Lamont, your videos are always a pleasure to watch! Your narrative is always spot on! I think Ikenna should get some slack for publishing his app despite his health complications, it's amazing how quickly Fluyo released, a lot of other leaders would have probably let the project die along the way, so big respects for that. As to the many bugs and user experience, I'm surprised they didn't have more internal testing rounds before rushing this out. A lot of times users would accept a delay for a better first experience. I'm actually building a language video game myself, we're going to drop a new demo real soon, if at any point you'd be interesting at taking a look at it, I'd be deeply honored! Or do any collaboration with you, I'm running a language TH-cam channel myself :) As for Fluyo, let's hope the team is able to eradicate some of their bugs and improve the experience, I want there to be solid competition in the language learning gamified space :) Keep up the great work, best, Manu
Remember: linguist ≠ teacher It's like a mechanical engineer ≠ a driving instructor. Yes, there are people who understand the nuts and bolts of a language that can also teach it, but they are fundamentally two different skills.
Yeah, I know... Like David Crystal is a linguist for the English language... but when you say you put together a team of this, that and linguistS (plural), then I'd think you're implying that someone who knew something about language acquisition was involved. Even Ikenna himself... I mean, I've never thought he was the be all and end all of polyglots... he's pretty obviously a "a few languages to A2" kind of guy... but even so, he has lived in Belgium long enough that I would have thought he knew that asking what the gender of "poisson" is makes no sense for learning.
So ironic when all you really have to do is just play not even a language learning game but a normal game, in the target language, which is arguably even better
I totally agree. I don't think it would be going to far to say that it's pointless having an app/game to teach you the whole language.@@dragonicbladex7574
i had low expectations already because of the way ikenna was talking about it. every time i hear the word "gamify" i have little alarms going off in my head
I don't mind gamification.. the problem is, this isn't really a full game, because there's no story and you're just answering the same 7 questions over and over again.
gamifying learning, especially language learning (or maybe not "especially", it's just my personal focus), sounds like a neat idea in theory, but it always boils down to flashcards / a quiz I remember how I wanted to make my own version of Duolingo for my conlang, only to realize very quickly that I might as well release an Anki deck with words mixed with sentence flashcards and it'd be a thousand times better either it's just a stupid idea that can't be executed well OR we're approaching it from the stupidest side possible
@autumnblaze6267 I feel like there's potential for a language learning game that isn't just flashcards and quizzes. I'm thinking more like a normal game in your TL, but the dialogue is written based on vocabulary and structures in progressively higher levels, like a graded reader. Welp that's my pitch, I gotta start an app development team now. But then again this wouldn't work well for beginners slash language learning newcomers, which is the market that every app is targeting
Do u know what gamified language learning is? Simply just playing a "proper" video game in that language entirely! Aka how a good portion of us europeans learned english 😅For me, the fun part about learning a language is actually having the feeling that you learned something. I want it to be fast paced and rewarding! And I want the reward to be "Yay I just understood that sentence!" and not "Yay, I slayed an underwater monster and got 100 points" I just found duolingo so TERRIBLY frustrating because I'm wastin 50% of my time on "fun" animations, cut scenes, boosters and ads.
Brave of you to do an honest review. Due to the health issues and all I became too afraid to be critical of Ikenna but I felt very critical of his channel and the app just seemed like a train wreck in slow motion to me. I unsubscribed years ago.
yea I also, I do like Ikenna, I even bought his E-book a couple years ago....but....he has always struck me as more of a salesman/businessman more than a true language enthusiast....I really do hope his health improves, his condition is really horrible and I empathize, but I don't think he is very genuine about his intentions unfortunately
I got the subscription just because the ad was irritating. And after some time I discovered Anki exists:D Like, they tried to make a 10 in 1 app and honestly failed. I develop games and know how hard it is to actually develop a bug-free and smooth game which is fun, entertaining, and snappy. And on top of that lies the main function - language learning, that must be faster and more efficient than other apps to stand out, but oh well..
15:10 Despite knowing absolutely zero french, I could still recognize which sentence was correct. I don't get how anyone who's learned any french at all could possibly get that wrong
Early adopters are encountering a lot of bugs. I chose French because after 50 years I’m a bit rusty. I have been rooting for him because of his health problems for years but this is major disappointment.Hope they get the bugs out but but I won’t be continuing
I downloaded Fluyo as a total beginner in Korean, and I have to say that now I’ve gotten used to it, I do enjoy it. However I am using the app alongside other apps and tools, and my motivation to learn comes more from the fact that I’m learning Korean to surprise my friend from Korea, rather than the app being gamified. I think as a complete beginner I like the slower speed, and I often pause lessons to write things down and create my own practice sentences etc. It’s definitely janky, but I’m intrigued to see how it (hopefully) improves over time as my language skills grow with the app. I also just love my dolphin I can’t lie 😂
Same. Also, while I obviously support anyone learning a language in whatever ways are open to them, if someone has to use loads of other resources on top of Fluyo, then it's not fulfilling it's original mission.
I wrote this comment and then immediately got hit with the Fluyo paywall limit… I know I should have expected it, but the app lets you get quite far until it suddenly doesn’t let you access any more content. Idk, would have been nice for the free version to still let you actually continue learning the language, even if it’s limited. But it just stops 😭
I don't care about someone's health status. Does their product fulfill its scope or solve a problem Better than existing offers? It is a yes or no question. No, then it's worth is zero.
In truth, everyone feels that way, but it will inevitably get brought up... you watch, SOMEONE in this comments section will be like "Well he's been bedridden, it's good for that..." but I actually don't think it is. What did all the other people do? Decide that "costly" had a gender?
I was waiting for your review on this since seeing your comment on Mike's video. You nailed it. I'd consider myself intermediate in French and I too decided to try it out for French. I chose beginner just to see what it had to offer. One of the first words the app taught me was "bonjour" (to be expected right?), it asked me to type in the answer so I typed "hello".... it told me "hello" was wrong and the correct answer was "good day". I decided it wasn't worth my while to use it after that.
I don’t get the choose the gender of a noun in English thing, in French it is the word that has a gender not the object itself so it doesn’t make sense to assign a gender without knowing the word. (Not to mention some words can have different meanings depending on the gender)
Exactly like in italian a courgette could be both femminine zucchina or masculine zucchino 2 words for the same thing habing two different genders, i couldnt find another example in french lol
Actually, a gender thing is what convinced me for good that natural acquisition is 100% real. Because I don't know the Swedish gender for "beer"... or at least, I thought I didn't. Until another high level Swedish speaker was like "Wait... is it "ett öl" or "en öl"...???" and I was like "It's... en öl... WAIT NO IT DEPENDS! You are talking about a particular brand and brew of beer, like "Nottingham Pale Ale"... so it's ETT in that case... but if you mean like "Let's grab a beer", it's "en"." And as I was saying all that I was like "I know this is right, but I have no recollection of ever learning this."
I stopped following Ikenna a long time ago because he made all those clickbait videos about learning languages in a ridiculously short amount of time. I was unaware of any health issues.
I really do feel bad for the guy, I believe his health issues are real, and it's really a devastating condition, but...the guy is 100% a business-man rather than a language enthusiast...he learned like 3 languages to a B-1 level and then immediately began focusing on how to sell people the idea of quick and easy fluency, and that has always been what his channel and brand is about
And the thing is... it's completely OK to be a business man and NOT a language enthusiast. But then the product has to be good... like, Jeff Bezos didn't get super rich by being an online shopping enthusiast. He got there by making Amazon clearly the best option for so many things. Fluyo isn't the best option for anything except clowning on.
Ikenna is someone that is an avid learner of languages. The fact that he tested this and thought this was ok for release. I tested the korean on apple and it was meh at best. The speech was so slow and the snake path you learn the same 6 verbs through an entire journey. The games like the memory game is a bit ok. There are better apps than fluyo and duolingo when learning korean like Sejong apps or lingory. Fluyo has a long way to go
not sure to the exact numbers but I figure it just went to supporting the developers living for 5 years. 5 years of salary paid to 4 people on the team each earning 75k per year (not unusual in the software dev world) comes out to 1.5m and almost certainly there were additional contracts, employees, and project costs involved. It's just a really expensive thing to make if you're not doing it completely on the side as a passion project
@@Quest-Givereven if it was 60k which is relatively common to low for even beginners in tech in most tech hubs, the difference could be easily explained by contractors as you mentioned. I'd definitely guess that's where it went. Unless something illegal happened, anyway.
Thanks for running those numbers... I couldn't be bothered, I just know it's not something I'm in a rush to do haha. But the thing is, they definitely didn't have 5 years of full time salary. He didn't hire anyone for at least 1 year, and that was only one person. I don't think it was ALL spent on the app, to be honest... and that's not me accusing Ikenna of fraud, I just mean, he admitted to a decent chunk coming from his video course... well, that's his money then, and if he wants to spend it on the app, he can. I think there would have been a lot of legal stuff to pay, plus all the narrators (someone said it was TTS, which it definitely wasn't in French)... But yeah, it is a little bit... well, it's a lot of money haha.
The problem with fluyo being marketed as a "better duolingo" is that the bar is already so low and they have less money. I knew the frenzy years ago would lead to this, but I didn't want to say it at the time because it would look bad.
So in the future when they work with the feedback improving the app and removing bugs could you see your self coming back to review it again and make an update video?
I couldn't while I was trying to create my own but if I just used a gmail account to sign me in, it worked... until it stopped working for some other reason, of course.
I read comments in Reddit from a couple years ago where people predicted from the screenshots that it’s just another vocab app. In and of itself, that’s fine for those who like it. What gets me is that someone who’s claimed to be a polyglot put words OUT OF CONTEXT in the game. Putting words in context-especially in an SRS-is a very basic learner concept. In hoping it gets better. I like Ikenna and his personality and tenacity. Thanks for putting this together for us, Lamont.
