TYK - a language learning tool

Dedicated to 인형.
You are the sunshine in my life.

Synopsis

TYK (the acronym for Teach Yourself Korean) is a generic tool for practicing vocabulary and grammar of foreign languages, primarily written to aid me in my private korean studies. TYK is free software, released under the GNU General Public License.

Look - where you learn more of TYK
Prepare - where you find out about TYK's requirements
Download - where you can obtain TYK
Contact - where you can get in touch with TYK's author
Contribute - where you can help to improve TYK
Leave - where you will find more resources on the web

Features and planned enhancements

Overview

TYK is meant to be an aid for learning foreign languages. It is not a language course! There is no grammar explained, words and phrases will often be out of context, etc. ...
In brief: if you want to learn a language, get a book. If you want to practice, get TYK.

For users

Rich set of exercises. Practice vocabulary and grammar in the way that suits you best.
Intelligent teaching. TYK will keep track of your progress and not bother you with material you have already mastered.
With full speech. Learn correct pronounciation by listening to native speakers.

For programmers

National language support. TYK will use GNU gettext to allow for internationalization (i18n) of the lessons, so that they can be presented in the user's mother tongue.
Full UTF-8 compliance. TYK's internal string format is UTF-8, allowing it to cope with almost any writing system out there.
XML-based data format. All of TYK's data is stored in XML files. This makes creating new content as easy as launching your favourite text- or XML-editor.
Platform independence. The TYK backend is written to run on any POSIX compliant platform. Different platforms might need different GUIs, though, to allow proper input in all kinds of languages, like 한국말.

Screenshot

[TYK and vocabulary plugin]
TYK and the vocabulary plugin running on OS X. (GTK+ interface for GNU/Linux is equivalent)

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Requirements

TYK depends on the following libraries:

libxml, version 2.5 or later.
GTK+, version 2.0 or later. (GNU/Linux only)

To compile TYK from CVS, you'll further need:

autoconf, version 2.50 or later
automake, version 1.7 or later
libtool, version 1.5 or later

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Download

Source code

A source package will be released once the following features are completed: GTK+ and Cocoa GUIs, vocabulary plugin and at least one exercise. That should be sometime January 2004 ...

CVS

Prior to the release of version 0.1, the CVS code won't be of much use, unless you are a developer. But if you want to try it nonetheless, execute the following commands to receive a copy of TYK's source code:
export CVS_RSH=ssh
cvs -z3 -d:ext:anoncvs@nongnu.gnu.org:/cvsroot/tyk co tyk
The first time you do this, you will be prompted by SSH to authenticate the server's key fingerprint. Answer with 'yes'.

Refer to the files README and INSTALL if you need further assistence. Occasionally run
cvs -z3 update -d
inside the tyk directory to upgrade your copy to the newest version.

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Contact

If you have questions regarding TYK, suggestions for improvements, or if you want to contribute, please mail me at ksterker@geekmail.de.

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Contribute

TYK is mainly written for my own entertainment, but if you can help to make it better and/or more useful for other people, you are welcome!

Areas that could use help

The frontend: I will write a GTK+ frontend to support GNU/Linux and *BSD, as well as a Cocoa frontend for MacOS X. Help with one of those is welcome, but of course you could also write your own frontend, for example to support your PDA.
Translation: once gettext support is in place, you could translate existing lessons into your own language. I might cover German myself, but French, Russian, you name it, ... are still open.
The lessons: don't want to learn korean? Why not provide some lessons for other languages, then?
Miscellaneous: various smaller tasks are listed in the task manager.

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