Is This the Perfect Language Learning App? 

Don't know what I'm doing wrong but promo code doesn't work for lifetime membership. Any tips?

@@anna.mrozek Ah, maybe it's not for lifetime memberships, sorry. I'll just check with them.

@@anna.mrozek Hey Anna - I just asked and he said it's working at their end. Are you sure you're using the correct code for the language you happened to choose? (Even though you will get all of them)

@@daysandwords yup. I've checked the code for 12 months subscription and it works

@@anna.mrozek If you'd like to buy the lifetime one and it still isn't working, it'd be good if you could contact them. I know it's a pain but that's all I can offer since they're saying it's working at their end. 🤷 Just one of those bugs I guess.

Yeah I should have said that actually. There are so many little things to try to remember when doing these, and then try to squeeze them into the review somewhere too. But yes, I think the whole thing is really well set up in that way.

@@daysandwords But I indeed want to ask for The mister Cringe's mom's basement adress.

@@twoblocksdown5464 Yeah you like the oldies I know. She lives in Scotland.

@@daysandwords ok we got benz and rolls an shit and right now imma fly to Scotland

@@twoblocksdown5464 You do that. Let me know when you need a boat to go the rest of the way because your geography is as dumb as your trash talk.

For me, the main thing I struggle with is that, the more I learn languages, the more languages I want to learn and I am scared I will then speak 10 languages but only really be fluent in 4.

@@AfroLinguo If you stick to one language family you'd pick them up faster

Providing the timestamp here because why not 15:41 "I can see why people like studying lots of languages. I g- I ge- I get it guys, I do. It's fun. And also sucks."

There's Norway this is true

I thought the language for Czechia was Czech republican but I think I should CZECH that again 😂🤣

I think you're Russian a bit with these puns

I don't have time for this, I'm hungary!

@@daysandwords If you are that hungary, have a Mandarin

True

For me, it is actually italki. Cuz I love having a teacher help me learn a language. It feels easier for me.

@@AfroLinguo Interesting! I'll try italki at some point

@@joachim1006 you will definitely not regret it

@@AfroLinguo I'm far too anti-social for that

I think it's kind of common to learn (measured against it's speaking population) because of its infamous difficulty.

@@daysandwords Yea! Still coming from learning german and italian the scarcity of media in finnish is kinda daunting. It's pretty hard to find quality imersion content thats accessible

@@diogoh3x Personally I love audiobooks and there seems to be plenty of them. But for movies and stuff I can imagine it would be difficult. Karppi and Bordertown are hardly comparable to the Flemish offerings.

It might be hard to find movies but there are quite a few finnish tv shows that you can watch (for free) even abroad from areena.yle.fi (national tv (yleisradio) -content) I would expect that most podcasts there, and news and such are available. There are also "easy spoken" or "simple Finnish" news for example ('selkokieli' or 'selkosuomi', "uutiset selkosuomeksi") and yle.fi has regular written newsmedia. Some comedy/comedy sketch shows on Areena that I love and checked are currently available outside of Finland are: Pasila - an adults cartoon about a police station in Pasila, Helsinki. This show can be very random, but it was super popular when it came out! Siskonpeti (Apparently titled pyjama party in english but really means communal bed/sleeping) - a sketch show by 4 female comedians, the episodes have varying themes and the show makes fun of a lot of things that relate to Finnish culture and habits specifically as well. Kimmo - a comedy about a guy that can't seem to grow up and get his life together. This one had really great actors in it. Modernit miehet - A comedy about 4 male friends with very different kind of personalities and lives. I find this one really funny :D Sekasin - a drama/comedy about 4 teens/young people that end up in a mental hospital. It is based on true stories about life in a mental facility. This show is directed at young people but I think it's really entertaining to anyone, I believe you can also find it on youtube. It's crazy, it makes you cry/horrified one moment and hysterically laugh RIGHT AFTER, or the other way around. I absolutely adore this show, and it was first made as part of a mental health campaign. The episodes are quite short! Problem with all of these of course is that they mainly only have Finnish subtitles available, might have swedish ones sometimes, so no translation in English or other more spoken languages, which means your Finnish needs to already be at quite a high level to actually understand most of what's said. But the "easy Finnish news" seem to be something that could work even at a more beginner level :) EDIT: if you're not interested in comedy, there's a talk show available abroad, called perjantai, that discusses all sorts of current topics, and they have this mini part called "perjantai-dokkari" they're 6-15 minute documentaries relating to the topic they talk about in the show, and these are nice kind of bite size videos to watch, I think.

