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Show HN: Lexical - How I learned 3 languages in 3 years (lexical.app)
9 points by trubalca 35 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 13 comments
Hey HN, I'm Taylor and today I'm launching Lexical, a language learning app that actually works by teaching the 5,000 most common words in the target language.

Spaced repetition is how I've learned Spanish, French, and Italian in the last 3 years and I couldn't find tools that have the languages that I want to learn in the future, so I built Lexical.

The link goes to my White-Paper describing the language learning philosophy behind Lexical if you just want to try it out you can click "Get Started" at the top of the page. To really experience Lexical at it's best you'll need an account (sorry guys) but I've tried to make it as easy as possible.

I'm a big fan of Hacker News and am looking forward to your comments and hopefully even some beta users.

Here are some old HN posts that inspired my app and white-paper.

Learning is remembering https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32982513

Kanji only requires 777 words https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20721736

Most of language learning is temporary heuristics https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44907531

Duolingo sucks https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45425061



The philosophy resonates with me. I even built a spaced repetition app myself while in Brasil a couple of years ago. I started with lists based on things like kitchen stuff etc. you’ve inspired me to resurrect it.

By the way, it’s a bit slow - maybe you’re getting increased traffic from the HN post.

The submit button needs to deactivate after being pressed the first time otherwise you end up pressing it multiple times and it’s like that scene from Toy Story with all the Martians in the machine.

Good luck with it!


Hey, thanks. I'll go fix the toy story bug haha. I am also working on making it quicker by pre-loading the audio. Thanks for the feedback!


Really like the philosophy, and the UI looks clean. You mentioned grammar briefly, but I’m curious if you think that’s also a component that could be learned through the app? One thing that’s nice about Duolingo (despite its flaws) is that it progressively introduces new grammar concepts and uses them in the lessons. Would be cool to have something similar here.


Hey thanks! I do hope to add some additional basic grammar instruction in the future... similar to what is in the grammar guides that I mention in the white-paper


Probably not important in the short term, but it would be cool if users could view the entire bank of 5,000 words somewhere in the app. And even cooler, something like, the words they've mastered are one color, and the words they don't know yet are another. Would be a fun way to visualize progress


I like the philosophy here — focusing on high-frequency vocab and spaced repetition is what actually moves the needle. I’ve always felt that most language apps gamify too much and teach too little.


Very good tool. Can it be used to learn English, my native language is Chinese


I really love using this app! Such a cool article!


Can you please add Portuguese?


Hi there! I'm working on it right now and hope to have it added by the end of the week. I'll shoot you a message here when I've got it added. Or, you can send me an email so I can respond to your there: taylorboan@me.com


This is huge


Haha, thanks man. If there a particular language you'd like me to add just lmk


Great work!




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