Side project · closed beta
I'm building Sawasdee — and I'm looking for honest testers
No launch event, no crowdfunding campaign. Just a tool I built because I missed it myself while learning Thai — and now it needs a few honest people to poke holes in it before it goes further.
What Sawasdee is
- Seven languages: Thai, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, English, German — the core and origin is Thai ↔ German
- Not a game: no mascot, no hearts or lives, no leagues, no artificial scarcity — the streak only shows whether you showed up
- Spaced repetition (FSRS): you practice exactly what you're about to forget, not just the next item in a list
- Native-speaker audio instead of a synthetic voice, plus pronunciation, tone and writing trainers depending on the language
- A daily session that fits your time: pick 3, 7 or 12 minutes — the app fills them with what's due
- Works fully offline, your progress stays on your device
- Free: level A1 of your first language, every trainer included, no time limit, no account
Why I'm writing about this here
This site is usually about the other kind of pattern-breaking — the one I write about in the blog. But there's a real, researched connection: thinking or deciding in a language that isn't your native one creates measurable psychological distance from automatic, emotionally loaded reactions (the "foreign-language effect"). That's close to the exact thing the blog keeps circling back to — the space between stimulus and reaction. Learning a new language won't make you smarter (that specific claim doesn't hold up in the research), but it does seem to train that particular kind of distance. That's the honest version of why this page exists here and not somewhere else.
What you get as a tester
- Early access before the public release, and a direct line to me — feedback actually gets read and often built.
- The free tier (level A1, every trainer, no account) stays free for testers regardless of what happens with pricing later.
- If you decide later that you want the optional premium tier: the one-time founder price is €34.99 until December 13, 2026, after that €49.99 — testers hear about this before anyone else.
- No obligation. You can stop testing and delete your account any time.
How it works
- 1Fill out the form below — your email address is all I need.
- 2I add you as a tester in Google Play and email you the “Become a tester” link, usually within a few days.
- 3You install the app via that link (Android) and try it at your own pace.
- 4Feedback goes straight to me through the in-app report button, or just by email — no detour through survey tools.
Honest heads-up: the beta currently only runs on Android. An iOS version is technically prepared in the codebase but not released yet.
Sign up as a tester
Just your email address. No newsletter, no spam.
Questions first? Just email me at alireza@deep-mirroring.com.