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If I could give a half star rating I would. While this app has the potential to be of great use, like other professionals whose field requires international travel, the fact that I am required to login from overseas to access lessons I have downloaded, makes this product useless to me. For anyone who needs this app to refresh their skills while traveling abroad DO NOT download this app if you value your online privacy and the security of your personal data. While the app itself may not present a direct threat, the requirement to log on at random intervals using unreliable foreign internet providers or unsecured servers puts your device at risk and all the personal data contained on it. I wrote this note to warn others and read your patronizing responses about protecting the product/users to others with the same complaint. The reality is that not everyone overseas is trying to abuse or steal your IP. You could easily stop downloads from suspicious sources abroad and allow users who legitimately registered and downloaded to access what they needed. Fix the problem or limit it to schools only. Don't make it available via libraries to the educated public or those who want to be educated on their own if you are going to deny access when needed most, while traveling. I wrote this review after losing access to previously downloaded material while traveling to an area with a high rate of online fraud and internet abuse. Completely frustrating experience.

I absolutely love Mango, especially how it has the option to show both a literal and a nonliteral translation of a phrase. I also love being able to download lessons and the wide variety of languages they offer (I’ve never seen Scottish Gaelic offered on such a platform before, it’s really cool they have it!). It’s also nice to have such clear audio, though I wish sometimes they’d distinguish more what dialects they use for their audios. I do have a suggestion in regards to the phonetic approximations for the words and phrases. I really wish there was an IPA option! Even just for the more committed linguists. It’s much better to have the IPA versions showing the exact pronunciations rather than the anglicized approximations. There are so many languages that have sounds not found in English, it doesn’t make much sense to always use the approximations. And more use of the IPA can only be a good thing in this care. For that matter, I’d love it if a mini-IPA course would someday be offered, since this app is language focused anyway, but still, I more importantly would love if y’all added an IPA option for the phonetics!

If you like tradition text book style learning with “just enough “ cultural and grammar notes this is the best app. However make sure you check which content is available first as not all languages have listening and reading practices for all the units. The sheer number of basic to beginner language courses available make this app a steal if you like to casually learn different languages. What’s missing? Foundational pronunciation and alphabet lessons. For example there are no lessons for how the Korean or Arabic writing system works. A patient person could probably figure it out as the reading system is excellent. You can just tap any phrases and it plays the pronunciation and shows a pronunciation guide; however, for languages such as Korean, Japanese, Arabic, etc. you’ll definitely do yourself a favor by finding another resource to learning how the writing system works first. There also aren’t any photos or short videos for learning vocabulary. It's straight traditional translation teaching method. I think most of the shortcoming can easily be remedied with supplementary material; however, there is one very annoying issue. That’s the narration, it’s nice at first but it quickly becomes obvious what the pattern is. You can turn it off for normal use, but it does not stay off if you use auto play.