Soon-after the team behind Native Tongue launched its first language-learning game Mandarin Madness for Android, iPhone and iPad devices, the team have quickly followed suit with their latest offering, Spanish Smash - for all you I-want-to-speak-Spanish enthusiasts - to make the acquisition of Spanish vocabulary fast, fun and effective.

We are especially proud of the music so once you have download the app, sit back and listen to our original soundtrack and bask in the Spanish-inspired music and let the waves of Spanish inspiration wash over you; right before you click the play button and experience the adventure that only gets more hectic!

As always, we love your feedback so just shoot us an email at hello@nativetongue.com if you have any suggestions on what you think works, what doesn’t work, what you think we can do better and what you would love to see included in future releases of the app!

Spanish Smash is currently available on Android Market. The iPhone and iPad versions are coming soon.

Until next time…

Hasta pronto amigos!

12 days ago, Native Tongue’s first language-learning game Mandarin Madness rocketed past 5,000 downloads; far surpassing the team’s expectations and smashing through projected goals.

As the team releases its second language-learning game Spanish Smash this week, we’re excited and even more determined to create an entire suite of language-learning games by the end of next month. Which languages? We’re not going to reveal yet but we do have some big plans up our sleeves. If you visit our the official Native Tongue Facebook page you might even get a sneak peak as to what we have in the pipeline.

On top of this, we’re ecstatic that the secret sauce in our language-learning games are showing effectiveness and rapid vocabulary acquisition rates. While we suspected this all along, it is nice to have our hypothesis confirmed. P.S. Watching children argue over who gets to play Mandarin Madness next delighted the team at the office to no end… should we be worried?

From our recent reviews and editors’ picks:

5/5 stars: Mandarin Madness is anything but madness. It’s quite logical and teaches a very complex language using a fun process. It pairs repetition (a staple for learning) of written symbols with clearly pronounced syllables to learn basic Mandarin. Highly recommended for novice language learners. – Famigo

4.5/5 stars: Mandarin Madness manages to look gorgeous, despite the educational subject matter. The graphics are superb, offering backgrounds the evoke popular thoughts of China. Not to mention the cards, which offer top-notch illustrations themselves. It is an unbeatable value for the language learner with no previous experience in Mandarin. Mandarin Madness is a must-have for the Android-owner looking to learn a foreign language on the go. From the ground-up, the experience is on-par or better than Byki or Rosetta Stone, and we can’t applaud it enough. – Android Apps Review

4/5 stars: I discovered that the learning method in this app seems to be highly effective. I also found that it was engaging, pleasant, and mostly fun. Mandarin Madness is a gem of a learning application, with a  great concept for combining education and gaming fun. I found myself learning Mandarin Chinese rather quickly. – Crazy Mike’s Apps

Thank-you everyone for your support and great feedback so far. The entire team can’t wait to see what challenges await and with the release of Spanish Smash this week, believes it will be speaking Spanish in no time.

Every now and then, a great app comes along that changes the way you do things, and and we think that great app might be Mandarin Madness; an app that changes the way you learn Mandarin Madness by making it fun and painless!

The Native Tongue team is super excited to announce that we are one step closer to our goal of making language learning fun and painless with the launch of Mandarin Madness on App Store for all iOS devices including the iPhone and iPad.

The iOS version joins the Android version already available on Android Market and Amazon Marketplace.

If learning Mandarin Madness was on your new year’s resolutions list this year, give Mandarin Madness a shot and get started today.

Mandarin Madness visits the Great Wall of China

Matt and Kym display Mandarin Madness at the Great Wall of China

Now there are even more ways for citizens of the world to download Mandarin Madness, to learn Mandarin Chinese vocabulary in the context of a fun, fast-paced game.

The next release? iOS for all your iPhone aficionados. Until then!

Matt, Riley and Allen discuss Mandarin Madness at Matt's new digs

Our successes would not have been possible however without the support of our creative team: Antonia Follano, Gemma Golland, Kacey Boxall, Alice Jin and Simon Villani. As we gear up for the official launch for iOS devices, we are consolidating all works and the creative genius of  the creative team will feature prominently throughout Mandarin Madness. (For those who cannot wait… Mandarin Madness can be downloaded now from Android Market.)

