A language learning plan for an upcoming trip, in three steps

You have a departure date, and most language software does not care about it. A course is built for a student who will keep going forever: units, levels, a tree that keeps branching, a counter that measures attendance rather than speech. Six weeks out from a flight, none of that answers the question you actually have, which is what you will say when the waiter arrives, when the driver asks where to, when the front desk wants your passport.

So the pattern repeats. You open an app, do the first few lessons, learn some sentences about owls and apples, and land with a vocabulary that has nothing to do with the room you are standing in. Then you point your phone camera at the menu and promise yourself you will start earlier next time.

A plan for one specific trip needs three facts that a general course never asks for: where you are going, when you leave, and what you expect to be doing when you get there. Phrazl asks for exactly those three, in that order, and builds the trip around the answers. There is no placement test, no goal-setting ceremony, no character reminding you that you have been away.

This is the only real decision in the setup, and it is worth thirty seconds of thought.

• Restaurant is the one most people want and the one where a stumble is most public. Ordering, asking for the bill, saying what you cannot eat.
• Transport is the one people skip and then need at a ticket window with a queue behind them.
• Hotel covers the check-in desk, the key, the thing in the room that does not work.
• Shopping is the market stall, the pharmacy counter, the price you did not quite hear.
• Emergency is the one nobody wants to think about while booking a holiday.

Each scenario carries 50 phrases once a trip pack is unlocked, so three scenarios is 150 phrases ranked for that destination. Three is the cap on a single trip, not on your account: the full bundle covers all five scenarios across every destination Phrazl includes, 2,500 phrases in all, and lets you set up new trips any time without paying again. Covering a fourth and fifth situation for the same place means a second trip set up alongside the first rather than a longer list on one screen.

On emergency, a plain limit, stated on the selection screen and mirrored in the terms of service: these phrases are for general communication practice only, and they are not a substitute for contacting local emergency services or working with a qualified interpreter. Practising them is sensible. Relying on them instead of a professional is not.

Pick by frequency, not by fear. The scenario you will be in three times a day is worth more of your preparation than the one you hope never to open.

The departure date is load-bearing. The countdown and the way the review schedule tightens towards your flight both hang off that one field, so a date typed a month out of place produces a calm schedule for a trip that is already closer than it thinks. Check it before you do anything else.

Every trip has its own edit screen, and from there you can delete a single trip along with its review history. While a trip is still on the free preview, that is also the clean way to start again with the right date: remove the trip, set it up once more, and the countdown rebuilds against the corrected day.

A trip you have bought a pack for behaves differently. The edit screen says so plainly, that the pack is attached to this trip and the trip therefore stays on your account, because deleting it would take the unlock with it. That is one more reason to get the date right before you reach for your card, and a reason the full bundle suits anyone with a flight that is still provisional, since it lets you set up new trips at any time with nothing further to pay.

The Free preview plan costs nothing and is built to let you judge the plan on its contents rather than on a landing page.

• The full three-step setup: destination, departure date, scenarios
• Audio playback on every preview phrase
• A departure countdown and a review schedule
• Limits: the first 20 phrases of your trip, and one trip set up

Two things to be straight about. First, the audio is a synthesised voice today, not a native speaker recorded in a booth. It is good enough to copy the rhythm and the stress of a phrase, which is most of what you need at a ticket window, and it is not the same thing as a recording made by someone who grew up saying it. The app says so on the screen, before you pay, and the slot for real recordings is wired for when they exist.

Second, the readiness figure is coverage of the phrases currently in play, so it re-bases when the set changes. On the preview it is measured against the 20 phrases you can reach. Buy the pack and the other 130 join the count, which means the percentage can read lower a minute after you pay than it did a minute before, with the same work behind it. That is arithmetic about coverage, not a verdict on your Portuguese.

Beyond the preview, Phrazl is a one-time purchase rather than a subscription. The trip pack is $9.99 for one destination with up to three scenarios: 50 phrases per scenario ordered by trip relevance, three ways to practise, every phrase at speed or slowed down to copy with a written pronunciation guide, and a review schedule that compresses as the departure date approaches. The full bundle is $19.99 for every destination Phrazl covers and all five scenarios, 2,500 phrases, with new trips set up any time at no further cost.

Phrazl is not open yet. The waitlist is how you hear when trip setup goes live, and it is worth joining with a date in mind rather than a vague someday, because the whole product is built around the assumption that you already know when you are flying.

When it opens, a trip belongs to an account you sign in to with an email address and a password, with a reset email if you forget it, so your destination, your date and your chosen scenarios stay attached to you. The account screen lists the trip packs you own, carries the support form for purchase and refund questions, and has a delete account button that removes the account, your trips, your review history, your purchase records and your support requests together. Trips and review history are held in a managed Postgres database on Amazon Web Services; Stripe keeps its own payment records, as it is required to.

Two things sit deliberately outside this page. How the review schedule tightens as the departure date closes in is its own subject, and so is the way the three practice modes, flashcard, listen and repeat, and fill in the blank, divide the work between recognising a phrase and saying it out loud. Both have their own pages in this section, as does the longer method piece for anyone whose flight is roughly three months out.