Yeah, but it's not something you can say in English.

@@daysandwords Yep not in America anyway. We get like oh you want a steak or hamburger but yeah very awkward language that would provoke a laugh.

Absolutely.

Yeah... I mean it would be higher priority than some languages but certainly not a super common choice. Feel free to comment about your experience at... um, is it Monteray or something? That place that's known only for it's language schools haha. I did the Australian version of the test and did fine in the test but the military said no for other reasons, which I can now see it fair haha.

@@daysandwords Yes, it's Monterey lol. I am 10 weeks in to a 48 week course and they throw you to the wolves lol. I haven't had a normal experience because of Covid-19, so all of our classes online. I have 6 hour classes Monday thru Friday and about 1-2 hours of homework a night. We learn new grammar points in our homework and while we aren't expected to know the new grammar by heart we are expected to be familiar and semi-comfortable with it the next day. We are often times given listening exercises that are very colloquial, which we do not know, and you start picking up things fast like that.

Wow you are lucky to be in Monterey Good luck!

How did you learn to write English, it looks great. :)

Hi what have you liked about it I am currently trying it.

For some reason a lot more people did this time! I guess for the codes but yeah, I'll have to remember to put a question there every time.

Its made by an estonian polyglot that speaks estonian and finnish thats why

Are you still using speakly?

The app is Estonian, that’s why they teach it. Finnish is the closest language to Estonian and Finland is a very important economic partner for the country, hence they teach Finnish.

The 3 best apps have Estonian because they are all Estonian haha.

@@daysandwords just out of interest, what are the other two best apps? I guess busuu is one of them?

@@someoneirrelevant1518 Nah, I should say my 3 favourite. I've kinda (to an extent) changed my mind on Busuu. It's great compared to more traditional things like textbooks and for Euro languages (the "Big 4" for example) but it doesn't encourage immersion and it's bad for the languages far removed from English. By the way it's German/British. My favourite 3 apps are Drops, Lingvist and Speakly. People might question Drops but it just makes learning vocab (my least favourite activity) fun. Similar thing with Lingvist, and then Speakly encourages immersion. All 3 of them are beautiful designed and logically laid out. So they are my 3 favourites but they're not necessarily all the "best" for learning.

Thank you! The new set up was actually an effort to make it take less time, but yes the editing and writing sure takes a lot of time, so I appreciate you saying so.

Can you share which channels and podcasts you watch?

Yes can you please share the podcasts channels 🙏🏼

Thanks Orphelia!

Hey, fellow Busuu German user here. I liked it at first, then I hit a wall where it got too difficult. Starting Speakly today, see ya 'round!

I agree with you 100%

If you are B1 or B2 level you don't need any app other then RU-vid. Just go watch some youtubers in your target language at first maybe you will have problems with comprehension but with only a little bit of practice you will understand almost everything (B1 and B2 level should understand majority of the things they hear or everything they hear, respectively. However if you haven't trained understanding the spoken language you will have difficulties at first but they are easy to overcome. Just practice 15-20 minutes of listening every day and after 2 or 3 months you will reach a level where you understand almost everything youtubers in your target language say)

@@hyggemcb06 How did you find the transition onto Speakly and in retrospect, would you have rather started with Speakly off the bat?

@@smrtfasizmu6161 how do u know what level u are??

Hey, currently studying with busuu A1 Can you say anything about b1-b2? I was going to see it through but have heard a few times b1 upwards isnt as good as the prior levels

Other stuff has Greek though. I mean I don't know how it compares... But personally I prefer Mango Languages to Duolingo. There is also GreekPod101.

I started with Mango Languages (free through library), but switched to Language Transfer to learn Greek. It's free (RU-vid, website, very basic app). It's not fancy, but I feel like it's giving me a solid foundation that will help with other resources I plan to use in the future (e.g. Super Easy Greek/Easy Greek on RU-vid, Hellenic American Union's Learn Greek podcast, textbooks from library, etc.). I'm really liking it, but could understand if others were to find it boring.

καλημέρα! μαθαίνω ελληνικά :) it is hard to find Greek resources. But Duolingo + self study is the best route. DL is actually quite good and has added lots of new alphabet units. Also yes to Language Transfer... if you find any more - let me know! :)

Is there any apps or websites for urdu I am underaged and can't buy any subscriptions or anything

I also have a speech impediment and I'm scared that I can't learn to speak languages

Succes met Nederlands :) . Als je een goed boek nodig hebt, "Nederlands op Niveau" van uitgeverij coutinho is geweldig

@@dant4185 Hallo Dan! Dank je wel :) Ik studeerd met Nederlands in Actie en het is fantastisch! :))

For some reason I can't get Falou where I am. Speakly goes to more than four sentences when you start getting more right.

