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.

Believe it or not, I remember first downloading this app in 2017 to learn Thai before my upcoming trip to Thailand 🇹🇭 Back then, it was pretty much the only app that offered Thai. But I learned a lot, especially getting my ears familiar to hearing Thai and practicing my pronunciation since the audio was so good.Fast forward nearly 7 years later!!! I’m using this app to learn Georgian for another upcoming trip 🇬🇪 The app may look completely different from my first experience, but everything is SO much better! So many languages to choose from (still the best for Thai in my opinion 😋), clear audio from real people as opposed to AI, easy to use, and fun lessons to keep me interested. But not too fun that I get distracted from learning! You can also turn on/off the transcription feature for non-Latin languages, which is a great indicator of your language level. The app is also constantly adding new languages and features, which means there will never be a shortage of learning.Highly recommend if you’re in the market for a language learning app, especially if you want to learn Southeast Asian languages! 👏

I downloaded Ling because it was the only app available with an Albanian course. That being said, my review is solely based on my experience with the Albanian course on Ling. The course is organized in a very strange manner and is riddled with an extreme number of errors. For instance, it tells you how the compound letter ‘gj’ sounds (like the ‘dj’ sound in jeans) and then gives an example word of xhep, which doesn’t have ‘gj’ in it at all. This type of error is commonplace throughout the lessons. The course starts by teaching you the words for boy, girl, man, and woman, which is sensible and similar to many other language courses. However, it then proceeds to teach you the words for twenty five, twelve, fourteen, and forty. How that random collection of numbers ever made sense enough to be approved and published is beyond me. The entire course needs to be edited and rearranged to make it even somewhat functional. One additional note, when I downloaded the app it said there was a free one week trial. However, when I downloaded the app it immediately charged me for a one year subscription. I would gladly pay for the subscription anyway, as I need to learn Albanian, but the way I was charged was dishonest at best. Moreover, with the current state of the Albanian course, I feel like I’m getting very little for the money. As the title of the review states, for me this has been a sincerely disappointing experience.