Hi r/SideProject! For the past year I've been building Bulba (learnbulba.com), an app for learning Lithuanian, made for English speakers. It's a solo project, free, and has no ads. Why Lithuanian? My partner is learning it, and I watched him struggle. There's very little out there for Lithuanian, so I wanted to build him something that actually helps. I've tried this project many times before, and every time I hit the same two blockers. Text-to-speech got Lithuanian pronunciation badly wrong, and an app that teaches you to say things wrong is worse than nothing. And there was no reliable way to judge what a learner actually said out loud. Both have changed: some of the latest ElevenLabs voices pronounce Lithuanian very accurately with a bit of tuning, and AI can now understand free-form speech and correct it. That's what finally made Bulba possible. What it does Short lessons in a clear order: new words, grammar and short readings, each with a quick explanation first. Spaced-repetition reviews: you type the missing word in real sentences, and it comes back just before you'd forget it. Words "grow" from Planted 🌱 to Harvested 🥔 (it's called Bulba, an old colloquial Lithuanian word for "potato" that my mother still uses, so I leaned into it). Speaking practice: you role-play everyday situations out loud, like ordering at a café in Vilnius or meeting a neighbour. An AI plays the other person, and your grammar mistakes are corrected under what you said. Built for a language with seven cases: gap-fills that teach the right ending, full grammar tables, and an on-screen strip for ą, č, ė, š, ž. Natural audio for every word and sentence, with a slow mode. Syncs between Android and the web. Level A1 (beginner) is complete. A2 is next. Some things I learned building it Even with good voices, about 5% of lines needed fixing by hand: some are spelled differently behind the scenes (a stress mark, a slightly different word) just so the voice says them right. AI is now very accurate at judging free-form speech. In the speaking practice you can say anything, not just a fixed answer, and it understands you and corrects your grammar reliably. A lot of what makes apps like Duolingo feel special is no longer hard for one person to build. Where I'd love your help Android testers. The app is in closed testing on Google Play, and I need testers who stay opted in for 14 days. Here's how to join: learnbulba.com/android. You don't need to learn Lithuanian seriously. Opening it now and then and telling me what's confusing is a huge help. Feedback. You can also try it in the browser at learnbulba.com, no install needed. What's confusing? What would make you come back the next day? Happy to answer anything about the build, the stack (Expo / React Native, AWS, the Anthropic API for judging free-form answers, and ElevenLabs for text-to-speech and speech-to-text) or the language itself. Ačiū!   submitted by   /u/Puzzleheaded-Roof-31 [link]   [comments]