Quazel

Learning and science

language learning

SHOW HN2022

Legend

Quazel

Get conversational practice in over 20 languages by talking to an AI

talk.quazel.com

#language learning#conversation practice#speaking practice#ai tutor

787points
335comments
#16of 2,570 in 2022
Top 1%of 2022 by points

How HN took it

DebatedReal support and real criticism

55 positive, 53 neutral or asking, 21 mixed, 61 critical, out of 190 comments about the project. Thread score -0.07.

Execution: 10 for, 39 againstIdea: 27 for, 4 againstPerformance: 2 for, 7 againstDesign: 3 for, 4 againstPricing: 2 for, 3 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Conversation quality impressive for some languages, especially Japanese

    From 2 comments
    • I'm stunned by how well this works for Japanese, the only language I think I'm good enough at to judge the AI's responses. The speech recognition is flawless as far as I can…
      esrh on HN
    • am rusty chinese speaker. randomly assigned to converse on Furniture & Locations. --- Quazel: 告诉我吧!你是如何安排你的家具的? Me (in halting, broken chinese): 窗户旁边有一个沙发,中间是电视和桌子。我的工作就是在这里.…
      swyx on HN
  • Speech recognition strong

    From 2 comments
    • I'm stunned by how well this works for Japanese, the only language I think I'm good enough at to judge the AI's responses. The speech recognition is flawless as far as I can…
      esrh on HN
    • I tried in Italian. Speech to text is impressive: kudos. The conversation was definitely weird and very repetitive. It needs more work I think. In any case, great idea and I am…
      fpierfed on HN

Objections

  • Responses unnatural in some languages, likely translating via English

    From 1 comment
    • I tried using it in Portuguese and it's cool but it seems very off, just a huge number of things that don't sound even remotely natural or idiomatic. But when I click the…
      crazygringo on HN
  • Conversations repetitive

    From 1 comment
    • This is an interesting tool. I did not encounter any awkward grammatical sentences that other posters did. But the conversation I had got really repetitive. This was my…
      missedthecue on HN
  • Bugs with loading, mic and Firefox

    From 3 comments
    • Loading screen doesn't go away in Firefox after choosing a language.
      werdnapk on HN
    • I am stuck at the loading screen when selecting Dutch. BTW I am using Firefox
      aeroaks on HN
    • Looks like there's still a few bugs, completely unable to have my voice recorded correctly or the install link to work on android
      zeryx on HN
  • Privacy concerns about sending voice recordings to cloud

    From 1 comment
    • This is a nice idea but unfortunately not for me: I'd feel uncomfortable sending recordings of my voice to some cloud service I have no trust in.
      kleiba on HN

Requests

  • Add more languages such as English and Arabic

    From 4 comments
    • It really looks cool. But, why it doesn't have English? Or meybe if it does have, why isn't showed first? People who use language learning apps are focused in learning English…
      phpisatrash on HN
    • Very nice! Please add arabic when you have a chance
      imranq on HN
    • No arabic?
      yamrzou on HN
    • No English?
      sanshugoel on HN
  • Adapt conversation level for beginners

    From 2 comments
    • Here’s what I think would be a killer feature. Have it use AI to adapt the conversation level to the level of learner. Smaller words, repetition, slower. If you notice this is…
      bilsbie on HN
    • This is an interesting tool. I did not encounter any awkward grammatical sentences that other posters did. But the conversation I had got really repetitive. This was my…
      missedthecue on HN
  • Save and review past conversations

    From 1 comment
    • As someone who is studying Japanese intensely with a tutor this is absolutely perfect for me! Being able to do some speaking and listening practice instantly at any time is…
      madmod on HN

Questions

  • What is the tech stack and which models are used

    From 2 comments
    • What's the tech stack? Whisper for language transcription, GPT-3 for NLP?
      danielbln on HN
    • Cool!(but yeah english is really important!!) which models do you use for speech recognition and text generation?
      nonasktell on HN
  • Pricing plans

    From 1 comment
    • I tried out Hungarian — I speak it well but have an accent — and it got some parts wrong in the transcription that a human speaker would definitely understand. A second try was…
      biztos on HN

Alternatives named

  • Duolingo

    From 1 comment
    • This looks so nice. On a side note, I used Duolingo for about 7 or 8 months (I spent like 15-20 minutes) and learned a little Japanese and Portuguese (European). I think Duolingo…
      nixcraft on HN
  • Blabot

    From 1 comment
    • Funny thing, my friend and I just built a very similar app: https://blabot.app It's a bit more minimalistic though.
      kebsup on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

Add a badge to your READMEShown on HackerShow
[![Shown on HackerShow](https://hackershow.org/badge.svg)](https://hackershow.org/show/32993130)