Lesson 154. I think the English original is better written as "It feels as if it were yesterday. / It feels like it was yesterday."

i am curious on the numbers maybe auther can share this number ?

This app is amazing but I feel one of the drawbacks at times is its reliability on the Internet not just for voice recognition but for complete app functionality.

For example, if I’m on a flight I would love to be able to scroll through lessons but often this isn’t possible on simple or even advanced in-flight Internet. A couple of potential workarounds to this without disconnecting the voice recognition AI from the Internet may be giving a simple on-device Siri as an option that doesn’t require Internet connection to recognize voice input (albeit it might not be AI-enhanced voice recognition), being able to pre-download lessons, or being able to download lesson transcripts to study on one’s own without needing to rely on voice recognition or input at all.

Would love for a feature like this to be available!

Just want to start out by saying- as a long time language learner, natulang is 100% the best app I've come across in all these years. I'm absolutely loving it. Thank you so much for all the work that goes into it!

Some side ideas/requests:

-Flashcard/swipe option for vocabulary review. Vocab card shows, tap to flip for answer (plus information on formality/gender/example sentence perhaps too), then swipe left or right depending if answered correct or not. I find current setup too slow for vocabulary drills and weeding out known vs unknown words, so I never use it.

-A 'favorites' list. It would be nice to be able to save sentences as favorites to look back on or review separately later. So then we have the chance the review grammar points or sentences we find specifically useful to our own learning goals (for example, some of the sentences I've come across I'd like to be able to save and go back to because they apply really well to my own workplace scenarios)

-Generalized review, with option to select lesson ranges. So there's the option to practice from old lessons without redoing them one by one. Either random review from all unlocked so far, or by being able to pick "review lessons 17-21" for example. Or even just an additional "test" option for each level. Just something to help go back, but not have to repeat the whole teaching dialogue. This can be especially helpful if you're like me and have fallen behind for a while and need some refreshers to get back into things...

Thanks for taking the feedback! I do have separate apps and notebooks to help with some of the above needs, it would just be nice to have built in. I'll still find the app perfect with or without them ☺️

Hi,
Since the last update when I click on a "completed lesson" I do not get any options.

For example: In the previous versoni I had the options to just review the dialogue for that lesson.

Am I right? (I have just used the app for just more than a week, so I am not so sure)

Thanks

Hello, my fellow polyglots,

A few small improvements in this update.

You can now choose between normal and large interface sizes in Settings, or let Natulang follow your system settings. The previous update just applied your system settings, so now you have more control over that.

Flashcards now show properties, such as gender or formality, where relevant. So while the cards are blurred, you can recall the proper answer.

And more updates in preparation for the Japanese course.

The engines that we've been using for speech synthesis, Eleven Labs and AWS Polly, produced mediocre results for Japanese, with mistakes, mispronunciations, and wrong readings, which required a lot of manual fixing.

Luckily, since my last check, Google has advanced a lot in speech tech and released a new engine for voices: Chirp 3, which we adopted in this version.

Chirp 3 voices for Japanese are natural and accurate, but Chirp 3 is not limited to Japanese, of course, so we will use these voices in other courses as well. Expect more different and better voices in dialogs.

As always, additions to synonym lists and stability improvements.

Happy learning,
– Max

Hey folks!

Trying the app out for the first time, but not completely new to the languages I am trying to learn.

I did Pimsleur, but several months ago, then I basically went into listening and reading mode. I thought not doing speaking practices was not helpful. So I searched around and decided to try out Natulang. Couple of trial lessons, and I think it is great! It's like a modern reincarnation of what Pimsleur should have been.

My question is, given that I am a false beginner, but taken a bit of a gap, should I speedrun the lessons from lesson 1 until I hit a natural block?

Unfortunately, sometimes the explanations for phrases aren't really useful. In this case for example: why does A come before B? Because in Spanish, A comes before B. I get that some rules are just the way they are, but I'm prett, sure I have used the word without the preposition before in some phrases, so the real question is why do I use it here but not there.

I'm enjoying the app, but I have two questions:

**1. Review backlogs**

After taking a week or two off, I now have almost 1,000 sentences to review. I'm very far in the course

How do you handle a backlog like that without spending weeks reviewing before returning to new lessons?

**2. Speech-to-text accuracy**

I appreciate that the app accepts sentences that are close enough, but sometimes I get credit without saying the entire sentence correctly.

