Ryan Hellyer is a former chemist, software developer and creator of Comic Jet, a fun and colourful site that enables you to learn German from comics.
Ryan Hellyer, creative, Berlin, WordPress, Comic Jet, German
" data-orig-size="1024,1024" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" aperture="aperture" />Introduce YourselfI’m a Kiwi who somehow made his way across the globe to wonderful Berlin. I work as a software developer, and can usually be found working from a cafe some place in Berlin.
What is your favorite place in Berlin?
Herman Schulz cafe. I regularly go there to meet friends, get work done and experience their yummy cakes and soups.
Tell us about Comic Jet
Comic Jet is my attempt at helping people practice their German skills. It doesn’t actively teach, but allows readers to begin reading proper stories in German (or English) and when they get stuck, they can simply click on the comic to switch into their native language.
Where did the idea come from?I had been trying to improve my German by reading comics, but it was driving me nuts having to constantly look things up in a dictionary. I ended up scanning both the English and German versions and putting them on my phone so I no longer had to take the books with me, and could easily switch between the two. This was useful, but it still took me a second or two to switch languages. So I set about working out how to switch languages quicker, and the basis for Comic Jet was born.
What is your favorite comic on the site?
The XKCD comics are my favorite for reading in English, but for learning German I prefer any of the Gaia comics, as they use much simpler language.
What is your favorite German word?
My favorite German word is “duh”. Most people use der, die or das, but I prefer to just say duh, as it makes the language a whole lot simpler! If you say it fast enough, people don’t even notice.
What other projects you are working on?
I have a whole fleet of open source projects on the boil. Most of them are posted on my geek blog. The most popular one is my Disable Emoji’s plugin for WordPress which is currently installed on over 50,000 websites.
What are your future plans for Comic Jet?
My main goal is to add more comics. There are very few comics which are available in both English and German and have licenses which allow me to use them on Comic Jet. If the site becomes popular, I will look into having existing comics translated.
For more, check out Comic Jet, or follow Ryan on Twitter, Instagram or his blog.Filed under: Berlin, Language, Life in Berlin, people