Many of us would like to learn a foreign language – no matter for work, study, or just out of a desire to touch another culture. App Store has tons of language learning apps, but a Kickstarter project called Fluent Forever takes learning to the next level.
The creator of the project is Gabriel Weiner, an opera pepper and polyglot, fluent in 8 languages (including Russian). The main idea of its application is not to try to remember as many foreign words as possible, but to build connections between them so that the brain can always restore any of them through associations. In an interview, Weiner said the following:
Fluent Forever focuses on interacting with memory. Not on grammar or listening skills, but on memory. If I say the word “camera”, a lot of images associated with this word immediately appear in your head. “Camera” is connected to iPhone, DSLR, shutter and lens. It is also connected to every photo you have seen in your life, and at the same time to the sound that your phone makes when taking a photo. With the photographer you saw on the news. You will never forget the word “camera” in your native language, because it is associated with a huge number of other words.
He goes on to say that when learning foreign languages, we do not care about building such connections between words. It is because of this that we often forget the words that we have learned recently. And it is precisely this gap that Fluent Forever is designed to close. Using flashcards and notes, you will learn pronunciation, expand vocabulary and learn the grammar of the language, and the process itself will be more intuitive than any other application.
How effective is it?
Weiner promises that an English-speaking user can learn spoken Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese or Dutch in 6 months, German in 9 months, Russian or Hebrew in 12 months, and Korean, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese or Arabic in 24 months.
Sounds great, doesn't it? This is why this startup has become the most successful project on Kickstarter. At the time of this writing, there is a little less than a day left before the fundraising is completed, and 3954 people have supported Fluent Forever in the amount of $ 528,720. Note that the original goal was to raise $ 250,000.
You still have time to support the project on Kickstarter. You need to pay $ 40 to get access to the app for a month, get a lifetime discount on its subscription and additional content. More donation means more months of subscription and more useful bonuses like a signed book, personalized for the language you're learning. For especially large donations, one could get an hour or two of consultations on Skype with Weiner himself. Why the past tense? The fact is that all such awards have already been paid for.
The app itself will be released in August 2018. It will help you learn English, Spanish (Latin America), Italian, French, German, Russian or Korean. If the project manages to receive $ 550,000 before the fundraising closes, then these languages will be added to Spanish (Castilian dialect), Portuguese, Dutch, Hebrew and Arabic. For $ 700,000, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese would be added to the application, but there is too little time left and the required amount is unlikely to have time to accumulate.