MitLernen

Pre-release

Coming to iOS and Android

Make German words your own.

MitLernen is a German–English dictionary and vocabulary trainer in one. Look words up, see them in real sentences, hear real speakers, and practise with spaced repetition. The dictionary and the recordings work offline.

Small steps. New worlds.

For iPhone (iOS 17 or later) and Android (8.0 or later).

Placeholder app screen: the word card for “die Pflanze” (plant), level A2, with a speaker button, an example sentence and a “Save word” button.
The MitLernen crab: a friendly red crab with big eyes, waving its claws.
Placeholder screen. Real screenshots coming soon.

Get notified at launch

MitLernen isn’t on the App Store or Google Play yet. Leave your email and you’ll hear when it is.

Your address is used only for this waitlist. It’s stored with the hosting provider, Cloudflare, and deleted after the launch announcement, or any time you ask.

How it works

Three small steps

From a word you meet to a word you know.

  1. Discover

    Look a word up, or scan a sign, a menu or a page. See its meanings, grammar and real example sentences, and hear how it sounds.

  2. Save

    Keep the words that matter to you. They go into your own library.

  3. Practise

    Short sessions bring each word back just before you’d forget it. You practise its meaning, article and plural, and you write it yourself.

Features

What’s in the app

Everything marked “In the app” works in the current pre-release builds. “Coming soon” means it isn’t built yet.

  • A real dictionary

    In the app

    Meanings, grammar, conjugation tables, declensions and word families, with autocomplete search.

  • Examples that fit the meaning

    In the app

    Sentences from Tatoeba and hand-reviewed ones written for MitLernen, matched to the meaning you’re learning.

  • CEFR levels A1–C2

    In the app

    Level badges on words, filters by level, and search that takes the level into account.

  • Native pronunciation

    In the app

    Recordings by real speakers from Wikimedia Commons, built into the app so they play offline. Words without one use your phone’s German voice.

  • Word Scan

    In the app

    Photograph or paste German text, like a sign, a menu or a page, and pick the words to save. Text recognition runs on your phone.

  • Spaced repetition

    In the app

    An FSRS scheduler brings each word back just before you’d forget it. You practise meaning, article, plural and spelling.

  • Reading exams

    A1–B1 · In the appB2–C2 · Coming soon

    Exam-style reading tests written for this app. They are not affiliated with any exam provider.

  • IPA transcriptions

    Coming soon

    How a word is pronounced, in the International Phonetic Alphabet, right in the word details.

  • Aquarium rewards

    Coming soon

    Practice earns sea friends, starting with a clownfish, for your own aquarium. That’s where the crab lives.

  • Also in the app: offline sentence translation from German to English on your device (after a one-time language download), progress export and import, and optional backup through your own iCloud or Android backup.

  • Free to start. An optional subscription, MitLernen Plus, unlocks unlimited scans, an unlimited library and all exams.

  • Private by design. No account, no ads, no tracking. The app is designed so that your learning data stays on your device.

Content

Where the words come from

MitLernen is built on open data, credited properly and improved by hand. Everything ships inside the app, so the dictionary works without a connection.

  • [NNN,NNN]dictionary entries
  • [NN,NNN]example sentences
  • [NN,NNN]native recordings
  • [N,NNN]own example sentences

  • Wiktionary via Kaikki.org

    Definitions, conjugations and word forms, extracted from Wiktionary with wiktextract.

    CC BY-SA 4.0

  • Tatoeba

    Example sentences from the Tatoeba community, selected, trimmed or corrected for the app.

    CC BY 2.0 FR

  • Wikimedia Commons

    Word recordings by individual speakers, trimmed and re-encoded. Every speaker is credited in the app under “Settings › Audio credits”.

    CC BY-SA, CC BY, CC0 or public domain

  • Made for MitLernen

    Hand-written and reviewed example sentences, curated meanings, CEFR labels and the reading exams.

    Adapted Wiktionary meanings stay under CC BY-SA 4.0.

    Own work

All credits and licences

Built with Claude

One developer, with Claude on the editorial work

A good learner’s dictionary needs editorial work that one person can’t do alone: levelling tens of thousands of words, cleaning up definitions, finding examples. I use Claude for that work, in a pipeline where every model verdict is recorded, checked by validators, and merged by me.

Today

  • CEFR levels. Each word starts with a level based on how often it appears in a corpus. Claude Opus then re-levels it through the Message Batches API with a calibrated prompt. The frequency rank is only a hint.

  • Topics. Claude sorts the levelled nouns, verbs and adjectives into 15 themes.

  • Learner-friendly meanings. Claude rewrites raw Wiktionary definitions into short meanings, using the example sentences as ground truth.

  • Examples where none exist. When the corpus has no good example, Claude first vets the entry: is the word worth teaching, are the meanings right, is the level plausible? Only then does it draft sentences, and the drafts are reviewed before they ship.

  • Reading exams. Drafted with Claude using structured output, checked by a structural validator, then reviewed.

  • Reproducible builds. Every paid model verdict is stored append-only with its provenance, so the dictionary can be rebuilt without calling the model again. Claude never writes to the shipped database directly: its verdicts go through validators and a merge step I run.

  • In progress

    Spanish and Turkish. Translations of the dictionary, being prepared with Claude. They are not in the app yet.

Roadmap

  • A personal tutor

    Coming soon

    Claude writes short reading texts built from your own saved words, and gives tips for the words you keep missing. Opt-in: your saved words leave your device only if you switch the tutor on.

  • More validation passes

    Coming soon

    Second checks of levels, meanings and examples across the whole dictionary, not just the parts reviewed so far.

  • B2–C2 reading exams

    Coming soon

    The upper levels, built and reviewed the same way as A1–B1.

What support would change. Every validation pass over the dictionary is a paid batch run, so how often I can re-check the content depends on budget. Credits from Anthropic’s Claude for Startups program would go to two things: more validation passes over the whole dictionary, and building the tutor.

[Photo of you, optional]

About

Hi, I’m Abdurrahman.

I’m an independent software engineer based in Munich, and I build MitLernen on my own: the iOS app in Swift, the Android app in Kotlin, and the dictionary pipeline they share.

[Your story: why you started MitLernen. Draft: “Learning German, I kept switching between a dictionary, a flashcard app and a notebook. I wanted one place where a word comes with a good example, a real voice and a sensible way to practise.”]

MitLernen is bootstrapped and paid for by me. [Optional: one sentence on your background, e.g. “Before this I spent [N] years building [kind of software].”] I’d rather ship it slowly and get it right: small steps.

Contact

Say hello

Questions, ideas, or a word that looks wrong? Send me an email. I read every message.

hello@mitlernen.com
Write an email Use the contact form