Show what you know and grow your vocab in daily games like Mazwi, Chiperengo and Chipande. The vocab deck brings back the words you miss until they stick.
Learning Shona has meant a different tool for every piece, and giving up on most of them. Afri-Speak is one place for all of it, built up a piece at a time.
All of it. One app.
Today that means three daily word games and a vocab deck you review like flashcards, all drawn from a real Shona dictionary and the way people speak now. Lessons, pronunciation and a tutor you can talk to are being built on top of that.
The waitlist gets you the launch note, and a hello from Tanya before then.
Wherever you ended up, there is nobody around to practise with. Afri-Speak fits into the slivers of time you do have, on the bus or before bed.
There is no classroom here and nobody watching. Practise on your own until the words feel like yours.
Spouses, partners, grandchildren, friends. If you are stepping into Shona from the outside, you are welcome here too.
Games and vocab you can use today. Lessons, pronunciation and a tutor after that.
One Shona word a day, six tries to guess it, Wordle-style. Every answer comes from a real Shona dictionary, so you are never guessing at made-up words.
Seven letters and as many Shona words as you can build from them. It is harder than it looks, and a good way to learn how words are put together.
Sixteen words hiding four groups. Sort them and you learn which words belong together and why, which is most of what fluency is.
A deck of 500 everyday words. Flip a card, say how well you knew it, and the app decides when to show it again. Words you struggle with come back sooner.
Set a daily goal in minutes. Hit it and the day counts. Miss one and the app does not make a thing of it.
Shona conversation at your pace, with pronunciation feedback and proper lessons. We are building it after the games and the vocab deck have settled with the first testers.
Duolingo does not offer Shona at all, so in that sense there is nothing to compare. Today Afri-Speak is three daily word games and a vocab deck, all drawn from a real Shona dictionary and the language as Zimbabweans speak it now. Lessons and a tutor you can talk to come later.
Yes. That is the most common starting point, and the placement check is built around it. The games and the vocab deck rebuild the words first. Speaking practice arrives with the tutor in a later release.
After the games and vocab have settled with the first testers. The plan is a tutor you can talk to in English while it answers in Shona, then flip to Shona-only when you are ready. There is no date yet, and we would rather ship it right than early.
Textbooks teach grammar nobody uses on a call home, and on YouTube you only watch. Afri-Speak makes you produce the words, six tries at a time, and remembers which ones you got wrong so they come back sooner.
Pricing is not final. The plan is a free tier with the daily games and the vocab deck, and a paid tier, probably under five US dollars a month, for the tutor and pronunciation feedback once they exist. Everyone on the waitlist gets early access pricing.
The iOS beta is on TestFlight now with a small group. A public App Store launch is planned for later in 2026. The waitlist gets the launch note.
Android is next, once the iOS beta has settled. A web version is further out.
It is built for teens and adults reclaiming the language, but the content is family safe and works for confident readers. A kids track with Shona stories is on the list for later.
A two-minute placement check. Maybe you understand a lot but never speak. Maybe you are starting from zero. Either way it picks your first words.
Five minutes, or fifteen if you have them. The streak counts the days you hit the goal, and skipping one does not wipe it out.
Today's Mazwi, a few vocab cards, maybe a round of Chipande. After a few weeks the words start turning up when you call home.
“Kuziva mbuya huudzwa.”
To know your grandmother, you have to be told. Nobody inherits a language on their own. Someone hands it over, or it stops.
Note from the founder
“I built Afri-Speak because nothing else met me where I was.”
I grew up in Harare understanding more Shona than I could speak. School pulled me in one direction, family in another, and somewhere between the two the language quietly became something I recognised but didn't use. Eventually I'd stopped trying.
Afri-Speak is the app I wish had existed back then. Patient, private, and built by someone who knows what it's like to almost speak the language of your own family. If that's you too, I'm so glad you're here.
— Tanyaradzwa Gozhora, founder
Drop your email. We send one note when Afri-Speak goes live on the App Store, and a hello from Tanya before that.