Yeah and people who learn French traditionally therefore get the idea that it's hard. But I firmly believe that it's the easiest language for English speakers, assuming the learner immerses.

What did they say?

@@georgegilbert4004 we have noted your request and would love to add this language in the future.

”Nu kör vi!”

To be fair, I actually like it. Russian script can be learned in an hour on RU-vid. Too many apps waste time with dumb games to teach it.

Yeah... which is this one? I know Lingvist has Latin American Spanish...

@@daysandwords It's Spanish Spanish unfortunately, but it makes sense since it's European based. I actually checked it out, and decided not to go ahead with it, since I've already found myself frustrated with the language differences. I'll definitely use it once I start with German and Russian though! Or if they add Swedish. :)

@@Ellary_Rosewood the difference between Spanish from Spain and from Latin America is not that vast though and it is still perfectly mutually intelligible, also Spanish varies wildly from one Latin American country to another so usually when apps have 'Latin American' Spanish they actually mean Mexican Spanish.

That was my first thought..

As a tech product manager, I can confidently say that a single person working with a single developer is extremely unlikely to make a perfect app anywhere close to this upon release. As a fan of Ikenna, you should manage your expectations. 🤷🏻‍♀️ The Speakly app shown here took a team to create, and the people who manage it all work full-time. From what I can find from LinkedIn, this app took 5 years of research to develop the method and has been a released app for 4 years. They currently have at least 13 employees (but likely more if some don't have LinkedIn). Some of those employees are language tutors and linguistics experts. Others are developers and product designers. Not to mention customer support, business, marketing, quality assurance, legal, accounting, etc. Not saying he couldn't eventually make something great happen, but I'm guessing from some of the silence he's had lately about his new app that he's figuring out that he's going to need more than just him and 1 developer to compete with apps of this caliber, not to mention more popular ones like Duolingo. Curious to see what he creates, but the first iteration is not going to be perfect. Much like this Speakly app isn't even perfect based on this review.

@@MelissaJetzt wow that just sent me back to the reality of the way things work and are put together, thanks

@@MelissaJetzt oh we know. I was seeing this more as a joke tbh. Of course I'll check it out when he releases it, but it's not that deep 🤚

No no, not at all. Long story short: more Aussies are into baseball than you would think, but we don't have much of an avenue to follow it. But I grew up watching and talking baseball. In my view, cricket was for wimps who needed to stand further from the ball and use a bigger bat haha. In my teens I got into cricket and now I love both, although if we mean playing, then I'm much better at cricket (like much much better). But I've always sort of "gone for" (not really) Cleveland because of the movie Major League... though you'll also see that I have a White Sox hat, because my sister was living in Chicago when I got it. Summary: these days I don't really have a team but I bought the Chief Wahoo shirt because I knew he wouldn't be allowed for long after that haha.

Would like to know the answer to this if anyone has any insight to offer

And will leave again any moment

I actually will leave. I have some videos already filmed but I won't be commenting or interracting with comments because I'm taking a month off all social!

I think you can just click "can't speak now" and it turns it off for the lesson, but I can't see an option to turn it off permanently. I don't think mimicking as best you can is a bad idea, I consider that a separate thing to actually outputting. Outputting it trying to take your own meaning and turn it into language, which is ineffecient. Mimicking is helping you to remember the meaning/language relationship.

May I ask you how you found the discounted lifetime subscription?

@Anneli Erkkonen Moi Anneli, kiitos paljon kommentista. Tervetuloa mun kanavalle! You like his channel and videos also!

Thank you! Yeah, they are getting some more languages hopefully by the end of this year!

@@daysandwords that's amazing!

How’s it going, been 8 months. Has it really helped?

I think maybe it could pop up at the start of lessons with little tidbits like "It can take up to 4000 hours of input in the language before you feel comfortable in it, but don't worry, the first 100 are the hardest." (or something, that one was a bit depressingly worded, but something that encourages more input.)

