Favorite Travel Apps: Language Learning with uTalk
There are few things I love as much as learning a new language. I dream of one day being a polyglot who can communicate in more languages than I can name, and, while my multilingual aspirations remain lofty, I’m working toward them slowly but surely. Beyond English and Spanish, I took French and Italian classes in college (and even a bit of Nahuatl, although I couldn’t tell you how to say a thing!), and I’m currently enrolled in a weekly Mandarin course.
Slowly but surely learning Mandarin.
Sadly, the real world limits the amount of time I can devote to language learning, which is where language apps save the day. I’ve played around with a lot of apps, but few haveĀ truly impressed me. I am a huge fan of Duolingo,Ā through which I’ve refreshed my Spanish, French, and Italian and can now communicate someĀ basic sentencesĀ in Portuguese and German. However, until now, that’s the only language app I’ve really used regularly.
I’ve recently discovered another app that has really won me over: uTalk. Its beautiful design impressed me right away, butĀ the number one best thing about it? It offers a hundred languages (compared to Duolingo’s current nine): everything fromĀ Hungarian to Hindi and Swahili to Slovenian.
Languages galore!
The app itself is free, and you can learn the starter words in each language without a charge as well. Each lesson takes you through various techniques of learning the words: a practice round, an easy game, a speaking game, a hard game, a memory game, and a recall round. So if you’re heading off to Serbia next week, just head on over to the Serbian section, and, soon enough, you’ll have all the basics committed to memory.
If you’re committed to learning a bit more, you can purchase an essentials pack (11 topics) for $9.99 or a premium pack (35 topics) for $16.99. And guess what? I’m giving away three premium pack codes at the end of this post! (So, uh, keep reading!)
I fellĀ madly in love with Romania in the summer of 2013, and my fascination for the country grew in November when I used its history and landscapes as the setting for my novel for NaNoWriMo (a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in one month).Ā Plus, Romanian is a Romance language, so I figured I’d already have a solid footing in it. Because of all this, I’ve started with uTalk’s Romanian lessons. Within ten minutes, my Romanian vocabulary was lightyears ahead of where it had been, so we’ll see how it goes after a few more hours on the app. BunÄ ziua!
uTalk focuses primarily on vocabulary rather than grammar, so if you’re looking to fullyĀ speak a language,Ā you’d need aĀ combination ofĀ learning methods, withĀ uTalk being one component. With the app’sĀ ease of use and great design, I’d love to see it expand to grammar lessons eventually. It’s also currently only available on the iTunes store, so hopefully it becomes available on other platforms soon.
Tempted to try uTalk? I’m giving away threeĀ premium codes to access the full set of lessons in a language of your choice!Ā Entries are now closed! Thanks to everyone who entered, and congratulations to the winners! If you’d like to try uTalk, you can download it here.
Good luck, and happy language learning!
I want to learn Italian and Russian!!
Molto bene! š
what an amazing sounding app! too bad I’m an android user š
Oh boo! I know they’d do well if they expanded to Android. Fingers crossed it happens soon!
Great idea! I’ll use this when I’m in Thailand!
Ooh, yes, definitely enter so you can do the Thai course for free!
I want to learn Mandarin!
I’m enjoying it and would recommend it!
I want to improve my Spanish, and then work on learning French.
Good choices! Have you done Duolingo’s Spanish and French lessons? They’re great if you already have some knowledge of the language (and French is easy enough to pick up ā aside from the pronunciation ā once you know Spanish!).
…Yeah–I REALLY need to seriously reinvest in learning German!!…Maybe this could help me!!…
That would be great! I’d love to learn a bit of German too…although the Germans I’ve met are so impressive at English, you’d be fine getting around Germany without it! But I find it particularly interesting because of how linguistically related to English it is.
Great post, I need to learn Spanish for my South America trip in September so very useful!
Awesome! Good luck with that, and let me know if you have any questions about Spanish!
I would love to try to learn Russian or pick up German
Russian would be super interesting but seems difficult. Sounds like a fun challenge!
I tried it once in college but the instructor expected us to already know the alphabet and pronunciation even though it was beginners!
Oh sheesh! That’s ridiculous!
This looks like such an awesome app! I was on a Duo Lingo roll for a while last year, but then I completely fell off the wagon. But I’ve always wanted to learn Dutch, so I’d love to try that! Also, I definitely had to Google what Nahuatl was… haha. Best of luck on your Mandarin and Romanian studies!
Yeah, I didn’t know much about Nahuatl before that class either! My college offered a seminar that I think was just an hour a week or every two weeks, and the language was so different from any other I’ve studied. Words can be like 50+ letters long, because you take a base word and then keep adding prefixes and suffixes.
I would love to learn Japanese š
Japanese would be cool!
Improve my school French as my brother lives there so that’s my nephews’ mother tongue!
Oh neat! Where in France does he live?
In Provence, in the south – Not far from Remoulins and the Pont du Gard š
Sounds amazing!
Dutch! in order to apply to become a Dutch citizen you have to speak the language~
Makes sense! Plus its similarities to English are interesting!
i would like to learn italian
Good luck!
Hi Kirstie,
Did you try Memrise or Busuu? As some of the free language learning apps.
I’ve tried Memrise but not Busuu!
Hi,
Wow, nice article to share with us and this looks like an awesome application I would love to try that in terms to learn Turkish language.
Keep sharing more with us.
Take Care
That would be really cool! I haven’t studied Turkish at all, but I loved hearing and reading it in Turkey and Azerbaijan.
Your article is really impressive and I love reading them every time very helpful article, keep it up admin and thanks for sharing such a cool and nice posts.
Learning languages can be so hard and totally rewarding. I suggest that if you are traveling to anywhere that speaks Arabic that you understand it. Its the worst not knowing what is going on.
Hi,
nice article to share with us and this looks like an awesome application, I am learning Arabic from an online learning platform now I would love to try that in terms to learn the Russian language.
Thank You for Sharing.
Happy Blogging!!!
This blog has helped me in building my confidence. Language tricks which are performed by many social media professionals, Great blog post keep sharing the good work.