Donnie La CuranOct 18, 2023
Christian Selig
Introducing Language Pal, easily learn languages right on your iOS Home Screen, no opening apps needed! Available now (for free!) in Pixel Pals! 🥳🇫🇷🇪🇸🇩🇪🇮🇹🌍🇨🇦🇮🇳🇨🇳🇰🇷🇯🇵
Oct 18, 2023 at 4:36pmIvory for Mac
Show threadChristian SeligOct 18, 2023

Will it beat Duolingo? Nope. But is it super handy to be able to breeze through a ton of vocab whenever you unlock your phone? Yeppp

Download link: https://pixelpals.app

‎Pixel Pals Widget Pet Game

‎Pixel Pals is an incredible app for customizing your Home Screen and Lock Screen, as well as Live Activities, allowing you to place adorable pets called Pixel Pals that you can customize and enjoy as you swipe through your apps or unlock your phone, making each interaction just that much happier! T…

App Store
Show threadkevalOct 18, 2023
@christianselig Can you tell us what api you are using for the language cards?
Show threadChristian SeligOct 18, 2023
@keval All SwiftUI!
Show threadBrennan StehlingOct 18, 2023
@christianselig I studied Spanish for several years in school but I never became fluent. On a trip to Mexico many signs were in English and Spanish and it has an effect of reminding me of so many words that it actually helped me become a little fluent while I was there.
Show threadGerty SteinblattOct 18, 2023

@christianselig
Lerve! <3

I'm trying Italian. I'd love for some Irish (Gaelige) language too. :)

I find the transition after getting it wrong is too fast for me to see what the right one is. By the time my eyes get there, all I see is the unrelated option for the next question.

Is it possible to have a setting to slow that down?

Thank you so much for such a joyful app miscellany. :D

Show threadinfixOct 18, 2023
@christianselig do you have a list of languages available on it? I am learning Persian and would love something like this! Duolingo doesn’t help me there 😕
Show threadinfixOct 18, 2023
@christianselig just realised you put the flag emojis 👴
Show threadChristian SeligOct 18, 2023
@infix The "slide" after that should also list them all :D
Show threadinfixOct 18, 2023
@christianselig
Ah yes! Modern technology beatin me again. Anyhooo, would love to see you add Persian! But thanks for great widget!
Show threadhttp.jamesOct 19, 2023
@christianselig I'm finding this really helpful!
Show threadwhatatwitOct 21, 2023
@christianselig Thank you for Language Pals and all your good works. I'm trying to improve my German and it would be even more helpful if it were possible for you to add the Der, Die, Das genders for the nouns as these are important in German (and many other languages). They determine the endings for adjectives, for example, and by changing they indicate where in speech a word is found, for example is it the object or indirect object of a verb. Vielen Dank!
Show threadEmmyOct 18, 2023
@christianselig this is amazing and you’re the best!
Show threadCarl Johan BerglundOct 18, 2023
@christianselig Wow.
Show threadAva Oct 18, 2023
@christianselig I love the choice of “Canadian” lol
Show threadJohnOct 18, 2023
@christianselig this would be such a good app to release standalone…
Show threadTibo LoeteOct 18, 2023
@christianselig this is really cool and is prompting me to install the app. I’m sure I’ll find it but a link in the post would be handy 🙃
Show threadJulian LopezOct 18, 2023
@christianselig Any chance you could add Polish? I want to learn a bit of that for my girlfriend’s parents.
Show threadChristian SeligOct 18, 2023
@JLO64 Sure! Would love to add a few more languages :D
Show threadSeanOct 18, 2023
@christianselig +1 for Brazilian Portuguese 🇧🇷
Show threadJulian LopezOct 19, 2023

@christianselig My GF has a message for you:

"You did a lot for accessibility and now are helping cross language barriers! Dziękuję!"

Show threadRamón 🇨🇴Oct 18, 2023
@christianselig simply WOW !! Immediate download. Thank you for this implementation.
Show threadBarry Oct 18, 2023
@christianselig Ah, bonjour mon Ami, tres bien. 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Show threadCarl Johan BerglundOct 18, 2023
@christianselig Wonderful idea! But the German nouns should really be Capitalized, and I’d hide the little German flag whenever the word becomes too long, rather than making the font smaller.
Show threadChristian SeligOct 18, 2023
@berglund Like the word at the top? And great feedback
Show threadCarl Johan BerglundOct 18, 2023
@christianselig Yes, that one. When that’s a verb or adjective, it looks great as it is, but German nouns should always begin with a a capital letter: “gelb”, “Traum”, “neun”, “Nachmittag”. And German words are sometimes longer than the space you have for them now.
Show threadCarl Johan BerglundOct 18, 2023
@christianselig Here the font becomes smaller, which is an OK way of handling a long word, but hiding the flag would be better.
Show threadBen WaltersOct 18, 2023
@christianselig very cool! Would it be feasible to add sign language eventually? I’ve been trying to find creative ways to learn with limited time and this kind of thing seems like the perfect fit!
Show threadChristian SeligOct 18, 2023
@BensCarBlog Oh that's a great idea! I wonder if there's an open library of symbols, it would need to be quite intricate like this, right? https://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/story.php?title=sign-language-quiz-1
Sign Language Quiz #1

Sign language is a universal means of communication typically using one’s hands, which is the predominant method of social interaction for deaf people – with some other uses as well. How well do you know the signs? Let’s find out!

