One of the challenges you can meet when you are learning a new language, is that it might be difficult to get to know people that have that language as their native language.
I am therefore very happy to share that HelloTalk contacted me and asked if I could talk about their app. HelloTalk is a great and free language app that gives you the possibility to make friends with people that have the language you are learning as their native language. This way you can for instance practice Norwegian with a native Norwegian.
After you have created an account, it’s time to search for new language friends. For example, if your native language is English you can search for native Norwegians that want to practice their English.
You can visit people’s profiles and add people as language partners if you want. If the other person accepts your request, it’s time to practice Norwegian!
A very positive thing about HelloTalk is that it offers a lot of functionality to make it easier when you’re practicing Norwegian.
If you click on a message in HelloTalk, you have many choices. You can:
- Translate the message into your native language
- Add the sentence to your favorites so that you can find the sentence easily later
- Correct the sentence and add comments to your language partner
- If the language uses another alphabet than what you’re used to, you can also transliterate the sentence to the alphabet you are used to.
HelloTalk gives you the opportunity to send audio messages as well. Click on this little symbol here to record. To play the audio message, simply click on it. A very cool function HelloTalk has is that you can also choose to transcribe the audio into text. If you and your partner want to speak “live”, you can also call each other for free within the app.
A really cool feature that HelloTalk has is the “Language Exchange”-feature. This function tells you and your partner to speak or write in one language for a set amount of time, before switching to the language your partner is learning. This means that you and your partner get practice in the languages you are learning and that’s very good – this way you don’t only speak one language with each other.
As mentioned earlier you have a profile on HelloTalk, but it might be that you don’t want to share what city or country you come from. Fortunately HelloTalk has several settings when it comes to what you want to share with others. For example you can choose to not share what city or country you come from. You also have the possibility to block users if you want.
There are many other features in the app that I haven’t mentioned yet. You can for instance send photos, you can draw in the app and these drawings and you can start group chats.
I think HelloTalk is a very good app and I definitely recommend downloading it and trying it out, especially considering it’s free. There are some limitations when it comes to how many times you can translate messages etc., but for a low price you get unlimited access to these functions.
The app is available on iOS and Android devices. You can download the app like this:
- Searching for “HelloTalk” in App Store or in Google Play.
- Clicking the link in the description below.
- Visiting HelloTalk.com in your browser.
My name is PederNorway on the app, so feel free to add me if you make an account!
Thank you very much for watching this episode of Learn Norwegian Naturally.
Good bye, everyone! I’ll see you later.