Don't worry, after you pick a language they force you to keep learning the same language. /s I chose Korean (beginner / no knowledge) because it was one of the "fully-supported" languages, and now I can't switch to any other language. (menu buttons don't work besides home and story mode)
@dragoon0anime that's interesting. I chose intermediate French and was able to later select Japanese, and can now toggle between the two. probably one of many bugs
I was able to select Japanese but for the first day or so it crashed every time I tried to open it... I think it's because one part of the app was telling the device I needed to see the Japanese home screen while another was saying I needed to see the French one... or something. This is why I wouldn't develop an app.
Oh boy, here we go. A lot to unpack here. So, I study multiple languages as well, and also ''a polyglot'' (whatever that means). For the past three years, I have been producing content in Portuguese about language learning. Having participated in the kickstarter and watched your video about Ikenna and Nathaniel 6-7 years ago, here's my 2 cents: First of all, the app sucks.And sucks bad. And that's sad because I liked the guy and was actually *waiting* for the app. I decided to hold-on on my boring ass anki-german journey because it would be _awesome_ to learn it with Fluyo. Man, I don't even know what to say. Don't know why no one mentioned it, but the German vocabulary in the app is just weird. A lot of ''communistisch'' things, and I'm not choosing sides here, just saying like... why is that in the app? And I could name like 30 words like that. Regimen. Partei. That sounds like grabbing a vocabulary list in German on the internet and throwing in the app, because since I actually studied german, I know that people there do talk about those things. But if a linguist actually worked on the game, he would quickly point out that this is deeply flawed. Vocabulary usage is HIGHLY subjective. (Btw, important to mention, I have a degree in Linguistics, and this is one of the most non L2 friendly apps ever) I was actually speedrunning the journey mode trying to find the endgame (non existent ofc) which is usually where the fun is in most games. And I played the alpha, beta, and the pr (alpha 2 apparently) In any case, I agree with everything on the video. 3 million on this just doesn't make any sense. There are PLENTY of amazing games that cost 1% of that. And I could just change their language in the menu, and it would be way better than Fluyo already. To be honest, again, I like the guy and wish him the best, but I'm going to be brutally honest here because I feel somewhat betrayed. To me, he just seemed like a dreamer man-child who actually had resources and convinced his younger audience to hop on his dream. His team are his hard-working underqualified friends who helped him in his narrative. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is, abosutely, an immature decision. I thought he took the decision and then would be professional but... summing his ebooks, courses, and everything really, I think that Ikenna doesn't know what he's doing most of the time. Which again man, is NOT a bad thing! But you NEED to be transparent on that. Go seek help, you know. Hire a team to hire a team. Don't take everything on the chest, that's a lot of responsibility. Also, I feel so bad saying this, but the girl in the game is basically his girlfriend. Which I get it, she stood with you in the darkest days, but business is business. That girl doesn't help in anything in the game. Animation is expansive, man, just remove her from the game and the game would be 30% better already just through resource management. Why invest so much in animation and mouth tracking, and to do that for EVERY language like bro WHAT YOU ONN lol there's red flags EVERYWHERE!! And if he decided to went on with it just because of his gf... I'm trying to not be too judgmental here, because I'll say again: I LIKE THE DUDE. But man, this app is just bad decision after bad decision. He could get a WAAAAY better result with way less money with an actually prepared team, with a leader that will actually make the right decisions for it. Maybe because of his health, but I think the summary of the situation is that Ikenna made a very bad entrepreneurship move. He was right on the narrative, after all, 3 millie raised is not a joke, but I guess that's about it... He needed someone to take the decisions right from the go. I remember he was looking for a COO (which I even applied for the job but never got a response btw, but I also think I do not have the experience nor knowledge to handle that, seeing where it lead), but when the COO joined, Fluyo was already 2 years in. The important decisions were already made, and they were mostly wrong. I bought the dream with him and his team, bought the shit, applied for jobs, followed everything but let's clean the room man, they're just unprofessionals. Potential, the concept yeah, the app no. The best overall approach for Ikenna from my perspective, is to take the punch in the mouth, admit your mistakes, clarify where t f these 3 million went, be humble and less ambitious, slowly progress the app through the years and in 15 years it could be something. That's the route most companys do either way. After all, if it ACTUALLY is the dream of his life and not some coping mechanism bc of his condition, he should be looking for a 15 year+ investment with a happy smile, for Fluyo to be anything near ''the revolution of language learning''. I was 21 when I first got to know Ikenna. I'm 28 now. I was a young boy, now a man, and if I could say anything to that kid who saved 3 months of savings to buy the KS, would be to not invest emotionally in the dreams of others. I know that's just me, but my point is his narrative persuades young people as I was at the time. And this is dangerous, you know... To conclude, would love to know if you would like to chat about Fluyo and L2 Apps @daysandwords, maybe we could collab, that would be cool. Anyway, thanks for the video. Was very therapeutic for me, as you can see lol Happy learning to all (including Ikenna, wish the guy all the best)... Edit: about the girl in the app, I get it that she teaches you the language, my point is that the same results could be achieved with less effort had not the emotional side of it been involved.
And so it was that the missing manuscript for "The Winds of Winter" was found, buried in the comments section of a video about a language learning app.
Anyway, in seriousness, now that I've had time to read your comment properly, yeah, I agree with everything. Even his latest video kind of confirms that he had the attitude of "Where there's a will, there's a way" - which is a great attitude for many things, but when it comes to actually publishing it... it should have been more like "Where there's a will, there's a way to fix all the flaws in the app." I also think that he attracts similar personalities; so the people who wrote to him to go work for him and whatever were similar. There are also numerous reports from people who were beta testers that they submitted all this feedback months ago... and the app is still like that now.
@@daysandwords yeah... he keeps saying "have patience with us, were a small team" and I'm like yeah.. that's the problem lol. I just hope this was a humbling experience for him tbh
This was way better than my video lol i just got too frustrated that i couldn't get the girl to let me continue. I tested it on my phone and it seems to work now but this just makes me more curious on how what the Japanese course looks like in the higher levels.
Thanks Mike. It's funny how all these comments on your video were like "Wow I didn't know you did this channel" and I was like "This is the first time I've ever seen you... but I can tell that this isn't your main channel." Can you tell me the name of one of your bigger channels so I can watch other videos?
@@daysandwords my main channel is @bijuumike but its just gaming content. Totally the opposite of what im gonna do with my new channel so i understand if its not something that interests you. Thank for the shoutout btw!
also you are way more knowledgeable when it comes to speaking about language. Im dumb at the end of the day but i do love leaning Japanese so i wanted to make some lighthearted content about my journey and hopefully inspire someone
My son has probably seen your main channel, or would be interested to see it. And yeah don't worry, I get the whole totally different genres across channels thing... I kind of want to start a photography, or music channel... all the channels.
Wait, you’re telling me the language guru influence with zero experience in education, pedagogy or game development failed at making a video game that teaches you to learn foreign languages? I am shocked. This has got to be the first time a language guru has sold a poorly designed unscientific method for learning language. /s
Honestly I think the only concept of a game being used to learn a language that makes sense would be where the player gets lost in a country. Can make it RPG with typical quest and stuff but have them not know the language and have to go around and learn new stuff. Have the language be deeply integrated into it. Yes, it would still be less efficient than just studying, but for those who can’t seem to study it could get them honed in. There’s a very delicate balance these language learning games need to have but all fail to reach.
I may sound like a POS, but with how poorly the levels are actually ranked it kind of makes me question if Ikenna even actually speaks any of the languages he claims to. He might, but he also might speak just enough to make it seems like he does. Like, he just does the entire pimsleur course and learns nothing more.
Oh I've never really thought that Ikenna had a working subconscious knowledge of any of them except French, since he lives in Belgium... but I'm sure that they got the results in French that they did by equalising and automating the Asian languages with the European languages, so that if you can hear the difference between one sentence and another in Japanese, you must also be at that level in French.
@@daysandwords Which is wild when English and Japanese barely have cognates while just about the entire higher register of French and English is Romance, and in English in good part via French. Nobody will ever fail at knowing what automobile means but _kuruma_ they sure will.
I saw his video speaking French and oh my, there are cuts in the video to every sentences he spoke. Seems like his other languages he spoke are better if not awesome though
in the spanish selection fluyo's "advanced" section is lower intermediate at best. i deleted it when the app marked "to turn off" as the direct english translation of "apagar" wrong 🙃
I did the upper intermediate german course. Not only was the vocabulary easy it also had mistakes... like der Roman (novel) was written roman (lowercase) when you had to choose 1 out of 4 options and you ALWAYS write nouns with a first letter capitalized
Yeah there were a lot of errors I didn't get into here either. I should have addressed its weirdest sentence. It made grammatical sense but no logical sense.
Can you do another review of your top language learning app recommendations? Your last one was 5 years ago, but as you said, you've learnt a lot more about language learning since then. Thanks if you do :D
Is it possible for a Kickstarter backer to get a refund? I feel like I've seriously been ripped off and the app failed to deliver on its promises. How can I go about getting a refund? Someone help me 😭😭😭
Hey, idk if everyone else has this problem or I’m blind, but I can’t find where the “lesson” tab is. I picked the intermediate Japanese course because I am not that great at Japanese, but I can’t find the area where I can take the “lessons.” If there is a tab that I am missing than I would suppose there should’ve been a tutorial on how to navigate or a better UI.
Hmmm. I did two years of French at school 38 years ago, and I got that audio question right. I would describe myself as solidly intermediate at Japanese, but I'm pretty sure the trigger words for separating those sentences are beginner level stuff even then. The things that make Japanese hard are the writing system and the sentence construction strategy, not really the vocabulary per se.
True, but the vocabulary of Japanese is mostly so different from English that you wouldn’t be able to guess it without knowing some Japanese, whereas I could easily answer all the advanced French questions with almost no background in French.
