Karak is live!
You’ve been on this ride with us for a few days or a few months now (thank you!). We have some lovely updates to share.
If you’ve already been on the revamped website, web app or the Android app, you may have seen it already. But here it is with some commentary!
Way more content (need I say more?)
New types of content (stories + conversations + scenes)
New vocabulary tools (flashcards!)
New grammar-focused dialogues (never again mix up tenses)
New reading & speaking tools (practice reading out loud and nailing your pronunciation)
New guide on how to learn Urdu (it’s really good)
1. Way more content: No longer must you submit to the tyranny of just 5 stories
You can also scroll right! And we have more coming, Inshallah.
There is some really fun stuff, ranging from the super short (a 77-word story about a thief who meows) to the medium (a 1,100-word story about a long day in the life of a single mother sparrow) to the longest so far (our 5,500-word translation of a classic Chinese horror story).
2. New types of content
Scenarios: Short conversations, from quick hellos to a 750-word narrative following a bus ride through Karachi.
Conversations: Native-speaker chats at native-speaker speed. Just one so far (a mamoo tells his trembling nieces the story of the rooftop room haunted by a djinn). More to come and help you decode native speed!
3. New tools to help you with your vocabulary
FLASHCARDS. Save the words you want to remember and review them whenever.
4. New grammar dialogues in the ‘Learn’ tab to help you understand and practice specific tenses
These are real conversations that naturally use more of one tense than another. For example, two friends talking about their bad habits that may or may not still be in the past...
5. New reading and speaking tools
You want to take it sentence by sentence, and pause so you can absorb what you just heard? Use Pause to stop at each line or a paragraph, and restart whenever.
You want to listen and repeat it at native speed? Use Listen & Repeat.
You want to just nail your pronunciation of the perfect putdown in Bad habits or any other line? Use Loop and repeat it till you have it down pat.
6. New how to learn Urdu guide.
More on this soon in a separate post. But it’s honestly really well written (humility is not our strongest suit...) and you should read it.
Overall
Everything in Karak is written, translated, illustrated, and recorded by native speakers.
We have one of each story, scene, and conversation entirely free to read, under ‘Try Karak Free’.
All the longer stories have free chapters too, so you can get a taste of them.
If you’d like the full library and unlimited flashcards, we have monthly and annual plans, with founder pricing. See our plans and launch pricing.
Notes
We decided to include a beta dictionary in launch. Our dictionary is still growing, so not every word is covered yet. The entries we do have are human-reviewed, so they take some time to finish. Also, readers in Devanagari will find no dictionary at all (for now). Of course, you have Urdu stories with audio and translations for each sentence to tide you over and make sure you never, ever, get stuck.
Thank you & Try Karak
Thank you to everyone who tested the beta, sent feedback, or encouraged us while we built this. And thank you to the professors who gave us feedback and are planning to use Karak in their classes, and the authors who trusted us with their work.
We hope you have fun with it!
Try it on web:
Or on Android
iOS coming soon Inshallah. Until then - read it on your mobile browser.