Sorry, Babushka

Every language course teaches you to ask where the library is. None of them teach you what people actually say when the bus doesn’t come. Sorry, Babushka is the other half of the language. A cartoon grandmother sits in her kitchen in one of eight languages, and you learn the words your textbook left out by saying them to her face and seeing what happens. She is not a scoreboard. She reacts. HER PATH One long path per language — 150 levels. Mild words first, the unforgivable ones much later, taught family by family. She tells you what a word means, where it came from and who you can say it to, and then the lesson ends the only way it can here: you say it to her, out loud, and she answers. Six times along the way you end up in her kitchen instead, answering a plain question to her face. SHE COACHES, SHE DOESN’T PUNISH Miss a word and she breaks it into syllables and says it again, slowly. Nothing is lost for getting it wrong. There is no tapping past her either, until she decides you have tried enough for one day. THE SHOUT ROOM Say anything you have learned and she gives as good as she got, or let her name a word she taught you and say it back. Five good ones keep your streak alive. A STREAK THAT IS ACTUALLY A RELATIONSHIP The number on the home screen is the days you’ve kept coming to her kitchen. Miss a couple and she looked at the door and the door looked back. Miss a week and your photograph gets turned to face the wall — she says so, out loud, and then forgives you, because you came. No hearts, no gems, no notifications. A grandmother who noticed. TWO VOICES, ON PURPOSE A plain native voice teaches — the words, the examples, the dictionary. She only ever reacts, in English in that language’s accent, dropping into her own language for the words that matter. A switch in Settings puts her back in it entirely. EIGHT GRANDMOTHERS Russian, Spanish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Persian and Mandarin Chinese. Each written separately, because none of this material translates. Italian keeps blasphemy in a category of its own. Spanish attaches its worst words to the altar and the family line. Persian aims at honour rather than obscenity. Mandarin admires an insult with no dirty word in it more than any that has one. You learn those distinctions here, because getting them wrong is exactly how a foreigner gets it wrong. THE DICTIONARY Organised by root, not alphabetically, because that is how these words work: the root at the top with its meaning and origin, and under it the words grown out of it, each with pronunciation, real English sense, and a line on who you can say it to. Around 180 words per language. SAY IT OUT LOUD Tap the microphone and she scores what she actually heard, word by word. Where a phone cannot hear a language at all, the app says so and takes your word for it. FREE, COMPLETELY All eight languages, the whole dictionary, the whole path. No subscription, no ads, nothing locked. AN ACCOUNT, IF YOU WANT ONE You do not need one. The app is complete signed out, it works in airplane mode, and she asks twice and then stops. If you do make one — with Apple, with Google or with an email address — it exists for one reason: so your streak and your words survive losing your phone. It is the only thing that makes this app talk to a server at all. No analytics, no advertising identifier, no trackers, nothing sold or shared, and nothing you say into the microphone is ever stored or sent anywhere. FOR ADULTS This app contains strong language in eight languages. That is what it is for. An age setting on first launch limits how far it goes, and it holds everywhere. WHAT IS NOT IN HERE No slurs. Nothing that attacks anyone for their race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexuality, gender identity or disability, at any setting, in any language. Swearing is aimed at a moment. A slur is aimed at a person for what they were born as. The app teaches the first and has no interest in the second.