A little story about why we started FluenTea
How long have you been waiting until you are good enough?
There’s an ad for a language learning app that gets my blood boiling. It’s the one where a guy asks for directions in broken Spanish, then his alternate self says the same thing perfectly, all because of this amazing app that will teach you Spanish in 2 weeks.
I get mad at the story line being sold, not the product. The lie that we have to be able to speak this new language perfectly before we utter a word. As a result, most learners get stuck in a cycle of learning alone until they build “enough skill” to eventually go use it. What nobody talks about is the part where you finally try to use it and completely freeze. Speaking anxiety is real, it's common, and it's a top reason people quit.
Nancy and I built FluenTea based on the version of this sad cycle that we both lived. We learned, the hard way, that we had it backwards.
Angie's story
This gets real and personal quickly, so here we go. I lost my father when I was 5, he died in a motorcycle accident. When I was 6, I went to Mexico and visited his family. I didn't go back again until one year ago (no, I won't tell you how many years that was 😉).
For years I told myself I wasn't ready. I grew up in California with Spanish all around me. I absorbed it, I knew some key phrases, mostly ones I learned when my mama was mad 😆. I'm a proud Latina who knows the power of a threat that includes a chancla. But my ability ended soon after those memorized phrases. I took classes in high school. I downloaded app after app. I had streaks and premium accounts. I was motivated to learn so I could reconnect with my family, and I kept waiting and practicing alone, convinced that if I couldn't speak Spanish well, I would be a disgrace. That I wouldn't be accepted and the trip would be heartbreaking.
Then I finally got tired of waiting to live. I wanted to know my family again, to know what parts of me were also in them. I wanted to hear stories about my father. So, terrified, I went. I stayed with my tia Arminda, my father's sister. She and her husband didn't speak English, and yet, we connected. We found our ways and I used every bit of Spanish I had and picked up a little more along the way. I realized I could understand more than I gave myself credit for and soaked in all the stories I had longed to hear. Every family member accepted me and was happy I made the trip. My tia Mary learned one sentence in English and said it at a family dinner held because I had finally returned to them. She said to me, "You are welcome here." It came out in a beautiful, thick accent from her warm, throaty voice. I cried, of course.
Most importantly, I realized I had waited much longer than necessary to reclaim my space in my father's family.
Nancy's story
Nancy has lived in Berlin for years. She wants a German friend with whom she can speak German. It's that simple. But simple is rarely easy, am I right?
The moments where a connection could happen move fast. We are all racing through our days, picking up kids from school, passing someone in the grocery store, waiting for the train. Attention is short and there isn't much patience for stumbling through a sentence when everyone is busy getting on with their day.
Nancy also downloaded the apps, had the streaks, the premium accounts, and even passed the fluency test needed to live as an expat in Germany. But, she still couldn't hold a conversation in her new language. We hit the same wall with different languages, in different countries, on different continents. The same feeling of waiting for a moment that keeps not arriving, of not being good enough to speak out loud.
Here's what we learned
Connection doesn't require fluency. It requires guts. One of our language experts here at FluenTea taught me that a person is bilingual whether they know 3 words or 3,000, and the lie we shouldn't believe is that we need to reach some level of good enough before we start using our language.
Connection, it turns out, is also what makes you want to keep learning. Not an app. Not a streak. A real person who is interested in your journey and ready to be part of it.
What FluenTea is
FluenTea exists because we got tired of learning alone. It's a place to use your language while you're still learning it, with real people who want to connect just as much as you do. Our AI coach ChaCha keeps the conversation flowing and turns what you practiced into what you learn next.
We want to start a giant, sweet conversation all around the world. One where language has a purpose and that purpose is connection, not perfection.
So if you've been waiting until you're ready, this is for you. You have been ready. It's time to start talking.
XOXO
Angie FluenTea cofounder