Ask HN: Does this exist?
I have an idea for a service.
Basically, a bot you can voice chat with, in a language you're trying to learn.
The thing is that it would use AI to learn the vocabulary you know, and try to create sentences using only words you know, throwing in a new one knowingly every once in a while, accompained by a dictionary card with the definition.
Compared to reading, you get used to hearing and speaking the language, and it helps build confidence.
Compared to doing conversation with a human being, you don't have to worry if the other person gets bored, and you build confidence gradually even if you're self-conscious. Also, the bot would only use words you know, and allow you to make progress little by little (or faster if it sees that you can master new words quickly).
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I like the idea. But this is a hard problem and I doubt there exists a functioning version of this.
I told a friend of mine who's into machine learning and AI.
I think that it's possible for the program to get to know how you pronounce things via machine learning. I'm not an expert in this space, though.
I could start with learning English, since from my experience software often works better than with other languages.
http://bots.duolingo.com/
If they had an API (which, they do not), somebody could build a TTS + voice recognition wrapper for this functionality, creating the experience you mentioned.