Verbling: The instant way to practice and learn a language

by lobo_tuerto • 15 years ago

222 59 15 years ago

modernerd2• 15 years ago

"Chat roulette for language learning" should be their five-word pitch.

Great idea. I've been learning French, Italian, and Spanish via lingq.com and what it's missing most is the ability to practise live with native speakers without having to schedule a call with a tutor.

It could prove a great way to practise a language, assuming they can work out a way to police it. What's to stop it filling with the type of crowd that frequents chat roulette, for example?

rickdale• 15 years ago

No, their five word pitch should not be "chat roulette for language learning". That would imply lots of cocks speaking different languages.

I hate when a company is the something for something else. Be unique. How about Video Chat For Language Learning. Why bring chat roulette into it? Break free and then Chatroulette can become the Verbly for wanting to speak your native language to another penis.

It just seems with all of the abuse that chatroulette gets it would be smart to try and separate yourself from them.

lobo_tuerto2• 15 years ago

Sorry, but no, I didn't get that idea when he mentioned that 5 word pitch.

The meaning I obtained was exactly what he initially meant. A place where you can be hook up to another person in the world, but with the explicit intention of practicing a language that's foreign to one and native to the other.

There is no shame in piggy-backing anyway, wasn't even someone famous who said: "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants."

Not saying that chatroulette is a _giant_ per se, but what they did in so few days was, well, a giant achievement (news, users, concept).

modernerd2• 15 years ago

Why bring chat roulette into it?

Because it's been a phenomenally successful concept that millions already understand conceptually. And because it highlights their USP -- live, instant matching of language partners -- when their competitors who use vanilla video chat services require you to schedule online conferences.

'The something-of-something-else' pattern is incredibly useful as a means of introducing new services and ideas. (My favourite is from Ronald Shusett and Dan O'Bannon, who famously pitched the film 'Alien' as 'Jaws in space'.) Sure -- you might take on the negative elements of the service you're comparing yourselves with as well as the positive ones, but as long as you have answers for those questions (e.g. "Good question. Our community is self-policing, and we review and ban users who misbehave."), then I see little harm in it.

noblethrasher• 15 years ago

"I hate when a company is the something for something else. Be unique."

At the risk of appeal to authority:

"In fact, I explicitly tell YC startups to explain themselves to investors as "the x of y" whenever possible."

-pg

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1216008 http://www.paulgraham.com/investors.html (see point 14)

webwright• 15 years ago

"I hate when a company is the something for something else. Be unique."

While I'm with you on the concern with the tainted associated, I couldn't disagree more with the above sentiment. Conveying something in a few words incredibly powerful and incredibly hard... Starting with something your audience is familiar with is an incredible asset.

It doesn't cheapen the movie "Alien" to pitch it as "Jaws on a spaceship". (hat tip to the book "Made to Stick").

jjolis9• 15 years ago

Jake from Verbling here. Thanks for this feedback. Really appreciate it. Many users are reporting switching from other sites once they've gotten the first few phrases down and want to practice with real native speakers. Talking to real people seems to serve as an extra injection of motivation.

Re. abuse: Verblings make accounts and that carry a crowdsourced reputation. We can see how well-liked our users are based on how their conversation partners rate them. Users with serious abuse reports filed against them are investigated and, if substantiated, kicked out.

guelo• 15 years ago

How do you investigate the abusers? Do you record the video?

brianobush2• 15 years ago

Great idea, but you really need Japanese :)

dchuk• 15 years ago

Never ever ever describe your own pride and joy by naming another product or company, regardless if they're a competitor or not.

JairusKhan• 15 years ago

This is very cool. Especially for ASL.

xlife• 15 years ago

Great idea, kinda sad it has no Portuguese.

unreal37• 15 years ago

Yes, I would try it if it supported Portuguese.

juliano_q• 15 years ago

Same here, waiting for the brazilian Portuguese support.

wccrawford• 15 years ago

Heard about this a while back. Still waiting for them to support other languages.

arturadib• 15 years ago

Just tried it out -- exactly what I was looking for. In less than a minute I was practicing Spanish with a nice fellow from Mexico. Superb idea.

jjolis9• 15 years ago

I'm Jake Jolis, one of the Verbling founders. Happy you found a good place to practice Spanish!

