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Comment by tdumitrescu | Hacker News Reader

When I started learning more languages as an adult, I found that the biggest accelerator for me personally was likewise to read novels, even if they were way beyond my nominal skill level. The first 50-100 pages would be slow grinding, looking up almost everything in the dictionary, but then it would rapidly get faster and easier as I got used to common turns of phrases, idioms etc. And it was great for maintaining real motivation, wanting to read and understand these captivating stories by Eco, Houellebecq, etc.

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That's a really interesting approach. I wonder if there are reading apps which have that dictionary integrated, but which still require a mouseover / tap to display it for a particular word (they are just using a translation language dictionary).

In my experience, a little hardship when looking up a word helps you remember it. Like having to alt-tab to a Google Translate tab vs just tapping the word inline, or having subtitles.

If it's too easy, then I found I'll look up the same words every time because it's too easy-come-easy-go.

Pleco is a high-quality dictionary app (for Chinese and only Chinese) which is currently moving into the space of selling ebooks. Dictionary features are of course integrated into the reader.

Kindle does this, both on device and in app.

I learned Japanese to a level where I can read novels without a dictionary, more or less. I just looked the words up one by one - I think the amount of time to look up a word actually made me learn them better. If I only saw a word once, I would be less likely to look it up. If a word I didn’t know always came up, I’d look it up and write it down. You also get lots of examples of how to use a word if you look it up - a definition alone is not always the best way to learn. If you are reading online, you can use the chrome plugin rikaikun to get a mouse over lookup. But I still prefer a hard copy and an electronic dictionary.

Look up LingQ

LingQ is great but too expensive for what it is, in my opinion. You could build a similar (unpolished) app in a month over some weekends.

Kobo does this.

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