Jack Murray - BlogWhy I built a language learning app… even though there’s already 37,647 out there1091 words (approx 6 min)
Seven years ago, my dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
Early onset. He was 53.
It’s hard to describe how awful of a disease it is. They don’t just lose memories. You slowly watch someone’s personality fade… while their body’s still right there.
Naturally, when you witness that up close, it shakes you.
Putting aside the support side of it, most people that see a loved one like that get thinking…
What can I do to avoid this myself?
I’ve spent years going down that rabbit hole.
Some things are out of your control - genetics, luck, life.
But turns out, a few things aren’t.
There’s the obvious stuff: diet, exercise, sleep.
And then there’s something that kept showing up in the research:
Cognitive reserve.
The brain’s ability to resist damage and maintain function despite aging or disease (like Alzheimer’s).
And one of the best ways to build it?
Learning a language.
I know.
I thought it sounded like crossword-puzzle pseudoscience too.
But the research is legit. Bilinguals tend to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s by 4-5 years on average.
That’s massive.
No guarantee, sure. But in terms of return on investment of time?
Learning a language punches way above its weight.
So I figured… okay. Time to learn one.
For me, that choice was mainly driven by a lot of pop culture and media I already consumed... Japanese.
I'm a millennial Pokemon kid, who knew?
I figured why not be able to one day consume media I already watch or games I play, just in its native language?
But here’s the problem I quickly noticed…
Most language apps seemed more interested in streaks than progress.
Games, not tools.
Flashy dopamine loops, not meaningful learning.
I spoke to people who had used a certain owl app for years but still couldn’t hold a conversation.
But equally on the opposite end of the spectrum were traditional classes and paper textbooks… stuff that felt extremely outdated or slow.
So I started digging into the actual science of how we learn hard things well.
The Science of Getting Good at Hard Things
From Anders Ericsson’s work on deliberate practice to the research on memory and skill acquisition since, one truth kept coming up:
“Deliberate practice requires effort and is not inherently enjoyable. Individuals are motivated to practice because practice improves performance.”
- Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Romer, 1993
That clicked.
It explained why so many apps feel good but go nowhere.
Deliberate practice doesn’t necessarily feel good in the moment.
It feels effortful - like doing a workout in the gym.
But stacking those effortful sessions and lifting slightly heavier weights each time leads to mastery.
And mastery feels incredible - and that’s what’s really fun.
I combined that insight with others from learning science and cognitive psychology:
- Spaced repetition (science’s favourite memory hack)
- Active recall (don’t just reread or refer to notes - pull the answer from memory)
- Deliberate practice (attack your weak points, don’t just coast)
- Mastery learning (don’t move on until you’ve got it, and build on a foundation of pre-requisites)
- Frequency and usefulness foundation (applying Zipf’s Law, if you start with the ~2000 most commonly occurring words, you’ll comprehend 80%+ of everyday use)
- And yes, motivation design - but not fake streaks. Real purpose.
I looked for an app that baked all this in.
It did. Kind of.
It existed across a lot of different fragmented tools all with differing setups and requiring a lot of user effort to get up and running and maintain.
It’s what I initially did for the first few months learning Japanese, but I was a particularly motivated person.
No normal person would be configuring all their own materials and learning pathway.
I longed for something where I could simply log in, put in the exact reps that I know would be progressing me forwards optimally, with minimal overthinking.
No single app really existed that did that.
So I built it.
LoopFox: A Language App That Trains You Like an Athlete
It started as a little side project.
A better way to learn Japanese for myself, and Italian for a friend.
A tool that brings together the best of learning science, modern language studies, and cherry picked features that work on other tools but get bogged down with overcomplexity.
Now, 15 beta testers later, it’s soon to be a real app on the App Store and Google Play.
I’ve built and scrapped numerous features, and fought with hundreds of bugs in the process to refine it.
It’s my own daily driver of Japanese progress.
I borrowed principles from Math Academy (an amazing EdTech for math learning) and others who understand that:
- Daily consistency beats intensity
- Practice should feel hard, but not overwhelming
- Motivation follows progress, not the other way around
- Snazzy animations don’t improve your ability to learn
Although the origins of LoopFox were in a way to try and protect my future, that’s not why I’ve stuck with language learning.
Speaking to many people who truly become fluent in a second language, they have all had one or more of these deeper reasons:
- To connect with a partner, a grandparent, or their roots
- To move abroad, or work in a new country/for a company that needs bilingualism
- To understand the books, shows, games, or music they love
- To pass exams or as an actual study of theirs (e.g. university)
So LoopFox is designed to help people who truly want to get to fluency.
In other words, for the above reasons.
It helps you train like a serious learner, not a passive app user.
It helps you push through the hard parts.
And it helps you see your own growth.
Pls Try It
For now, LoopFox is free.
It won’t be forever, but the important thing to me was getting it out there.
The current content allows you to reach around B1 (intermediate) level (or N3 by the JLPT standard for Japanese). This is the point where real conversation and engagement with more native content begins.
After that, LoopFox helps you track your immersion and out-of-app practice. In other words, your real exposure practice with the language.
Reading, listening, speaking, writing - through mediums that you personally enjoy.
This is what pushes you towards fluency.
I built it because I needed it.
And it’s helped me more than any tool I’ve tried, I'm obviously biased though.
If you're wanting to learn Japanese or Italian (that's all it supports for now), give it a go.
It might help you too.
Let me know what you think.