The language forums

The forums are where you can ask other learners and native speakers things that a flashcard can't answer.

How the boards are organised

Your languages - one board per language you're studying, for discussion, questions and correction requests. If you're signed out or haven't added a language yet, you see the most popular language boards instead.
General - anything not tied to one language.
Yalango News - announcements about the site.
All language forums - the full list, if you want to look at a language you haven't added.

Quiet boards are hidden from the forums home page to keep it useful, with a line telling you how many of your language forums are still empty. The top of the page shows how many questions across the forums are still waiting for an answer.

Pinned threads

The Yalango team can pin a thread to the top of a board - for example a welcome thread or a guide to the board. Pinned threads appear under Pinned above the rest of the posts.

Follow a whole board

Use Follow forum at the top of a language board to get an in-app notification whenever someone starts a new thread there. If several threads start within the same hour, they're grouped into one notification. These notifications are never emailed - the weekly digest covers that.

Posting

Use New post or the composer at the top of a board. A post has:

A topic (optional), which tells people what kind of response you want. Pick it first - choosing Ask for corrections adds the fields for the text you want corrected.
A title, up to 120 characters.
A body, up to 2,000 characters.

Topics include Introduction, Question, Grammar, Tips, Resources, Progress, Culture, Discussion, Feedback, and correction requests. Correction requests need a language board, so they aren't available on General or Yalango News.

Formatting your posts

Post bodies, replies and comments support simple Markdown. Switch the composer to Preview to see how your text will look before you post.

**bold** and *italic*
~~strikethrough~~
[link text](https://example.com), or just paste a URL
Bullet lists with - and numbered lists with 1.
Quotes with > at the start of a line
`inline code` and fenced code blocks using three backticks

Headings, images, tables and HTML aren't supported - they'd make threads harder to read. Line breaks work as you type them, so you don't need any special syntax for a new line.

Sorting replies

Inside a thread, replies are shown Oldest first, so the conversation reads from top to bottom. Switch to Top rated to see the most upvoted replies at the top. An accepted answer always stays above the rest, and replies to a reply stay in the order they were written.

Reading posts in the language you're learning

On a language board, posts and replies are in the language you're studying, so you can read them like any other text on Yalango:

Tap or select a word to translate it, save it to one of your decks, or mark it as known. Turn this off with the Tap words to translate switch at the top of a thread.
Show translation under a post or reply translates the whole text into your own language. Try reading it yourself first.

Level badges

In language boards, a small badge next to someone's name shows their level in that language when they wrote the post - for example Native or B1. It comes from the level they set on My languages, and corrections from native speakers are labelled as such.

The badge follows your Languages privacy setting in Account settings. If you choose Only me, no badge is shown, and it's removed from the posts you've already written.

Questions and accepted answers

If you post with the Question topic, you can mark one reply as the answer. The person who wrote it earns 10 stars, and future readers with the same problem can see what actually solved it.

Marking answers is the single most useful thing you can do after getting help.

Weekly writing challenges

Every Monday, each active language board gets a pinned Writing challenge from the Yalango team - a short prompt like "Describe your morning routine". Open it and choose Write your answer: the composer opens as a correction request, so other members can correct what you wrote. Answers are listed under the challenge, which makes it easy to correct a few in return.

You can help

If you've set a language as Native, C1 or C2 on My languages, the forums home and your study dashboard show You can help: correction requests and questions in that language that nobody has replied to yet. The weekly digest includes them too.

New since your last visit

Threads posted since you last opened a board are marked New, and the forums home shows how many new threads each board has since your last visit. Use Mark all as read on a board to clear the markers. This is remembered in your browser, so it doesn't carry over between devices.

Searching

Use the search box on a board to search its threads, or the one on the forums home to search every board. Search matches whole words in a thread's title and the start of its first post, and ignores accents - "cafe" finds "café".

Latest activity

Latest forum activity on the forums home shows the newest threads, replies and corrections. The full recent activity feed also includes comments from around the site, and you can sort it by most recent or highest rated.

Stars for taking part

Posting a comment, reply or correction earns a star, corrections earn 3 more, and accepted answers earn 10. It's a nudge toward answering other people's questions, not just asking your own.

Writing a post that gets answered

Put the actual question in the title. "Why does this take the dative?" beats "grammar help".
Show what you tried. Your own attempt at a sentence gives people something concrete to correct.
Pick the right board and topic. A German question on the German board reaches German speakers.