Problem

Bahasa Malaysia has roughly 33 million speakers and almost no serious learning apps. Duolingo dropped its course, and most alternatives are colonial-era phrasebooks. The few that exist stop at tourist phrases, leaving learners stranded the moment a real Malaysian opens their mouth at normal speed.

Approach

It's a streaming-style learning environment built on real Malaysian video. The catalogue is graded by linguistic difficulty using a frequency analysis across an 8.3-million-word subtitle corpus (1,114 subtitle files). Inside the player you get dual Malay/English subtitles, can rewind one line, slow playback, and tap any word to open a translation popover and save it. Every saved word becomes a clip-based flashcard that replays the original scene during review. An SM-2 scheduler decides when each card is due, and a daily 'smart study mix' blends new clips, overdue reviews, and audio practice. I'm the solo founder and engineer: product, design, full-stack build, the data pipeline, and content strategy.

Outcomes

A self-paced loop where the input (TV), the lookup, and the long-term memory layer all live in one app, built for a language the big edtech companies have given up on. The corpus, the catalogue, and the custom player are the moat.

Selected features

• Real Malaysian TV: dramas, telemovies, and documentaries with verified subtitles
• Dual Malay/English subtitles in sync, with rewind-one-line and playback-speed controls
• Tap-to-translate inline on the video, no context switch
• Clip-based flashcards: every saved word keeps the original scene attached for review
• SM-2 spaced repetition scheduler
• Daily smart study mix: new clips, overdue reviews, listening practice
• Difficulty-graded catalogue from 1,114 subtitle files (8.3M-word corpus)
• Progress dashboard with streaks, vocabulary growth, mastery breakdown
• Free / Pro (RM 19) / Premium (RM 39) tiers via Stripe

Tech