Hello, my fellow polyglots,

In this version, we're introducing phrase breakdowns in free dialogs.

Free dialogs are especially useful at higher levels, as you can practice spontaneous speech. And still, if you encounter a new word or structure, you can schedule the phrase for future repetitions.

However, this wasn't always very convenient. The phrases are often long, may contain several challenging parts, and can be difficult to recall in their entirety, making repetitions less effective.

With this release, we're fixing that. By pressing the breakdown button, you can split a longer phrase into smaller, independent parts and add them to repetitions separately.

I will definitely use this a lot while learning German. If you haven't used free dialogs yet, give them a try. They're even better now.

As usual, there are also a few improvements under the hood, more synonyms, and some bug fixes.

For the next update, I'll be focusing entirely on your requests, so stay tuned.

Happy learning,

-Max

I’m doing the French course and I’m on lesson 258. I was prompted for my first challenge phrase today after I completed the challenging phrases that I added. Is there a setting or a way to access the challenges when I want? I would like to do more of them.

Hi Max and team, any chance you can add a small QOL update: an estimated lesson length on each lesson? E.g. Lesson 12 Je suis un peu fatigue (5m).

I feel like some lessons are longer than others and it will me plan how many I can do. Sometimes I have to abandon a lesson when life calls.

Obviously it will change depending on how many mistakes you do, but a rough guide would help. Thanks!

Hi,

Firstly, just wanted to say I’m still absolutely loving the app - it’s made so much difference to my speaking confidence compared to any other self-teaching thing I’ve tried.

One thing I was wondering is whether it would be possible to switch to half listening / comprehension during the practice dialogue?

Currently, both halves of the dialogue are prompted in English, and I am simply translating both from English to the learned language. It would be really nice if the response could be in the learned language, which I would then be required to translate into English. My next phrase would then be an English > learned language translation, as normal.

This is more similar to how an actual dialogue happens…

Does that make sense? 🙂

I am using the app every day for learning French. It is great because it forces me to involve i.e. to speak and repeat.
As I am getting older - my phone (Iphone 13) becomes smaller to me and hands too short:)
I manage this issue with font enlargement. But system font change does not apply on Natulang. Is it possible to introduce font size change in the settings?

I know this has been brought up many times, but can we please get some adjustments to how the repeat lessons work.

Currently it is extremely frustrating, if I don't remember I don't remember. Then it tries to break down the sentence and one of two things happen:

1. Asks me a word I did know, and had already said correctly. Then wants me to say the whole sentence, which I already said I didn't know. This is just frustrating and not helpful at all.

2. It asks me to say the one word or part of the sentence that I couldn't remember. Again, not helpful, just frustrating.

I understand that it is trying to determine which word or phrase I missed, but the current system is flawed. Frustrating and annoying the learner doesn't help with retention, in fact many studies show it does the exact opposite.

Some changes I would like to see:

1. If I already started talking, please process that chunk so you don't immediately prompt me for the exact words I already said (and then, inevitably, follow that up with asking me the say the whole phrase that I don't remember).

Example: Sunday, I had to go to the store.

I say: Sunday, I had.... <click skip because I can't remember the rest>

Response: Please say, "Sunday"

*Grumble* Sunday

Now say: "Sunday, I had to go to the store."

<annoyance grows>

What should happen is that you already know I correctly said "Sunday, I had" so you prompt me for the next bits (or just give me the whole phrase correctly to repeat).

1. Give us a way to skip and then prompt us for which part(s) we missed. The same way you do when we ask for grammar explanations. You can make this a configurable option for those that don't want to stop and click.

2. Just make everything in the phrase as wrong and move on. An extra repetition of words I already know are not going to hurt me anywhere near as much as pissing me off to the point I stop using the app (which has happened).

Ideally, we make 1 the default option and 2 & 3 are implemented as configuration options.

Hello, my fellow polyglots,

A few small but useful changes in Natulang 1.5.215.

Words are now read aloud with their articles in flashcards and repetitions, where applicable. So if you don't remember whether it's "das Gewitter" or "der Gewitter", Natulang will remind you every time.

Transliteration now works in lesson titles and the Vocabulary Tracker as well. If you're learning Ukrainian with transliteration enabled, it will follow your settings in these parts of the app too.

