Not Another Messaging App: East alum made his own app to help people practice foreign languages

After popping his knee out of place during a Utah ski trip, 2019 East alum Hank Breckenridge had to sit his senior year lacrosse season out for physical therapy. When he was finally able to come back for their tournament in Memphis, Tenn., he tore his ACL and was out for the rest of the season. He divided the time during his weeks of recovery between binging “Game of Thrones” and looking up coding tutorials online to replicate.

Once fully recovered, Breckenridge continued building up his coding skills from copying codes off of videos to making his own codes. Now a sophomore at Illinois Wesleyan University, Breckenridge has used these skills to create his own app.

Last August, Breckenridge and his two co-founders started working on a messaging app called “Nama” that translates messages between users to their chosen language of the 110 languages provided.

“The main idea behind it is that you can passively improve your language speaking skills without having to change your daily routine,” Breckenridge said. “So, you’d already be messaging these people, [and] they don’t have to speak the language that you’re learning. We do translations, so that say one person was learning French and one person was learning German, the person who’s learning German will send all of their messages in German, and they’ll receive all of their messages in German, and the person learning French will see everything in French as well.”

The idea for Nama came about when Breckenridge joined a mentorship program at Illinois Wesleyan University. After brainstorming app ideas with his mentor, they landed on a multi-language messaging app to help users practice their foreign language skills. 

“I was pretty bored, I wanted to build something, but I didn’t know what,” Breckenridge said. “I tried a few things at that time, but nothing really stuck. And then I saw this opportunity to learn from a startup founder, who had a proven track record, and was very successful. And so I decided take advantage of it — it was the opportunity I was looking for.”

Nama is unique from other language learning apps because it’s meant for those who already have a basic understanding of the language and want to practice and expand their knowledge. 

“We basically pick up where Duolingo leaves off,” Breckenridge said. “And so once you’re able to kind of have a very basic conversation, that’s when our app starts becoming effective.”

To help grow people’s language skills, Nama provides live feedback to the user of how accurate their messages are. The app also assists in forming messages by allowing people to directly translate what they want to say, making suggestions for words and defining terms and phrases.

Another feature included in the app is taking the words the user needs to have translated from their messages and plugging them into a practice set for the user to go through to learn the words they’re commonly using.

The inspiration behind this method ties to Breckenridge’s experience living in India from sixth to eighth grade. The middle school had students from around the world who spoke lots of different languages, and the school was able to teach those students how to speak English in a year by focusing on words and skills they’d typically use in conversation.

“Every year, there’d be kids that come in that don’t speak a lick of English, and they knew how to get someone from no knowledge to conversational, and then from conversational to fluent in pretty much under a year,” Breckenridge said. “Their model of doing that and how I saw people effectively communicate in perfect English has been a huge inspiration and a really good North Star when building this app.”

Unlike other language learning apps, Nama doesn’t have a locked-in set of words you have to learn. The flash cards start with some basic words, but as you send messages, the vocabulary is shaped based on the words you’re using.

“So the goal is that you will select the words that you want to learn,” Breckenridge said. “Rather than learning how to say ‘milk,’ ‘eggs’ and ‘rainy,’ you’ll be able to build your vocabulary to be what you actually use. So, we won’t teach you useless stuff that you have no intention of ever saying.”

Breckenridge and his co-founders are aiming to be the number one place for practicing languages.

After starting to work on the app in early August, they found a template for an open source chat app, redesigned the structure of it and added in their features — having the app mostly developed after one month. For the past few months, they’ve been refining the app by adding and removing features and testing it for feedback.

As of now, Nama can be downloaded through the app called “TestFlight” where they’re doing beta testing — meaning the app is available to download, but they’re still able to easily tweak it. Breckenridge hopes to get Nama in the app store sometime in March, where the base version will be free for anyone to download. Users will have access to all of the app’s features, but the practice time per day will be capped at five minutes, unless you upgrade to their monthly premium deal.

“I’ve always been pretty entrepreneurial,” Breckenridge said. “I really like seeing something go from just an idea in my head to something physical that actually solves problems and has an impact in the world.”