How Maya was born

Don’t you know that feeling when you spent the last 600 days grinding a streak on a language learning app but still cannot talk to anyone that is beyond ordering some food or a cafe?

I struggeld with this a lot 3 years ago when I wanted to learn Swedish. After almost 2 years of wasted attention span my Swedish was not in any position to handle a normal every day conversation. Even ordering food was hard beyond the absolute basics.

Fast forward 1 year and I receive a message from my University that my exchange semester is going to be in Peru. Spanish… Oh no. I need to learn Spanish. Fast…

So naturally I enrolled in a university class for Spanish. And although my teacher was amazing and such a kind hearted woman, I did not learn too much. For me it was hard to prepare in between of other university classes and assignments and everything. Also it always felt like a chore to study grammar or verb conjugations.

Then I remembered that I was coincidentally in a group project in another course with a girl from Mexico. She speaks Spanish so I asked if we could practice a bit. The Euphoria was there, the actions afterwards not. We quickly forgot about it again and again I did not improve. But I really liked the idea of a language buddy.

And since I can code a bit and recently dabbled with sending automated Whatsapp messages in another project I put 2 and 2 together and the first iteration of the service was born. Maya did not have her name yet, or memory, or anything else. Just a bit of a system prompt.

And over the months I improved the service more and more, adding the ability to remember things, adapt to my language skills (which were improving quite rapidly) so I was always kept on my toes but still not overwhelmed. I could now bore you with technical details, but believe me there is a lot to do.

Lastly Maya needed a name and a personality. So I settled for someone living abroad for their job. Someone that likes foood (because who does not) and music and some history.

Maya was done and is now yours to enjoy and learn with. I hope Maya can teach you even more than she tought me over the last months.