Hacking James' laptop: Replacing his wallpaper with Matt

From winning Startup Weekend Australia to launching at TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing to moving into our first office space after months of working out of cafes to officially launching Mandarin Madness LITE on Android Marketplace and the subsequent full version, the entire team stands chuffed at hitting our milestones in quick succession: 100 downloads, 200 downloads, 500 downloads, 1,000 downloads, and finally 2,000 downloads.

It’s 2012 now and the entire team are fresh, energized and ready to kick butt. Here’s to a rocking 2012 and beyond.

James and Riley enjoy a beer after a week of scrambling together a prototype

Working out of Inspire9

Working out of Inspire9 (part II)

Tyson from TaskWant shows the team how to perform the perfect head-book-balance

Matt tries his hand at the delicate book-head-balance

Taking over Inspire9's collaborative consumption corner

Matt hard at work whilst we trial a potential new office space

Matt on the plane… ready for departure to TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing

On the contrary, 2011 ended on a particularly high note. After blasting our way through set milestones of 100 downloads, 200 downloads, 500 downloads and then 1,000 downloads, we were proud as punch to publicly proclaim that we spend the majority of our days “playing games”!

As luck would have it, however, the tail of 2011 (December 31 to be exact) saw an added surprise; Native Tongue blasted its way past 2,000 downloads!

Today, despite being in the most relaxed state since Native Tongue’s inception, the team is super relaxed (most likely due to Christmas festivities and hot-summer new year celebrations), wildly optimistic (can we be anything else?) and believe with-absolute-certainty that the constant goal-kicking and increasing download counts are excellent indicators of a market out there for people who want to make language-learning both easy and fun.

On behalf of the entire Native Tongue team, we wish you a belated Merry Christmas, a happy new year, and hope you all had joyous celebrations with your friends, family and loved ones! Here’s to a another year of kicking major goals and butt!!

Our next goal? 5,000 downloads!

With every launch, our dream of making the acquisition of languages engaging, effortless and fun becomes more and more real. We’re changing the way people learn languages and are passionate about language-learning because we truly believe that every new language brings a fresh perspective and understanding of the world to the person that speaks it.

As our world becomes increasingly globalised, it’s pretty darn important that we celebrate any means that promotes understanding between people and cultures; don’t you agree?

Join the movement and download Mandarin Madness today. We would love to hear your thoughts.

We’re launching our first iteration of Mandarin Madness to the open public via both App Store and Android Market very soon with the addition of exciting new language packs so prepare yourself to brush up (or acquire) some new Mandarin Chinese vocabulary!

The next milestone? 2,000 downloads.

Founders Matthew Ho, James Drucza and Kym Huynh.

The entire team at Native Tongue believe in the ability for languages to reframe and increase our understanding of the world, and to state that we’re excited is more than an understatement, for every tick on the milestones list brings us one step closer to making the acquisition of languages more engaging, more effortless and more fun.

I’m proud as punch to report that the entire team is upbeat and eagerly kicking goals as we move full steam ahead towards a full release of Mandarin Madness on both iOS and Android devices.

The next milestone? 1,000 downloads.

While we cannot promise an exact launch date, be assured that the release of our first Mandarin Chinese game, Mandarin Madness, will be out of the launch gates very, very soon. For those impatient however, we do have a make-shift salve; Android Market is distributing a test version of Mandarin Madness that you can download today for free; pretty neat eh? We’re already giving stuff away!

The test version only involves a limited number of Mandarin Chinese vocabulary… but perhaps these sneak peaks will satisfy your curiosity for now… somewhat! (If not… please direct all hate-mail to hello@nativetongue.com and we’ll see what we can do.)

We also have some rather exciting news… as of yesterday, Mandarin Madness has surpassed the 200 downloads mark. Celebrations ahoy!