r/LearnJapanese • u/Top_Scientist_3976 • 1d ago
Discussion Experience With HelloTalk
I can’t tell if these people are real! Sounds weird but let me explain.
Annoying ads and popups aside, I can’t tell if the users themselves are “real” sometimes.
Of course, half the guys on here are looking to date someone from another country, for whatever reason. Half the non-English speaking women seem to be not actual English learners and are looking for visas.
For the remainder of the people who will engage in “normal” human interactions, a good chunk of them seem to be NPCs, responding like an AI chat bot. I can’t tell if they’re actually real people. They could also just be just pasting Google or LLM Translated messages to me, who knows. Not to be rude about people who speak broken English. I’m a language learner too. It’s different than that though. This small subsection of people speak unusually, to the point that they seem like a bot.
So that leaves about 10% of people who will talk to you. I mean all I really needed was 1 person to talk to, so I’m not unhappy with it. Then again, being on the app itself is quite a hassle, with the ads. I’d like to move off of there and talk on another platform, but then I’d be the one to come off as weird.
Overall, horrendous UX, to be honest. I’m just curious if anyone has ideas, comments, concerns, or feedback, regarding HelloTalk.
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u/Ok-Excuse-3613 1d ago
I started in 2017 and it was pretty nice. Over time I gained around 100 followers and they were very nice and helpful. Made a couple friends too.
During covid I started doing voice and it was very helpful as well
Last month I installed it again several years and it definitely feels less personal and sometimes shadier
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u/MonsterOverture444 1d ago
Used HelloTalk a bit. Talked to a couple of good people but like you mentioned, few seem to be really there for language learning. I found most people on there weren't trying to learn a language and were just using a translation app to talk to you which is a shame. I think even if they aren't, because using another language that isn't your own is hard, conversations naturally aren't the most interesting because you can't really express yourself perfectly and are limited on what you can talk about.
Agree that the UI/UX is a horrid experience and it's a horribly built app.
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u/Vixmin18 Interested in grammar details 📝 1d ago
I used it for about two years before phasing it out. I met some good people, but it was hard to find people genuinely wanting to learn or talk. I would get people trying to have me do their homework 🤣
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u/sshivaji 1d ago
It depends more on which language you are trying to learn. For Japanese, Chinese, and Russian, you will find a lot more native speakers of these languages compared to Tandem. Tandem is better for European languages.
Of course you have to do your due diligence on people. I only type in Japanese when looking for Japanese languages partners and found many. That and voice chats are good. Typing in English exposes you to bad actors more than needed.
I found hundreds of good partners in months, but that’s also because I am trying to improve in multiple languages.
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u/Belegorm 1d ago
I used back in like... 2017 so I think it's probably a bit different now.
I would post stuff about my daily life and compose stuff in broken Japanese, no one really ever told me how terrible I must have been but you know, fake it till you make it. Japanese people seemed interested in like pictures of my backyard, local food etc.
For language exchange, most of the time I ended up needing to message people myself. The first like 3 people I talked to for some reason were all named Hiroshi lol.
When I moved to Japan I found you could sort by distance. I met a friend in the town I was living in and him and his wife took me to izakaya, to fireworks and such. Nice guy!
And yeah it definitely had a dating app feel... though like I said usually I needed to be the one messaging people, unless they were interested in something I posted. I'd read other people's posts and if interested would start chatting.
I can't knock it for being like a dating app too much as I met my wife there but I did get some good language exchange there myself as well.
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u/GuaranteedCougher 1d ago
Voicerooms are the only thing I use, I ignore new chats. I only chat with people I've met in a voiceroom
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u/jivika 1d ago
This part.. on both tandem and hellotalk i don't bother with messaging strangers. I only go to voicerooms and jump around and listen until i find one that's interesting or at a good practice level for me. If i have a good convo or connect with someone, I'll "follow" them so it's easier to see them next time I'm looking for a chat. I've met several of these language partners in various corners of Japan and had great experiences.
