Posted by lakesare 3 hours ago
Looking at the first Frieren example:
"Live without [fear]", "Live without [bread]", "Live without [sunlight]", "Live without [honour]". The common words are more than enough to set up a generic sentence for lack of something but then what someone lacks can be literally any object, concept or verb. There are a lot more than 500 of those in the world.
Observe an unknown word used a few times in different contexts, and you'll get a very good bead on what it means.
It's the "natural" way of learning a language. No one gets every word explained to them in detail - most words you know in your own first language are the ones you picked up on the go.
I think this "structural redundancy" might be a big part of what enables LLMs to learn human languages "from nothing".
>What could make this wrong: >1. "Understood" means you know every word. It ignores grammar, kanji readings, speaking speed and context.
Other than language learners. If you want to learn someone's language, read their comic books. They have pictures.
You blurred yakusoku, everybody knows that, but houshuu is much rarer word, should have blurred that
I didn’t include it in my analysis, but I’ve been thinking about “sentence coverage” vs “word coverage” for a number of years now. In an extreme case, you could imagine a transcript with only i+1/1T sentences and you’d be left with totally incomprehensible input.
IMO, what that tells us is that a completely dumb repetition of small set of simple concepts to just set up the pathway can be an effective means to kickstart language acquisition process. Most language learning materials attempt to establish a compact set of rules to be expanded with a long tail of modular add-ons, even many that aims to create an alternative and less stressful approaches like Duolingo. The Inmu dictionary has less than 500 known expression, all unusable in regular communications and inappropriate in most settings, and the way it is used is simplistic, childish, disrespectful, and dumb. And I think that might be how "start with picture books" advice look like if rebuilt from first principles.
I'm pretty sure many of the lines are _not understandable by intent_, even.
"Present day... present time... ahahaha!"
Ironic that it holds the first place by understandable lines. The vocabulary isn't the complex thing - it's the content itself that eludes understanding.
Surreal and dreamlike - almost as if inviting you to connect the dots, but not giving you the labels, not giving you enough dots or an obvious enough outline to connect them confidently.
The main characters were all well voice acted while I admit background characters were poorly voice acted.
However I say it’s the pivot point because the in top of the main characters having good voice actors the translation included cultural context I would have never picked up on my own.
For instance it took me nearly a decade later of occasionally watching subs to find out that “ore” was rude when male characters used it to refer to themselves because I didn’t have the cultural context to understand.
If I’m willing to become fully fluent in a language and its culture dubs are superior, but I just don’t have the time for most foreign media.