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Launch HN: Issen (YC F24) – Personal AI language tutor

313 points mariano54 | 1 comments | 26 Jun 25 14:32 UTC | HN request time: 0.31s | source

Hey HN, we're Mariano and Anton from ISSEN (https://issen.com), a foreign language voice tutor app that adapts to your interests, goals, and needs.

Demo: https://www.loom.com/share/a78e713d46934857a2dc88aed1bb100d?...

We started this company after struggling to find great tools to practice speaking Japanese and French. Having a tutor can be awesome, but there are downsides: they can be expensive (since you pay by the hour), difficult to schedule, and have a high upfront cost (finding a tutor you like often forces you to cycle through a few that you don’t).

We wanted something that would talk with us — realistically, in full conversations — and actually help us improve. So we built it ourselves. The app relies on a custom voice AI pipeline combining STT (speech-to-text), TTS (text-to-speech), LLMs, long term memory, interruptions, turn-taking, etc. Getting speech-to-text to work well for learners was one of the hardest parts — especially with accents, multi-lingual sentences, and noisy environments. We now combine Gemini Flash, Whisper, Scribe, and GPT-4o-transcribe to minimize errors and keep the conversation flowing.

We didn’t want to focus too much on gamification. In our experience, that leads to users performing well in the app, achieving long streaks and so on, without actually getting fluent in the language you're wanting to learn.

With ISSEN you instantly speak and immerse yourself in the language, which, while not easy, is a much more efficient way to learn.

We combine this with a word bank and SRS flashcards for new words learned in the AI voice chats, which allows very rapid improvement in both vocabulary and speaking skills. We also create custom curriculums for each student based on goals, interests, and preferences, and fully customizable settings like speed, turn taking, formality, etc.

App: https://issen.com (works on web, iOS, Android) Pricing: 20 min free trial, $20–29/month (depending on duration and specific geography)

We’d love your feedback — on the tech, the UX, or what you’d wish from a tool like this. Thanks!

1. runarberg ◴[26 Jun 25 19:19 UTC] No.44390432[source]▶
I tried a 20 minute conversation, as a beginner Japanese learner (mid-to-high A1).

My first problem was setting my native language truthfully to Icelandic which seemed to confuse both me and the AI tutor. We spoke together in Japanese but asking how to say a word in Japanese but giving the Icelandic word didn’t quite work, giving the word in English worked much better.

Now as a beginner I don’t think this service is right for me. It is very hard to have a conversation—even a basic one—at my level and I didn’t actually learn that much as I wasn’t able to say anything. I did however learn that I need to practice creating sentences on my own, and I need to practice speaking, but honestly I would much rather do that via structured exercises from a textbook then from an AI tutor (or a human tutor for that matter). I have been skipping those exercises in the textbook that I use, so I guess having that 20 min conversation did indeed help me realize what I need to focus on. So I guess thanks for that.

A more useful feedback from a beginner’s perspective. Taking your time between sentences is something you can do with an AI tutor which you can‘t do with a human tutor, so I recommend you add stuff like dictionaries and grammar keys which beginners can look up before starting the next sentence.

I would also like to see some basic note-taking, or even message drafting, such that you can type in a draft before you start speaking your next sentence. I don’t think intermediate speakers would need these as they can just ask the AI tutor during the conversation, but for beginners it is nice to have some written materials as you practice.