February Update
Published on February 21, 2026 by Shane
Dia dhaoibh a chairde.
In this post, I'll give an update on everything going on with the Sionnach Beta app and Madra Teanga. There is a lot to report so this post will likely be long. I'll do a summary up front in bullet points and then dive into the details after.
This is what is currently happening with the apps:
- Latest release was focused on stability and updating all the code, it had some small additions mostly around trying to make communication easier.
- New chat feature on the app messages the team directly, this can be used for anything to do with the app, we want to hear from you, I guess the chat feature is for when you want a response.
- The updates and roadmap is something we can use between releases to communicate what is happening behind the scenes, it's broken into "in-progress", "done", and "planned", so you can see the direction of the app and have your input on any of it.
- I also added a page on the home screen calling for people to record audio for the app, you can read more about it there, but it's part of our push to replace the current audio on the app.
- There were some updates and fixes for the lesson content, but we are having all of this proofread and some of it rewritten professionally so that new polished content will be in the next release.
- There is a new small feature, the text input now scrolls as you type, this was because it was not clear when you finished part of a long word that there is more to type. Users were reporting being stuck.
- There was a lot of UI clean-up for different devices.
- Most of the work was in updating the code, security, and just the general maintenance an app like this needs but is not that visible to users.
- We are using most of the donations now on updating the content.
- We have paid professional proofreaders to review the current courses.
- We are and will be paying freelancers to convert the text into each dialect, so we will offer the three main dialects and the standard as options. You will start to see this in the next release.
- We have started to recruit speakers to record audio, they are waiting on the scripts to be converted into each dialect. These recordings will start to appear in the next release. The process is as follows:
- We get the scripts professionally proofread.
- We get them professionally converted into each dialect.
- We get 1-minute test audio from the speakers to make sure the audio is good.
- I take the audio submitted and I clean it up and enhance it digitally with tools like Audacity, to make it better for learners.
- For the professional audio they either invoice us or we pay them and invoice, either way, it will show up on the Open Collective public ledger.
- All of the text data will be available from the open-source project so anyone can use it, the only requirement with the license is that improvements are contributed back to the open-source project. The idea here is to create a free resource for anyone else building tools for learning Irish.
- The audio we are getting is both content to use as reference from really strong speakers and we are also accepting content from learners, the learners' content is unpaid but credited, the idea is to provide realistic audio on the app of how people you might encounter speak and that includes people learning the language.
- For the audio we are using a CC BY-NC-SA license to protect it, we leave the copyright with the speaker and we just get permission to use it on the apps. This is important for voice data because it should be up to the speaker of the audio where it appears. That means anyone who wants to use it will need to ask the speaker directly.
- For the open-source project, it will be a case-by-case basis of who wants to contribute their audio, for example, I'll provide mine so anyone can use it (not that anyone would want it but it's a good placeholder).
- We are now set up with Open Source Europe who manage all our admin and taxes, they also provide the public ledger to see where money is being spent. You can see that here https://opencollective.com/madra-teanga
- The Open Collective also makes it much easier for us to work with freelancers and organisations.
- At the end of this month, I'll be moving all the donations from here to the Open Collective.
I think that's everything to report, there is a lot going on it can be hard to keep up with it all. I would like to thank you all for your patience and supporting the project. Most of the donations now are going into improving the content and you will start to see that showing up in the Sionnach Beta from the next release.
From a personal point of view, it's really exciting to be getting all this professional content, up to this point all the content was created by me as best I could. There was only so much I could do, so now to see the variation in the dialects and to hear the audio is really, really exciting.
I would guess maybe a lot of you are either bored with the content or perhaps have not used the app in a while, there are two things to talk about here, first is about the new courses, the second thing is about the app itself, making it easier to use and more interesting.
So to start, on the new content, the daily conversation course has been created, but I decided to hold off and wait to get it professionally proofread, the dialects done and audio recorded. I think holding each course to this standard is really important so any future course will be held back until it's ready.
With the existing courses there was a great pressure to get them out and see how people used them, the introduction course was created because of how hard the irregular verb course was for beginners. When the app was first built the idea was more to create courses fast and allow people to create their own. The audio is the big challenge doing this quantity approach, we put a lot of thought into maybe using a Machine audio for this. However, from the bugs reported this audio just wasn't what people wanted.
There is so much we could have done to improve the TTS but in the end, it just made so much more sense to find strong speakers and use the donations to compensate these speakers for their time. Personally, I really like this because if all goes well it should become a reliable source of income for strong Irish speakers. I think the move to human recording just makes a lot more sense even if its a lot more work.
There is so much we could have done to improve the TTS but in the end, it just made so much more sense to find strong speakers and use the donations to compensate these speakers for their time. Personally, I really like this because if all goes well it should become a reliable source of income for strong Irish speakers. I think the move to human recording just makes a lot more sense even if its a lot more work.