@@daysandwords I personally prefer your wording, but I wouldn't say I'm a beginner anymore. Maybe for beginners a less drastic wording would be more motivating... This depressing wording is something I, and, apparently, pretty much all language apps I've seen, are struggling with as well. Usually they end up using misleading statements like the one you mentioned in the video. On the other hand, even I felt a little underestimated as a beginner when they assumed I was a beginner (and that wouldn't realize that). I mean, the audacity!

I'm with you there. I've tried several of mango languages' languages, and their Punjabi is by far the worst of them all. I've picked up the colloquial books (they have a "colloquial 2"). I think I will take the audio and cut out all English so that I can have actual conversations to listen to over and over.

@@senorsmile The other issue is mango only has everything in shahmukhi... But yes I have colloquial and actually got teach yourself too. I was planning on doing the same on both of those and putting it into something like lingq to look over. Another thing I was thinking of doing was getting the 60 lingq ministories translated and audio recorded somehow. Let me know if stuff like this interests you too. We could also try to figure out any other resources we could share :)

@@Dudewhoswinning finding someone to do the ministories in linq for Punjabi would be amazing. For mango, there were several common things being said that my Punjabi friends would just laugh at me (the clearly Arabic derived things). I will definitely reach out to collaborate.

@@senorsmile I agree from a "speaking to other Punjabis" perspective, especially because the diaspora around the world is mostly Indian Punjabi. However I think given that there are double the Punjabi speakers in Pakistan than India, it could be beneficial in some way. I imagine Pakistani Punjabi is more Farsi/Arabic influenced. But yeah, I'm currently weighing up the ministories because it will cost a lot to get someone to translate and narrate all 60 episodes.

Hey I believe LingQ soon may be getting Punjabi. Not sure when but Steve Kaufmann mentioned it.

I do but I anticipated this question and filmed a different video on the same day about why I have recommended different apps and where my views have or haven't changed on it. But yes if they both have your language then Speakly is my preference.

Was wondering about the same, great to know, also love your work, thank you for helping us out.

@@daysandwords Okay, thanks :)

@@daysandwords Have you ever tried LingQ?

@@rm9308 Yep. See my chat with Steve Kaufmann for my thoughts on it.

It's the complete opposite of Drops though. You will have to choose between like "shdjdh7yhå" and "shdjhd7yhå" kind of thing. The listening exercises would probably be better for you, but the fact that you have to unlock them means you might be better off taking a placement test and even cheating on the test to unlock more.

@@daysandwords Yes, I'm going to do the placement test first. Should a language learning RU-vidr advice people to cheat on a placement test?!😂

@@Tomanita Totally. I even said that in the other parts of this video that got cut out (this video is like 10% of what I actually filmed). Experienced learners should cheat in placement tests because all it does it opens up more material. It doesn't mean you can't do the base stuff, so it just gives you more responsibility in terms of managing your own learning. Like in French, I opened up 34 of the 50 listening exercises (without cheating), but in Finnish I would like to have had 15 or 20 as opposed to ONE.

I saw a friend of mine review it and I was like "meh"... I dunno. I might have to have a look because a few people have asked now.

@@daysandwords I’ll be honest, I’ve been using it for a while, and I really like it. Just interested in your take. Certainly not perfect, and perhaps not as ‘fun’ as many of the apps out there. But I like how it does follow a lot of scientifically backed language learning principles (which Wyner expands on in his book). Language learning sure isn’t a science, but many of the approaches out there don’t seem to take into account the scientific work that has been done on language learning (which I think most people would agree is important). Worth a look! I’m going to check out Speakly though 👍

It was Allegri's version thereof, yes. His is by far the most famous and therefore is often known as the Miserere, but that's very similar to saying "the 9th symphony". Whose? Well, Beethoven's, obviously. Hundreds of composers have written 9 symphonies but only Beethoven's gets the title of "THE ninth", as Allegri's Miserere mei, Deus, is known as the Allegri Miserere or even just Misereri. Even The Cat Empire have wrriten one haha.

I have been using Speakly on and off, not because I don't like it... but just because I have a lot to do and a lot of different things I can use for the small amount of time that I do get to learn Spanish. I still like it quite a lot... although it is Castilian which isn't my particular target dialect.

Thanks heaps for the reply Lamont. I’ve even following you long enough to respect your reviews and thoughts on language learning. I think I’ll give speakly a try! Thanks.

Which is why this app is perfect. It's the perfect introductory material.

Yeah it was a Finnish woman who started me on this whole languages thing so I know there are crazy different forms but honestly I think you can just learn and immerse, learn and immerse, repeat, repeat and eventually all that stuff becomes clear, like the situations in which Swedes use the formal "ni" or "smaklig måltid".

