Glottayou learn a language while texting your friends
Glotta is a keyboard for iPhone. While you text anyone, in any app, it translates your sentences into the language you are learning, corrects you when you try it yourself, and suggests synonyms and new words. And if you like, five minutes a day of a complete course, from A1 to C1.
It is not a problem of willpower. It is a problem of time.
Language apps ask you to find the time every day, and teach sentences somebody else chose: “the cat drinks the milk”, which you will never say.
Meanwhile you spend two hours a day writing messages. Glotta works there, inside the keyboard: you learn as you write. And if you want some order, five minutes a day for a real lesson, with the sentences you would actually say.
How it works
Three things, as you type
01
Write in English
The keyboard writes it in Spanish, and marks the new word.
02
Try it in Spanish
It corrects you as you type, and tells you why.
03
Then, the lesson
Today's is ready when you are: five minutes, in the app.
The keyboard
It translates, it corrects, and it suggests new words.
The strip above the keys changes job with what you are doing, in any app: three modes, one tap to move between them, and, when you are not typing, today's lesson.
Translate
You write in your language and the translation appears above the keys, in the tone of a chat. One tap puts it in place of your sentence, and the line above marks the new words for you.
Correct
When you write in the language you are learning, Glotta does not translate: it proofreads. The corrected words are lit up, and the reason sits in the line above.
Nearby
Type a word and see its synonyms in the language you are learning, the words close to it and the idioms, one card at a time.
The lesson
Until you have done the day's lesson, when you are not typing the bar offers it to you: “Shall we do the lesson?”. Tap “Go in” and it starts in the app.
79 languages
The keyboard translates into 79 languages, and for the most widely spoken it picks the country too: Mexican Spanish is not the Spanish of Madrid.
Analyse
The sentence taken apart word by word: the verb with its conjugation, the base form, the reason for every choice.
The course
A complete course, whether you are starting out or already on your way.
From your first words to C1, in eight levels: for people starting from zero, for people who studied the language at school, and for people who want to go all the way. A five-minute lesson a day, with dialogues, voices and exercises for listening, speaking, reading and writing.
levels, from A1.1 to C1
8levels, from A1.1 to C1
minutes a lesson
5minutes a lesson
kinds of exercise
20kinds of exercise
courses, in six languages
8courses, in six languages
The languages
Spanish (from Spain, Chile and Mexico), English, Italian, French, German and Portuguese.
Sol
Alongside the course runs a parallel story: the conversations with Sol, one episode a day, always at your level. You listen, answer aloud or in writing, and your answers are corrected, with the reason why.
The app
The real screens
Today's lesson: you know what you will learn and how long it takes, five minutes in three parts
Every lesson teaches a few things and gets you using them: you hear them in a dialogue, then you try
The sentences are the ones you would say, each with its own voice
The conversations with Sol: one episode a day, at your level
Under the hood
What happens to every sentence you write
Two paths with two sets of constraints: one has to keep up with your fingers inside a keyboard, the other can take the time it needs. Keeping them apart is the reason typing stays fast.
While you type
1Keystrokethe host app knows nothing
2Sentencerecognised as it grows
3Memoryseen before? the instant path
4Translationthe strongest model · or the phone
5The barabove the keys, in time for the next sentence
Straight afterwards
1Wordspulled from the sentence, which is not kept
2Dictionarymeaning, base form, example
3Vocabularyone row per word, a counter going up
4Your lessonsthe verbs you use most
5Reviewbefore a word fades
~20 MB
A light keyboard
Freshly opened, it takes up about twenty megabytes of memory. To stay light, it first checks whether it has seen a sentence before, works in tasks that can be interrupted and, if an answer is late, steps aside instead of blocking the keyboard.
0 bytes
In password fields
In secure fields iOS hands the keyboard nothing: there, Glotta reads nothing, translates nothing and learns nothing.
Always
An answer, whatever happens
A cascade of engines tries strongest-first down to the simplest, and stops at the first one that can genuinely answer: if the strongest model does not answer, it falls to the ones on the phone.
1 rule
Better no answer than a wrong one
A rewrite that drops a number, eats an emoji, or answers with an explanation is thrown out before it reaches you.
iPhone app · Keyboard and courses from A1 to C1
