Ling - Language Lessons Reviews

I paid for a subscription for the year because there are not many options for Cantonese language learning apps. I’m giving it three stars because Ling is satisfactory given that there really isn’t a better option out there. However, the lessons are simplistic and repetitive. It is good for learning to recognize Cantonese words and training listening comprehension, but it is not good for learning how to speak or write your own sentences. The review mechanism also leaves a lot to be desired. I would like to be able to quiz myself on all past vocabulary but there is are no flash cards. Your options are to click through the vocab cards and cover the English with your thumb, or to do (what seems like) a randomly selected set of review exercises that are not comprehensive. Ling is also littered with errors. I have submitted around 10 error reports in my first week of studying. Often the English answer is grammatically incorrect or the Cantonese audio is mismatched with the jyutping/characters. I already know some mandarin, so I can spot the errors pretty easily (and they do not inhibit my learning), but I’m don’t know if a complete beginner could do the same. In short, Ling has potential but is very, very rough.

Ling surpasses Duolingo in every way. Firstly, they offer a solid variety of languages. While Duo focuses on constantly expanding 5 European languages, Ling has invested in dozens of Asian and European languages ! I am Bengali American, and came across Ling because it was the only one offering Bengali. I was incredibly impressed by the quality of the Bengali course! The voice actors are actually from Bangladesh. The material is relevant. The accent is clear and authentic. I’m just blown away. I learned German with Duo, but sometimes I just need a vocab refresher. Yet Duo has no flash cards or quick refresher features. You have to go though a whole annoying lesson to review what you already learned. I tried German on Ling, and it has the best refresher features. I’m blown away. Thank you to the developers for creating this gem.

So hard to find a language app with Cantonese. Thank you so much for helping preserve a language China is so desperately trying to stamp out.

As for Ling itself, it’s not as streamlined as something like HelloChinese (Mandarin only) or Duolingo (Mandarin only). However, this is the best option for Cantonese I can find and it’s still worth the money.

ISSUES:
- Speech recognition is too strict. My native Cantonese family and friends have trouble passing the speech recognition…
- Voice speed is slow in the early part of the lesson and fast in the conversation at the end. So if you adjust the voice speed, either the early part is too slow and the conversation is normal, or the early part is normal and the conversation is too fast
- Sometimes the lessons give questions before introducing the vocab for those questions later in the lesson. I know some Mandarin and Cantonese already so it’s okay for me, but would probably be confusing for a complete beginner

SUGGESTIONS:
- Speak the word or sentence after clicking it or answering correctly like Duolingo and HelloChinese. Hearing the characters or sentence after answering the question helps reinforce the knowledge
- Grammar explanations: both Duolingo and especially HelloChinese have grammar explanations which are really helpful

Overall I’m really happy with Ling and hope to see it continue to improve! Thank you for your hard work!

I am using Ling to learn Bulgarian, which is difficult and not many apps support it. The pronunciations are clear and accurate. I personally like how you can repeat or slow a word to ensure you’re understanding. To keep your interests peaked, Ling offers matching, spelling and fill in the blank exercises in each section; so you not only know how to say a word but use it in a sentence or conversation. For additional practice, there is also a chat box where you can simulate conversations to test what you’ve learned. Overall, I’m happy with Ling and would highly recommend for language learning.

I wanted to try learning Farsi/Persian. I don’t know a single word in Farsi and I was already catching spelling mistakes in the second lesson! They had the word “twenty-five” spelled “bist w penj” on on card and right below it had it spelled “bisto panj”. After some brief research outside Ling , the second spelling is correct. Why would I continue to use Ling when I already can’t trust that it’s giving me correct information?

Update: I’m not increasing the rating. I took the time to research what app to download, download Ling , and go through the whole first lesson only to find out that the information I was learning isn’t worth anything because I can’t trust if it’s correct or not. I don’t trust that the other languages and lessons are correct either. Find a different language app that you can actually trust.

Much better than the popular language apps. I haven’t gotten too far yet, but I’ve really been enjoying it as a learning supplement with my textbooks. Really love the speaking function as well! Tons of unique features. I think the only thing I’ve come across so far is the use of 당신 that can cause some bad habits and awkward speaking, but I know it helps English speakers understand when they’re first learning Korean, so I’m not sure if that changes further into the units or not, just one thing I wish was a little more natural! Still 100% amazing.

I’d say this falls squarely between duolingo and babbel. Hated duolingo, loved babbel, this app is pretty good. It has a lot of conversation and vocab, which is great, but I’m missing some of the rules of language that babbel provided, like conjugation of regular verb forms, different types of pronouns; the drier stuff that you need to learn so you can think out constructing sentences on your own. Babbel did a good job balancing memorizing grammar rules than then rolling them into conversation. this app does more conversation, so you might only use 2 or 3 verb conjugations and miss that the next verb you learn has the same rules. But overall good!

I’m only a few days into it, but I’m determined to stay with it. I’ve spent a lot more on other ones, but couldn’t hang in there.
I’m a little further along from visiting the country and using the language now, so that may help me as well.
There are a few things I would change right now, but maybe as I get further in, the changes I think should happen will. Regardless, this was pretty inexpensive and seems to be working ok.

