About
Heidi is made in Zürich, by people who had the same problem. We build in the open — including the parts that did not work.
Because a great many people here take the same path: learn German, move over, and then find that the decisive part of the language is not written down anywhere. That is not a niche problem but the standard experience in this city.
We read what the research says first, and only then built. Three findings overturned the plan we would otherwise have shipped. What we learned is on the research page — including the places where we had to correct ourselves in public.
Today: understanding and replying to real text, hearing an answer read aloud, and a register of where dialect is actually spoken on air. Next: the listening lab, where you hear one Zurich voice, tune in, and we measure how much you catch of another. That needs recordings, and they are being made.
Swiss German is the beginning, not the destination. The method is not specific to Switzerland.
All over the world there are languages and dialects too small for a large course provider to care about — and which are at the same time exactly what you need in order to actually belong. You can have perfect command of the official language and still be on the outside at the table.
Language courses follow the market, and the market follows speaker numbers. What is left behind is a few dictionaries, a few research corpora you are not allowed to use commercially, and no recordings to practise with. Heidi is built for that gap.
Adults who already command a related language do not have to start over — they have to relearn what they already own. That holds for Standard German and Zurich German as it does for many other pairs. Which is why in Heidi the language being taught is swappable configuration rather than something written into the code.
Concretely: more Swiss German dialects first, then a language outside Switzerland — the same machine, a different language pack. The spoken half travels with it: every one of these languages is heard far more often than it is written, and for every one of them there is media nobody has sorted into dialect and standard. What we learn on the way, we write down.