Show HN: Find compelling and comprehensible media for learning a language

Show HN: Find compelling and comprehensible media for learning a language(languageroadmap.com)

20 points by pizza_pleb 3 years ago | 9 comments

sumnole 3 years ago |

This seems like a nice resource for language learners. Personally, I've been looking for a way to display dual subtitles (native/foreign) while watching foreign media and still haven't found any satisfying solutions. It would be something I'd gladly pay for.

pizza_pleb 3 years ago | |

While there are probably some tools to do this, I'd suggest taking the plunge and just doing native subs (or no subs!). Part of the immersion process is being comfortable in being uncomfortable. Removing the crutches can be a big leap, but IMO our brains need it in order to progress.

If I have native subs, I find myself falling back on them and not really learning. Less information on-screen is also less our brain has to process, which is already quite a bit when learning a new language.

Also finding subs (and good ones at that) are frustratingly difficult, so finding a pair that is synced up sounds like quite the task!

Thank you for checking out the site and for the comment!

kadoban 3 years ago | |

Since srt files are just a list of timestamps and things to show, I bet you could create a simple tool that just interleaves the two language subtitle files. Not sure how that would look.

Just based on the options it allows you to choose, https://subtitletools.com/merge-subtitles-online seems like a good bet to me. I'd try playing it in vlc, it generally supports anything a little odd that other players may not like.

testmzakrzewska 3 years ago | |

> This seems like a nice resource for language learners. Personally, I've been looking for a way to display dual subtitles (native/foreign) while watching foreign media and still haven't found any satisfying solutions. It would be something I'd gladly pay for.

pizza_pleb 3 years ago |

Hi HN,

I'm happy to announce the release of a site I've been working on to help find immersion content that's engaging _and_ at your level (without sacrificing one for the other).

It's part-catalog, part-immersion tracker, and part-recommendation system.

Find content by genre/theme or media type (movie, TV, book, podcast, YouTube channel), add it to your library or bookmark it for later, give it a thumbs up/down rating, and rank its difficulty to help us build a global difficulty scale!

Thank you

P.S. Made with Remix which made it a breeze

gus_massa 3 years ago |

Are you planning to support "dialects" like English-GB vs English-US. Spanish is also complicated. [Hi from Argentina!]. The usual classification is Spanish-ES vs Spanish-latin-america, but Latin America is big and each country is slightly different (an even each city is different). I'm not sure about the best way to split it.

When my oler daughter was young, we used something like this to teach her English. She saw a movie in DVD a few times in Spanish and then in English a few times.

pizza_pleb 3 years ago | |

Hi and yes! I am planning to migrate to ISO-639-3 which accommodates dialects.

Thank you for checking it out and for the comment!

bitbckt 3 years ago | | |

I’m very much interested in dialect support, too. Also, your iPad rendering could use some attention.

I will definitely be using this regardless!