"Pitää" is a common word in colloquial speech! "Tykätä" might see more frequent use due to the gemination of 'k' rolling off the [Finnish] tongue better than the slightly more problematic 'd' phoneme. But it's true that formal and colloquial Finnish are very different and using formal speech most probably makes you sound clumsy, at best rigid, and at worst uptight and/or arrogant. The last can only happen if there is a reason to assume you're proficient in Finnish, and so choose to use it as a disconnecting device to distinguish yourself from others, instead of connecting with them. You might also temporarily switch to formal speech to communicate some idea more clearly, which is also a de-facto way to communicate to the other party that they're a bit slow in the head. The possessives are important. For example, in the video the sentence "Tämä on minun ystävä" ("This is my friend") sounds very wrong because "ystävä" lacks the first person possessive suffix '-ni'. Speaking formally you would either say "Tämä on minun ystäväni" or "Tämä on ystäväni." That they "belong" to you is already explicit in "ystäväNI", so you don't need "minun" and the redundancy makes it sound awkward unless you specifically want to emphasize that they are YOUR friend (as opposed to someone else). On the other hand, in colloquial speech using the suffix would sound stiff and/or pretentious, and instead you would say "mun ystävä." Furthermore, "ystävä" is a little heavy word in connotation, and implies a stronger bond between the two of you, and in most cases you would use "kaveri" instead. In any case I would probably recommend learning formal Finnish first, because it's much easier to proceed from formal to colloquial than the other way around. If one wants to read the newspapers, watch the news, or read prose, then "kirjakieli" will get you there. It will also enable you to converse, even if you sound a bit "off", but everyone will understand you. You will pick up the dialect/slang from conversing with people. It's just a bunch of shortcuts in essence.

​@@Anriuko Kuulostaa hyvältä! Mä oon sama mieltä. Mutta mun mielestä sä voit opiskella puhekieli (harjotella kuuntelemista) ja kirjakieli (harjotella puhumistä), sijasta vaan yks - ainakin earlier rather than later

It's more about which one encourages the right behaviour. If you're a beginner, Speakly is definitely more helpful but Busuu "teaches" you more. But "teaching" language isn't really a thing.

I haven't. I wasn't heaps inspired by Gabriel's talk, but I might try it one day.

@@daysandwords I regret backing it on Kickstarter. Waste of money. Speakly is way better

Haha Harry Potter has been translated into everything.

B1 to B2 possibly but definitely not beyond there. If you are at B2 you can read novels in the language, like I do in Swedish. Read 50 novels (preferably with audiobook accompaniment) in your language and you'll most likely be at C1 then.

Well, money aside I probably still wouldn't recommend multiple apps so much as a weekly lesson on iTalki where you use the teacher more like a coach than a speaking partner, and that's only really for motivation. Which app is kind of just your preference. Remember an app's job is to move you smoothly into native content. The better it can do that the more useful it is.

@@daysandwords Thanks : )

I tried it yesterday. My personal take is it's better than both. You get a free 7 day premium trial right from the start.

Ok so first, I assume you know Norwegian Pod101? Mango Languages and Drops also have Norwegian. I know Matt personally (through this channel but still, we communicate on a regular basis and support each other on Patreon) so it would be weird for me to review Refold. Matt's results speak for themselves. My Swedish is pretty good but it's nothing compared to his Japanese. So anything I said about Refold would be like me reviewing Rafael Nadal's tennis technique.

This but Czech. I'm always surprised there isn't at least ONE publisher, app, whatever, that doesn't want to be a big fish in a small pond _re_ some lesser-studied language. The worst bit is always seeing how much material there _is_ for languages that truly no-one actually needs (Irish, Latin, Dutch, and, dare I say it, Scandanavian).

They are looking at Swedish by the end of the year. It was meant to be by autumn or something but to be honest I doubt it.

Is Pimsleur really that good? I'm yet to try it properly but at least their older Swedish course was laughably structured.

@@daysandwords their premium programs are best, but overall any pimsleur course is a very good way to invest in learning a language from scratch/improve pronounciation skills. Its worked wonders for me with French, German and Italian (although it is crucial to use pimsleur alongside another app like Busuu)

They have 5 in the works but they haven't told me what they are. Honestly I doubt Japanese is one of them, unfortunately (just cos of the inherent complexity of such a course).

@@daysandwords Ahh thank you. I may try German on tbe side then.