Many apps and even textbooks calling themselves advanced are really maybe A2 level. That French was ridiculously easy. I had no problems with it and have only dabbled a teensy bit in French. Among language learning games, I kind of like Lingo Legend. It asks you a few questions to judge your level. It’s still basically translations and vocabulary, but it makes the reviews gradually harder. It starts with true/false questions and multiple choice and then moves on to making you spell things out. And you get to fight monsters and run a farm. There is still a bit too much English in the story line, but if you’re looking for something fun to do between bouts of serious learning and aren’t advanced enough to just play regular games in your target language, it’s kind of nice.
Thank you for not mincing your words. I respect it. I get that it's tempting to sugarcoat things given the situation but at the end of the day, we're still talking about people's hard-earned money and their free time. It's wrong to sugarcoat. If I'm being honest, I had a strong feeling that it was going to turn out exactly the way it did solely based on the screenshots I saw years ago. Just a boring Luodingo-esque game tacked onto a 2000s MMO. Trash TTS, no context for the words, useless multiple choice exercises. Also, the thing with "now"/"maintenant" makes me think they just fed word lists through Google Translate or something. lol I laughed so hard at the repeated clips of you typing out "initiative" as an answer for "initiative".
Actually one thing that I forgot to mention was that it's NOT TTS... the audio was actually quite good. Some people have had probablems with it trimming the start and end of single words (again, single words are dumb anyway), so that they couldn't hear the words properly, but on the full sentences, the audio is most certainly not TTS and is much better than Duolingo for that reason. I know... "initiative... consequence... situation... perserverance..." I think they scraped blocks of text for it, which is how they get that "désormais" means "now" and such stuff.
I genuinely burst out laughing when you were talking and you had “I was waiting for the Japanese lesson to load while I was filming this” in the corner of your screen😂 But in all seriousness I feel bad for Ikenna and his team. With the amount of years and money this took and this was the results that’s pretty disappointing.
the game is too buggy, you get the ad popup everytime you get back to the "main page" or completing a lesson (which can take 10 min if you have the non talking bug) The app was too rushed and should be cooked for a longer time! They should've wait till summer until release ngl
To me the bugs aren't really disappointing, the disappointing thing is that there is no concept here of a game that is any different to any other thing currently on the market, when what was promised was something totally new that would finally be a one-stop-shop for fluency. That said the marketing to this point has shown so little of the actual game or really told us what is supposed to make it new that there is no huge surprise there. It felt from the beginning that there was a grand idea and a minimum viable product, but that the former was never really the guiding light for the latter.
I’m only partway through the video but I will say it’s interesting that Fluyo used a different word for “now” in you French intermediate course because I’m a French beginner on Fluyo (have never spoken French) and one of the first words it taught me was “now” as “maintenant” instead of the one you saw - I wish it communicated the differentiation between the two for those in the intermediate stage.
I like the idea so much but yeah I think to *really* flesh it out would take a huge budget. If you want to gamify, it’s better to get to an intermediate level in your TL and then play an actual game in that language. For the big languages, you can find so many games that support your TL. Heck, I’ve found a good amount of games in that are in Finnish or have a large Finnish player base I can communicate with.
I’m seriously hoping they’re able to improve! I love the concept but I do have to admit everything feels a bit off… The 3D characters feel a bit out of place and I feel it lacks a lot of aesthetic (There’s barely any animations or satisfying sound effects), this without mentioning the actual language learning. I still bought the yearly premium because I believe in the app, but it seriously will require a lot of updates.
Lots of people are saying that but honestly I'm not hopeful. The parts that are good about it were already set like 3 years ago, that is, the graphics etc. I don't imagine they can do enough work to the language learning side of things to make it a good app... and if they do, I think it'll take 2 years minimum.
To me it's expecially frustrating how ikenna is very negative over the way Duolingo teaching languages and said he would make a better app, when apart of like a different UI it feels almost like the same experience imo.
18:33 if you want to skip *to* the Surf Shark segment. It made me laugh after a rather depressing video. Bugs can be fixed, but the underlying concepts seems to be an even bigger problem.
I like how Amrakonto did it for teaching Esperanto. It was a game/visual novel that actually goes through using the language in situations (in the game, the character ends up in a weird world where they speak Esperanto and she has to figure out the language through context mostly). There's a story and it's engaging. Way better than this type of stuff
I’m watching this coz I saw your comment/feedback on Japan Mike’s video! I ranted a whole bunch about my disappointment there so I’ll just not talk about that here. But yes, DISAPPOINTING. Especially considering the funding
Haha. If I see Fluyo p*** I will definitely review. Certain things have prevented me from doing this but I've often really wanted to talk about how much erotic literature there is in Swedish (like 20 new audiobooks a week), and the pros/cons of listening to it for language acquisition. 🤣
I think ikenna’s idea was too ambitious. I remember him saying “this app is going to be as addictive as playing a video game you love”. For someone that never made a language learning app or a game, this is too much. Maybe he should’ve started with something more simple, like an app with basic courses for a few languages, or a vocabulary app
I really don't get it thou. He literally knows that the best way to learn is natural aquisition. So why did he not actually imply ANY ways of doing so? He also knows the method that Ankinis using and how even with paper flashcards you end up repeating the words you don't know well yet more often than thise xou already kinda know. Yet the flashcards will show me 2 words that are not cognants vs 8 that are basically the same word in both languages! How on earth am I supposed to actually learn those 2 new words at this rate?
"He literally knows that the best way to learn is natural aquisition." Do you know where he said that? As some others in the comments section have pointed out, he's not really very fluent in any other language (at least, not by my definition of fluent).
@@daysandwords He wrote an e-book a while back called Fluency Made Easy where he outlined his language learning philosophy. He basically recommended a few programs to start, Pimsleur and Assimil, and then iTalki lessons and comprehensible input. It’s actually a pretty good roadmap to fluency for some people, and it’s largely the path I followed. I don’t think his prescription will work for all types of learners, but I think he basically gets how languages are learned. That’s why it was so disappointing to find that Fluyo was just an unwieldy vocab app
I found this app through that one "language app tiers ranks" video were fluyo was put on the upmost tier! Thought wow - that looks absolutely terrible for actual learning. Guess I was right...It is kinda sad but to be expected.
In French and in France at least, "vaincre une épreuve" is not grammatically correct, and not idiomatic, it seems to be translated directly from English. The person who created the exercise just had to make the biiiiiig effort of going on Google Translate to get the right expression! When you are at an intermediate level, you already know that some endings always have the same gender, or to make the difference between an adjective and an infinitive verb that always ends in ir or er in French, which makes the deduction of the right word easy. It seems that this inadequacy between the exercises and the supposed level is really a big flaw of the app.
16:54 you are being waaaay too kind here. you can just say what we're all thinking, this needs to be a different app entirely 😭 like the team did not make any of the methods worthwhile, it does what duolingo does but worse, and the "game" part is so uninteresting and lackluster you'd have more fun studying grammar from a textbook lol.
Advanced vocabulary usually includes words that are for complicated concepts and stuff demanding expertise, but unlucky for this app, French and English have more similarities on that level. "House" and "maison" are different enough, but when it comes to a word like "architecture" I don't even have to repeat, because it's the same word in both English and French. The approach on directly adapting all language levels cannot work in this. As I have even participated in his Kickstarter campaign, I really hope that this thing goes better. Nice idea but not everything that looks good in imagination and paper, works in real life.
"House" and "maison" are different enough." The thing about French that I think many people "underestimate" is that it is VERY much the exception that two words don't share SOMETHING, e.g. "maison"... I think immediately of masonry, as in brick-work... others might think of mansion. Some with "livre"... It's skippable to "library". People look at German and Swedish and say "Aha, English is Germanic because I heard that in a video and now I am smart... LOOK! The Swedish word for "book" is "bok"! That must be so easy!" Sure, but the Swedish word for "doctor" is "läkare" while the French word is "médicin" or "docteur".
@ the word for “doctor” in several Slavic languages do sound like the Swedish “läkare”. Лекар (lekar) in Bulgarian and Serbian, “lijekar” in Bosnian, “lekár” in Slovak, “lékař” in Czech and “лікар” (likar) in Ukrainian. In Russian the word for medicine is лекарство (lekartsva). I founded it out during my Finnish tryout on Duolingo, the word for that was “lääkäri” and at first I thought it was something to do with the time they were under Russian control, but as the Swedish word was also “läkare” the connection might be different.
I tried multiple languages and did learn a little Spanish and Japanese beforehand. I tried both and idk… the gameplay is tedious, music is okay, the words you start with are okay, but it wasn’t as challenging. But when you do everything else… oh boy don’t get me started on that woman. They try to explain simpler things so complicated that I couldn’t understand what they wanted from me anymore 😂 in Japanese they tried to implement learning hiragana, not katakana and kanji later. But weirdly the first hiragana you’d learn are う、て、ひ、し、 つ and I think also ち? Why?😂 why not start with あ、い、う、え、お like everyone else? I also tried Korean too, as it’s fully supported and I haven’t touched it yet, but it wasn’t like Japanese where you learn their alphabet first, they expected me to know Hangul right then and there 😂 no need to say I was frustrated and didn’t understand anything that they tried to tell me. The other, less supported languages only have flashcards, which are nice, but you could get it from anki and maybe more. All in all, I’ll wait until it maybe gets better or don’t use it at all anymore, which makes me sad because I waited like everyone else quite a long time. Sorry if this reads weird, I’m from Germany and just wanted to rant a little 😂 have a nice day!
Both the IOS and Android apps have major problems that make them unusable. On both, I can't click any menu buttons except for home. Clicking to go forward lags horribly, if it works at all. Samsung s24U and iPhone 14 pro max, both updated,
Yeah I am not sure about his French... I mean he lives in Belgium but he's also been bedridden for most of that time. I always got the impression that he was being cagey about not revealing exactly what his French was like.
@@daysandwords Ikenna was in the Netherlands for about 2 years. He had an interview, and people were pointing out his level was not fluent, as it was also noticeable the mistakes he made. That was native speakers noticing them though. Ikenna is smart enough to know, that he does not have to actually prove it, as viewers would believe it if they don't know enough about the languages themselves. Example: One viewer for some reason or another thought Ikenna was also literate (Read and write) in all eight languages he claimed to speak. Despite, not making even one video of ever addressing that topic.