ProProfs
Show threadBen WaltersOct 18, 2023
@christianselig good question! I know there’s a lot of nuance and motion to many signs too, so could be pretty tricky. A library of simplified emoji-like GIFs would be ideal…
Show threadRichardOct 18, 2023
@christianselig that’s amazing! Love it! I do use Duolingo but great to brush up on some vocabulary.
Show threadChris Wu 🪐Oct 18, 2023
@christianselig what a cool idea Christian!
Show threadConstantin JacobOct 18, 2023
@christianselig FLUGHAFEN!
Show threadEthan Lipnik 🦧✡️🇮🇱Oct 18, 2023
@christianselig love this update! Any chance for a primate to be added at some point? (Would pay extra for a bonobo)
Show threadDr. FyzziksOct 18, 2023
@christianselig CANADA REPRESENT! (Also, awesome!)
Show threadVoltaireOct 18, 2023
@christianselig oh my gosh this is incredible!!!
Since there are so many languages, and so many words, is this something you think the community could help out with?
What a great idea. I thought it was a separate app for a second but am actually really delighted that it’s going in Pixel Pals. Awesome.
Show threadBenOct 18, 2023
@christianselig tried out Japanese! For Kanji, it would be nice to show the kana after selecting an answer (especially if I got it wrong!)
Show threadPeter FOct 18, 2023
@christianselig You’re already doing a much better job at creating an “everything app” than that other guy.
Show threadJosh WoldOct 18, 2023
@christianselig added to Home Screen!
Show threadRavi SambamurthyOct 18, 2023

@christianselig Looks awesome, though I don't have iOS to test it out.

Just wanted to point out that using the Indian flag for Hindi might not be accurate, given that there are 1500 languages spoken here, of which almost 30 are considered major enough to be the official languages of the Indian Union.

For more info: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_India

Languages of India - Wikipedia

Show threadChristian SeligOct 18, 2023
@ravisambamurthy Not sure I understand, how does using the Indian flag for India’s most popular language indicate that India doesn’t have other languages?
Show threadRavi SambamurthyOct 18, 2023
@christianselig Long story short, Hindi is not the 'most popular' Indian language. A minority of Indians speak it, around 40% - in terms of numbers. Even this number of 40% has been arrived at by considering distinct languages such as Maithili, Awadhi, Rajasthani, etc. as 'dialects' of Hindi, which is strongly contested by native speakers of these languages. Removing these dialects would leave about 26% to be speaking the actual language. (Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi_Belt )
Hindi Belt - Wikipedia

Show threadChristian SeligOct 19, 2023
@ravisambamurthy But still, isn't 26% far more popular than any other language? Not saying it's majority, but it's the most popular, no?
Show threadRavi SambamurthyOct 20, 2023

@christianselig Yes, Hindi is at #1 in terms of number of speakers. But to assign the Indian flag to it, is it spoken by an absolute majority of Indians? No. Will it be appropriate to label the US flag as 'California', because there are more Californians than there are residents in other states?

Also, if you plan to include the next popular Indic language in your app, then which flag will you assign to it? To workaround, I suggest using ISO language codes instead of national flags.

Show threadChristian SeligOct 20, 2023

@ravisambamurthy California isn’t a language. If it was, and the most speakers in the world lived in the US, and it was the most popular language in the US, then I would think a US flag would be a valid icon for it yeah.

For your second question, probably the Indian flag as well?

ISO language codes don't exactly make for beautiful and easily glanceable visual representations, which is why most language services like Duolingo use flags

Show threadN8Oct 19, 2023
@christianselig I love it!!!
Any chance you'll be adding Ukrainian? I'm neck deep in my journey on Duolingo, and would love an additional avenue for practice 🤣
Show threadChristian SeligOct 19, 2023
@kdegeek Ooo that would be a fun one!
Show threadmyrmidonOct 23, 2023
@christianselig Cool! Will you add English?
Show threadChristian SeligOct 23, 2023
@myrmidon It uses English as the base language to learn from, so it would be quite a bit of work to architect it from the perspective of other languages unfortunately
Show threadLiNov 21, 2023
@christianselig I think it’s a really good companion to Duolingo