— for learners of português europeu
An AI tutor for people serious about European Portuguese — moving there, marrying into it, returning to it, or finally chasing the language you've loved at a distance. With memory, with opinions, with a real curriculum. Not gamified. Not Brazilian. Not pretending to be human.
— Algarve, the south coast
azulejos in Porto
a tuesday in Porto
where you'll want to be
— the problem
Built for streaks and casual exposure. Treat every learner the same. Forget everything between sessions. And — almost without exception — default to Brazilian Portuguese, a different enough language that the materials are actively unhelpful if you're going to live in Portugal.
The luxury experience. Real humans, real teaching. But $30–50 an hour, plus scheduling. Useful once or twice a week. Cannot scale to the daily practice that fluency requires. And no human tutor maintains detailed memory across thirty students.
A handful exist. Most are libraries of recorded lessons. None give you conversation. None remember what you told them last Tuesday. None have an opinion about fado, or push back when you're being lazy with the subjunctive.
— what it is
The tutor remembers your dog's name. The hike you took last weekend. The cousin in Porto whose wedding is in October. It uses that memory — not as a gimmick, but the way a real teacher of two years would.
You can browse and edit what's remembered. Nothing hidden.
Built on CEFR scaffolding and the public-domain Foreign Service Institute Portuguese course, modernized by a native European Portuguese teacher. Every grammar rule is authored and reviewed — never invented by an LLM mid-conversation.
Your notebook fills automatically as you learn: grammar rules, vocabulary with your own example sentences, and what's coming next.
Your tutor has a name, a voice, and views — about saudade, about Sintra, about whether you're being too hard on yourself with the pronunciation. It will tell you when you're slacking. It will laugh when you make a good joke.
It is honest about being AI when asked. It doesn't pretend to live in Lisbon.
Conversation happens by speaking, not typing. The voice slows down when you're a beginner and speeds up as you progress — the same way a real teacher modulates their speech for the student in front of them.
Pronunciation feedback is phoneme-level: not just "good" or "try again," but which specific sound needs work, and what it sounded like instead.
If you have a teacher on italki or in person, this is what you do between sessions to make them more productive. If you don't, it's your structured daily practice until you reach upper-intermediate — at which point we'll recommend you find a human.
We are not trying to replace the people who do this best. We're trying to be everything before them, and everything between them.
— a note from the founder
My partner is from Lisbon. I've been learning European Portuguese since last September — and like every learner of EP I've spoken to, I've been frustrated by every app on the market. They teach Brazilian. They forget me between sessions. They feel like video games when I want a teacher.
I was a product manager at Meta until earlier this year. Now I'm building the tool I wish existed, with help from my own Portuguese teacher in Lisbon and a growing list of early testers.
We're in private alpha. If you join the waitlist, I'll reach out personally when there's something real to try.
— Yasyaclosed alpha · summer 2026 ✦