Title: I’m throwing this out because I’ve gone as far as I can as a solo founder without holding myself back. (More info about me in my profile.)<p>I have an awesome prototype that re-imagines how people learn a language. I think this has a real chance to change the world by making language learning as achievable as learning to read in your first language and as predictable as following a recipe.<p>I applied to YC last year and got an interview, but it was still early enough in development that I needed to rely on instinct and intuition to answer questions. I’ve finished the initial R&amp;D and am building the final UI for the prototype. The prototype natively supports any pairing between 20+ languages, including English, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Russian, and many European languages. Practically these pairs are limited by the availability of bilingual dictionaries.<p>I’ve been meeting with a couple of people a week, mostly language learners, teachers, and tech people, but I am finding people, perhaps unsurprisingly, have a lot of trouble seeing past the curse of knowledge. We’ve all learned a language, so most of us feel qualified to teach it to others without deeply examining our assumptions.<p>Meeting someone on HN isn’t ideal, but I’m determined to find the right people and I’m willing to improve my chances in any way that seems productive.<p>What’s my idea?<p>I’ve studied Japanese for years and constantly wonder,  “how close am I to being able to read and understand this book, academic paper, song, or show?” And there isn’t any tool that can answer that question for me.<p>Natural language processing (NLP) has advanced to the point where I can build something resembling abstract syntax trees (ASTs) for natural language sentences. By indexing the words and original sentences, I can easily track a user’s learning across any number of pieces of content, link to word references like dictionaries, cross-index words to show other examples of usage, create automatic exercises with full context, schedule reviews (SRS), tagging named entities (proper nouns and the like) and provide concrete guidance.<p>I want to build language servers (natural language LSPs) and integrated language environments (an IDE for language) for individuals. For any content a user adds she will have access to content reader, dictionaries, cross-references, character information (like kanji) if applicable, review exercises, parallel text tools (not machine translation), and sentence shadowing tools.<p>My prototype takes the books, articles, or web pages you would like to read and creates a detailed index of all the words and sentences; it then finds the fewest sentences that cover all the words and turns those into fill-in-the-blank exercises to study from. You are given real feedback and correction when answering exercises. It also includes an integrated e-reader and dictionaries.<p>Who do I want to meet?<p>You must be:<p>* Deeply curious and technical (but this need not be in programming);<p>* Willing to ignore established methods&#x2F;ideas when reality doesn’t match;<p>* Deeply believe that at every level, the details matter;<p>* Able to say “No” in order to ship, even for things with obvious immediate value.<p>I&#x27;m currently preparing my YC application for the winter 2023 batch. 
If interested, please email me at joshua@solarmist.net. Put &quot;co-founder&quot; somewhere in the subject and include:<p>1) something awesome you&#x27;ve built<p>2) why would you be right for this and<p>3) the best time and way to contact (FaceTime&#x2F;Zoom&#x2F;etc) you.<p>Even if you aren&#x27;t the right person, please upvote this and help us meet.
Upvote: