Twenty-something year old Steffen decided that taking a gap year and traveling to South-America was thé way to discover not only the world but also himself. We won’t dwell too far on what he learnt (take him out for a beer if you want to know his life story), but something that has since stuck with him, was the difference between learning a language from a book in a classroom and actually using the language to talk to people.

He took Spanish lessons before he started to travel and wasn’t the first one to have that brilliant idea. But there was one thing that set him apart from his fellow travellers, and that was the courage to use this newly learned language in practice. Something that was not only greatly appreciated by the local guides, who finally had someone to talk to when they went up the same trail for the gazillioned time, but also allowed him to improve his language skills.

Fast forward to 2017 (by the way, Steffen has now found himself and just travels for fun). After many conversations with pedagogical people, Steffen and Maryia came up with the idea of the practical language task game: Language Hero. The goal? To make learning a new language fun and effective. In Language Hero, a student literally talks to a virtual character and gradually receives feedback on the use of the language he or she learns. That was the kickoff of the development of a unique chatbot platform and unique speech technology, which form the basis of Linguineo.

The unique technology we first started to develop as part of a language task game, has now become something bigger. We use our technology in different custom projects, designed to fit the needs of our clients. The central component in these projects is our unique chatbot technology and speech recognition, which makes it possible to really practice speaking and writing by talking to virtual characters.