"That was native speakers noticing them though." Native speakers are actually a lot more forgiving of errors, even subconsciously, than learners. Native speakers filter what you say and essentially correct it before they've even understood it... meaning they often forget, within a few seconds, that you even made the error. I have a friend who isn't Swedish but when she speaks Swedish it feels like I'm driving down a road with speedbumps, cos it's like "....huh that's not... ...um yeah ok it's INTE first... no that's "göra"... " but I have studied her husband's face (he IS Swedish) and he doesn't seem to even notice haha.
💯 Only positive: “The music is not the worst” 😂 What gets me about Ikenna is how he slated other established learning apps to convince people that he was building something to floor them all, and, bugs aside, Fluyo is the worst learning experience I’ve had hands down.
I want to say something good about it, because I agree with you on everything. The production was pretty poor. But the mnemonics for learning the japanese alphabet was pretty good. My wife who has never learned japanese picked it up super quick.
@@daysandwords oh I must have missed that one because the nordic noir stuff was too scary haha. But scrolling your videos does remind me that you used piano playing as a metaphor in that video series that I've watched several times! Always thrilled to see more of 'my people' in the language community:) especially since I also happen to be currently writing a piece based on folklore in my TL region (Brythonic). And I've already done a choral piece years ago about a Slavic water spirit, when I was learning Polish. There's something about water-related stories
Yeah, I agree. It also already looked like this about 3 years ago... so I'm not sure what they've been doing for 2 or 3 years... Certainly not the language learning part of it.
I would never have figured out there was a limit on lesson per day. The game is so laggy that it takes 3-5mins just to load in my phone, sure it's an old phone, I give you that. I think they tried to cook too hard on graphics using 3D models it feels like I'm trying to run GTA6 on my potato PC. I did enjoyed the anki pre-build decks. When learning a new language, I usually feel lost about which decks to add.
I've been waiting for your review - tho I knew you would say things like these. I absolutely agree - but to me it would be hard to stay that kind towards Ikenna. This product combined with all the false advertisements is a borderline scam, to be honest. I'm a game developer and I know how hard it is to create something like that - so my expectations were super low - but this app is just a disgrace in so many ways. :(
With all the toil and turmoil that Ikenna went through to finally get it out, it's hard to give it a "meh" review but so far that's the best I can do. I know they're gonna be scrambling to improve things but I didn't have any performance issues with the app running, so that's not a criticism from me. I just couldn't get into the game or get any sense that I was going to learn much from the app in a way that makes me want to keep going.
I am still reeling from the fact that Ikenna tried to soft-blame Duolingo for meddling in their appstore approval... like, bro, a $15 billion company isn't interested in your broken dolphin.
I don't think he actually meant it to be a con or a scam, but certainly a lot of his "...speaks this many languages..." videos are total garbage. Way back in the day, like more than 5 years ago, I made a video saying that he and Nathaniel Drew were both full of it for their "Learned a language in 7 days" videos (yes I know they are clickbait but Nathaniel's video is particularly insidious because it backs out without backing out...) - anyway, Ikenna changed the title of his, which I thought was a pretty fair response. Nathaniel went and cried to his audience, which was a Nathaniel response.
I loved that Video (of yours)! When I saw it, I was learning Italiam for 2 years and struggled with it while these guys make videos about learning languages in 7 days.
@@daysandwords Yeah, he changed the title of that video because it was too much of a red flag. He still had one final scam to pull before he could allow himself to be revealed as the grifter he is. Having an illness doesnt give you a free pass to lie and rob people.
I unlisted that video because I didn't like how vague I'd been about the points I was making. My main point was that Nathaniel was having his cake and eating it too. He was getting to say that he'd learned Italian in 7 days without having to actually show anything to back that up.
Quite possibly! Normally my French accent is pretty good but I did record that at 1am because I'd forgotten that I'd left placeholder audio in there, plus my French is never great while I'm switching between English and French. But I'm glad it sounds Swedish and not just Australian.
I agree. The app in its current state is not achieving the goals the developers wanted to. This project, as it stands at the moment, I objectively is a failure. Can it become a better app? If they’re willing to change the structure and lean into the gamification more, sure. They’re trying to sell it as a language learning “game” but it has hardly any entertaining gameplay to it. Also the fact that the guy is chronically ill should not have any influence on the perception of the app. Is it sad, of course. But he’s not the only person working on it. In my opinion, they need to focus on context-based learning and update the game aspect to be more fun. Thanks for the video! I remember asking you to make one and here it is, keep it up! Edit: I did not intend for the message to look like I just asked and you made the video, sorry for the miscommunication on my part… I was just excited and was happy to see a video that I asked for but I should have worded it better
Just to correct you on that last point, I had already made this (shot it) several days before you asked me to make one. It's my job to make videos about language learning.
To be fair many games are rushed and released way too early, at least Fluyo got that aspect accurate. Also since there is a Blåhaj in the Surfshark segment, I like to imagine that you have way too many of the ikea plushes for swedish immersion that can double as toys for your child.
I want to learn Ukrainian, so I bought "S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2" to play with Ukrainian voices and English subtitles, but my computer unfortunately wasn't good enough to run the game without major lagging :/
Good idea though. Part of this review that I cut was me playing Raid Shadow Legends but I cut it because I couldn't figure out how to change the language... apparently you can do it though.
Yeah, in a deleted part of the review, I was trying to set Raid Shadow Legends to another language... you can do it but I couldn't figure out how (tutorial I followed was saying a way that didn't work anymore)... but my point was that RSL isn't even a good game and is probably more better than Fluyo.
The spanish released without ANY of the wayfinder lessons (what actually teaches you the language). Not to mention the player vs AI function is completely broken and there is no way in hell you find a real person to 1v1. 2/5 MAX in my book but I haven't seen the other languages.
Go to surfshark.com/lamont for 4 extra months of Surfshark!
Lamont, your videos are always a pleasure to watch! Your narrative is always spot on! I think Ikenna should get some slack for publishing his app despite his health complications, it's amazing how quickly Fluyo released, a lot of other leaders would have probably let the project die along the way, so big respects for that. As to the many bugs and user experience, I'm surprised they didn't have more internal testing rounds before rushing this out. A lot of times users would accept a delay for a better first experience.
I'm actually building a language video game myself, we're going to drop a new demo real soon, if at any point you'd be interesting at taking a look at it, I'd be deeply honored! Or do any collaboration with you, I'm running a language TH-cam channel myself :)
As for Fluyo, let's hope the team is able to eradicate some of their bugs and improve the experience, I want there to be solid competition in the language learning gamified space :)
Keep up the great work, best,
Manu
Remember: linguist ≠ teacher
It's like a mechanical engineer ≠ a driving instructor. Yes, there are people who understand the nuts and bolts of a language that can also teach it, but they are fundamentally two different skills.
Yeah, I know... Like David Crystal is a linguist for the English language... but when you say you put together a team of this, that and linguistS (plural), then I'd think you're implying that someone who knew something about language acquisition was involved.
Even Ikenna himself... I mean, I've never thought he was the be all and end all of polyglots... he's pretty obviously a "a few languages to A2" kind of guy... but even so, he has lived in Belgium long enough that I would have thought he knew that asking what the gender of "poisson" is makes no sense for learning.
Yes but any linguist would be able to tell you that adjectives don't have an inherent gender in French.
Babe wake up new "bro this will totally be the game that makes you learn a language" game has dropped
So ironic when all you really have to do is just play not even a language learning game but a normal game, in the target language, which is arguably even better
@@dragonicbladex7574 "Mom! What's a flamethrower?"
I totally agree. I don't think it would be going to far to say that it's pointless having an app/game to teach you the whole language.@@dragonicbladex7574
i had low expectations already because of the way ikenna was talking about it. every time i hear the word "gamify" i have little alarms going off in my head
I don't mind gamification.. the problem is, this isn't really a full game, because there's no story and you're just answering the same 7 questions over and over again.
For me it's the dependence on translation. When Lamont showed the game quizzing the genders USING THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION I'm like nope I'm out
gamifying learning, especially language learning (or maybe not "especially", it's just my personal focus), sounds like a neat idea in theory, but it always boils down to flashcards / a quiz
I remember how I wanted to make my own version of Duolingo for my conlang, only to realize very quickly that I might as well release an Anki deck with words mixed with sentence flashcards and it'd be a thousand times better
either it's just a stupid idea that can't be executed well OR we're approaching it from the stupidest side possible
@autumnblaze6267 I feel like there's potential for a language learning game that isn't just flashcards and quizzes. I'm thinking more like a normal game in your TL, but the dialogue is written based on vocabulary and structures in progressively higher levels, like a graded reader.
Welp that's my pitch, I gotta start an app development team now.
But then again this wouldn't work well for beginners slash language learning newcomers, which is the market that every app is targeting
Do u know what gamified language learning is? Simply just playing a "proper" video game in that language entirely! Aka how a good portion of us europeans learned english 😅For me, the fun part about learning a language is actually having the feeling that you learned something. I want it to be fast paced and rewarding! And I want the reward to be "Yay I just understood that sentence!" and not "Yay, I slayed an underwater monster and got 100 points" I just found duolingo so TERRIBLY frustrating because I'm wastin 50% of my time on "fun" animations, cut scenes, boosters and ads.
Yep I'm sticking with comprehensible input + Anki
My personal method is incomprehensible output
@@notaname8140😂😂😂😂
😂@@notaname8140
@@notaname8140😂
Same.
We need a Lamont Japanese 0-100% fluency Fluyo journey video on the channel stat. I mean he's basically an advanced learner already /s
Also keep track of how much of that journey was loading screens, app crashed and bugs
He's so modest about how he's actually D2 in dozens of languages.