Just for reference, biggest countries right now are USA, Spain, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and U.K.

eLobato• 15 years ago

Jake, congratulations for the idea and the execution. Sometimes the simplest idea is the one that changes the world. By the way, is there any reason why I can't connect from Spain? It is stuck on the "connecting" screen :(

yock• 15 years ago

One thing that doesn't appear obvious to me is the level of proficiency required (if any) to get started. I suppose that could be an expectation to be set by the community, but is it feasible for someone to make Verbling their first stop on the way to learning a new language?

danvideo• 15 years ago

Yep, there's not really a good explanation of what beginner/intermediate/advanced means. Also it seems interactions are rated--- meaning what? Ability of speaker in said language? Interestingness of speaker? Whether they are normal?

jjolis9• 15 years ago

Jake from Verbling here. Beginner/intermediate/advanced refer to the different levels of conversation topics available to users. You can click through all of them while you're in a conversation, so you're never "stuck" in any of the categories. Specifically, at the beginner level, you're exposed to mostly the present tense and beginner's vocab. At the advanced level, you'll see some conditional tense and more advanced vocabulary, for example re. politics, culture, technology.

Re. ratings: We simply ask you, "How was your conversation?" Based on whether you superlike/like/dislike, we can pair you up with that same native speaker more often, at the same rate, or never again.

Hope this helps!

jjolis9• 15 years ago

Jake from Verbling here. So far, most of our users are at the intermediate to advanced level, though we've got a bunch of beginners as well.

For beginners, we've built beginners conversation topics to provide some initial Spanish context to get you started. Click the "Beginner" button once you've got a native speaker on the other end.

My co-founder Mikael actually knew zero Spanish before the summer but just started using Verbling to learn (and get feedback). He's now very conversant, at the stage where I can hear him use phrases that real Spanish speakers would use in everyday life, which is often very different from what they put in textbooks.

pkandathil• 15 years ago

There is another site where you can do this. They actually take you teach you the language. http://www.livemocha.com/

jrvarela56• 15 years ago

Another language learning tool by the creator of Captcha:

www.duolingo.com

check out a description at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQl6jUjFjp4

koopajah• 15 years ago

Yeah but it was announced a few months ago in this presentation a no real news from it (i've subscribed as soon as possible to the mailing list)

brianobush2• 15 years ago

No news yet and their twitter feed is dead silent. They are only offering a couple languages initially as well (with no Japanese in sight)

TillE• 15 years ago

So it's language exchange partners, but over the internet.

Pretty neat, but I'd definitely worry about audio quality. If you live in a multicultural city with a couple universities, the real-life version is easy enough to set up.

lobo_tuerto2• 15 years ago

And for the ones that don't have the financial ability to pay a top rated course?

I think this service enables self taught people with enough tools to march forward on their quest to learn a new language.

wahnfrieden• 15 years ago

You don't need to pay for a top rated course to find someone who's trying to learn your language and vice versa, and meet up with them in person when you live in a multicultural city as the parent said, with universities where there are lots of young people eager to learn.

dfischer• 15 years ago

I love how www.livemocha.com handles this.

Zakuzaa• 15 years ago

Someone should make a codecademy of langauages.

stevelosh• 15 years ago

This is a really cool idea that I can definitely see myself using. A few ideas that would make it even more awesome (for me):

More languages would be great.

Let me specify the level I currently know a language at. For example: I'm not a native speaker of ASL, but I can get through a conversation. I'd be a great partner for an ASL beginner but not for someone advanced.

jjolis9• 15 years ago

Hi, I'm Jake, one of the Verbling founders. Thanks for this feedback! We are planning to launch more language combinations in the future, though Spanish-English is the only one currently active. As we scale, we can allow users to impose filters such as "I want to talk to advanced speakers only."

machrider• 15 years ago

Sounds like Colingo: http://colingo.me/

pguzmang• 15 years ago

There is another great resource: http://www.fluentin3months.com/language-hacking-guide/

You can subscribe to his blog for free is really interesting.

Check the complete site out.

kouiskas• 15 years ago

"sign language" should be labelled as ASL if that's what you meant. There are hundreds of sign languages.

danso• 15 years ago

Bummer...no French (yet)

This sounds stupidly superficial, but the page is configured (apparently) in such a way that sharing it on FB gets you a blank for title/descriptor/image...YEah, I know, superficial. But I wanted my friends to know about it and you know what they say about click-through rate for articles w/images...

frew• 15 years ago

Definitely not superficial. Sorry for the long delay, but this now fixed. Thanks for the pointer. Let us know if you have any additional feedback.

camslizzle• 15 years ago

how about Indonesian?

jjolis9• 15 years ago

For a quick demo, Verbling was tried out on local TV in Texas http://www.the33tv.com/about/station/newsteam/kdaf-verbling-...

sunspeck• 15 years ago

Is it just me, or do the two faces paired in each image on the homepage all look oddly similar?

