Prismatext - Language Learning

It’s a nice concept and the app is well made, for the most part. Some issues, however. I’m using it for Japanese and some of the substitutions are questionable in context, due to the lack of 1:1 translations between words. Sometimes the same word in English has multiple translations only some of which make sense in context, and the system does not quite account for that. It COULD, using e.g. vector word embeddings and other AI technologies (such as part of speech analysis - there are other cases where verbs and nouns were mixed up), so I hope it will improve. HOWEVER, the concept is still quite useful for learning vocabulary as long as these caveats are kept in mind.

Love the way it repeat certain work for memorization and build on it. Wish it would sync between my phone and iPad. Also more selection of books.

This is a such a fun way to develop language abilities. My advice: even if you normally read complex and nuanced documents in your main language, consider choosing a light read or page turner. Also, beginners? Pick a book written in contemporary language you are likely to encounter in real life rather than an older book with (perhaps delightfully) dated literary language. Long term wish feature (i think they are just getting started): I would love to see more books originally written in my target language adapted to this system, so that I am moving towards reading either a popular or classic work in its original language, and maybe have a super advanced level that is the original text. (They might have these titles already if not that last mode - apologies if I just didn’t notice.) I read the books first on the intermediate setting, and then reread later on the advanced setting, which is a little hard for me the first time through. It’s worth the money.

It gets the target language wrong! I’m reading a biography of a woman. In the part about her childhood, the translation keeps using masculine forms - il bambino, il figlio. Im a beginner and I’m better at Italian than this thing.

Love you concept, excellent value for your money. The only thing that I think would improve it would be a little more insert of the language a person is studying. I am studying Spanish and would like to see more.

I’ve been trying to work on my Dutch and thought this was a great idea and much more convenient than another approach I’ve tried (side by side books - one in English, one in Dutch). This doesn’t work! It appears to use machine translation … so translated the word “to-day” in the book to the Dutch word for “to” followed by the Dutch word for “day” … so “tot dag”, rather than the correct translation of “vandaag”. Many examples like this … you cannot rely on the appropriate translation in context. Also means that even at the highest density level only the odd word is translated - I had hoped for a range from just a few words all the way up to full translation. All in all, very disappointing and I’m about to delete the app.

I’m learning Italian, and this is a fun way to increase my vocabulary. You can set the language density to low, medium or high. Words in your target language are underlined and translations provided. I’m enjoying it so far. I had trouble downloading the books at first, but the devs were extremely responsive and helpful.

I started reading Through the looking glass, using Russian. I am a little fluent in the language and have settings on high for word use. I find it very easy to use and helpful on my language journey. Never read the book before, so also enjoying the read.

I saw an ad for this app on Instagram and I was really interested! However, I was extremely disappointed by the hoops you have to get through to get started reading. I very much would like to use this app, but I would much rather pay for the books separately rather than pay a monthly fee for credits. Or, I would like to just buy credits instead of having to subscribe to a service!

Love this app, love learning Swedish while reading about Huck Finn! Next I’ll try Spanish!