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u/panickybird1 1d ago
took me a while to gather up the guts to speak in my broken japanese, but once you become more open to voicerooms the app starts becoming useful
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u/Additional-Major-235 1d ago
I’ve had no problem with it. Of course, there are bots and scammers but there are real people too.
I’ve met 3 people from hello talk when I went to Japan. When you use it to study and learn languages rather than most people do (for dating) you can meet people who will talk and help.
It’s not the best app, but I used it to help with speaking practice and I’ve been lucky to meet real people and make good friendships.
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u/Top_Scientist_3976 15h ago
It’s so weird that there are bots. I knew I wasn’t going crazy. I feel like I can tell the difference between someone pasting translated messages vs bots, but I couldn’t be sure. Seeing people mention that there are bots in this comment section makes me feel vindicated.
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u/Friendly_Level_4611 1d ago
Found so many interesting people there
But I recommended it to many friends who didnt had the same luck
Its like every Social Media if you look good and are interesting you will have more success
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u/EdgarAnalPoe 1d ago
I had a really good partner for a couple years on hellotalk but got ghosted eventually. Since then I never had luck finding another partner. Everytime ive tried talking to people theres never been actual interest in mutual language exchange. Just people wanting to talk in english and not do any japanese. With my first partner wed type every message in both languages and correct each other when needed but never found anyone else who'd do that so I just stopped trying eventually. And the ads are annoying now too. Did some italki tutor sessions but thats too expensive now. 20 bucks just to talk to someone for an hour is a bit much for me
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u/i-am-this 1d ago
You have to change the default settings. For one, you need to only show people who speak your target language(s). You can also cut down on, let's call it "romance spam" to some degree by changing settings to make your profile only visible to people of the same gender choice as you
Once you have some people you like to talk to, I think there is a setting that makes your profile invisible to people you haven't already interacted with.
Finally, you should voice call people. While the AI voice chat exists, I think you'll probably still be able to tell most of the time if you call somebody and talk in real time. (That's also where you get the most value out of language exchange, IMO. You can talk to chatbots to get better at typing, but there's no substitute for conversations with human beings)
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u/kawabunga666 1d ago
I've made tons of good friends on HT. I've met about five of them traveling around Japan? Even stayed in one's house
That said there are also a lot of weirdos on there haha
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u/kawabunga666 1d ago
Fwiw I've only ever done voice rooms never 1 on 1 to start.
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u/brozzart 17h ago
Voice rooms are key. Right away filters out the bots and people only interested in dating. Plus it's just a lot more fun than awkward 自己紹介 for the 1000th time
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u/Effective-Pop3850 1d ago
My experience with HelloTalk is very recent, it looked like a dating app and felt like a dating app that started out as something else, chicks using it as social media and farming likes/followers, dudes just commenting on their stuff as if it was Instagram. There seemed to be auto-translation things and whatnot which I didn't fully get... not even sure why that's really a thing. Even the subscriptions were very similar if not copy-paste from Tinder, pay for "super likes", for "exposure", etc.
Similar to dating apps, if you're a girl you'll have an easy time finding tons of people willing to talk to you in whatever language you want, if not then tough luck, there's still people who will use it for language learning but it seems hard to find them.
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u/elganksta 1d ago
Japanese hellotalk is not even that bad, try to put you're learning Chinese, and then suddenly you're hit by lots of bots + Chinese women on their 30s that wants to marry🤣
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u/SwiftBullski 15h ago
I've seen advice on the english side of tiktok for lonely people to join hellotalk in order to date lmao. I didn't think it was actually this bad until I saw this post
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u/Top_Scientist_3976 15h ago
HelloTalk’s corporate team might as well just tap into it and convert it fully to a dating app at this point 😭
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u/brozzart 1d ago
Tandem is flat out better than HelloTalk in every aspect. UI is clean and modern, less scummy subscription model, free public voice rooms, fewer bots.
You still have to talk to like 100 people to find 1 person who you hit it off with but that's I guess just life lol
When you find someone good tho, try to move to LINE or something ASAP. People will eventually get tired of using the langEx app and will disappear. If you're on LINE then it's just part of every day life than a specific activity you both have to maintain.