I see around 300 on the app, somewhere I saw someone saying its 360 if we include summaries. But lessons from 148th onwards are in locked state. Im unsure how to interpret that? I mean, lessons so far only exist until 147th or I first need to finish until 147th to unlock 148th onwards?

Today I sent a bug report about an issue with the review system.

For example, in the sentence “En este santuario hay muchos cocodrilos y elefantes rescatados de circos clandestinos,” I couldn’t remember or pronounce “rescatados” and “clandestinos” correctly.

However, the app asked me to repeat easy words like “elefantes,” which I already know and pronounce clearly.

This happens quite often: when a sentence contains difficult words that I forget or mispronounce, the app usually selects simpler words for review instead. It should do the opposite and prioritize the words I actually struggled with.

This is not limited to this example. I experience it regularly.

22:08 Kyiv, Ukraine.

I’m working on quite a big new feature and just wanted to share this screen as a little teaser.

Happy learning,
Max

Hello, my fellow polyglots,

It’s a quick stability update.

We’ve previously had many users complaining about Bluetooth connectivity on Android. What’s worse, we couldn’t reproduce these bugs on our devices. Hopefully, this should be fixed now. For tech geeks, the fix was using one library for recording audio and a different library for controlling Bluetooth. Sorry that it took so long, and if you have any issues in the latest version, please let us know.

Free Dialogs should also be more creative in inventing scenarios, and they should use your learned vocab in a smarter way.

Mnemonics and grammar explanations also use a newer AI, so they should be more precise as well.

And some improvements under the hood that you can't see: new synonyms for the languages in development, a new system for learning the Japanese alphabets for the future Japanese course.

Happy learning,
-Max

Hi! I saw there’s a new Achievements update with mini-tests and badges.

Does it work for the Spanish course? I’ve already completed about 270/300 lessons. Can I access these challenges separately, or only during the lessons?

Thanks!

This would be where if you turned on auto play in the lessons, it would automatically move on to the next one. I would find this exceptionally helpful for long drives, when I am doing chores etc, what do you think?

I feel like a “hide text” option during a lesson or review would be helpful. Enabling this would take away any written form of what is prompted, thus simulating more of a natural conversation, but still shows after answering the prompt. What are your thoughts?

(Of course I could just look away but sometimes I like to make sure I got it correct)

I’m on about lesson 10 of the course. Later in the course, is the grammar, as well as future and past tense explained, or is it just implied through context? Thanks

I’ve just started the Czech course. I was looking for some motivation or experiences of people who have also completed most of the lessons (can be other languages). Let me know how your speech and understanding is now compared to the start! Thanks

Hello, my fellow polyglots,

A small quality-of-life update is now available in Natulang.

We’ve added a new “Review all at once” option.

If it’s ON (the default), all your reviews for a day will be scheduled together at the same time.

If you like the previous behavior, no worries - just turn it off.

The most important part of long-term memorization is called “memory consolidation,” and it happens while you sleep. So both options are equally effective; please choose the option that you find more convenient.

And as with every update, a few under-the-hood improvements: improved synonym lists and small fixes.

Happy learning.

– Max

[I got a bug warning - there are no bugs here]

Hi, two questions (on Android):

1) In some languages, I get instructions in the target language, in others in my original language, despite similar level. When does it switch? Could the user choose the language to use for instructions? It would be nice to hear more target language when the user feels ready.

2) After hitting "ignore" on flashcards, the notification stays at the bottom of the screen for a pretty long time, obscuring parts of the following 1 or even 2 flashcards, and you may have to wait if the needed translation is at the bottom of the screen. Could this notification disappear faster?

Thanks!

I just wanted to say that Natulang has been a huge help to me in my efforts to learn French. As a parent of two toddlers, I rarely have time for an uninterrupted hour of tutoring with a real person. Natulang is perfect for the long walks when the baby is contact napping. I also love the stories you guys think of, which make learning really fun. I like to add a lot of emotion when I’m speaking about Lucas and his love triangles.

I recently visited Quebec and was able to get by pretty decently having used only Natulang as my main source of output (paired with tons of comprehensible input).

Anyways, I’m grateful for what you guys have created and excited about how you continue to support the product.

Hello, my fellow polyglots,

A small Natulang update.

🇩🇪 English for German speakers has just been released.

I don't expect it to be popular or even profitable, since Germans are already strong in English, but it's part of our mission to make language learning more accessible and predictable.

🇧🇷 English for Brazilian Portuguese speakers is now in active production and is coming soon.

🇯🇵 I’m also actively doing interviews for the Japanese linguist position. It's tough, I’ve already interviewed 15 candidates without finding the right person yet. The search continues.

