About this app
What Mothertongue does
Mothertongue is a vocabulary practice app for diaspora children — and curious adults — who want to keep a parent or grandparent's language alive. v1 ships three under-served languages: Yoruba (Nigeria + diaspora), Tagalog (Philippines + diaspora), and Marathi (India + diaspora). Each language ships 600 carefully selected words (kitchen, family, body, weather, work, faith, market, neighborhood). Cards include written form, transliteration, and on-device AVSpeechSynthesizer audio. What's in v1: — Daily 10-card session: spaced-repetition queue with calm pacing. No streaks. No timers. The session takes 5 minutes. — Audio pronunciation: AVSpeechSynthesizer reads each word in the right locale (yo, tl, mr). Tap to repeat. Slow down toggle. — Themed decks: family, kitchen, body, weather, market, work, faith, neighborhood — 8 decks × 75 words per language. — Sentence builder: tap 3-5 words to compose a sentence; the app speaks it. Useful for saying 'where are the keys' the way grandma did. — Listening practice: the app reads a short word, you tap which one of four candidates it was. Calm rhythm. — Progress is yours: per-language progress lives on this phone. No leaderboards. Free. The three languages are all included.
Features
Built to be useful, not noisy.
Daily 10-card session
Spaced repetition, calm pacing.
Themed decks
8 per language.
Sentence builder
Compose + speak.
Listening practice
4-choice quick test.
Why it exists
The problem
UNESCO: 3,000+ languages at risk. 7,000 living languages, voice AI works for ~30. Duolingo's bandwidth is limited; smaller languages are side projects (Navajo, Hawaiian). The diaspora-side-of-the-app is genuinely uncrowded for Yoruba, Tagalog, Marathi.
What's different
How Mothertongue stands out
Mothertongue is the only iOS app combining (a) 3 under-served languages with hand-curated 600-word decks, (b) on-device AVSpeechSynthesizer with the right locale, (c) calm pacing (no streaks/leaderboards). Duolingo + Babbel skip these languages or offer them as side projects. Te Hiku Media is Māori-only.
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FAQ
Questions about Mothertongue
How much does Mothertongue cost?▾
Mothertongue is free. All features are included from day one — no subscription, no in-app purchases, no paid tiers. Everything you see in this listing works the moment you install it.
Where does Mothertongue store my data?▾
On your device. Mothertongue is built privacy-first: no account is required, no analytics SDKs, no third-party trackers. Nothing is uploaded to a server we control — the app works without one.
What platforms does Mothertongue support?▾
iOS, on iPhone and iPad. You can find the latest availability on this page.
How do I get support for Mothertongue?▾
Use the Support link on this page, or email support@allthingsn.com. We answer every message and keep responses on the same thread.
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