Russian1 / 10
синий · голубой
siniy · goluboy
Russian has no single word for blue. Dark blue and light blue are separate colours, and Russian speakers tell them apart faster than English speakers do.
Between you and most of the world, there’s a wall
Look closer. Every brick says friend
The Talkey Manifesto
We’re here to take it down
Talkey is a language app with one stubborn idea: nobody should stay a stranger because of the words they were born into
Seven thousand ways
7,000
About seven thousand languages are spoken today. Each one cuts the world up a little differently, and you only get to see the cuts from the inside
A language is a way of seeing
Turkish2 / 10
geldi · gelmiş
Turkish grammar asks how you know. Geldi: he came, and I saw it. Gelmiş: he came, or so they tell me.
Guugu Yimithirr3 / 10
gungga
north
In this language from northern Australia there is no left or right. There’s an ant on your north leg, and everyone always knows which way north is.
Aymara4 / 10
nayra · qhipa
in front · behind
In Aymara, spoken in the Andes, the past lies in front of you: you have already seen it. The future is behind your back, out of sight. Speakers point forward when they talk about long ago.
Spanish5 / 10
se me cayó
it fell from me
English says “I dropped it.” Spanish says the glass fell, and you happened to be there. In one study, English speakers remembered who caused an accident better than Spanish speakers did.
Pirahã6 / 10
hói · hoí · baágiso
few · some · many
Pirahã, spoken along the Maici River in the Amazon, has no words for exact numbers, only for smaller and larger amounts. Small quantities were easy for speakers to remember; larger ones became estimates.
Japanese7 / 10
敬語
keigo · respectful language
Japanese changes the verb depending on who is speaking to whom. The same “eat” takes a different form for a friend, a stranger and a teacher, so every sentence says where you stand.
Arabic8 / 10
تقبرني
tuqburni · you bury me
Said in Levantine Arabic to someone you love so much you hope to go first, so you never have to live without them.
Hindi9 / 10
जुगाड़
jugaad
A clever fix made from whatever is at hand. Less a word than a whole way of solving problems.
German · Spanish10 / 10
die Brücke · el puente
the bridge
German makes the bridge feminine, Spanish makes it masculine. In a well-known and still debated study, German speakers described bridges as elegant and slender, Spanish speakers as strong and towering.
A second soul
People keep arriving at the same idea, in different centuries and different languages
Habere alteram linguam est possidere secundam animam.
Kolik jazyků znáš, tolikrát jsi člověkem.
Bir lisan bir insan, iki lisan iki insan.
Wer fremde Sprachen nicht kennt, weiß nichts von seiner eigenen.
Una lingua diversa è una diversa visione della vita.
Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt.
همدلی از همزبانی بهتر است
What we believe
Five rules we built Talkey on
- 1
Start talking before you’re ready
Nobody feels ready. The waiter won’t wait for you to finish your conjugation tables, and that’s fine. A wrong ending said out loud teaches you more than a perfect one kept in your head.
- 2
Learn from the real thing
Enough dialogues about where the pen is. Read an actual novel, slowly. Listen to a real podcast host who stumbles, laughs and talks far too fast. That’s the language people actually use.
- 3
Forgetting is part of the plan
Your brain lets go of what it doesn’t use. So we bring each word back right before it slips away, and a little later every time, until it stops leaving.
- 4
Ten minutes count
Most people don’t quit a language. They pause, and never come back. A small habit you keep every day outlasts a big weekend of motivation.
- 5
The score isn’t the point
Streaks and XP are there to bring you back tomorrow. The point is the day you understand a joke in another language, and laugh at the right moment.
But the machines can translate
Machines translate everything now. So why learn a language?
Translators are astonishing, and we use them too. But a translator moves words. A language moves you closer to people
- 1
Words travel. Warmth gets lost
A translator says eline sağlık means “health to your hands.” It won’t say this is how a Turkish guest thanks the cook. Meaning lives around the words, and you only learn it by living in the language.
Eline sağlık!Health to your hands.What they meantThank you for cooking. It was wonderful.
- 2
A screen is still a wall
Talk through a phone and you look at the phone. Speak the language yourself and you look at each other. People lean in when you meet them in their own words, and that’s where friendships begin.
Привет!¡Hola! - 3
It’s yours, and it works anywhere
No signal, no battery, no subscription, nobody listening in. On a mountain path, at a hospital bedside, in the dark. What you’ve learned goes everywhere with you and answers instantly.
No connectionDov’è la stazione?Lì, a destra! - 4
The effort is the gift
A clumsy merci says more than a flawless machine voice, because it says: I came toward you. Nobody can do that part for you, and everyone notices it.
Avec plaisir !
A translator gives you the answer. A language gives you the person
So
Go collect a few more souls
Start with ten minutes today. The rest of the world isn’t going anywhere, and it has a lot to tell you
– The Talkey team