If the software were to enforce this, I wonder if I would have a more enjoyable/didactic/narcissistic experience speaking with my Chinese mirror-image...

wmblaettler• 15 years ago

This is great! I would love to see school districts be able to sign up entire classes and be matched with foreign classes. This feature would be a potential source of revenue. Free for anyone to use, but added features for paying schools: class matching system, teacher moderation, statistics, etc.

coatta• 15 years ago

A "Teach for America" friend has recently been tasked with building a small Midwestern charter school's first Spanish program. One of the biggest challenges for her is finding ways to immerse students in the language with a lack of resources and a tight budget. This certainly seems like a quick, inexpensive and appealing way to get students engaged. I'll see if she can provide feedback.

tmeasday• 15 years ago

I've thought about this idea many times, and one idea I have had that I haven't seen verbling talk about---perhaps it doesn't make sense yet with only English + Spanish---is to run on a credit system rather than matching you up with an 'opposite'.

So, if I want to learn spanish, rather than trying to find me a spanish-speaker wanting to learn english for a 50-50 conversation, it just matches me up with a spanish-speaker wanting to learn _anything_, and I burn credit talking to them. Later I can earn credit by speaking to a _anything_-speaker wanting to learn english.

If you think through that system lots of cool ideas come out, especially if you attach a monetary value to the credit---like people only earning credit and cashing it out (tutors), or people only spending it, and injecting cash into the system (impatient/rich people).

Anyway, Verbling guys, you may have already thought of this, but if not, I've been thinking about it for quite a while, hit me up if you want to chat more about it.

luke_s• 15 years ago

Unfortunately I'm learning Chinese, which is not yet supported. But as I am very interested in using verbling, I thought I would provide some feedback:

Firstly - Why do I have to register to use? It would be nice to specify your language and jump in. Then if I enjoy the experience, I can sign up with my e-mail address, etc.

Secondly - Having spent a bit of time around Asia, the market to learn English is absolutely huge! A lot of people are desperate to practise English with a native speaker. In Taiwan, sometimes had people (usually high school kids) coming up to me in the street wanting to practise. However it will require localised sites, written in Chinese, or Korean or Japanese to tap this market. Also, it will need a different marketing strategy to what you might use for English, or a European market. In China for example, a lot of people spend most of their time hanging around on BBS's like MOP. For obvious reasons using Google ad-words would be a no go ...

jjolis9• 15 years ago

Jake/Verbling here. Thanks for this.

1. The reason you have to register is because the people you talk to have the option of adding you to "My Verblings" and thereby increasing your reputation on the site.

2. Thanks for your input on the Asian market.

joshuabutner• 15 years ago

I know I'm not the only person to say this, but I kind of prefer the (original) implementation created by LiveMocha at http://www.livemocha.com/

jstclair• 15 years ago

It's an interesting concept, but I'd think the video part would be more of a distraction, honestly. The best language-learning idea I've ever seen was a foreign-language MOO/MUD. I worked on one at the University of Bergen (Norway). You can find a paper on the German-version here: https://bora.uib.no/handle/1956/1286

joeyj01• 15 years ago

I agree with the video part. Let's say there is a weird looking guy/girl in front of you and it can be very distracting. Only voice will be enough since it is about speaking.

rjack_• 15 years ago

I disagree. If I can see the lips of my interlocutor I have a small help understanding what he/she is saying.

cipherpunk• 15 years ago

Where's my Swedish option? :(

arvinjoar• 15 years ago

This. Finding Spanish speakers for an American can't be that hard, but finding a Swedish speaker could prove much harder, they should prioritize languages like Swedish.

bulletsvshumans• 15 years ago

Do they let you filter your language partners by gender? Because otherwise my girlfriend will not use this, even though she is very excited about the idea in general.

She wants to work on her Hindi skills in exchange for English, but after spending a year in India she is certain she will be mercilessly hit on.

My guess is that women in general will be uncomfortable having 10-minute chats with random men.

Verbling: The instant way to practice and learn a language

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