The dominant language apps were designed for teenagers with free time. They dress learning as a game because games are sticky. For a forty-year-old with a full calendar, the guilt loop is the product and the Spanish is incidental.
You do not need a mascot to feel bad. You need a session that starts when you sit down with a coffee, ends when the kettle boils again, and leaves you with something real. One sentence you can actually say out loud. One line you heard and understood.
Habla is built around the way adults actually find the time. Short. Honest. Offline. Done.
Streak of 47 daysYou missed Tuesday. Start Wednesday.
Gems & livesNo currency. Nothing to lose.
Cartoon mascotJust the language and you.
Notifications 7pmSilent. You come to it.
FRAME 03 / METHOD
Four sessions. Each one under fifteen minutes.
Rotate through them across the day. You can do one. You can do all four. The only rule is that you show up when you want to, not when an app tells you.
01 · LISTEN
Hear the pattern.
A twelve-minute audio drill. You hear a Spanish line about your real life. Pause. Say it. Hear it again. Your ear learns the rhythm before your mouth tries to copy it.
12 MINAUDIO ONLYDRIVE-SAFE
02 · WATCH
See it in context.
A short clip one rung above your level. Comprehensible input with soft Spanish captions you can toggle off. Your brain does the stretching without you noticing.
8 MINNATIVE SPEEDNO DUBS
03 · TALK
Actually speak.
A live back-and-forth with a voice that answers and listens. Five minutes. Roleplay a café, a taxi, a job chat. Your voice gets the reps, not just your thumbs.
5 MINVOICEREAL CONVO
04 · REVIEW
Lock it in.
Spaced repetition for what you already met this week. No new vocab. No surprises. Only the lines you heard, watched and spoke, surfaced at the exact moment your brain is about to forget them.
6 MINSRSNO NEW LOAD
FRAME 04 / WHY THIS EXISTS
My dad never taught me Spanish. I'm learning it for him.
(01) My dad
My dad was in the Chilean merchant navy. A church in Birkenhead had an outreach team that brought sailors in for meals. That's how he ended up there. My mum was in the choir the day he came in. They wrote to each other when he shipped back out. Months of letters. He called her from somewhere at sea and asked her to marry him. She said yes. Came out, got engaged, got married, had four sons. He's not here anymore. That's the thing that sits with me most.
(02) Me, age five
Three months in Chile with my older brother Nathan and my youngest brother Daniel, who was just a baby. Mum and Dad took us all out. By the time we came back we were speaking it fluent. Kid brains. Then school, English mates, English everything, and it drained out. Real shame.
(03) Me, now
Half my family lives in Chile. I can't hold a proper conversation with any of them. Tried Duolingo. Tried Babbel. Bounced off both. Kids' games, not an adult tool. So I built the thing I actually needed. Fifteen minutes at a time. Around the kids, around two businesses. This one's for my dad. And for anyone else carrying the same gap.
Chris. Wirral.
FRAME 05 / FEELS LIKE
What the app actually looks and feels like.
Rough mockups while the product is being built in parallel. Shown here so you can see the shape of a session before you install it.
LISTEN12:00
DRILL 14 OF 20
¿Dónde aparcaste el coche?
Where did you park the car?
◀◀ REPLAYSAY IT
WATCH08:00
CLIP 07 · CAFÉ MADRID
Dos cortados, por favor.
Barista: ¿Para llevar o para tomar aquí?
To go, or to drink here?
CC · ES0.9× SPEED
TALK04:12
SCENE · JOB INTRO
Cuéntame de ti.
Tell me about yourself.
Hold to speak
LIVEES-ES
REVIEW06:00
DUE THIS MORNING · 12
aparcar3/4
cortado4/4
llevar2/4
cuéntame2/4
SRS · 5DNEXT →
FRAME 06 / PRICING
Free while we build it. Nothing else for now.
Habla is in open beta. The whole thing is free while we learn what works. Pricing will be decided once the app earns it. Sized against what adults actually pay for apps they use every day. No surprise renewals, no streak shame, no upsell nag inside the product.
Now · open beta
Free.
£0/ during open beta
Everything currently in the app. No card, no trial, no lock-in. We will tell you in plain English if that ever changes.