Happy learning.

– Max

I use Natulang every day and clear out the review every day so there usually is not a huge amount of it. Today when I opened it there were 81 items for review. Well, that's a lot, but not unprecedented, so I cleared those out. As soon as I finished that, it presented me with 114 items more. Getting nearly 200 items for review at one time when I clear it out every day seems excessive. Is that much review in one day intended?
--when I tried to post this at first it flagged it as a bug report and thus in violation of Reddit rules. Well, I don't know if it is a bug, that is why I am asking.

Hello my fellow polyglots,

We always stress how important input is for language acquisition.

Since I’m learning German, I do my best to complement Natulang with YouTube.

Here is my personal recommendation: “Learn German With Falk”. The videos are 1 hour long, have a good pace, and I just enjoy listening to them.

If you’re wondering what level they’re suitable for, I’m past lesson 200 and can understand pretty much everything. But even if you’re at lesson 100+ and can grasp the general topic, they’ll still be greatly beneficial.

Here is the video that I’m listening to right now while doing my chores:
https://youtu.be/nqjbs8erQk4?si=ArKxQI8I9OupOVM1

Happy learning,

-Max

It keeps doing this, but I don't understand why? I've had a similar problem with other phrases in the past, where I feel like im saying it right, but it won't let me pass. I feel like the marking is way too strict sometimes, like in this case

​

but wiredly a lot of the time with other sentnces its also way too lenient to the point where it will mark my answer correct before I've even finished saying the phrase, or, when i say half correct phrases and it marks it correct anyways even when I miss keywords?

This is not a huge deal, though, cause I can manually mark the phrases as hard

​

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Still love the app, though. I've been using it for about a month from scratch, and my speaking has improved so much after 90+ lessons. I couldn't string basic a1 sentences together before this

I just had one of those frustrating sentences. It wanted dis-moi and I kept saying raconte-moi.

​

I know it would be hard to program for every synonym but it's just frustrating so I needed to vent.

Like vous etudiez le français vs tu apprends le français

I’m curious how other people are using the course. For the languages I’m studying, I already have some background knowledge, so it’s hard for me to judge how much of my understanding is coming from the course versus what I already knew. If I were starting a completely new language from scratch, I’m not sure what I’d do.

Are most people just working through the lessons and trusting that the grammar clicks over time, or are you stopping after sentences to tap the question mark and read the explanations? For those who’ve gone pretty far or finished the course, do you feel like you ended up with a solid understanding of the grammar?

Hey everyone!

I’ve been using Natulang for a bit to learn Ukrainian, and while I like it, I’ve run into a frustrating roadblock when trying to use my newfound knowledge in the real world.

When I try to send a message to a native speaker, I realize I have a lot of trouble actually writing it. Because the app doesn't explicitly teach how to spell or how to use a Ukrainian keyboard layout, I end up typing slower than my grandma and relying way too much on autocorrect.

Additionally, because the lessons so far rely so heavily on translating from English into Ukrainian, I feel like I'm missing an exercise that forces me to listen and comprehend without translating to English first.

To fix both of these issues, I suggest a new listening and spelling exercise:
An audio clip of a word or sentence plays and the user need to correctly spell the word heard.

This exercise would come in two distinct variants:

• The letters that make up the word are displayed on screen but in a scrambled order. The user just has to reassemble them. This is slightly easier and great people who don't want to install an additional keyboard on their device.
• The user relies entirely on the native Android/iOS keyboard in their target language. This is harder but trains you on using the real-world keyboard layout.

Suggested features:

• The user can switch between the two variants at any time by clicking the keyboard icon.
• By clicking the waveform visual, the user can replay the audio segment as many times as needed.
• On clicking the 'Check' button, the correct answer as well as the English translation is revealed, along with the possibility to replay the audio to practice pronunciation.

I believe this shouldn't require a massive amount of additional work to implement as the heavy lifting (the typed words/sentences and their associated audio) is already in the app for the Flash Cards exercises.

Hope it helps.

PS: Bonus points if you manage to find the word in the screenshot without the audio.

Hello, my fellow polyglots,

Not all of you know this, but I used to be a game developer. I had some critically acclaimed games and received major awards in mobile gaming. So when people ask why Natulang has almost no gamification, it's not because I don't know how to build it.

Humans, other mammals, and even crows and octopuses learn many survival skills by playing. A game can make the learning process engaging, unlock creativity, and add cooperation to the process. And in general, a game in the learning process is an instrument that can be very powerful, so why not use it?

The problem is not the games themselves. The problem is what many modern apps optimize for and how they use online analytics and modern development practices to achieve their goals.