Brave of you to do an honest review. Due to the health issues and all I became too afraid to be critical of Ikenna but I felt very critical of his channel and the app just seemed like a train wreck in slow motion to me. I unsubscribed years ago.
yea I also, I do like Ikenna, I even bought his E-book a couple years ago....but....he has always struck me as more of a salesman/businessman more than a true language enthusiast....I really do hope his health improves, his condition is really horrible and I empathize, but I don't think he is very genuine about his intentions unfortunately
I was playing and was just floored by how boring it was to play.
EXACTLY!!! That was the first thing I noticed. I didn't wanna do the battles, and then when I learned "new words" they were usually cognates......
I got the subscription just because the ad was irritating. And after some time I discovered Anki exists:D
Like, they tried to make a 10 in 1 app and honestly failed.
I develop games and know how hard it is to actually develop a bug-free and smooth game which is fun, entertaining, and snappy.
And on top of that lies the main function - language learning, that must be faster and more efficient than other apps to stand out, but oh well..
15:10 Despite knowing absolutely zero french, I could still recognize which sentence was correct. I don't get how anyone who's learned any french at all could possibly get that wrong
My 13 year old was able to do all of it (except the stupid gender questions) and he's never learned any and he's not interested in language stuff.
Early adopters are encountering a lot of bugs. I chose French because after 50 years I’m a bit rusty. I have been rooting for him because of his health problems for years but this is major disappointment.Hope they get the bugs out but but I won’t be continuing
Comprehensible input remains undefeated. Nothing ever happens.
A good app is a stepping stone into CI, like Speakly.
From day 1, it's got you listening to 4 minute passages with tonnes of new vocab.
@@daysandwords I wanted to use Speakly but it doesn't teach Japanese, Korean or Chinese which are the only languages I want to learn
Can vouch for this! Speakly was really good. Moved on to Clozemaster afterwards just to have frequency lists to work on every day.
That’s the way
Not Breaking News: Comprehensible is STILL the best way to learn languages.
I downloaded Fluyo as a total beginner in Korean, and I have to say that now I’ve gotten used to it, I do enjoy it. However I am using the app alongside other apps and tools, and my motivation to learn comes more from the fact that I’m learning Korean to surprise my friend from Korea, rather than the app being gamified. I think as a complete beginner I like the slower speed, and I often pause lessons to write things down and create my own practice sentences etc. It’s definitely janky, but I’m intrigued to see how it (hopefully) improves over time as my language skills grow with the app. I also just love my dolphin I can’t lie 😂
dunno. the entire foundational concept seems to be pretty unrecoverable to me.
Same.
Also, while I obviously support anyone learning a language in whatever ways are open to them, if someone has to use loads of other resources on top of Fluyo, then it's not fulfilling it's original mission.
I wrote this comment and then immediately got hit with the Fluyo paywall limit… I know I should have expected it, but the app lets you get quite far until it suddenly doesn’t let you access any more content. Idk, would have been nice for the free version to still let you actually continue learning the language, even if it’s limited. But it just stops 😭
@@daysandwordsThis is so true. And disappointing, when we’ve (or I have) been looking forward to this app for ages!
"They hired a linguist. Did that linguist do anything?" xD
I don't care about someone's health status. Does their product fulfill its scope or solve a problem Better than existing offers? It is a yes or no question. No, then it's worth is zero.
In truth, everyone feels that way, but it will inevitably get brought up... you watch, SOMEONE in this comments section will be like "Well he's been bedridden, it's good for that..."
but I actually don't think it is. What did all the other people do? Decide that "costly" had a gender?
like i can wish you the best and still not enjoy your product. it's not a slight against the person, i just don't like it.
I was waiting for your review on this since seeing your comment on Mike's video. You nailed it. I'd consider myself intermediate in French and I too decided to try it out for French. I chose beginner just to see what it had to offer. One of the first words the app taught me was "bonjour" (to be expected right?), it asked me to type in the answer so I typed "hello".... it told me "hello" was wrong and the correct answer was "good day". I decided it wasn't worth my while to use it after that.
Your every new video is like music to my ears. I've rewatched all the old ones so many times by now they're becoming scarce
I don’t get the choose the gender of a noun in English thing, in French it is the word that has a gender not the object itself so it doesn’t make sense to assign a gender without knowing the word. (Not to mention some words can have different meanings depending on the gender)
The whole thing was completely ridiculous.
Having me guess which gender the English word "large" is had me mad confused. English is my native language, too.
Exactly like in italian a courgette could be both femminine zucchina or masculine zucchino 2 words for the same thing habing two different genders, i couldnt find another example in french lol
Actually, a gender thing is what convinced me for good that natural acquisition is 100% real.
Because I don't know the Swedish gender for "beer"... or at least, I thought I didn't. Until another high level Swedish speaker was like "Wait... is it "ett öl" or "en öl"...???"
and I was like "It's... en öl... WAIT NO IT DEPENDS! You are talking about a particular brand and brew of beer, like "Nottingham Pale Ale"... so it's ETT in that case... but if you mean like "Let's grab a beer", it's "en"."
And as I was saying all that I was like "I know this is right, but I have no recollection of ever learning this."
I stopped following Ikenna a long time ago because he made all those clickbait videos about learning languages in a ridiculously short amount of time. I was unaware of any health issues.
I really do feel bad for the guy, I believe his health issues are real, and it's really a devastating condition, but...the guy is 100% a business-man rather than a language enthusiast...he learned like 3 languages to a B-1 level and then immediately began focusing on how to sell people the idea of quick and easy fluency, and that has always been what his channel and brand is about
And the thing is... it's completely OK to be a business man and NOT a language enthusiast.
But then the product has to be good... like, Jeff Bezos didn't get super rich by being an online shopping enthusiast. He got there by making Amazon clearly the best option for so many things. Fluyo isn't the best option for anything except clowning on.
Ikenna is someone that is an avid learner of languages. The fact that he tested this and thought this was ok for release. I tested the korean on apple and it was meh at best. The speech was so slow and the snake path you learn the same 6 verbs through an entire journey. The games like the memory game is a bit ok. There are better apps than fluyo and duolingo when learning korean like Sejong apps or lingory. Fluyo has a long way to go
I don't really think he is that avid a learner of languages. I think he just likes saying he's a polyglot.
YOU USED MY REVIEW IN THE VIDEO! VERY NICE! :0
For a second I was confused... your comment review haha.
Yeah it was a good comment!
@@daysandwords Haha yeah should have been more specific xD
I saw your comment on Mr Salas's video so I was looking forward to this video. My question is where the development money (Three MILLION USD?) went?
not sure to the exact numbers but I figure it just went to supporting the developers living for 5 years. 5 years of salary paid to 4 people on the team each earning 75k per year (not unusual in the software dev world) comes out to 1.5m
and almost certainly there were additional contracts, employees, and project costs involved. It's just a really expensive thing to make if you're not doing it completely on the side as a passion project
Well, definitely to the wrong things... but I can see how you would burn through that.
@@Quest-Givereven if it was 60k which is relatively common to low for even beginners in tech in most tech hubs, the difference could be easily explained by contractors as you mentioned. I'd definitely guess that's where it went. Unless something illegal happened, anyway.
Thanks for running those numbers... I couldn't be bothered, I just know it's not something I'm in a rush to do haha.
But the thing is, they definitely didn't have 5 years of full time salary. He didn't hire anyone for at least 1 year, and that was only one person.
I don't think it was ALL spent on the app, to be honest... and that's not me accusing Ikenna of fraud, I just mean, he admitted to a decent chunk coming from his video course... well, that's his money then, and if he wants to spend it on the app, he can.
I think there would have been a lot of legal stuff to pay, plus all the narrators (someone said it was TTS, which it definitely wasn't in French)...
But yeah, it is a little bit... well, it's a lot of money haha.
@@Quest-Giverat one point I think he said there’s a team of like a 100 developers working on the app.
The problem with fluyo being marketed as a "better duolingo" is that the bar is already so low and they have less money. I knew the frenzy years ago would lead to this, but I didn't want to say it at the time because it would look bad.
Yeah I never had high hopes for it but I thought it would at least appear to work.
So in the future when they work with the feedback improving the app and removing bugs could you see your self coming back to review it again and make an update video?
They'd have to work out the LINGUISTIC PEDAGOGY bugs, which is much harder to do.
One of our students told us this app was a nightmare :( That's so sad!
I cant get through the account creation so I kinda need a video explaining what it is lmao
I couldn't while I was trying to create my own but if I just used a gmail account to sign me in, it worked... until it stopped working for some other reason, of course.
@@daysandwordsI used gmail. The 2 lesson limit came as a surprise to me.
At least that's what it appeared to be saying... I dunno if they lifted that after the first day?
In any case I kind of had to buy premium anyway.
I read comments in Reddit from a couple years ago where people predicted from the screenshots that it’s just another vocab app.
In and of itself, that’s fine for those who like it. What gets me is that someone who’s claimed to be a polyglot put words OUT OF CONTEXT in the game. Putting words in context-especially in an SRS-is a very basic learner concept.
In hoping it gets better. I like Ikenna and his personality and tenacity.
Thanks for putting this together for us, Lamont.
that's not even a prediction, isn't that what the first release was advertised as?
It’s also hard to do an app for several different languages
Don't worry, after you pick a language they force you to keep learning the same language. /s
I chose Korean (beginner / no knowledge) because it was one of the "fully-supported" languages,
and now I can't switch to any other language. (menu buttons don't work besides home and story mode)
yeah better Anki lol
@dragoon0anime that's interesting. I chose intermediate French and was able to later select Japanese, and can now toggle between the two. probably one of many bugs
I was able to select Japanese but for the first day or so it crashed every time I tried to open it... I think it's because one part of the app was telling the device I needed to see the Japanese home screen while another was saying I needed to see the French one... or something.
This is why I wouldn't develop an app.
Oh boy, here we go. A lot to unpack here.