So what you can expect is after the current courses are updated, there will be a steady stream of new content showing up on the beta app, my hope is a new course each month. As you can imagine coordinating all this does take a good bit of time, so we are open to someone joining the team to take on this content management and coordination role. So if you or anyone you know may be interested please do get in touch. You should see some public announcements on this in the future.
So now onto the second matter. The app itself. From a personal point of view, I would love to just be focused on this and constantly improving the app to make it more interesting and easier to use.
This challenge of how to learn or improve your Irish with an app is really, really interesting. However, atm there is just so much going on, the Sionnach beta is currently sitting at 75k lines of code, and it's just me working on it on a part-time basis. Each new feature adds thousands of lines and dozens of bugs.
So for now the focus is on adding content, fixing bugs and small improvements. All the while the Madra Teanga open-source app is being built out, this is being built out in public and the idea is any developer with an interest can come along and start working on it. The open-source project isn't quite there yet, it's still being set up, the app is basic, most of the energy is directed at setting everything up. This week I've gotten into the habit of just spending a few hours each morning on the open-source app and it's honestly been a lot of fun and I really look forward to that part of my day.
This challenge of how to learn or improve your Irish with an app is really, really interesting. However, atm there is just so much going on, the Sionnach beta is currently sitting at 75k lines of code, and it's just me working on it on a part-time basis. Each new feature adds thousands of lines and dozens of bugs.
So for now the focus is on adding content, fixing bugs and small improvements. All the while the Madra Teanga open-source app is being built out, this is being built out in public and the idea is any developer with an interest can come along and start working on it. The open-source project isn't quite there yet, it's still being set up, the app is basic, most of the energy is directed at setting everything up. This week I've gotten into the habit of just spending a few hours each morning on the open-source app and it's honestly been a lot of fun and I really look forward to that part of my day.
The Sionnach app is as I said 75k lines of Dart code, it's not documented, or written correctly, in saying that if someone was interested in working on that code, please do contact me, I can provide access to the code.
So on the Sionnach app I'd like here to just list some of the ideas and places I would work on if I had the chance and these will likely show up in the Madra Teanga app instead:
- Simplifying the interfaces, making them far more intuitive, doing a lot less with the space on the screen.
- Add in more fun features, so games like wordsearch and boggle crosswords etc, I actually built out prototypes of these before the Xmas break.
- A much more streamlined and fun Exp system, ideally tied directly to your progress with Irish.
- I would love to do more social media features, like a forum on lessons, so people could chat to each other, maybe some way to get people talking on the app with each other to practice their Gaeilge.
- It would be really cool to have something on the app to connect students with teachers, something like giving teachers the option to advertise their services on the app.
- From a tech point of view these features are not hard to implement and there is no cost in running them, the challenge is in moderation, dealing with incidents or the app being misused, this would probably need a full-time person to monitor and respond if anything happend.
- It would be great if we could list resources for learners, links and books etc, when people start learning Irish this can be the hardest to figure out. This can be harder then you might think, it would need to be done in a fair way and all options listed. I guess an alernative would be for users to provide their own lists for other learners.
These are just some ideas, we're always open to hearing from you, so thanks to those who have reached out and emailed me their thoughts so far and please do continue, it really helps.
From a personal point of view, what I'm most interested in is how an app can be best used to learn Irish. What should be done on an app, what should be in a book and what should be left to a teacher. I think the value of the app is it's free and when it is released on the app stores, then in theory Irish can be learned on any of the 7.5 billion smartphones in the world. Still, in saying that I think there is a lot that can be done with the design of the app and its features to make learning Irish with it easier and ideally more fun. My own opinion here is some apps are fun but your not learning, personally I think making progress with a language is fun so the features on the app sould be built around that and not just giving the illustion of progress.
I think that's everything for now. I'll aim to give more updates soon, the next release should be out in the next two weeks. That new app version should have the first of the new content being made. The Madra Teanga app is still in the early stages but I will be moving the lesson content there soon, and when the app is worth taking a look at I'll create a version for people to play around with.
I think after the break the momentum is back and I really hope the snowballing from before Xmas returns and this time in a sustainable way. I'm really excited about the direction of the apps and the state they will be in soon. I am also struggling a bit with impatience but keep being reminded it's not even a year old yet.
For anyone interested I recorded a dev log yesterday, it's not for everyone, its unscripted, unedited and it's 90 minutes and very technical but it's here for those interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M71JkA5JHTc&t=95s
I do it in this format because its much easier for me and I think it gives a different insight.
I do it in this format because its much easier for me and I think it gives a different insight.
Thank you again for all of your support, it's really making the difference.
GRMA
Míle Buíochas
Le Meas Seán
Míle Buíochas
Le Meas Seán