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Comment by mahesh_rm | Hacker News Reader

Hi, you seem to summarize, in this post, the kind frustration we have been experiencing so far by language exchangers telling us about their experiences (commonly known as tandem learners in Europe). This also answer your question: We don't do dating. We do language exchange. For free, done right, and modulated upon your interests. Because you pick up a language much faster if you actually enjoy what you are talking about, and the person you are talking to. :-)

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Hey Mahesh,

I'm still a bit confused too, but I think it's because I'm American: the terms "language exchange" and "tandem learners" don't mean anything here.

So is it like: say I'm fluent in English and conversational in German; I'd meet up with someone who's fluent in German and conversational in English, and we'd help each other learn? Is that the idea?

Hey mtowle, Alessandro from CoffeeStrap. The idea is exactly what you have said. We are still tuning the format so to deal with different levels of languages.

So far for example here in San Francisco we have a lot of people willing to learn Mandarin(or actually speaking! I am looking at you Zack! :) ) and fluent in English. Another trend here in the bay is about Korean/Japanese. And a lot of Spanish speakers and Portuguese as well. Those are the main languages so far!

Thank you for your explanation. The blog post didn't really detail that, so I mistakenly thought it primarily was about getting together to discuss Creating Things -- like a blind date for hackers to find coding/project partners -- rather than what seems to be primarily about learning languages.

Fortunately, your main page is VERY clear on this main goal. Well done! It makes me wish I were trying to learn a language, as I expect that there's not much use for someone who only speaks English.

I had the same impression from the blog post. I think it's a good idea, even in a blog post, to always say, "Our project is a tool that ______".

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