So, I study multiple languages as well, and also ''a polyglot'' (whatever that means). For the past three years, I have been producing content in Portuguese about language learning. Having participated in the kickstarter and watched your video about Ikenna and Nathaniel 6-7 years ago, here's my 2 cents:
First of all, the app sucks.And sucks bad. And that's sad because I liked the guy and was actually *waiting* for the app. I decided to hold-on on my boring ass anki-german journey because it would be _awesome_ to learn it with Fluyo. Man, I don't even know what to say.
Don't know why no one mentioned it, but the German vocabulary in the app is just weird. A lot of ''communistisch'' things, and I'm not choosing sides here, just saying like... why is that in the app? And I could name like 30 words like that. Regimen. Partei. That sounds like grabbing a vocabulary list in German on the internet and throwing in the app, because since I actually studied german, I know that people there do talk about those things. But if a linguist actually worked on the game, he would quickly point out that this is deeply flawed. Vocabulary usage is HIGHLY subjective. (Btw, important to mention, I have a degree in Linguistics, and this is one of the most non L2 friendly apps ever)
I was actually speedrunning the journey mode trying to find the endgame (non existent ofc) which is usually where the fun is in most games. And I played the alpha, beta, and the pr (alpha 2 apparently)
In any case, I agree with everything on the video. 3 million on this just doesn't make any sense. There are PLENTY of amazing games that cost 1% of that. And I could just change their language in the menu, and it would be way better than Fluyo already.
To be honest, again, I like the guy and wish him the best, but I'm going to be brutally honest here because I feel somewhat betrayed.
To me, he just seemed like a dreamer man-child who actually had resources and convinced his younger audience to hop on his dream. His team are his hard-working underqualified friends who helped him in his narrative.
Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is, abosutely, an immature decision. I thought he took the decision and then would be professional but... summing his ebooks, courses, and everything really, I think that Ikenna doesn't know what he's doing most of the time. Which again man, is NOT a bad thing! But you NEED to be transparent on that. Go seek help, you know. Hire a team to hire a team. Don't take everything on the chest, that's a lot of responsibility.
Also, I feel so bad saying this, but the girl in the game is basically his girlfriend. Which I get it, she stood with you in the darkest days, but business is business. That girl doesn't help in anything in the game. Animation is expansive, man, just remove her from the game and the game would be 30% better already just through resource management. Why invest so much in animation and mouth tracking, and to do that for EVERY language like bro WHAT YOU ONN lol there's red flags EVERYWHERE!! And if he decided to went on with it just because of his gf... I'm trying to not be too judgmental here, because I'll say again: I LIKE THE DUDE. But man, this app is just bad decision after bad decision. He could get a WAAAAY better result with way less money with an actually prepared team, with a leader that will actually make the right decisions for it.
Maybe because of his health, but I think the summary of the situation is that Ikenna made a very bad entrepreneurship move. He was right on the narrative, after all, 3 millie raised is not a joke, but I guess that's about it... He needed someone to take the decisions right from the go. I remember he was looking for a COO (which I even applied for the job but never got a response btw, but I also think I do not have the experience nor knowledge to handle that, seeing where it lead), but when the COO joined, Fluyo was already 2 years in. The important decisions were already made, and they were mostly wrong.
I bought the dream with him and his team, bought the shit, applied for jobs, followed everything but let's clean the room man, they're just unprofessionals. Potential, the concept yeah, the app no.
The best overall approach for Ikenna from my perspective, is to take the punch in the mouth, admit your mistakes, clarify where t f these 3 million went, be humble and less ambitious, slowly progress the app through the years and in 15 years it could be something. That's the route most companys do either way.
After all, if it ACTUALLY is the dream of his life and not some coping mechanism bc of his condition, he should be looking for a 15 year+ investment with a happy smile, for Fluyo to be anything near ''the revolution of language learning''. I was 21 when I first got to know Ikenna. I'm 28 now. I was a young boy, now a man, and if I could say anything to that kid who saved 3 months of savings to buy the KS, would be to not invest emotionally in the dreams of others. I know that's just me, but my point is his narrative persuades young people as I was at the time. And this is dangerous, you know...
To conclude, would love to know if you would like to chat about Fluyo and L2 Apps @daysandwords, maybe we could collab, that would be cool. Anyway, thanks for the video. Was very therapeutic for me, as you can see lol
Happy learning to all (including Ikenna, wish the guy all the best)...
Edit: about the girl in the app, I get it that she teaches you the language, my point is that the same results could be achieved with less effort had not the emotional side of it been involved.
And so it was that the missing manuscript for "The Winds of Winter" was found, buried in the comments section of a video about a language learning app.
Anyway, in seriousness, now that I've had time to read your comment properly, yeah, I agree with everything.
Even his latest video kind of confirms that he had the attitude of "Where there's a will, there's a way" - which is a great attitude for many things, but when it comes to actually publishing it... it should have been more like "Where there's a will, there's a way to fix all the flaws in the app."
I also think that he attracts similar personalities; so the people who wrote to him to go work for him and whatever were similar. There are also numerous reports from people who were beta testers that they submitted all this feedback months ago... and the app is still like that now.
@@daysandwords yeah... he keeps saying "have patience with us, were a small team" and I'm like yeah.. that's the problem lol. I just hope this was a humbling experience for him tbh
This was way better than my video lol i just got too frustrated that i couldn't get the girl to let me continue. I tested it on my phone and it seems to work now but this just makes me more curious on how what the Japanese course looks like in the higher levels.
Thanks Mike.
It's funny how all these comments on your video were like "Wow I didn't know you did this channel" and I was like "This is the first time I've ever seen you... but I can tell that this isn't your main channel."
Can you tell me the name of one of your bigger channels so I can watch other videos?
@@daysandwords my main channel is @bijuumike but its just gaming content. Totally the opposite of what im gonna do with my new channel so i understand if its not something that interests you. Thank for the shoutout btw!
also you are way more knowledgeable when it comes to speaking about language. Im dumb at the end of the day but i do love leaning Japanese so i wanted to make some lighthearted content about my journey and hopefully inspire someone
My son has probably seen your main channel, or would be interested to see it.
And yeah don't worry, I get the whole totally different genres across channels thing... I kind of want to start a photography, or music channel... all the channels.
I dunno about that... learning Japanese is probably about 3x as much work as learning Swedish so...
Been YEARS since I spoke French, "maintenent" is where my mind went. Lol
You have the best surfshark segments of all youtube.
Thanks Sonya!
Wait, you’re telling me the language guru influence with zero experience in education, pedagogy or game development failed at making a video game that teaches you to learn foreign languages?
I am shocked. This has got to be the first time a language guru has sold a poorly designed unscientific method for learning language. /s
Honestly I think the only concept of a game being used to learn a language that makes sense would be where the player gets lost in a country. Can make it RPG with typical quest and stuff but have them not know the language and have to go around and learn new stuff. Have the language be deeply integrated into it.
Yes, it would still be less efficient than just studying, but for those who can’t seem to study it could get them honed in. There’s a very delicate balance these language learning games need to have but all fail to reach.
1:40 I've already tried to create an account 10 times, even selecting different options, and it still doesn't work :((
I may sound like a POS, but with how poorly the levels are actually ranked it kind of makes me question if Ikenna even actually speaks any of the languages he claims to. He might, but he also might speak just enough to make it seems like he does. Like, he just does the entire pimsleur course and learns nothing more.
Oh I've never really thought that Ikenna had a working subconscious knowledge of any of them except French, since he lives in Belgium...
but I'm sure that they got the results in French that they did by equalising and automating the Asian languages with the European languages, so that if you can hear the difference between one sentence and another in Japanese, you must also be at that level in French.
@@daysandwords Which is wild when English and Japanese barely have cognates while just about the entire higher register of French and English is Romance, and in English in good part via French. Nobody will ever fail at knowing what automobile means but _kuruma_ they sure will.
I saw his video speaking French and oh my, there are cuts in the video to every sentences he spoke. Seems like his other languages he spoke are better if not awesome though
in the spanish selection fluyo's "advanced" section is lower intermediate at best. i deleted it when the app marked "to turn off" as the direct english translation of "apagar" wrong 🙃
I'm glad someone put my thoughts and feelings into a video 😅 Thank you for your unbiased review
I did the upper intermediate german course. Not only was the vocabulary easy it also had mistakes... like der Roman (novel) was written roman (lowercase) when you had to choose 1 out of 4 options and you ALWAYS write nouns with a first letter capitalized
Yeah there were a lot of errors I didn't get into here either. I should have addressed its weirdest sentence. It made grammatical sense but no logical sense.
Can you do another review of your top language learning app recommendations? Your last one was 5 years ago, but as you said, you've learnt a lot more about language learning since then. Thanks if you do :D
where did 3 million go
Is it possible for a Kickstarter backer to get a refund? I feel like I've seriously been ripped off and the app failed to deliver on its promises. How can I go about getting a refund? Someone help me 😭😭😭
I don't think that's how Kickstarter works but I don't really know.
Sorry to hear it's been so disappointing.
That's the risk you take with a Kickstarter.
Hey, idk if everyone else has this problem or I’m blind, but I can’t find where the “lesson” tab is. I picked the intermediate Japanese course because I am not that great at Japanese, but I can’t find the area where I can take the “lessons.” If there is a tab that I am missing than I would suppose there should’ve been a tutorial on how to navigate or a better UI.
Hmmm. I did two years of French at school 38 years ago, and I got that audio question right. I would describe myself as solidly intermediate at Japanese, but I'm pretty sure the trigger words for separating those sentences are beginner level stuff even then. The things that make Japanese hard are the writing system and the sentence construction strategy, not really the vocabulary per se.
True, but the vocabulary of Japanese is mostly so different from English that you wouldn’t be able to guess it without knowing some Japanese, whereas I could easily answer all the advanced French questions with almost no background in French.
Many apps and even textbooks calling themselves advanced are really maybe A2 level. That French was ridiculously easy. I had no problems with it and have only dabbled a teensy bit in French.
