Hey guys! I know in the past some of you have asked for ways to find or interact with native speakers of your target languages. Here’s an app that allows you to do that (and a lot more).
What is HelloTalk?
A language-learning phone app for iOS or Android users that has a lot of different tools to help learn a language by interacting with native speakers.
First Impressions:
As I was registering to use the app, I took note of some of the things, good or bad, that surprised me. This is a first impressions section, after all.
I know many of you speak and/or are learning multiple languages, and the thing that surprised me, perhaps the most, was that you could only add one native language and one language that you’re learning on your profile. To add more languages, you have pay extra (see below). But as I was playing around with the app, I realized you could change which language you’re learning as well as speak with people who don’t fall under your language categories.
One thing that I really liked straight off the bat were the search settings. I’m a huge fan of having control of the things you’re searching for, especially in something like a language app where your needs are very specific. You can customize your search for speakers by age, the language that they are learning as well as the level of that language. You can also search for their native language, nationality (where they were born or in some cases where they live), as well as by city.
If you’re looking for specific people that you know use the app, you could also search for someone by their user ID, name, or email.
I think this is amazing, because you don’t only get a Spanish speaker, you can get a Spanish speaker from Costa Rica, Peru, or Spain. But you like Madrid? Okay, let’s look for specifically Madrileños. Done. And done.
Another thing that caught my attention was the quality of text-to-voice and translation. The voice of text-to-voice and the translation quality is very Google Translate-esque, so if you decide to use these features, take it with a grain of salt as you would with Google Translate or any kind of machine translation.
Going Deeper:
Aside from what caught my attention the first time using it, after spending some time with the app, I realized that there’s a lot going on in the app to help you learn your target language.
And that’s one of its best qualities: that it’s really interactive. While you’re in a chat with someone, you can send photos or take pictures, doodle, send your location to someone (be careful with this one though!), and things like that. I think this not only makes language learning more interesting and fun, but it makes learning about that person and their culture and country so much more tangible.
Within the chat, you can also correct your language partner’s sentences which I think can be really useful and help point out the mistakes they (or you) made. The first part in black is the original and beneath it in grey, you can add or take out words, and automatically the app highlights the new words and crosses out the words with mistakes. When you press send, it sends it back to your partner in the chat in an identical form, so they’re seeing the original and the new version.
For those of you learning languages with non-Roman alphabets, there is also a “Transliteration” function where if someone writes to you 我爱你!, don’t panic! Because you can click the transliteration function and it’ll display it in pinyin. Useful, right?
One really cool thing about this app: free calls! You can make and receive free calls from your language partner, so for those of you who have trouble finding people to talk to, here’s your answer! I think it’s a genius idea to have it in an app and for free, because texting apps like Whatsapp normally don’t allow free calls.
Languages:
One thing I really liked about this app was the wide range of languages you could find on their list (see list of languages below). I applaud the diversity of languages (especially African, Chinese, Native American, and con languages!!) that they have on the app but the amount of speakers for “lesser known” languages or languages that don’t have a lot of speakers is still a problem. It’s definitely not at fault of the app, but in general I found little to no speakers for languages like Apache and Hawaiian, which would still make it difficult to learn these languages through the app even if they have it listed.
When you go into the search function and click “native language” to find a native speaker of your target language, you not only get a list of languages, but at the top of the list are languages that are more popular within the app, which is good news for you if those are the languages (or writing system) that you’re learning. To the left is a list of popular native languages (including English which was number 1, but I didn’t include it so I could get a screenshot of the rest). You can also search for “nationality” or even the “city” of users, which I really like and helps with various things such as the dialect you want to learn or which culture you want to learn more about. If you’re more into Spain’s Spanish than Mexico or Argentina, it’ll be easier for find a speaker of that dialect and culture. To the right are the popular nationalities of users in the app.
Advice:
If you’re going to use this app but want to do so in multiple languages, “learn” the language that you’re focusing on the most OR the one that has harder-to-find speakers where you live. For fun, I made my language-to-learn Catalan for a few days and got quite a few friend requests and messages, and that’s a population thats usually hard for me to find speakers. You can also message speakers of other languages even if it doesn’t display it on your profile; when my language was Catalan, I spoke with a few Brazilians.
If your native language is English, you might get a lot of messages from people from a variety of countries, because a lot of people are trying to learn English.
To break it down and summarize the great and not-so-great points…
The Not-so-Great:
-Have to pay for extra languages
-Free 25 translations per day (after 25, you have to pay)
-Translate, transliteration, and text-to-voice are machine-generated (like Google Translate) so while it’s useful, be aware!
-In reviews of the app in my App Store, some people have said that it has a lot of bugs, a lot technical problems, and/or drains your battery (but I honestly haven’t experienced any.)
The Great:
-Customizable search settings to find exactly the kind of speaker you’re looking for.
-In general, access to a lot of speakers especially popular languages.
-Just the sheer number of languages - some languages I haven’t heard of made me interested to learn more and I actually looked some up. Also, Conlangers! Dothraki and Klingon….
-Free calls!
Final Thoughts:
It’s kind of equivalent to a Facebook phone app of language-learning. It has a lot of really useful tools to help you improve your language learning and is probably the best thing you can do before traveling to your target-language country.
If you’re looking to practice your reading and writing, it’s good for that, chat it up! If you’re looking to practice comprehension and speaking, you can do that too. This app hits the four main points (reading, writing, listening, speaking) of language learning that every learner should touch upon.
However, I would say don’t stop reading language-specific books or searching for grammar sites online. While this is a really useful app and adding it to your studies will help you, don’t replace your studies with the app. Native speakers aren’t usually the best at explaining grammatical phenomena of their native language, and if your target language is grammar-heavy of new and complicated concepts, they might not be able to explain under what circumstances it happens. They will however, help your authenticity and fluency.
App Details:
Free Version and Pro Version (see below)
Available for iOS and Android (click to download!)
Over 100 languages
App Qualities:
Search for speakers (by age, language learning and level, native language, nationality, or city)
Voice-to-Text
Text-to-Voice
Transliteration
Translation
Free Calls
Grammar Correction
Pro Version: Unlimited translation, transliteration, and transcription from voice to text. Able to view chat history and customize Translation Target Language from chat settings. Able to increase group chat member limit from 30 people to 50, and notes up to 1000 characters.
1 month ($0.99)
3 months ($2.99)
1 year ($9.49)
Learn & Teach 1 more language ($1.99)
Disclaimer: This post was sponsored by the HelloTalk app but all thoughts and opinions are my own. I only review what I think would be useful to you guys and things that I think would benefit your language learning experience. Enjoy!
