What's new in December: New features, the Polygloss team is growing, and more!

Etiene Dalcol, December 26, 2020

Same news but in πŸ‡§πŸ‡· Portuguese: Novidades de Dezembro no Polygloss

New features and fixes!

πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡ΈπŸ‡«πŸ‡·πŸ‡©πŸ‡ͺ Word suggestions added for Spanish, French and German

πŸ“– Dictionary definition with examples for word suggestions

πŸ”“ New screen after match will show when a new lesson is unlocked

πŸ– Better form to give correction: more space to write and button to copy text

🐞 Fixed bug when sliding and dismissing next match

🐞 Improved issue with duplicate matches

🐞 Improved issue with duplicate usernames

🐞 Fixed lesson type being drawn even if it hasn’t been unlocked by player yet

🐞 Fixed issue finding partner on Play tab

🐞 Disabled auto correct in more writing fields

You can unlock the suggestions for each image using your energy points, and upon clicking on the hints, a pop-up with definitions will come up. It will also bring other information like the gender of nouns, and sometimes examples and synonyms.

Coming next

πŸ”€ Word suggestions for more languages: Portuguese and Italian

(small break to work on other features, before adding more languages to word suggestions (Dutch, Greek, Russian, Welsh, Irish, Korean, Norwegian, Indonesian, Swedish, Arabic and more! ))

πŸ’β€β™€οΈ Better user onboarding and app explanation to new users

Check our Roadmap to see what else we are working on next.

Listen to Etiene’s interview about language learning

In this Podcast episode, I was interviewed by Dakota, from the Language Learning Lounge Podcast. We discussed all sorts of things from comprehensible input, comprehensible output, why some language learning methods don’t work as well or are being misapplied, and many more things.

Welcome Doug!

Polygloss' team is growing! Today I’m very happy to introduce you Doug. He has years of experience in customer service and support and, after completing a 12-week program in the Florida Atlantic University, he will be working with us as UI UX designer. In the next weeks he will help making Polygloss more polished and more engaging.

We have started by working with feedback I collected so far, like the user questionnaires I have sent you over the past months, the interviews I have made, the Play Store reviews and the iOS beta test feedback. He has compiled all that information beautifully in a way that helps us determine how Polygloss should evolve in the next months. I am very excited with the new roadmap we are planning out.

Here’s an interview with Doug so you can get to know him a bit more:

What are your languages?

Portuguese, English and now I’m studying Spanish.

What is your favorite work tool?

Pen and paper! I need to write to make associations and my ideas end up coming from what I write. Nowadays there are so many wonderful digital tools that it is a bit difficult to get attached to them, but I’ve been working some years with the Adobe Cloud suite. I edit videos on Adobe Premiere, make artwork on Photoshop, and use XD not only for UX projects but also to create other visual work (I’ve dying to learn some animation).

Can you tell me a bit more about your stay in the Pontifical Catholic University of SΓ£o Paulo?

I studied Business for 1 semester in the University of Guarulhos, but I got a 50% scholarship the Landless Workers' Movement and I transferred my credits to PUC. I stayed there from 2008 to 2010 and this change was very important to me. I met a new world. I’m from the east zone of SΓ£o Paulo, and I always studied and worked around there. It was the first time in 18 years that I dared to leave the east zone to study with people from a very different background from mine in a fancy neighborhood of SP (Perdizes). That gave me a whole new perspective of the world, and I decided to interrupt my studies and use my money to do an exchange program in Dublin. At the time I saw more value in that choice.

How has your style of thinking on the users changed throughout the years?

What really shaped my way of thinking on the user were my life experiences. Living in Ireland and US has made me understand deeper how people behave and communicate in different cultural contexts. My work experiences were also a key factor. I had the privilege of working with internal and external clients inside the same company, a start-up in New York, for 3 years. There I gained an inclusive and diverse perspective, which makes a big difference when I need to understand a group of people and what they want.

What are your hobbies?

Music and painting are my favorite hobbies. But I sing since I was 13, was always in a band, and I participated in musical projects from different styles. Today I study piano and guitar, and always when I have some inspiration I put some acrylic on canvas.

And favorite book?

My favorite book is Spiritual Nutrition from Dr. Gabriel Cousens. In 2016 I started studying spirituality and this book has shaken everything I knew about the human body, the food we eat, and the importance of sustainability in a holistic context. Today I continue in love with vegan culinary, and in these 4 years I adopted many good practices that are part of my day-to-day

Recommendation of the month

If you’re learning Portuguese, or if you speak Portuguese and are learning other languages, then you must check Beatriz' YouTube channel MΓ©todo autodidata out.

Some months she reviewed Polygloss in one of her videos, and she regularly brings amazing content on her journey learning languages and shares good materials she finds.

Super thanks πŸ’–

Super thanks to everyone who is giving feedback, reporting bugs, writing reviews at the Play Store, sharing about Polygloss and the iOS Beta on social media and, of course, our new subscribers! Your support is very important for us to keep developing this game. When you subscribe you’ll get unlimited energy ⚑️, support developers and new features, and get access to an exclusive Slack group. If you are on iOS (which doesn’t allow paid subscriptions while in test) and still want to support the development, let us know by email.

iOS Beta

We have just invited a new batch of people from the waiting to access the iOS app. If you haven’t received your invitation yet, please be patient! So many of you signed up, which is really exciting, and we are rolling it out by stages as we improve the app πŸ™ Meanwhile, you can share the Android version of Polygloss with your friends.

Privacy Policy

Polygloss now has a Privacy Policy, you can read it here.

Happy Holidays

Lastly, I hope you are all well, safe and I wish you tasty and fun Holidays! Our team will go on a break until January 6th, so we are refreshed and able to bring you lots of new things next year. See you soon β™₯οΈπŸŽ…


Etiene is a Software Engineer who is passionate about languages. She recently finished her MSc. in Computer Science researching Computational Linguistics and Computer Assisted Language Learning.