Among language learning games, I kind of like Lingo Legend. It asks you a few questions to judge your level. It’s still basically translations and vocabulary, but it makes the reviews gradually harder. It starts with true/false questions and multiple choice and then moves on to making you spell things out. And you get to fight monsters and run a farm. There is still a bit too much English in the story line, but if you’re looking for something fun to do between bouts of serious learning and aren’t advanced enough to just play regular games in your target language, it’s kind of nice.
Thank you for not mincing your words. I respect it.
I get that it's tempting to sugarcoat things given the situation but at the end of the day, we're still talking about people's hard-earned money and their free time. It's wrong to sugarcoat.
If I'm being honest, I had a strong feeling that it was going to turn out exactly the way it did solely based on the screenshots I saw years ago.
Just a boring Luodingo-esque game tacked onto a 2000s MMO. Trash TTS, no context for the words, useless multiple choice exercises. Also, the thing with "now"/"maintenant" makes me think they just fed word lists through Google Translate or something. lol
I laughed so hard at the repeated clips of you typing out "initiative" as an answer for "initiative".
Actually one thing that I forgot to mention was that it's NOT TTS... the audio was actually quite good.
Some people have had probablems with it trimming the start and end of single words (again, single words are dumb anyway), so that they couldn't hear the words properly, but on the full sentences, the audio is most certainly not TTS and is much better than Duolingo for that reason.
I know... "initiative... consequence... situation... perserverance..."
I think they scraped blocks of text for it, which is how they get that "désormais" means "now" and such stuff.
I genuinely burst out laughing when you were talking and you had “I was waiting for the Japanese lesson to load while I was filming this” in the corner of your screen😂 But in all seriousness I feel bad for Ikenna and his team. With the amount of years and money this took and this was the results that’s pretty disappointing.
I'd love a in depth review of languatalk, too! Thanks for your thoughts.
I just tried it yesterday. The games are not interesting at all.
the game is too buggy, you get the ad popup everytime you get back to the "main page" or completing a lesson (which can take 10 min if you have the non talking bug) The app was too rushed and should be cooked for a longer time! They should've wait till summer until release ngl
the surfshark ad segment is always so funny
I was desperately hoping it would be an alternative to Anki, because I absolutely hate how bad Anki feels to use, but it seems that’s not to be…
Anki is literally perfect
What language is this for, Yggdras?
@@daysandwords Japanese! I use Wanikani for kanji, but Anki’s UI just feels really bad when I’ve tried to use it before.
@@feelingevaporated2912 Anki is about learning words without context
Thanks for the review!
WE GOT FLUYO BEFORE GTA 6????🤯🤯
GTA 6 must be taking the time time to work out at least a few of the bugs.
Would it surprise you if GTA 6 turns out to be a better way to learn a language than Fluyo?
@@mfc4655 it is only in English lol, but yeah video games are also cool to learn
SURELY there's SOME Spanish!?
To me the bugs aren't really disappointing, the disappointing thing is that there is no concept here of a game that is any different to any other thing currently on the market, when what was promised was something totally new that would finally be a one-stop-shop for fluency. That said the marketing to this point has shown so little of the actual game or really told us what is supposed to make it new that there is no huge surprise there. It felt from the beginning that there was a grand idea and a minimum viable product, but that the former was never really the guiding light for the latter.
I’m only partway through the video but I will say it’s interesting that Fluyo used a different word for “now” in you French intermediate course because I’m a French beginner on Fluyo (have never spoken French) and one of the first words it taught me was “now” as “maintenant” instead of the one you saw - I wish it communicated the differentiation between the two for those in the intermediate stage.
I like the idea so much but yeah I think to *really* flesh it out would take a huge budget.
If you want to gamify, it’s better to get to an intermediate level in your TL and then play an actual game in that language. For the big languages, you can find so many games that support your TL.
Heck, I’ve found a good amount of games in that are in Finnish or have a large Finnish player base I can communicate with.
I’m seriously hoping they’re able to improve! I love the concept but I do have to admit everything feels a bit off… The 3D characters feel a bit out of place and I feel it lacks a lot of aesthetic (There’s barely any animations or satisfying sound effects), this without mentioning the actual language learning. I still bought the yearly premium because I believe in the app, but it seriously will require a lot of updates.
I'm sad. It definitely needs more time to cook
Lots of people are saying that but honestly I'm not hopeful.
The parts that are good about it were already set like 3 years ago, that is, the graphics etc.
I don't imagine they can do enough work to the language learning side of things to make it a good app... and if they do, I think it'll take 2 years minimum.
What's the Refold app? What's the method? What does it entail? I'm very curious.
It's kind of a super advanced habit tracking app, for languages.
@@daysandwords Is it on the App Store?
No, it's in Beta.
Thank you for the honest review.
It teaches you patience 🤓☝️
To me it's expecially frustrating how ikenna is very negative over the way Duolingo teaching languages and said he would make a better app, when apart of like a different UI it feels almost like the same experience imo.
Duolingo is much much better at the moment.
18:33 if you want to skip *to* the Surf Shark segment. It made me laugh after a rather depressing video.
Bugs can be fixed, but the underlying concepts seems to be an even bigger problem.
I like how Amrakonto did it for teaching Esperanto. It was a game/visual novel that actually goes through using the language in situations (in the game, the character ends up in a weird world where they speak Esperanto and she has to figure out the language through context mostly). There's a story and it's engaging. Way better than this type of stuff
I get wanting to play a game made for language learning before you can play native games but sheesh.
I'm glad I never saw an ad for this "game" lol.
I’m watching this coz I saw your comment/feedback on Japan Mike’s video! I ranted a whole bunch about my disappointment there so I’ll just not talk about that here. But yes, DISAPPOINTING. Especially considering the funding
7:24 because they wanted to make advanced level useable for A2 learner, to give them an illusion, they reached advanced level
The only reason people will use it is for the waifu.
If she was my wife I'd be divorced in about 2 days. She's super annoying haha.
@@daysandwords🤣🤣
@@daysandwords Don't under estimate peoples will to simp. Rule thirty four is probably in the process.
Haha.
If I see Fluyo p*** I will definitely review.
Certain things have prevented me from doing this but I've often really wanted to talk about how much erotic literature there is in Swedish (like 20 new audiobooks a week), and the pros/cons of listening to it for language acquisition. 🤣
I think ikenna’s idea was too ambitious. I remember him saying “this app is going to be as addictive as playing a video game you love”. For someone that never made a language learning app or a game, this is too much. Maybe he should’ve started with something more simple, like an app with basic courses for a few languages, or a vocabulary app
I really don't get it thou. He literally knows that the best way to learn is natural aquisition. So why did he not actually imply ANY ways of doing so? He also knows the method that Ankinis using and how even with paper flashcards you end up repeating the words you don't know well yet more often than thise xou already kinda know. Yet the flashcards will show me 2 words that are not cognants vs 8 that are basically the same word in both languages! How on earth am I supposed to actually learn those 2 new words at this rate?
"He literally knows that the best way to learn is natural aquisition."
Do you know where he said that? As some others in the comments section have pointed out, he's not really very fluent in any other language (at least, not by my definition of fluent).
@@daysandwords He wrote an e-book a while back called Fluency Made Easy where he outlined his language learning philosophy. He basically recommended a few programs to start, Pimsleur and Assimil, and then iTalki lessons and comprehensible input. It’s actually a pretty good roadmap to fluency for some people, and it’s largely the path I followed. I don’t think his prescription will work for all types of learners, but I think he basically gets how languages are learned. That’s why it was so disappointing to find that Fluyo was just an unwieldy vocab app
Oh, all the reviews I read of that book said it was a quick moneygrab with nothing useful at all.
I found this app through that one "language app tiers ranks" video were fluyo was put on the upmost tier! Thought wow - that looks absolutely terrible for actual learning. Guess I was right...It is kinda sad but to be expected.
In French and in France at least, "vaincre une épreuve" is not grammatically correct, and not idiomatic, it seems to be translated directly from English. The person who created the exercise just had to make the biiiiiig effort of going on Google Translate to get the right expression!
When you are at an intermediate level, you already know that some endings always have the same gender, or to make the difference between an adjective and an infinitive verb that always ends in ir or er in French, which makes the deduction of the right word easy. It seems that this inadequacy between the exercises and the supposed level is really a big flaw of the app.
16:54 you are being waaaay too kind here. you can just say what we're all thinking, this needs to be a different app entirely 😭 like the team did not make any of the methods worthwhile, it does what duolingo does but worse, and the "game" part is so uninteresting and lackluster you'd have more fun studying grammar from a textbook lol.
I am not being kind. I do see SOME potential there with SO SO SO much work, which is what I said.
Advanced vocabulary usually includes words that are for complicated concepts and stuff demanding expertise, but unlucky for this app, French and English have more similarities on that level. "House" and "maison" are different enough, but when it comes to a word like "architecture" I don't even have to repeat, because it's the same word in both English and French. The approach on directly adapting all language levels cannot work in this.
As I have even participated in his Kickstarter campaign, I really hope that this thing goes better. Nice idea but not everything that looks good in imagination and paper, works in real life.
"House" and "maison" are different enough."
The thing about French that I think many people "underestimate" is that it is VERY much the exception that two words don't share SOMETHING, e.g. "maison"... I think immediately of masonry, as in brick-work... others might think of mansion.
Some with "livre"... It's skippable to "library". People look at German and Swedish and say "Aha, English is Germanic because I heard that in a video and now I am smart... LOOK! The Swedish word for "book" is "bok"! That must be so easy!"
Sure, but the Swedish word for "doctor" is "läkare" while the French word is "médicin" or "docteur".
@ the word for “doctor” in several Slavic languages do sound like the Swedish “läkare”. Лекар (lekar) in Bulgarian and Serbian, “lijekar” in Bosnian, “lekár” in Slovak, “lékař” in Czech and “лікар” (likar) in Ukrainian. In Russian the word for medicine is лекарство (lekartsva). I founded it out during my Finnish tryout on Duolingo, the word for that was “lääkäri” and at first I thought it was something to do with the time they were under Russian control, but as the Swedish word was also “läkare” the connection might be different.
