I like learning foreign languages and I am currently developing an application to support that endeavour. When you learn a foreign language with a text book, the text book gives you a guideline on what grammar and which words to learn. However, according to my experience usually after level A2 or B1 text books become rarer and when you want to practice languages with real texts you’re on your own.

I’ve always found it hard to continue learning languages once you have completed introductory text books. There are many text books for levels A1, A2 and B1, but my feeling is that starting with B2 there’s just not so much anymore. Additionally, I usually want to learn foreign languages to understand original content, so wouldn’t it be perfect to jump into original content as quickly as possible?

I am currently developing a simple Qt application with Python for myself to learn foreign languages. When I wanted to add support for Japanese, I recognized that while I have no problems with Anki and other Qt applications, Japanese input did not work in my own application.

During the recent hype of ChatGPT and the Bing Search Bot I had the thought that these chat bots - if they know more languages than English - can be a nice addition to foreign language learning. This post outlines a very rough idea how such a bot can be created using the GPT API.

In a previous blog post, I wrote a script to extract RSS feed URLs from Youtube channel URLs. It seems Youtube has recently updated the URL schema for named channels, channels may now start with a @ symbol and in this case don’t have the /c/ path in the URL anymore. An example for such a URL is https://www.youtube.com/@Geschichtsfenster.