Langlearn on Creativity Hacker

Tormenting AI For Fun and Profit

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 13:30:00 +0000

I’ve come up with a fun way to practice written conversations in norsk—by taunting my AI practice partner.

If that sounds like fun, just step behind this curtain and I’ll show you the game.

The Rip-Cord Protocol

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 09:21:56 +0000

Every language course I’ve ever taken began with how to have a simple conversation, but I don’t think I’ve ever been taught what to do when those conversations break down. And they do break down. All the time. Especially for beginners.

This post recaps a conversation I had with ChatGPT about what I think is a crucial - yet often missing - first lesson in language learning: How to keep conversations moving when the bottom falls out.

I call it The Rip-Cord Protocol.

From Noise to Nuance

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 09:24:35 +0000

As I focus more specifically on ear-training, I’m noticing stages of progress in my ability to unpack the noise into recognizable chunks, but how many stages should I expect on this journey? And what do they look like?

Verbal Emphasis

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 09:06:54 +0000

There are a cluster of words I’ve been more or less ignoring in norsk; words like “jo” and “vel.” They seem to come scattered randomly in sentences, shifting the nuance somehow, but I’ve been so busy focusing on what the nouns and verbs are doing that I haven’t unpacked all those dangly bits.

Today I decided to take the plunge, in another installment of Useful Conversations With ChatGPT…

Kaffe Kan Fikse en Tregmorgen

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 08:56:38 +0000

Join me for another installment of my “Conversations with Robots” series.

Molecular Vocabulary

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 12:31:02 +0000

Language is an extremely flexible tool. You can assemble words into messages that express an unlimited number of thoughts. Anything from “Where food?” to “Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.”

But in everyday speech, we don’t typically use words to communicate. We actually assemble most of our day to day utterances using larger chunks of language. What are those chunks? And why do I think they can be used to supercharge your language studies?

Let’s take a look…

Automatic Language Growth

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 18:19:42 +0000

While working on the ear training features for the FrankenTongues app, I stumbled across a reference to the Automatic Language Growth (ALG) model of language learning, and the moment I read it, I had to stop everything I was doing to investigate.

Because it resonates loudly with my own views on how we learn languages.

New Road Trip, New Trial

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Mon, 16 Jun 2025 09:34:48 +0000

I’m sitting in the car, waiting to begin another long road trip, and in keeping with recent practice, this will be another chance to test my hands-free learning tools. But in light of my current ALG experiment, there will have to be some changes to the plan.

Norwegian Crime Kids

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 18:15:24 +0000

With my recent experiments in ALG-style language study, I needed to shift gears in my Norwegian reading practice. Instead of reading adult-oriented books and using translation tools to help me over the rough parts, I’m embracing kids books and white-knuckling my way through them without a safety net - no dictionaries, no translations, just context and guesswork.

Today I finished my first one, and thought I’d share some notes about this new approach.

Norskiserer Meg

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Tue, 27 May 2025 08:28:21 +0000

I’ve been writing about my language learning app project and my language learning cartoons project, but I haven’t said much about my actual language journey. Well that changes today, in the form of this new project category, all about my practices and progress with Norwegianizing myself.

Ears Don't Have Fingers

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Mon, 19 May 2025 15:32:18 +0000

While conducting my road tests recently, I had a bit of an epiphany: my Norsk reading skills went from zero to B2 level (advanced intermediate) in 3 months, but after spending a similar amount of time focused on training my ear, I’m still at A1. I think it’s time to change gears…

Hearing is Believing

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 18:55:27 +0000

There are times when implementing a new feature seems daunting - when the perceived difficulty of the task at hand hangs so ominously over your future-view that you seriously question whether you’ve got the stamina to get through it. But today I heard the sweet sound of success, literally, and can finally breathe a little easier.

Missing Modes

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Thu, 03 Apr 2025 20:42:27 +0000

As my Norwegian text skills get better, I’m increasingly annoyed that my acoustic conversational skills are not, but it’s because I still haven’t found a practice method or tool that suits me. So today I’m putting some more concrete thought into what I actually want.

Unforgettable Intro

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 15:44:40 +0000

Hi. My name is Ogg and I’m a caveman. Okay, well, I used to live in a cave. Sadly, it froze (long story) and I waited there for absolute ages until the science dudes finally thawed me out. But they had to tear open my cave to get me out, so now that they’re finished studying me, I don’t actually have a home anymore. Which is kind of why I’m writing this book.

Unforgettable

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 10:50:50 +0000

Traditional tools for learning foreign language vocabulary usually employ simple L1-to-L2 text translations (shoe = sko), and sometimes they’ll add an image to illustrate, but the way this material is commonly presented completely ignores how memory actually works. Fortunately, I’ve got an idea for how to change that…

Headline Grabber

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Fri, 28 Mar 2025 03:44:42 +0000

Similar to the Ad-hoc Text problem, another technique I use for improving my Norwegian is to start each day by scanning Norsk news headlines. But can I make it even easier to use?

Ad-hoc Text

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 08:32:41 +0000

One technique I often use to improve my Norwegian is to create “study blocks”. From a few sentences to a few paragraphs, each block focuses on a specific aspect of the language I want to explore. For example, I have one that demonstrates a spectrum of common adverbial intensifiers that range from slightly (litt) to extremely (ekstremt). But after comparing the text for such a block, how do I then get it into Frankie?

Play-testing Local Translations

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Thu, 27 Mar 2025 05:04:02 +0000

It’s been a month now since I last used LingQ. I didn’t actually intend to switch - it just kinda happened - which must surely count as some kind of validation. But as much as I’ve enjoyed Frankie’s lower-friction experience, it is not completely smooth. And today I begin on the next step.

Go home, Norsk. You're drunk.

jeff@smithicus.com (Jefferson Smith) — Tue, 05 Nov 2024 07:10:13 +0000

My journey with learning Norsk hit an unexpected landmine today, all because of our new curtains.

Having learned a decent amount of French in school, I’m passingly familiar with the notion of gendered nouns. So the masculine, feminine, and neuter categories in Norwegian weren’t a problem. And learning that many people collapse the feminine and masculine into a single common gender came as a welcome simplification. But then we bought the damned curtains.