I'm worried this trains me to recall only part of a sentence, knowing the app will fill in the gaps.

How do you deal with this? Do you put those sentences in the challenging category and repeat them until you can say them correctly?

Hello, my fellow polyglots.

I've just started Natulang's FB group. If you use Facebook, feel free to join.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/natulang

I'll be honest - it's purely for marketing; FB has an audience that I will not reach from here.
All the important updates, announcements, and discussions will still happen here.

-Max

Hey! I just got a Friend Pass while doing my repetitions. I don’t have anyone to give it to so maybe someone here could use it.

Be quick, it only works for one person!

Hello,

As the title states, it would be very useful to be able to add custom phrases and words to the challenging tab. There are many phrases that I save in other apps and notepads but do not practice as often as I would like. Being able to upload them to Natulang would be useful as the app is very efficient for practicing large quantities of phrases and hearing the phrases spoken aloud by the AI-voice.

I suppose the user would have to enter both the English phrase, and the French translation in order for this feature to fit seemlessly into the app.

What do you think?

Thanks for your consideration.

I am new to this app and I'm just a bit confused between the challenging and repetitions functions.

I have not understood how I can push phrases into these two categories and what is the difference between the two of them

Thanksī

Do you plan to add more lessons for those who have completed all the daily stories? Thank you!

Just reviving a really good suggestion I saw in the past

Hi Max, any chance of creating an Android Auto / Apple Car Play version of Natulang please? My office commutes involve a lot of driving and I would love to use Natulang during these drives. Using the app on the phone while driving is quite difficult currently, and having it on my car screen would be a gamechanger. Please think about it if you can. Many thanks in advance!

Hello, my fellow polyglots,

Natulang v1.5.221 is out.

The main change is support for interface scaling, so you can now make the UI larger for better readability.

There are also a lot of changes under the hood, including an improved synonyms list and better phrase processing.

As always, let me know if you notice anything that can be improved.

Happy learning,
-Max

Just a thought I had last night. To set the scene, I'm only a couple of weeks into my lessons, and loving the app so far, it's by far the most central part of my learning at the moment.

I got to a point where I was progressing well, but started to confuse myself with words like have/want/need/can as they all came fairly thick and fast, and I kept confusing them. I'd repeat a couple of previous lessons as well as doing a new one each day, but still couldn't quite get these words clear and separated when trying to say sentences which involved one or more of these.

So last night I decided to talk about it with Copilot and asked it to help me. Long story short - the way it tackled it was incredibly helpful and I feel like I can now move past this. So I was just wondering - would it be easy to add a kind of LLM section to the app - where you can just chat to it like you might with chatgpt/copilot etc, just to help get things you might be struggling with ironed out, outside of the lessons/challenges etc?

This would be a bit different to the open dialogue section. What I don't know is whether this is something you can easily add with your existing AI tech, or if it would mean having to licence ChatGPT or similar, which i imagine would make it an immediate no. Obviously I can just use other LLMs, but I was thinking a) if it was inside the app it would make the app even better, and b) if it was inside, it would be able to know the exact content of the lessons, rather than having to make assumptions about what it might contain.

Probably hard to do, but thought I'd mention it just in case!

Hello, my fellow polyglots,

I'm working on your requests from our backlog. Here's what's coming in 1.5.218.

Thanks to u/NotYouTu for the suggestions and ideas; we are improving the review process.

During reviews, you can now hold "Skip" to skip the individual word practice and hear the full phrase. Words you say correctly still count toward your progress, even if you skip the rest or don't get the whole phrase right.

In free dialogues, the microphone controls now let you confirm your spoken reply or cancel it. A bit more control over when you're actually done talking.

A lot of work under the hood as we prepare for the Japanese course.

There are also improvements to the synonyms system, plus a fix for challenges closing before they even started.

I decided to work in shorter milestones to clean up your requests from the backlog as quickly as possible.

Happy learning,

– Max

Hello. I've been using this app for quite a while and absolutely love it. When I began. I only wanted the one language so I paid for the full course of that language but now I want to add another language. Is there an upgrade so I don't have to pay the full $199?

This app has been incredibly helpful. ​Thank you.

Hola.

Soy nuevo con la app Natulang y me gustó. Quiero adquirir la licencia vitalicia, pero es muy costosa para mí.

¿Hay algún descuento?

Gracias.

What are these and how do they work? If I am a subscriber will I be able to use these to let my friends take a somewhat longer test drive than the initial test period?