goal.
Now, originally, I was thinking really just about text, but of course now they have, you
know, well back then as well, but now speech and bandwidth of the internet is easier and
the audio streaming audio is a lot easier to do now, and it's a lot more affordable
for people.
So of course now Skype I noticed has translation built in in the latest versions.
So maybe voice recognition is supposed to be getting better now in Linux and the free
software world.
So if it's not already readily possible, it soon will be to use audio.
So and then, I mean, instead of doing the just the normal kind of like live mocha does
now, in my mind, it would maybe the app could do something like, let you record because
for me, part of the issue really was me struggling trying to say something and then the other
person like us, it can run rings around me in English compared to what I know of their
language.
And so it was just kind of, it wasn't enjoyable for me struggling with really basic stuff.
So my thinking would be that maybe you could have a mode where it would let me record
what I want to say until I'm kind of ready to send it.
And then I could also, you know, give them the text of what I was trying to say could
also maybe use the trans, the speech recognition to do some parsing before I send it and give
me some clues.
And then I send it.
And then at that point, the person can listen to it and the idea will be and they just
see if they can reply and understand me just by listening.
And then if so by default, it would just show that and then if they needed to hear or
see what I was trying to say and this would be in English, then that could be revealed.
And then of course, to, you know, something whatever would be the equivalent of Google
translate could be involved to see how it translated what I said.
And then, and then so maybe that could be a crutch to help help still let me, you know,
still let you learn with the aid of a real person, but, but not, but let you construct
the sentences that you want to say with kind of without their help because if, if it's
live and someone's talking and they're trying to say, I want the, and they know you want
to say the book, maybe they're going to complete book and give that to you.
So this would be kind of a way for you to construct what you want to say without their
help. And then of course, after they see it, then they could do the normal, well, here's
what we, how we would normally say that and that kind of thing. And those are, so those
are just a couple of different ways that I could see using, you know, a little bit modification
of programs that we already have and use to maybe help help language learning. Like
said, especially for those who don't really have a strong motive, I mean, don't have
a real strong motivation. They want to learn it, but it's not like, okay, it's not like
I'm taking away from my friends and family time. I'm just doing this in my, what I would
normally consider my spare slash hobby time instead of, you know, versus, oh, if I know
English from my job, I get, you know, they, I get more money or maybe I can just even
get a job. So not really talking about that level of need because you got some motivation
there. There you're willing to spend your extra time or maybe even take time away from
your friends or family. If you're talking about something that's going to help you do
a better job of putting food on the table. And that is really all I need to say. So,
yeah, that's, that's it. And now the next episode in this series, I think I'm going to
record them all today, is going to be about some games that I think could help with language
learning. So hopefully that'll be interesting.
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