It needs a LOT of work
UPDATE: Changing to a 1-star. DO NOT USE THIS APP.
I’ve moved through their useless “lessons”. Currently I’m on a “lesson” about present tense adjectives. The instruction is “fill in the blank with the correct word.” That is it. No context for what word they want out of all the words that end with い that are listed. The verbalization of the words only matches some. Then when you pick an answer (and my answers are correct because I’m not the rank beginner that this lesson is aimed at)… the answer is marked incorrect.
Final verdict? This app is trash and is actually infinitely WORSE than Duolingo. Their customer service is useless, their app is badly designed, badly programmed, and will absolutely NOT help you learn anything.
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Previous review: Do I want to like it? Yes. Very much. It could be a good alternative to the stupid AI-heavy owl.
HOWEVER…
Currently this app often shows the wrong language (romanized) in the answer selection, it marks correct answers as incorrect, and even at the “I’ve never tried this language before in my life” level, it presents advanced sentences, ideas, and concepts with no teaching. You just guess and hope you get the correct answer.
Support tickets for issues get a response of “yeah, we know, hope you are okay with it until we get around to fixing it!”
Because I can see potential and because I can see that it is being worked on, this app gets 2-stars, and I can revisit in the future if/when the app improves.
For now? I hate to say it, but you’re better off with the AI Owl.
I’ve moved through their useless “lessons”. Currently I’m on a “lesson” about present tense adjectives. The instruction is “fill in the blank with the correct word.” That is it. No context for what word they want out of all the words that end with い that are listed. The verbalization of the words only matches some. Then when you pick an answer (and my answers are correct because I’m not the rank beginner that this lesson is aimed at)… the answer is marked incorrect.
Final verdict? This app is trash and is actually infinitely WORSE than Duolingo. Their customer service is useless, their app is badly designed, badly programmed, and will absolutely NOT help you learn anything.
_______________
Previous review: Do I want to like it? Yes. Very much. It could be a good alternative to the stupid AI-heavy owl.
HOWEVER…
Currently this app often shows the wrong language (romanized) in the answer selection, it marks correct answers as incorrect, and even at the “I’ve never tried this language before in my life” level, it presents advanced sentences, ideas, and concepts with no teaching. You just guess and hope you get the correct answer.
Support tickets for issues get a response of “yeah, we know, hope you are okay with it until we get around to fixing it!”
Because I can see potential and because I can see that it is being worked on, this app gets 2-stars, and I can revisit in the future if/when the app improves.
For now? I hate to say it, but you’re better off with the AI Owl.
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Good app for learning rare languages
UPDATE: The recent updates have improved the UI considerably. Very happy to see the errors I described below are gone. I am enjoying learning Estonian on this app. Good job!!!
OLD REVIEW: I speak Latvian fluently and placed with a test in advanced lessons, but it’s stuck on super basic vocabulary even though I passed the full exam with a perfect score. I can’t get to an advanced level or delete and re-add Latvian. Learning Estonian from the beginning is ok. Making an account and logging in is pretty buggy and it asks for my Apple ID password multiple times. Still a good resource for learning rarer languages.
OLD REVIEW: I speak Latvian fluently and placed with a test in advanced lessons, but it’s stuck on super basic vocabulary even though I passed the full exam with a perfect score. I can’t get to an advanced level or delete and re-add Latvian. Learning Estonian from the beginning is ok. Making an account and logging in is pretty buggy and it asks for my Apple ID password multiple times. Still a good resource for learning rarer languages.
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Response from developer
Thanks for the feedback! We‘ve improved a lot since then and would love for you to try again!
Excellent alternative to Duolingo
I've been a Duolingo Super and then Max subscriber for years with a 2000+ day streak. Duolingo has been increasingly annoying in its design decisions over the past few years and, when my subscription renewal was due. I had some initial issues getting my account and password setup in Lairner but the team monitoring Threads messages were quite helpful and now I'm really enjoying Lairner!
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Response from developer
Thank you so much for your review! Hope you can catch our constant new updates and features!
Great app
Cool app, learning Georgian now. Helps me a lot!
Bit buggy but good idea
I speak Latvian fluently and placed with a test in advanced lessons, but it’s stuck on super basic vocabulary even though I passed the full exam with a perfect score. I can’t get to an advanced level or delete and re-add Latvian. Learning Estonian from the beginning is ok. Making an account and logging in is pretty buggy and it asks for my Apple ID password multiple times. Still a good resource for learning rarer languages.
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