Have you ever wished that you could learn a new language just by browsing the web? Well I know I have. About a year ago I decided that I wanted to learn Russian. Learning a new language is a slow process, so being able to spend time constantly working towards this goal is critical. However once the novelty of embarking on a new hobby wore off I found it harder and harder to engage and enjoy what I was reading, children stories just aren't that entertaining. This lead to me thinking, I wish I could engage with Russian the same way I do English every day. And this is where I decided to create Lingo Journey, a Chrome extension designed to help people learn a new language. If Language learning is all about immersion, then what better way to achieve this than surfing the web entirely in your new language. I wanted the ability to read news articles and watch YouTube videos all in my target language.
Here are some images showing Lingo Journey in action.
For those who are familiar with LingQ it works somewhat similarly. Words are highlighted different colours depending on their learning status. You have the ability to click on words creating a popup window displaying translations, the learning status and other information.
This window remembers where you placed it so you can position it wherever you want and every time you click on a word it will popup and show translations. It can highlight words in the subtitles as you watch the video. Being able to use YouTube to learn a new language opens up so many opportunities.
If that sounds good to you then I strongly recommend taking a look at installing Lingo Journey here (https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/lingo-journey/hkkghimlnkomhmnndmnnidbpilokcaeo). If you are curious you can find the source code on GitHub here (https://github.com/asdf-a11/LingoJourney).
Paid translations. Lingo Journey provides free translations which should be good for beginners but as you progress you may find words that don't have translations, I suggest getting the complete translation list from my patron (https://patreon.com/LingoJourney and then in the shop tab). It costs barely more than one month of LingQ but you keep it forever, sounds like a good deal to me.
What's next. I think my main focus is to support more languages, German, French and Spanish just to name a few. So far I have been solo testing this project and developing for my own needs, but I am excited to see what other make of it and implement any feedback.
Lastly if you have any thoughts or questions you wish to share I would love to hear about them in the comments.
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