I tried multiple languages and did learn a little Spanish and Japanese beforehand.
I tried both and idk… the gameplay is tedious, music is okay, the words you start with are okay, but it wasn’t as challenging.
But when you do everything else… oh boy don’t get me started on that woman. They try to explain simpler things so complicated that I couldn’t understand what they wanted from me anymore 😂 in Japanese they tried to implement learning hiragana, not katakana and kanji later. But weirdly the first hiragana you’d learn are う、て、ひ、し、 つ and I think also ち? Why?😂 why not start with あ、い、う、え、お like everyone else?
I also tried Korean too, as it’s fully supported and I haven’t touched it yet, but it wasn’t like Japanese where you learn their alphabet first, they expected me to know Hangul right then and there 😂 no need to say I was frustrated and didn’t understand anything that they tried to tell me.
The other, less supported languages only have flashcards, which are nice, but you could get it from anki and maybe more.
All in all, I’ll wait until it maybe gets better or don’t use it at all anymore, which makes me sad because I waited like everyone else quite a long time.
Sorry if this reads weird, I’m from Germany and just wanted to rant a little 😂 have a nice day!
How did this app actually get released in its current state? The issues are so blatant, that it's honestly shocking that they just pressed publish 😂
That's true, but for me the biggest question is how it was in alpha and beta for like a year and seemingly nothing was fixed?
Both the IOS and Android apps have major problems that make them unusable. On both, I can't click any menu buttons except for home. Clicking to go forward lags horribly, if it works at all. Samsung s24U and iPhone 14 pro max, both updated,
Tell us more about the beta Refold app
I don't really know that much about it.
It's a very nice, detailed timetracking app for language learning.
It should be noted, that Ikenna is not fluent in any other language aside from his native English.
Yeah I am not sure about his French... I mean he lives in Belgium but he's also been bedridden for most of that time.
I always got the impression that he was being cagey about not revealing exactly what his French was like.
@@daysandwords Ikenna was in the Netherlands for about 2 years. He had an interview, and people were pointing out his level was not fluent, as it was also noticeable the mistakes he made. That was native speakers noticing them though.
Ikenna is smart enough to know, that he does not have to actually prove it, as viewers would believe it if they don't know enough about the languages themselves.
Example: One viewer for some reason or another thought Ikenna was also literate (Read and write) in all eight languages he claimed to speak. Despite, not making even one video of ever addressing that topic.
"That was native speakers noticing them though."
Native speakers are actually a lot more forgiving of errors, even subconsciously, than learners. Native speakers filter what you say and essentially correct it before they've even understood it... meaning they often forget, within a few seconds, that you even made the error.
I have a friend who isn't Swedish but when she speaks Swedish it feels like I'm driving down a road with speedbumps, cos it's like "....huh that's not... ...um yeah ok it's INTE first... no that's "göra"... "
but I have studied her husband's face (he IS Swedish) and he doesn't seem to even notice haha.
💯
Only positive: “The music is not the worst” 😂
What gets me about Ikenna is how he slated other established learning apps to convince people that he was building something to floor them all, and, bugs aside, Fluyo is the worst learning experience I’ve had hands down.
Nah I did say that the multiple choice audio was good too, even if it was still too easy.
I want to say something good about it, because I agree with you on everything. The production was pretty poor. But the mnemonics for learning the japanese alphabet was pretty good. My wife who has never learned japanese picked it up super quick.
If changing to Japanese had been a smooth process, I may have been able to put this in my review. 😂
13:50 every year or so I find out another langtuber has a background in music
Check out my video two back from this one, with the scary woman next to my face in the thumbnail.
@@daysandwords oh I must have missed that one because the nordic noir stuff was too scary haha.
But scrolling your videos does remind me that you used piano playing as a metaphor in that video series that I've watched several times!
Always thrilled to see more of 'my people' in the language community:) especially since I also happen to be currently writing a piece based on folklore in my TL region (Brythonic). And I've already done a choral piece years ago about a Slavic water spirit, when I was learning Polish. There's something about water-related stories
I loved Pedros Adventure in Spanish, would love that for Japanese. ❤
It feels like a prototype to me, how did this take 5 years to make?
Yeah, I agree.
It also already looked like this about 3 years ago... so I'm not sure what they've been doing for 2 or 3 years... Certainly not the language learning part of it.
I would never have figured out there was a limit on lesson per day. The game is so laggy
that it takes 3-5mins just to load in my phone, sure it's an old phone, I give you that.
I think they tried to cook too hard on graphics using 3D models
it feels like I'm trying to run GTA6 on my potato PC.
I did enjoyed the anki pre-build decks.
When learning a new language, I usually feel lost about which decks to add.
I've been waiting for your review - tho I knew you would say things like these. I absolutely agree - but to me it would be hard to stay that kind towards Ikenna. This product combined with all the false advertisements is a borderline scam, to be honest. I'm a game developer and I know how hard it is to create something like that - so my expectations were super low - but this app is just a disgrace in so many ways. :(
With all the toil and turmoil that Ikenna went through to finally get it out, it's hard to give it a "meh" review but so far that's the best I can do. I know they're gonna be scrambling to improve things but I didn't have any performance issues with the app running, so that's not a criticism from me. I just couldn't get into the game or get any sense that I was going to learn much from the app in a way that makes me want to keep going.
I tuned out when they thought game playing and duolingo messing was more important than comprehensible input.
I am still reeling from the fact that Ikenna tried to soft-blame Duolingo for meddling in their appstore approval... like, bro, a $15 billion company isn't interested in your broken dolphin.
Broken dolphin 🤣🤣🤣
You make me laugh Lamont!
Ikenna had con-artist vibes from the moment he announced that app. Every 10 seconds he has to remind us how "fun" it is.
I don't think he actually meant it to be a con or a scam, but certainly a lot of his "...speaks this many languages..." videos are total garbage.
Way back in the day, like more than 5 years ago, I made a video saying that he and Nathaniel Drew were both full of it for their "Learned a language in 7 days" videos (yes I know they are clickbait but Nathaniel's video is particularly insidious because it backs out without backing out...) - anyway, Ikenna changed the title of his, which I thought was a pretty fair response.
Nathaniel went and cried to his audience, which was a Nathaniel response.
I loved that Video (of yours)! When I saw it, I was learning Italiam for 2 years and struggled with it while these guys make videos about learning languages in 7 days.
@@daysandwords Yeah, he changed the title of that video because it was too much of a red flag. He still had one final scam to pull before he could allow himself to be revealed as the grifter he is. Having an illness doesnt give you a free pass to lie and rob people.
I unlisted that video because I didn't like how vague I'd been about the points I was making.
My main point was that Nathaniel was having his cake and eating it too. He was getting to say that he'd learned Italian in 7 days without having to actually show anything to back that up.
Watching at 2x and found it so funny that I heard your Swedish accent for "une belle maison" at 11 minutes 🤣
Quite possibly!
Normally my French accent is pretty good but I did record that at 1am because I'd forgotten that I'd left placeholder audio in there, plus my French is never great while I'm switching between English and French.
But I'm glad it sounds Swedish and not just Australian.
Wait there’s a refold app?
Yeah, Refold Tracker
i hope in a year we can look back and see how much the app has improved 😢
I agree. The app in its current state is not achieving the goals the developers wanted to. This project, as it stands at the moment, I objectively is a failure.
Can it become a better app? If they’re willing to change the structure and lean into the gamification more, sure.
They’re trying to sell it as a language learning “game” but it has hardly any entertaining gameplay to it.
Also the fact that the guy is chronically ill should not have any influence on the perception of the app. Is it sad, of course. But he’s not the only person working on it.
In my opinion, they need to focus on context-based learning and update the game aspect to be more fun.
Thanks for the video! I remember asking you to make one and here it is, keep it up!
Edit: I did not intend for the message to look like I just asked and you made the video, sorry for the miscommunication on my part… I was just excited and was happy to see a video that I asked for but I should have worded it better
Just to correct you on that last point, I had already made this (shot it) several days before you asked me to make one. It's my job to make videos about language learning.
@ oh yeah… right I misremembered sorry. 😅
I had the feeling it was going to be shit when it was announced
So did I but not THIS sh**...
Wow, and they don't even have a green owl?
This could be part of a massive conspiracy to make Duolingo look good?
Funnily enough, Ikenna kind of claimed without fully claiming, that Duolingo had sabotaged Fluyo... LOL.
@@daysandwords You can't trust an owl, especially the green ones.
To be fair many games are rushed and released way too early, at least Fluyo got that aspect accurate.
Also since there is a Blåhaj in the Surfshark segment, I like to imagine that you have way too many of the ikea plushes for swedish immersion that can double as toys for your child.
Fluyo wasn't just rushed though. As I said, the jankiness is the least of its problems.
I theorize Ikenna used most of the funding for his personal medical ventures, that's why fluyo is bad
I want to learn Ukrainian, so I bought "S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2" to play with Ukrainian voices and English subtitles, but my computer unfortunately wasn't good enough to run the game without major lagging :/
Good idea though.
Part of this review that I cut was me playing Raid Shadow Legends but I cut it because I couldn't figure out how to change the language... apparently you can do it though.
I know one goal of Fluyo was the "gamification of language learning" but I would rather just play actual video games in my target language instead.
Yeah, in a deleted part of the review, I was trying to set Raid Shadow Legends to another language... you can do it but I couldn't figure out how (tutorial I followed was saying a way that didn't work anymore)... but my point was that RSL isn't even a good game and is probably more better than Fluyo.
Does Blåhaj speak Swedish?
Det gör han!
Fast han är faktiskt fransmann.
The spanish released without ANY of the wayfinder lessons (what actually teaches you the language). Not to mention the player vs AI function is completely broken and there is no way in hell you find a real person to 1v1. 2/5 MAX in my book but I haven't seen the other languages.