TL;DR: I built a web app called LangGlitch that aggregates comprehensible‑input videos (and soon podcasts/graded readers) for multiple languages, starting with German, Vietnamese, and English. I want it to become a one‑stop place for comprehensible input for every language, including small/obscure ones, and would love your feedback and language requests.

Hey folks, I’m Stefan, a guy from Germany who loves travelling and getting lost in new cultures and languages. In school I was terrible at languages and grammar never really made sense to me, but at some point I realised I had somehow become fluent in English just by playing games and watching YouTube in English.

Looking back, what worked for me was basically “comprehensible input”: content that I mostly understood and actually cared about, consumed for fun rather than as “study”. These days I always try to learn new languages that way, but I kept running into the same problem: unless you’re learning something huge like Spanish or Japanese, good comprehensible‑input content is scattered and hard to find.

So I decided to build something for myself and ended up turning it into a proper project: LangGlitch – a little web app that aggregates comprehensible‑input videos for language learners. Right now it supports German, Vietnamese, and English, with playlists grouped by difficulty, tags, and creators. You can sort for “easiest”, filter for topics you like, and then just watch your way through material instead of hunting for the next decent video.

I’d love for LangGlitch to eventually cover every language out there, including the really small and “obscure” ones, so it can be a genuine one‑stop place for comprehensible input. If there’s a language you’re passionate about and want to see added sooner rather than later, tell me in the comments or message me and I’ll do my best to prioritise it.

I’ve just put it into free open beta, so anyone can sign up and play around with it. I’m planning to add more languages over time, plus podcasts and graded readers, and if it ever makes enough money to pay its own bills I’d love to commission new comprehensible‑input content for underrepresented languages as well.

If you try it, I’d really appreciate honest feedback: confusing UI, missing features, annoying bugs, anything. You can leave comments here, DM me, or join the Discord (linked on the site) and yell at me there. Screenshots in the comments so you can get a feel for how it looks.

  • sychthys@lemmy.world
    3·
    3 days ago

    This comment may be overly blunt, but I’m also frustrated with trying to find decent language learning tools. This is just being added to the list of frustratingly opaque tools that I’ve bounced off of. I clicked into it and didn’t even make it a full minute before leaving frustrated.

    I saw no way to easily find a list of supported languages. That’s the only thing I care about when I click into a site like this. The site not having a list of supported languages in either the menu or on the front page instantly fills me with distrust.

    The front page tells me almost nothing. All the info there blurs into corpo speak about how great the site is without giving me real info I need to make the decision on if I should risk giving out my email to sign up. It seems the only way to find the info I need in order to decide if I should use this site in any capacity is to sign up by giving you my email address. That’s a hard pass.

    Any site that hides info I need in order to decide if it’s even going to work for me makes me feel like its just trying to either scam me or spam me. As a result, it goes into my list of do not use sites.

    Having seen the screenshot you posted here, I have to agree with the other feedback about why I wouldn’t just go to YouTube directly. At least there I can use SponsorBlock and sign in to save their already made playlists. I don’t see how this site adds any actual value over going to YouTube, to be honest.

    • LangGlitch@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      2 days ago

      The front page tells me almost nothing. All the info there blurs into corpo speak about how great the site is without giving me real info I need to make the decision on if I should risk giving out my email to sign up. It seems the only way to find the info I need in order to decide if I should use this site in any capacity is to sign up by giving you my email address. That’s a hard pass.

      Would you be more open to test websites like this if you could try them out without an account but in a more limited fashion? Like you can see the VideoOverview & watch the videos but there is no progress tracking & Playlist and you would always see ads?

      • sychthys@lemmy.world
        2·
        2 days ago

        I have two answers for this:

        1. Yes. If I could try it out in a limited fashion and get a feel to see if it would add value to my learning experience without having to provide login details first, then I’d be much more willing to try it. Especially if its made clear that a login is not required to try, since so many sites have a Try It button that just leads to a sign up page.
        2. If the critical information I need to make the decision to try it out is present, easily accessible, and clear then I’m going to be more willing to try it. Not as much as if option 1 was available, but more willing.
        • LangGlitch@lemmy.worldOP
          2·
          2 days ago

          Thanks for the Feedback!

          Yes. If I could try it out in a limited fashion and get a feel to see if it would add value to my learning experience without having to provide login details first, then I’d be much more willing to try it. Especially if its made clear that a login is not required to try, since so many sites have a Try It button that just leads to a sign up page.

          I’ll see if I can do that in a reasonable time frame because currently the App depends on a logged in User. I agree that this would be better for people to check it out but it was an oversight while creating the Application. It just went from cool project for myself to a Product idea way to fast I guess

          If the critical information I need to make the decision to try it out is present, easily accessible, and clear then I’m going to be more willing to try it. Not as much as if option 1 was available, but more willing.

          Good to know. I’ll try to improve all the landing pages!

    • LangGlitch@lemmy.worldOP
      2·
      2 days ago

      This comment may be overly blunt, but I’m also frustrated with trying to find decent language learning tools. This is just being added to the list of frustratingly opaque tools that I’ve bounced off of. I clicked into it and didn’t even make it a full minute before leaving frustrated.

      Hey, sorry to hear this. That’s of course quite the opposite of what I want to achieve. I’m always glad about specific & even critical feedback so thank you for posting!

      I saw no way to easily find a list of supported languages. That’s the only thing I care about when I click into a site like this. The site not having a list of supported languages in either the menu or on the front page instantly fills me with distrust. The front page tells me almost nothing. All the info there blurs into corpo speak about how great the site is without giving me real info I need to make the decision on if I should risk giving out my email to sign up. It seems the only way to find the info I need in order to decide if I should use this site in any capacity is to sign up by giving you my email address. That’s a hard pass. Any site that hides info I need in order to decide if it’s even going to work for me makes me feel like its just trying to either scam me or spam me. As a result, it goes into my list of do not use sites.

      Someone already mentioned this & this is a HUGE oversight of mine! I’m currently redesigning the Landing Page (I’m not a designer so I’m struggling a bit here but it has to be improved!) Also the Corpo speak on there is pretty much a placeholder, I have to learn how to do marketing will actually doing this. I majored in Computer Science so it’s learning by doing. If you could tell me which section you really found useless/bad/meaningless I’ll try my best to vindicate that in the redesign!

      Having seen the screenshot you posted here, I have to agree with the other feedback about why I wouldn’t just go to YouTube directly. At least there I can use SponsorBlock and sign in to save their already made playlists. I don’t see how this site adds any actual value over going to YouTube, to be honest.

      Well honestly I think what I offer is aggregation & tracking not necessarily content so if people decided Youtube is a better experience & they bounce from my website that just means I have to improve my offered Service. Also as far as I know Sponsorblocks & all other Youtube related Plugins should work, thats why I choose to use the normal Youtube Embbed. I also could use a different Player without the Youtube branding but then plugins wont work. If they didn’t for you I would be interested in what browser (version) you tried.