Ling – Learn Languages Easily

The lesson content is fine and digestible, however the app functionality is often faulty and frustrating. The Thai writing lesson portions are especially useless and aggravating to get through. I use my phone to get through the lessons, so I have to use my finger to draw the symbols to complete the “writing” portion, which requires a degree of precision that is impossible to achieve with a finger. A simple introduction to the letters, the stroke pattern to right them, and reading rules would be much more helpful. Since the latest update, the speaking portion is also often unbearable to get through. The “mic” sometimes will not connect/load at all, and will also frequently not catch a large portion of a word or phrase. The voice analyzer is also highly unreliable. Sometimes it will say “100% - you sound like a native!” But when I listen back, it only actually caught about 3/4 of what was said. Then other times, it will ask for a simple word that I know I am pronouncing correctly through my lessons and interactions with native speakers, and I can hear that it matches their own provided recordings as well, and it will deem it somewhere in the range of “75%”. I’m not attached to getting max crowns or whatever on every level, since this app is only a minor supplement to my learning, but it is frustrating that something that used to work decently no longer does. Again, I do like the actual content and the way it is presented, but the issues with the speaking and writing portions are pushing me to consider other, less frustrating options.

I’m using this app to learn Albanian and Bosnian. I would emphasize that you won’t become fluent just through using the app, and learning the language comes down to your own motivation and use of other resources too. This is by no means a criticism of this particular app, as I feel that apps like Duolingo also will not make you fluent. However, I feel that the app is easy to use and is providing good information and a great starting point to guide my learning further. It doesn’t teach you every single word, but it gives you some important basic ones for each lesson. As I use it more I am beginning to understand some of the grammar rules by doing the conversation exercises and am picking up on certain nuances in the languages. Overall I think this is a great app to use as a starting point. You will need to incorporate other resources if you truly want to become fluent, but it has been very helpful in guiding me. Other things I have added alongside the app include watching videos of native speakers and chatting with AI in Albanian to have real-world conversations in lieu of knowing people who speak Albanian. Don’t expect to become fluent using just one medium, but the app has only been beneficial for me.

I was really excited to see that Ling offered Slovenian, which is a small language not available in most other formats. I had learned a very small amount already, and I quickly realized that while the written words for boy and girl, for instance, were the words I knew, the spoken words did not match. Turns out there are a couple of different ways to say girl and boy in Slovenian, and one way was used for the written word and the other for the spoken words. Slovenian pronunciation is already difficult for an English speaker; someone trying to match the spoken and written words would have no chance. I used the error-marking capability to mark these and other errors, but there were so many I finally gave up. To their credit, when I reached out to Ling, they were really nice and very responsive, which is why they have a couple of stars. But to release a language, not as a beta but as something you pay for, when it has so clearly not been vetted at a very basic level, is really irresponsible. A gain, these were very basic errors on simple words that started at the beginning of the lessons. I just logged on to see if they’d been corrected, but they haven’t. If you want me to help test a language, that’s one thing. But I decided to pay for a year, so ai think that was $60 I can’t get back. I’ve given them opportunities to fix the errors; time to delete the app and cut my losses.