Why I started Lang.Global
I am starting a company about language, human language, for a very intimate and personal reason. I feel deeply about this pursuit, but first I want to tell you a little about myself.
I consider myself a creator and builder by trade. For the past 5 years, I have been building websites and applications for clients at TechPines, an agency that I started. It’s been an incredible journey. However, there has always been something nagging at me, something I couldn’t quite see like a question that I didn’t know how to ask.
An experiment
I’ve always enjoyed writing code, and I’ve learned dozens of programming languages like Python, Javascript, Ruby, Java, C, C#, Bash and more. In a lot of ways, they all blur together. As long as you have a few primitives like a “for” loop and an “if” statement, all of these different languages are (for the most part) equivalent — or turing complete.
Then, last summer I stumbled upon an interesting question on Quora. The question asked if it’s harder to learn a coding language or a foreign language. Most of the responses were the same. Of course, learning a computer language is easier than learning a foreign language. That’s what I thought too. I mean, I knew over a dozen programming languages, yet I only knew one real language, English.
But something bothered me about this. Something bothered me about the answers I read on Quora. So, I decided to start an experiment.
I thought I’d try to learn French and Spanish. I wanted to understand how these real languages were so much different than the computer languages. Before long, I started feeling like I wasn’t seeing the whole picture with just French and Spanish, so I added German to the mix.
Soon, I found myself becoming more and more intrigued by the other major languages and linguistics in general. I started studying Russian, then Arabic, Chinese and Japanese. I’ll be the first to admit that I got carried away, but the more I learned, the more questions I had.
Starting something new
While trying to learn these 7 languages, I found that the tools online didn’t work how I wanted them to work. For instance, with German (like many languages) the verbs are one of the most fundamental building blocks. Yet many of the free sites on German Verbs were lacking in UX and functionality, so I built a free site about German Verbs and translated it into several different languages.
I felt that what I was working on had become bigger than a hobby, therefore I decided to create a new company around it.
For now, the focus of my new startup is going to be on building free, high-quality online language tools. In addition, I will offer consulting services around building internationalized websites and applications for businesses that want to expand their global reach.
On a personal note, I believe that what I’m able to ultimately achieve depends on the context in which these endeavors exist.
The truth about the world
We live in a dangerous time, but also a time of great opportunity. In spite of all the advances of human civilization, we are still divided as people. We are divided by culture and color, but on a more fundamental level, we are divided by language.
For this reason, I believe our future depends on each of us making an effort — small and large — to see the other side of the language divide.
With this in mind, I am starting a new company, Lang.Global. To help people. To break down barriers. And to open the world to human language.
In these uncertain times, may the future be bright for all of us.
