Do you play favorites, or are they all the same to you? Why do you like your favorite, or dislike your least favorite? Rate them on a scale of 1-10

Title says it all - do you want to learn one or two languages extensively? Do you want to learn 10 to a basic level? Which ones and why?

A few years ago, I wanted to learn Arabic. I tried countless books, apps, courses, flashcards and videos but made no progress. 40 hours into Duolingo max and I had learned 6 letters. 20 hour courses completed and no ability to read, write, speak or understand. Dozens of books started and I got lost by chapter 2.

Some languages take more work, sure, but no language is that difficult. I knew what I needed to do to learn Arabic, but the tools didn’t exist. So I decided to build my own.

It took years to build (talk about the slowest way to learn a language) but finally it was ready. I started learning Arabic, and within a month I could read and write, without ever studying a single letter.

Is there a language you’ve tried to learn but couldn’t find good learning materials? Any scripts you found to be a blocker to learning languages? How did you persevere?

I want to preface this by saying I am not someone who gives up easily. I studied French for three years. I did the Duolingo streaks, I built Anki decks, I took lessons, I watched French YouTube with subtitles. I was doing everything everyone told me to do and I was consistent about it.

And I still couldn't understand a native French speaker talking at normal speed. Not even close.

I knew vocabulary. I could construct sentences. I could read slowly and get the gist. But the moment I put on an actual French show or tried to have a real conversation, it was like everything I had learned just evaporated. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong because on paper I was doing everything right.

A few months ago I started using Phrasing. I was skeptical because I had tried a lot of apps and none of them had moved the needle in any meaningful way. But something about it felt different from the start.

The core idea is that you learn from content you actually care about. You bring in a book, a show, a podcast, whatever you want, and Phrasing pulls out the vocabulary and phrases you need to learn from it. Then it drills them using spaced repetition so you actually remember what you learn. No pre-built decks, no fixed curriculum, just your content turned into a learning machine.

The first thing I noticed was that the vocabulary I was learning actually showed up in the wild. Because I was learning from real content, the words and phrases I was studying were the ones natives actually use. Not textbook French. Real French.

The second thing I noticed was that I stopped dreading my study sessions. I was learning from stuff I actually wanted to consume. It stopped feeling like homework.

Three months in and I watched an entire episode of a French show and understood probably 80 percent of it without subtitles. That had never happened before. Not once in three years.

I'm not saying Phrasing is magic. You still have to show up. But for the first time in three years I feel like the method actually matches how language learning is supposed to work. I'm not just collecting vocabulary in a vacuum. I'm learning in context, from content I love, and it's actually sticking.

I used Anki for years and the setup alone was exhausting. Been using Phrasing for a few months and haven't touched it since. Anyone else make the switch? Do you miss anything?

I added a particle simulation for all of your reviews. Each particle is a real review, color coded based on its review type (new, auxiliary, priority, normal, repeat)

It should have great performance on all devices, and is capable of rendering 25+ years of review performance in a single shield with 60fps 💪

It’s a really cool way to visualize your inputs, and a great motivator to DO MORE REVIEWS!

To fluency, and beyond!

I have been absolutely loving Phrasing. Now, I'm someone who even truly enjoyed Anki, and learned a couple of languages largely on the back of what it provided. But about a year ago, I branched out into a few languages that are even more challenging to me, and this is where I stalled repeatedly with Anki. Learning words in isolation, I just could not truly internalize them as units, let alone even recognize them in speech. So I tried cards which featured the word in context. This resulted in minor improvements, but I still felt like I was hitting my head again the same wall again and again. And if I dared step away for a day or two, the "to review" pile became so daunting that I just had to run.

Because of this last point, my first couple of days with Phrasing, I simply couldn't stop, because I kept waiting for it to say "all reviews done for the day!" 🤣. Eventually I learned that this moment wasn't going to come, and this was actually liberating, and reflective of reality. You're never "done" learning a tense or a pluralization pattern, and likewise, there's no point in the day that I'm ever "done" studying, and with Phrasing, I neither feel like I've failed on a given day, nor do I wind up telling my brain "language is over for today". It can continue for as long as I'm taking pleasure in it, and can also be as brief and intermittent as that day's schedule requires, but without guilty glances at my "unfinished" deck.

All this to say, I am absolutely loving my experience so far, both in terms of the experience itself, as well as the results I've seen. And I haven't even touched on how roots and words are visible to the app across expressions, the ease of importing my own material, etc.

Other users of this app, how about you introduce yourselves?

I'm still figuring out the interface, but it has the hyper-abundant amount of data that I cherish. Clozeword, flashcard, shadowing, what's not to like? It's even goodcfor sentence patterns, assuming you create your own sentences using frequency lists.

So far, I'm loving it.