I am founder of HelloTalk. The idea is to connect language learners worldwide for mutual help and to practice languages, through mobile app. HelloTalk community has 600,000+ registered language learners with 40,000+ using it daily now.
If you are living in Palo Alto learning Korean or Chinese, you can easily find native Korean or Chinese speakers learning English to practice language with. The focus is on using the language rather than studying it.
HelloTalk has features like one tap translation, transliteration, text to speech, speech to text, grammar correction, and sentence favorites. The following video gives you the idea:
www.HelloTalk.com/t/Youtube
@zackery I guess it makes it a natural learning process rather than Duolingo App. I like how it combines both the social aspect with language, removes barriers. going to give it a try
@k_roushdy it can work well in conjunction with Duolingo. You can also see the language level of others, and especially as you speak English there will be many people willing to assist you learn their language!
@7ewis@k_roushdy@k_roushdy Yes HelloTalk complements apps like Duolingo, Busuu, and Memrise well because they are based on predetermined static content whereas is HelloTalk is based on actual human input.
Frankly there are downsides to HelloTalk's approach:
- User experience is not uniform, as it depends on what kind of language partners one encountered
- There are inherent problems of any social network with strangers, and a lot has to be done to maintain the community as primarily focused on language learning.
We hope to add Q&A and UGC content related to language learning and eventually make the app like a Quora/Wiki for language learning.
This is similar to Hua which I posted earlier. Learning a new language from others sounds really cool! BUT, I really wonder how (and if) this works in real life.
Maybe a founder can answer some Q's?
Random GIF below:
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Downloaded this last week and have been using it every day since. Brilliant concept and very well executed. I like the monetization strategy too -- charging for in-line translations above a free allotment, which I reached after my first day. @zackery: Curious if you see this as a sustainable way to monetize or whether you have other strategies planned as well?
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I'm learning Korean right now. Definitely downloading! I'll share my experience.
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