I used this app before in the past and decided to revisit it today after an e-mail sent to me. Not only is Ling much faster and more responsive than it was before, but the team behind it is also very kind and speedy to my e-mail! I’m currently using this app to become more fluent in Tagalog and from the looks of it, the learning material is pretty accurate! I highly appreciate that this app offers languages outside of the norm.

Thank you so much Simon for getting back to me in a speed manner!

Ling has some nice functionality! Being able to turn on and off romanizations is handy, and I especially enjoy the conversations at the end of every lesson.

I think it would be nice if there were more grammar notes for the conversations and perhaps a separate option so that we can actually review them on their own. In general I would also like to see a tab for just being able to review the grammar notes that come along with the lesson!

Something to take note of: When clicking on multiple words, the voice clips play over one another. It’s not that big of a deal but you might want to keep an eye out for it. Also, typing numbers for Korean is finicky (마흔/사십 is marked wrong due to it being 사십/마흔), and the voice pickup wasn’t working for me in Chinese.

I’m overall very impressed, especially since so many languages have already been implemented! I’m definitely sticking around to watch as Ling develops.

It is hard to find quality resources for learning Cantonese.
My only feedback at this point is for the voice playback speed to be set at natural speech pace and have the slow button play what is currently normal speed.
I have it set to 1.5 speed and it still feels slow. My wife and in-laws speak much faster and I would like Ling to allow me a chance to practice at natural speed.
Thank you!

Ling is well made and runs smoothly. Also I really like how it includes mini conversations at the end of each chapter so you can see your new vocabulary used in practise. That’s really neat!
However I don’t recommend it for beginners learning Korean. Ling uses a lot of pronouns (me, him, her, you, etc) in their sentences which you should not do in Korean. Especially the word “당신” is very prominent in Ling , but you should almost never say it because in Korean it’s quite rude.
It seems like an app that was built for learning western style languages, and they’ve tried to fit Korean into the same mould. But yeah it’s not that easy I think!

I’ve tried a few apps for learning Khmer and this one is definitely the best I’ve found. The other are usually just a flash card app for really basic words. With Ling it shows you how to form a sentence, at the same introducing you to new vocabulary. The pronunciation is great and there are even conversation examples for you to listen too. No doubt this is the fastest/ most effective way to learn how to speak Khmer - a really rare tool to find in the first place.

Using Ling to learn Korean, and I love how simple it is, and within the first lesson I felt like I could say a sentence! (It was a super simple sentence, but nonetheless). I like that it introduces grammar and structure points so soon, something I’d been lacking in similar apps.

My one gripe is that after the little grammar/structure notes pop up, I can’t quite figure out where to see them again. I’d love to be able to look at the grammar/structure notes again to review.

I am growing up in a Indian household, in America, so when my parents moved here they spoke English to not only the natives, but also to us. In my extended family almost everyone speaks Urdu. I understand Urdu a little, but can’t speak it! I will need to learn it to communicate with other adults in the Muslim community when I grow up, so I wanted to start learning now <3
Totally recommend Ling!

For my first run through of Ling I really like it. It’s very user friendly and visually it’s pleasing. I really enjoyed listening to the pronunciations and stresses on the accents of words. I especially liked the dialogue interaction at the end of each lesson. If the full version is as good as the free one than Ling will be a game changer! I’m learning Serbian since I just moved to Serbia and already I’m feeling more confident. Thank you!

I’ve been looking for a good app to help me learn Finnish and this is one of the few that does. It breaks it down into easy to understand lessons. I like the method of using a combination of memorization and also everyday use. I’m excited at the improvement I’ve already seen and I’ll see how far I can get by next summer when I’ll visit the in-laws again!

I’ve only been using Ling for five minutes and have already come across three errors in translation. For example, “siya” is a gender-neutral pronoun, however, when I chose “she” instead of “he” as the translation, it was marked incorrect. Another sentence said “you watch a movie,” however, the options for the answer did not have a translation for the pronoun “you” (which would be “ka” or “ikaw”); instead, the translated sentences used the pronoun “siya” (she/he). I speak Tagalog/Filipino and was hoping my child could use Ling to practice sentence structure. I will have to keep looking.

This is a great alternative to Duolingo because I was disappointed that Duolingo did not have Tagalog. This has been very helpful to me to learn my native language every day. However, will Tagalog have a Speaking game as well? I was surprised that this did not have a feature for the language chosen whereas other languages have.

I downloaded Ling to practice finnish, but I've already been studying the language for 4 months, so I was able to spot some errors. For example, I know that the word for Japan is "Japani", but it said "Japanilainen" instead, which actually translates to "Japanese" or "Japanese person". Strangely enough, it said that the word for "Japanese" was "Japanilainenså", which I have never seen before so I doubt that it is correct, unless it's in a case/form that I haven't learned yet.

I'm hoping to save up to buy the premium version so I can go onto the next levels! No joke, I've looked at a ton of sources to learn Khmer and none of them have been as helpful as Ling. If it's possible, please share you knowledge of Khmer with the rest of the world. It's very hard for English speakers like me to find a good source for learning Khmer.

Since I started to use Ling my Thai skills improved a lot but I pretend to delete my Google account and I don’t have facebook, are there other ways to save my progress? Connecting with iCloud? Creating an account on Ling ? Please help here

It’s a lot similar to Duolingo except it’s not free but I find it worth the cost because it has so many more languages!!! It’s simply and easy to use and includes different levels of fluency showing you your progress and how far you’ve come!!