app · learn indonesian for life in bali

Learn Indonesian in three minutes a day

Learn Indonesian the way you'll actually use it: situation lessons, a 2472-word dictionary and a phrasebook — all with pronunciation spelled out and spoken aloud. Works with no connection. Not for tourists: for people who live here.

2472
words: 753
phrases: 30
lessons

Tap any of them — that is exactly how it sounds. Inside there are 753 phrases, a dictionary and lessons.

Open the app

Free forever: lessons, dictionary, phrasebook. Camera, voice and translator — a trial to try them out.

Bule pays a different price

“Bule” is what locals call white foreigners. It isn't an insult and it isn't a scam: at the market, at the bengkel (the motorbike repair shop) and when renting a scooter there is simply a local price and a price for someone who didn't ask in Indonesian. Nobody hides it. Over a month of living here the gap adds up.

But it isn't really about money. After your first correct sentence people start talking to you instead of serving you. Your ibu greets you by name. The mechanic explains what he actually fixed. The neighbour invites you to a ceremony.

Not the dictionary — the street

Machines translate correctly and beside the point. We give you what people actually say: at the market, at the repair shop, to the neighbour over the fence — and mark what is polite and what is casual.

Fix the brakes
Memperbaiki rem
the dictionary way
Benerin rem
what they say at the shop
Can you make it cheaper?
Bisakah lebih murah?
bookish and long
Kurang dong!
what you hear at the market
It doesn't work
Tidak berfungsi
straight from a manual
Nggak jalan
what your neighbour says

What is inside

Every word spoken aloud: Pronunciation spelled out, stress checked against sources, and a note wherever a word has a trap in it. Works with no connection.
Lessons built from real situations: Not “the boy eats an apple” — the repair shop, the villa deposit, the police checkpoint.
A translator that picks the register: Polite, neutral or the way locals actually say it. Machine translation can't do that.
Reviews that remember for you: A word comes back on exactly the day you start forgetting it.

Why tokek

The tokek is a big gecko that lives under the roof of every house in Bali and calls at night loudly enough to hear across the street. Its name is its own call: it literally shouts what it's called.

And in Java they say: if someone says something and a tokek calls at that moment — what was said is true.

So here, when you say a phrase correctly, the tokek calls. Not “plus ten points” — a local belief. Tap the pronunciation above; he's already doing it. And you can poke the tokek himself.

Built by people who moved here too

Not linguists, not a university department. People who moved here themselves and hit the same wall at the market and the repair shop. We're the same bule you are — and we know which phrases you need in week one, because we went looking for them ourselves.

So, honestly: we don't promise perfect pronunciation. If a local corrects you — they're right, not us.

What we promise and what we don't

Phrasebook by situation

All sixteen situations

So the app remembers
what you already know

You can flip through phrases without an account. But the lessons, the full dictionary and the reviews don't live on this page — they're inside.