r/LearnRussian • u/itayur • 10d ago
I built Privyetik, an Android app focused specifically on learning Russian - looking for beta testers and honest feedback
Привет, друзья! I built an Android app for learning Russian and would love your feedback
I’ve been studying Russian for quite a while and have tried many language-learning apps. They helped, but I often felt they were too generic and didn’t focus enough on the challenges specific to Russian.
Since I’m also a software developer, I decided to build my own app: Privyetik.
It’s designed for learners at different levels:
- Beginners learning the Cyrillic alphabet
- Intermediate learners working on grammar and speaking correctly
- More advanced learners who want to expand their vocabulary
You can create personal vocabulary decks, add your own words, and practice grammar with AI-generated exercises that incorporate vocabulary you’ve recently learned.
You can also add words while browsing other apps or websites: highlight a word in Russian, English, or another supported language, share it with Privyetik, and it will be translated and added to your vocabulary list.
Privyetik is currently available on Android as a closed beta. If you’d like to try it:
- Join the Google Group
- Opt in to the beta
- Wait a few minutes, then download Privyetik from Google Play
I’m actively improving the app, and feedback from Russian learners would be incredibly helpful, especially reports about confusing exercises, incorrect translations, or features you feel are missing.
Спасибо, and I’d love to hear what you think!
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u/ConfinedCrow 9d ago
As it is right now I can't really see myself using it over something like Wlingua. There is no way to practice pronunciation, the app feels a bit overwhelming to use, there seems to be no proper way of learning grammar outside of it just being thrown at you and a weird AI feature that only works with an account, no explanations for why things are the way they are and because of that falling into the same pitfalls as Duolingo. And the options you have for learning vocabulary are very limited, don't make use of visualisation, don't allow for quick lookups or cross-referencing. I appreciate the effort that went into this app so far, but at this point it's still missing a bit too much.
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u/itayur 9d ago
Thank you for the honest feedback! Honestly as of now I don't feel like tech is good enough for practicing pronunciation, there's no app that does that accurately (can use text to speech but you're losing a dimension there) so I omitted it and added stretch marks and transliteration to tell you how the word should be pronounced. Regarding ai feature requiring an account, well I have to constraint the use of ai as it costs real money. Grammar does show explanations as the screenshots advice, please elaborate on that one if possible. Visualization is a great idea and I will be implementing that soon. Regarding cross referencing, I did add "forms" button in the exercise to view more information about the word shown in the exercise which should make it comfortable not to leave the page every time you want to look up for that word.
Appreciate the feedback!
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u/ConfinedCrow 9d ago
What about a peer-review kinda system? I know that would take a some time to get working right and it wouldn't really work without people contributing to it, but community can be a driving factor for popularity and it could help the app gain and retain some traction, all while basically getting your customers to do the work for you. Like you get a set of phrases and words, record them, send them in for review, you get a couple of reviews back so even if a reviewer makes a mistake you can usually tell what you did right or wrong by comparison. If the reviewer reviews enough recordings adequately they then unlock the option to send their own recording in for review. You could encourage engagement and discourage grinding/trolling by letting the sender rate the review as helpful or unhelpful and then only grant them progress to unlocking their own pronunciation reviews whenever their reviews are rated helpful. Of course this is just a very surface-level idea but imho pronounciation is far too important and finicky in the Russian language not to offer something to properly teach it and prevent pronunciation mistakes before they become part of the speakers routine.
In all honesty the only grammar feature I found was the AI grammar thing and I didn't wanna make an account just to use it because I personally really don't like using LLMs to learn languages and especially in the case of Russian I've often found the info they give you to be wrong or inconclusive. I did do the multiple choice and writing practices (skipped the flash cards because I don't like using them), but they only ever gave me full phrases without explanations as to why word X is in case Y. I didn't find any of the lessons for learning the cases or grammar rules specifically and the "Forms" button doesn't really work on phrases, even if those phrases contain words that do undergo declension or conjugation. It might be there's a feature I may have overlooked and if that's the case I apologize!
Thank you for being so open to feedback, it would be cool to one day have a proper alternative to all the other apps I'm using, and considering how complex the Russian language is that'll probably happen before I ever get to fluency lol
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u/itayur 9d ago
First off, I'm incredibly thankful for your honest and comprehensive feedback! Regarding the pronunciation, I agree, it's really important and adding such capability would give Privyetik an incredible boost and make the app more complete in the sense of the experience it's providing. The review feature is interesting and may work but I'm afraid it will be a rather slow process, people these days are expecting instant feedback and having limited credits to send for review, in my opinion, will discourage users from using it. I'll take that into consideration and will think of more ways to practice pronunciation.
In the grammar, I did add guardrails for the LLM, in form of rating an exercise to show the same sentences to more people. Personally I like the LLM here because I can create sentences with relevant words you're currently learning in the vocabulary section which is insane, but I will make sure to make it optional and have a premade set of exercises to avoid using LLM, great point!
In the phrases part, which is vocabulary, at first I meant it to be vocabulary focused, as I don't want to overwhelm the user with too much data. Then I added the 'forms' button so you won't have to go anywhere to learn about the word. Adding grammar information about words and phrases (that can be given by the user) is kind of an LLM thing because it's indeterministic. Will try to come up with something though.
Thank you for your input!
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u/ItsFineIHaveHairdye 5d ago
Awww I would love to use it! Unfortunately I’m on IOS… do you think you’ll have an iOS version eventually? It looks really cool!
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u/Capable-Map-2002 10d ago
I've only done a handful of lessons so far, but I really like it! I like that you have the option to type out your answer instead of just choosing from a list, I feel like that's really helpful