Kindle isn't extensible software (duh)

So I bought a Kindle book recently in a language I'm not a strong reader in. It was "It's Hard to be a God" by Arkadiy and Boris Strugatsky, but I bought it in the original Russian. (It's definitely above my level but I'm hopelessly optimistic).

I'd describe my Russian as "fluent-conversational", and some reading ought to help. Already, I use Kindle by default for most books, probably for historical reasons. But now I realize I am afflicted by vendor lock-in.

In any kindle app or device I've used, you can hover a word for a definition/translation. On my Kindle e-reader you can find the list of words you've hovered. I can't seem to do this on my phone.

In fact there doesn't even seem to be a russian-english offline dictionary at all for the mobile app. I am frequently offline recently due to travel.

If I were not in a vendor locked ecosystem I'd probably open my ebook in another app that has the features I need. If no app had it, I might even add it myself to an open source project.

I could probably make a feature request but I somehow feel predisposed to despair that there's no way the largest American electronic book company could have that feature on some devices but not on others without deprioritization that I could not possibly effect.

As a language learner, being able to track and eventually export your list of new words so you could e.g. convert them into a flash card set, would be enormously valuable. Really that is an example of the value of any "open" system, you can connect random things in amazing ways.

But non-extensible software, a subset of non-open software, won't let you.

Will I be looking into de-DRMing my Kindle books for personal use? Maybe (wink).

Should I have bought books that I don't own in the first place?

Perhaps not.

I'm not sure I had a choice since I don't think I own enough space for a physical library and I doubt my neighborhood library has this book in the original language.

Hopefully getting far enough in the book will convince me to do something about this.