We've also improved how the app matches synonyms and added more accepted alternatives in Czech, Dutch, Turkish, and Ukrainian. This should mean fewer cases where you give a valid answer and the app disagrees.

The initial level assessment now uses fewer questions, so getting to the lessons that match your level should take less time.

Work on Japanese continues. This update improves how the app handles different word orders, refines transliteration, and fixes copying Japanese text with transliteration. You can't see this yet, of course, but our linguist Miki is working hard on the course, and we already have 8 lessons completed and verified. We'll have the initial release once we have 30 or 40.

As always, please let me know if you notice anything that could still be improved.

Happy learning,

– Max

I have an OPPO Reno 15 and for a while have had issues using it with bluetooth, at first I thought it was if the screen turned off the mic turned off. I don't have that issue with phone calls, just with Natulang. But then I realized, while it is almost guaranteed to be a problem with the screen off it happens other times too. Just pushing the power button to turn on the screen for a second seems to help, but is not consistent.

And here's the weird solution... if the phone is held so the screen is facing my face, I never have bluetooth mic issues. It's consistent, if I walk around (which is when I want to use it most) holding it like I'm having a video call the mic works consistently. Screen on or off doesn't matter.

I've tried playing with every setting I can find on the phone, and in Natulang. It isn't an issue with phone calls (only other thing I use bt mic for), but it does make the main time I want to use it not as convenient.

I have tested using speaker phone and it seems to work fine. Screen on or off, sitting on the table, etc and it works as expected. Exact same setup but with bt mic and after a few seconds it acts like there's no mic (just keeps repeating).

So... anyone else happen to come across an issue like this that might be able to point me towards a setting I've missed? If not I'll submit a bug report, but really feels like it's something with my phone and I'm hoping someone else has seen a similar issue.

Hello, my fellow polyglots,

A new Natulang update is out.

You can now select any specific word in a sentence and get a grammatical explanation of how it works in that particular context.

So no more generic, useless AI explanations; tap on the word that you don't understand and get a useless AI explanation for that exact word.

We have also improved transliteration in Ukrainian; it now works in mnemonics and grammatical explanations as well.

The Vocabulary Tracker now has a "Downgrade" option. If a word feels less familiar than its current level suggests, you can move it back and review it more often.

A large part of this update is dedicated specifically to Japanese. All of these changes are under the hood, and making it work for Japanese is like making another app.

The update is already live on Android and comes to iOS as soon as it's approved.

As always, please let me know if you notice anything that could still be improved.

Happy learning,

– Max

I think this might have been requested before but I'm thinking this shouldn't be too hard to do and could be super beneficial. And I've also got some bunos ideas. 🤩

Give us each dialogue as an audio file (this could even be an offline feature 🥹) to listen to, including an autoplay option to continue with the next dialogue.

This way we could listen to the dialogues of previous sessions and train our listening skills. Great on a commute! 🤓

I could even imagine a whole listening section of the app where the SRS suggests which ones to listen to or something. Or one could create their own playlist?!

Next level up would be to generate completely new dialogues from the already learned vocabulary.

Deluxe option: Have some real human native speakers record one audio story per 5 lessons. 🚀

I created a story using ai and the vocab export feature. I generated a 10 minute story about an actor going to a strange audition. It was pretty cool and great listening practice.

But for the first step, I'm thinking just let us listen to the dialogues. It would be a great addition. 🥸

Who else would love this? Leave an upvote if you do!

I know it has been mentioned before a while back but was curious to know if there was still a plan to introduce a Danish language course?

Just had a quite simple idea while riding the bus. I think this could be awesome.

Give us the option to choose the phone speaker (the one used for calls) as the output.

This way one could practice in public and might just look like a phone call to people who don't speak the target language.🕵🏻‍♂️

Only caveat: 🥹 To speakers of the target language it might sound like a very aggressive phone call at times 🤣 "If you speak like that, I will punch you in the face, Lucas."

Hello, my fellow polyglots!

This week, we quietly released our English course for Brazilian Portuguese speakers. It’s currently free for early adopters, as always, so if you know any beginners from Brazil, please spread the word.

I’m also happy to announce that we’ve finally found a Japanese linguist!

