I spent 10k hours building the perfect language learning app
Hello HN - Over the last few years, I've been building an app to learn languages. It supports ~85 languages and ~40 dialects, and is optimized for learning and maintaining multiple languages. Learning a language is a ton of work, but really quite simple. Find text you're interested in, dissect and understand it, and review it often. Grind that every day for a few years, and you'll be fluent. So I built Phrasing for 4 main reasons: 1. To have an app I would actually be excited to use every single day for years. 2. To do all the research, explanation, prioritization, course planning and…
In plain words
Phrasing is a language learning app supporting approximately 85 languages and 40 dialects. It is designed for people who want to learn and maintain multiple languages simultaneously using a text-based approach: finding interesting content, understanding it thoroughly, and reviewing it regularly. The app handles research, explanations, prioritization, and course planning automatically, allowing users to focus on learning without manual organization.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hello HN - Over the last few years, I've been building an app to learn languages. It supports ~85 languages and ~40 dialects, and is optimized for learning and maintaining multiple languages. Learning a language is a ton of work, but really quite simple. Find text you're interested in, dissect and understand it, and review it often. Grind that every day for a few years, and you'll be fluent. So I built Phrasing for 4 main reasons: 1. To have an app I would actually be excited to use every single day for years. 2. To do all the research, explanation, prioritization, course planning and management for me, so I could just focus on learning 3. To support learning multiple languages as a first class citizen 4. To have a nice, unified interface to learn languages from Spanish to Arabic to Cantonese I've been using it daily now for almost a year to learn a variety of languages and I've been loving it. I have an awesome group of users in the Telegram channel who have been using it as well to great success. If you're a polyglot, an avid language learner, or someone who tried to use Anki in the past but found it wasn't for them — I think you might really like Phrasing :) EDIT: Phrasing is a paid application, but there are 30 expressions you can try for free in the islands tab (you'll see 10 of them in the onboarding flow as well) -- PS: Phrasing uses FSRS under the hood, so a huge thank you to the FSRS team and Jarrett Ye for all the amazing work. Phrasing would not be the product it is without you! PSS: I'm documenting some of the latest updates on the blog this week, they're 50% product and 50% technical, might be of special interest to the HN crowd: https://phrasing.app/blog/launch-week-1
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