Why I built Linguisticat

For the first 16 years of my life, Flushing, Queens was my neighborhood. Zoned schooling, which mapped where you lived to a specific school, took me to different areas at each transition from elementary, to middle, to high school. I walked home from school, played sports with, and competed in video games with Koreans, Columbians, and Greeks to name a few. Over time I learned a few words, mostly the wrong ones as kids do, in Korean, Spanish, and Greek. I was always interested and wanted to learn more, but as far as I knew,

😭 Spanish was the only option at school so that is the only language I began to study. It wasn’t so much that I had a choice, the decision was made for me.

There was a minimum requirement of 2 years of language study in order to graduate from high school. Since this wasn’t my first choice of language I stopped asap. Thinking back on this later in life, I’m not sure I fully agree with needing to have 2 years of the same language. When I was learning Spanish in high school,

🤯 I didn’t know where I would want to study abroad, what language skills I would need in my future career, nor which country I might live in in the future. Could learning just the basics of a half dozen languages instead be more helpful?

At home we spoke a mix of Gujarati and English. My parents ran a small business so their English is perfect. I always found it interesting why a handful of their customers called speaking Urdu, Hindi, or Panjabi and wouldn't speak to my parents in English.

💰 My parents knew just enough to get by and make a sale. That seemed to create trust and a sense of community and customers kept calling back. I found this very fascinating!

My parents couldn't read or write in most languages they communicated in but speaking was all they needed. My extended family could also speak Swahili. I learned that a few generations ago groups of people migrated from Asia to Africa, Africa back to Asia, and Asia to Europe following jobs and independence. Along that journey they picked up local languages and commonly mix of Swahili, Gujarati, and English in the same sentence.

😎 How cool would it be to be able to just get by in Swahili to my aunts and uncles, and in Gujarati to my cousins and grandparents?

As my closest friend put it in his best man speech, marrying Falon, my wife, is my best idea yet (sorry Linguisticat, you’re my second best idea). Falon is part Cuban and part Irish. During the holidays we normally see Aba (her grandmother) who mostly communicates in Spanish. She makes really good camarones, will take your money in Dominoes, and is always down to catch a novela. Good thing I know just enough Spanish to bond with her, it’s always a good feeling when we’re both on the same page. It was all fun and games until Covid.

When it was clear Covid was going to be around for a while, I wanted to find a challenging hobby that keep me sane and focused from the lockdown restrictions. I chose to study Korean. Thinking about the $2 kimbab I used to eat multiple times a week when I was a kid and the fact that there are some really good Korean dramas,

🥩 I thought it would be cool to try and understand just a few words when watching tv and try ordering KBBQ order natively.

The first language app I released was Learn Korean! Fast (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/learn-korean-fast/id1545310185). At the time iOS Safari Extensions (think Chrome extensions, but for iPhone and for the Safari browser — more about the tech in another blogpost) was new and one of the things I built was Korean word replacement in iOS Safari.

🧠 My problem has always been memorization. I not only had to spend dedicated time learning vocabulary, the reinforcement methods I knew about also took focused time.

Out of everything I had built in the app, I used and appreciated the extension the most. Whenever I learned new words, I added them for replacement and boom - I would be browsing and just see 핸드폰 instead of phone. I had studied the Korean alphabet and I could already read so this was fine for me. But what if you just wanted to be able to speak? Extensions could work for that too. Instead a user could choose to show the romanized version, haend-eu-pon for phone. Imagine seeing that a few dozen times as you normally go about your browsing habits? I started to learn more words and I wanted to see what a v2 would look like.

My wife landed a pretty cool role which took us from California to Amsterdam. Even though in the Netherlands people speak perfect English, their first language is Dutch. I really like that at cafes and restaurants they would always speak to me in Dutch first, and then switch over to English when asked.

🇳🇱 How cool would it be to not have to switch back to English and respond in Dutch?

I took some Dutch lessons and I felt really good during and right after the lesson, but hours and days later had trouble recalling things. I quickly hacked on my Korean app and added some Dutch words I knew into my browsing experience. This is when I tested the search term “blue iPhone” and saw blauw 핸드폰. I thought this was pretty neat because I knew I could support multiple languages and have different criteria of what I wanted to learn. For me, in Korean it was more nouns and numbers, and in Dutchit was colors and groceries.

But, Europe! Travel is much easier and affordable and we’ve been lucky to take some advantage of that with some short trips over the weekends via long distance train.

🥐 Wouldn’t it be cool to order a croissant in French, greet my co-working in Finnish, and order a Bratwurst in German?

I’ve been exposed to and have been interested in languages a lot over my life and I suspect others have too. As we become more diverse I think studying multiple languages has its own benefits. I built this so I could connect and build trust with other, understand foreign dramas, and most importantly order a butter croissant.