Finally nearing official launch, with open beta signups now available

This project was born out of some frustrations initially encountered while learning Dutch while living in the Netherlands.

After half-heartedly using Duolingo for an extended time I started to question if I was really improving my Dutch, or if I was mostly trying not to lose my streak I started looking into other ways of improving my vocabulary, and came across articles recommending to read a book.

As I love reading already and was always reading books in English it felt like the natural thing to do, and I started reading my first book in Dutch, which was not a fun or enjoyable experience in any way.

Reading a paper book I had to constantly open Google Translate, several times per sentence, and I found myself spending more time unlocking the screen, finding back where I was on the page to find the spelling of the word, then putting it into the phone, and trying to understand the sentence from that, and more often than not having to do that several times for a single sentence; and on top of that I also tried to build up a deck of flashcards for memorizing the words that I found.

This process was so tiresome and demanding and I made no progress at all.

From there I bought an Android tablet to take advantage of the long-press on text for translations using the Google Translate widget, which worked ok, and I finished my first book like this, but it was still a lot of work, and I quickly discovered that I wasn't actually memorizing anything, and I found myself looking up the same words page after page.

From these main problems an idea started to form on what I wanted as a solution, and I went out looking for an app to solve the problem for me.

Unable to find anything remotely similar to what I was looking for, I decided to give it an attempt to build it myself.

And like that started the long journey of developing Simply Fluent

Over the years it has transformed a lot based on my own needs, and super valuable feedback from people that I've shown it to, which has transformed the app into what it is today

Finally it's reached the level that I want to share it with the world, and with a release just around the corner (if all goes well) the website is now live and public and the app is now open for beta testers to help find any last issues.

If you feel inspired to check it out please fill out the beta testing form on the website, and I want to offer 1-3 months of subscription for any active testers that help provide feedback and maybe a testimonial.

www.simplyfluent.com
www.simplyfluent.com/beta

The ambition of this project is to make language learning more interesting, giving the control of what and how to learn to the readers, creating motivation to learn by allowing the readers to learn through books that they themselves actually want to read, creating motivation and inspiration to read more, and to get back to language learning because they actually want to finish the book they've started.

I've used the app myself to learn Dutch, Spanish, a bit of German, and now focusing on Portuguese, and from my own experience, it's working way better for learning than anything else that I've tried, helping to naturally understand and absorb vocabulary and grammar without having to even care about it just through the act of reading, and when I feel inspired to speed up my learning then doing so is easy using the built-in flashcards that help to memorize the translations that has been looked up and saved through reading.

My hope is that Simply Fluent will find it's way to other language learners that love reading, and that they will have the same experience that I have, finding more joy in the process of language learning

Cheers 🌱