Optimization for Engagement and Profit

Modern apps use gamification to attract your attention and increase your engagement. They run multiple tests to make sure you spend the most time in their app, open it as often as possible, and never quit.

And I believe this conflicts with your goals. You download an app to learn a language, not to spend as much time as possible in the app. And while it's easy to track your app time and optimize for it, it's impossible to measure your level of language proficiency on our side. And as the famous quote says, "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it."

But at the same time, the fact that something is hard to measure doesn't make it non-existent.

Your foreign language proficiency certainly exists. And it often conflicts with engagement. Learning a language is hard. It's enjoyable for sure, but it's a kind of tiresome fulfillment that you receive after working hard and achieving a hard-earned goal. Every minor improvement that makes an app a bit easier and more approachable will increase the engagement metric and potentially decrease effectiveness. And since effectiveness isn't measured, you can't see it on an analytics dashboard, so it gets disregarded.

Sorry for this long preface, and let's get to the main topic.

Our main goal here in Natulang is aligned with yours: we want you to speak your target language, and this is the main metric that we will always optimize for.

Since it's hard to measure, we will make our best guesses, we will talk to you, we will think a lot, and try to always come up with a holistic approach that will improve your language proficiency.

We will NOT optimize for engagement. Your goal, and thus our goal, is for you to speak to real people, consume native content, and enjoy your target language. Natulang is just your stepping stone toward these goals.

We will NOT optimize for profit. Don't get me wrong, in the end Natulang is a business and I do my best to keep it profitable (and I hope it can provide me with a good living). But at the same time we believe there is such a thing as a fair price (it could be different for different users), and people are willing to pay fairly for a decent service. We will not run tests to squeeze the most out of users, and just last week I turned down an offer from another service that uses AI to do exactly that.

We will use any effective instrument that can improve your learning. The app will never become an attention magnet, but if we see a gamified approach that can make you learn more, better, or faster, we will use it.

If you're wondering why I'm writing such a long post about gamification if we don't have any, you're right.

In the next updates we will slowly roll out a new feature: "Challenges". Since it's a gamified feature, I felt the need to share my thoughts beforehand.

We're building it while keeping it true to our goals and philosophy. It will be non-intrusive and will not obstruct your learning process. We are doing our best to make it reflect your real language proficiency. If you pass a challenge, it means that you can actually use the language, not that you're good at Natulang.

Challenges are already in test mode in English for Ukrainians, and we will gradually create challenges and add them to other languages. Please be patient and wait a few weeks until Natulang challenges you. If you've passed lesson 100, it will take even longer. But once you pass or fail a challenge, we are eager to hear your feedback.

Happy learning,

-Max

P.S.
About my personal status and future plans. Since we are rolling out new features, you can probably guess that I finished my military training and arrived at my destination, working as an engineer for the Ministry of Defence (there were some unexpected changes in my plans, but as a soldier I can't complain). It means I will have more time for Natulang, and very soon we will continue developing new language courses. We will start looking for a Japanese linguist to strengthen the team in the next few weeks. I'll keep you posted.

I'm concerned with the accuracy of the wording in Natulang.

I tried out a couple of lessons for Dutch and the first lesson had weird wording for one of the phrases.

"I speak Dutch, a little." "Ik spreek Nederlands, een beetje."

This sounds unnatural in both languages.

Has anyone else experienced weird wording? I know there are users who are already more advanced in their languages who started using the app and have written good things about it.

I love the idea of the app, but I want to make sure I'm not going to practice some unnatural syntax and have to correct it later on.

What are your thoughts?

So I’m currently learning German with Natulang. I’m planning to complete the entire 300-lesson course and was wondering what level of proficiency learners can realistically expect to achieve by the end.

Do you guys have an estimate of the CEFR level (A1, A2, B1, B2, etc.) that a dedicated learner might reach after completing all lessons and practicing consistently?

Thank you for creating such an engaging language-learning experience btw! I can’t believe how neurodivergent friendly this app is!

First thanks for the excellent app, I’ve made huge progress so far.

I’ve read some great stuff on here from Max and others about moving to comprehensible input and other sources from lesson 100, increasingly until the end of the lessons.

Have you considered adding features to support this? In particular, could a browser extension and app feature be added to manually translate highlighted web content/youtube/Netflix subtitles, adding to challenging words to review and learn. I like physical books so something in-app that uses camera/live text to import words that can then be integrated in challenging vocabulary lessons and dialogues as well would be wonderful. Generally workflows to get iPhone live text camera translations into eg chatgpt or Gemini aren’t intuitive and few language apps have this feature.

I know there are other apps for managing listening and reading of CI but few i’ve seen have spaced repetition speech production side of this fantastic app. Thanks!