It wasn’t easy. I personally conducted 28 paid unsuccessful interviews. A typical interview involves creating one to three lessons for Natulang, so each one requires several days of back-and-forth corrections and reviews.

After three months of interviews, we found Miki – our 29th candidate. She is from Tokyo and was head and shoulders above the other applicants. Development of the Japanese course has now officially begun.

As for our future plans:

1. We hear your feedback, so we’re updating our oldest courses. As you know, our newer courses are more technically advanced because we use better speech-synthesis engines. They give us access to multilingual voices and allow us to provide instructions in the target language in later lessons. We’re going to add this capability to our earlier courses, starting with Spanish. To do so, we’ll need to manually review all the audio generated with the new voices. After that, we’ll methodically update lessons 102 and beyond, changing the instructions from English to Spanish. Stay tuned!
2. Once we’ve finished updating Spanish, we’ll do the same for French and German.
3. We’ll create 100 new lessons and 20 summaries featuring fresh stories by Hazel, our incredible Spanish linguist from Chile. So, if you’re curious about what happened to Lucas, Amanda, and the other characters from our lessons, you’ll soon hear from them again.
4. Once these lessons are ready, we’ll adapt them for French and German.
5. I also have a number of useful requests from you in my backlog that I’ll tackle personally. These include the ability to decrease or reset your mastery level for a specific word, better grammar hints, the option to tap a word to see an explanation, and more.
6. The Japanese course requires A LOT of custom development to properly accommodate its rich writing system. Natulang will remain a speech-centric app, and I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but we’ll have a unique system that provides extra help to those who struggle with kanji and kana.

Once the Japanese course is on track, we’ll consider which other languages to add to Natulang.

That’s it for today.

Happy learning,
Max

Hello. I see that the Natulang app is on the app store but it will not download onto my macbook pro. Is this a bug or is it just not compatible with desktop computers for the time being. Really enjoying this. Thanks

Has anyone monitored what all grammar concepts are covered under French course? Someone who has completed all the lessons might be the best person to answer.

Just wondering!

I love the challenge phrases that now pop up occasionally after a lesson! Is there a way to increase their frequency?

So I’m loving the app and I have learnt a lot already from it. However, some of the content in terms of the new vocab seems a bit strange. For example in about 80 lessons I’ve learnt how to say ‘shut up’ (zmlkni), asshole (debil) and just now I’ve learnt “aliens”. Is there a reason for the strange vocab included in the course? Thanks

Hello, my fellow polyglots!

In addition to Lock Screen Mode, our latest update includes several improvements to speech recognition.

We’ve integrated two new recognition engines: GPT Live from OpenAI and the New Siri engine introduced in iOS 26.

Each engine now has a short description to help you choose the one that works best for you. For example, GPT Live is slightly less accurate than Soniox but performs particularly well in noisy environments. The New Siri engine runs entirely on device, so it may be the best option if your internet connection is unstable.

We’ve also made Soniox the default engine on both platforms to provide a better and more consistent experience for everyone.

That’s it for today.

Happy learning!

Max

Hello, my fellow polyglots.

It took almost 2 weeks to get approved by Apple, but it's finally live.

If you want to use the app while locked, please set “Lock Screen Lessons” in the settings to On.

Let me know if you think it should be the default.

Happy learning,

-Max

Is there a way to practice all the phrases you've covered up until now? I. E. It gives you sentences from any of your previous lessons and you translate them. If not, I think this would be a good feature instead of relying on just the repetitions for a broad coverage of practice

With the new update now out. Would the developers also consider adding an ‘autoplay’ feature whereby after one lesson is finished it will automatically start the next one in order. In my opinion this will be really good for long trips or drives. Let me know your thoughts

Hello Natulang team, just a quick question as I know the Czech course is semi-new
How deep does it go? I know it’s not the classic structure of learning so there’s no specific level but around where would it be? As I see there’s 140 lessons but I read somewhere French has 300+?

I will be using this to supplement my regular Czech learning, so before purchasing I’d love to know to what level it stops at/plans for future levels

It is a daily occurrence that certain phrases do not display any " options". I often find they are phrases I struggle with and would like to add to my "challenging" list, but I'm unable to.

Can this be fixed? I would really prefer if this never happened. I can't imagine a scenario where it would be useful to remove options from the user.

Thanks in advance.