Idea behind this
A couple of months ago, in May, three of us traveled to India. We planned everything carefully — booked our hotels, downloaded India’s most popular shopping and taxi apps, even picked up local SIM cards before we left. We thought we were ready for anything.
Except one thing: the language barrier.
We didn’t think it would be a problem. We assumed most people spoke English, the way they do here in Sri Lanka. We were wrong.
The moment we landed in Delhi, we were lost. Almost no one around us spoke English, and none of us spoke Hindi. Booking a taxi through the app was easy — but the moment we met the driver, things fell apart. He didn’t understand a word we said, and from there, it was chaos.
We turned to translation apps, hoping they’d save us. They didn’t. The apps couldn’t keep up with real conversation, couldn’t handle background noise, and couldn’t understand the driver’s accent. And honestly — talking to someone through a phone, waiting for a translation, is just plain awkward.
That’s when it hit us: these translation apps, no matter how much tech companies praise them, fall apart in the real world.
So what’s the solution? Learn the language ourselves.
I know — that sounds like a lot of work. That’s exactly why we built Linglo.
Built for lazy people
Now, you might ask — there are already a dozen language-learning apps out there. What makes ours different?
Simple: Linglo is built for lazy people.
Most apps promise to make you fluent — teaching you grammar, vocabulary, everything, over months. We skip all that. Here’s our thinking: if you’re traveling somewhere for five days, why learn the entire language when you only need a handful of words and phrases to get by?
With Linglo, it’s simple. You open the app, tell it why you’re learning the language, and how much time you have. Our AI then builds a personalized mini-course — teaching you exactly the words and phrases you’ll actually use.
How it works
Tell Linglo about your trip, and Pip (our little chameleon) gets to work. It sketches a course around the situations you’ll actually hit — markets, restaurants, trains, hotels — not generic textbook drills.
Lessons are short and practical. Translate a word, tap to hear the pronunciation, move on. No fluff.
When you want to rehearse a real conversation, the role-play studio lets you spin up a custom scenario — like buying kottu from a street vendor — and practice before you’re standing there sweating in real life.
Presenting Linglo
We got a chance to present Linglo at the Cursor Colombo Builder Series meetup on 18th July 2026 at the DHPL Auditorium. Standing on stage and walking people through the idea — and the Delhi taxi story — was a lot of fun.
Tech Stack
Nuxt 3, Vue 3, TypeScript, Bun, Elysia.js, Google ADK, Gemini, Drizzle ORM, PostgreSQL, Docker, Server-Sent Events