Babbel GmbH, operating as Babbel, is a German subscription-based

language learning software Computer-assisted language learning (CALL), British, or Computer-Aided Instruction (CAI)/Computer-Aided Language Instruction (CALI), American, is briefly defined in a seminal work by Levy (1997: p. 1) as "the search for and study of applicat ...

and

e-learning Educational technology (commonly abbreviated as edutech, or edtech) is the combined use of computer hardware, software, and Education sciences, educational theory and practice to facilitate learning. When referred to with its abbreviation, edt ...

platform, available in various languages since January 2008.

History

Babbel is operated by Babbel GmbH in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's most populous city, according to population within city limits. One of Germany's sixteen constitue ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. Babbel has around 450 full-time employees and freelancers. The company is based in the

neighborhood of

Mitte Mitte () is the first and most central borough of Berlin. The borough consists of six sub-entities: Mitte proper, Gesundbrunnen, Hansaviertel, Moabit, Tiergarten and Wedding. It is one of the two boroughs (the other being Friedrichshain-Kreuzb ...

. The company was founded in August 2007 by Thomas Holl, Toine Diepstraten, Lorenz Heine and Markus Witte. In January 2008, the language learning platform went online with community features as a free beta version. In 2008, Kizoo Technology Ventures and IBB Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH became Babbel's first investors. Then, in 2009, Babbel was granted roughly one million euros by the ERDF European Structural Fund. The new product version, Babbel 2.0, went online in November 2009. At that time Babbel's founders decided against an advertising and mixed-finance model (freemium), opting for paid content. In March 2013, Babbel acquired

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

startup PlaySay Inc. to expand into the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. As part of the acquisition, PlaySay Founder and CEO Ryan Meinzer joined Babbel as a strategic advisor for its US operations. In January 2015, Babbel opened an office in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

with the aim of expanding its presence in the US market. Later that year, a third funding round led by Scottish Equity Partners raised another $22 million. Other participants in this round include previous investors Reed Elsevier Ventures,

Nokia Growth Partners Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finland, i ...

, and VC Fonds Technology Berlin. Since January 2017, Babbel, Inc., the company's US subsidiary, has been led by Julie Hansen, CEO U.S. In November 2018 the company announced it had sold around 1 million subscriptions during the previous year. It was also launching a new set of products, oriented at travel marketplace. The project was going to launch in 2019. In 2019, co-founder Markus Witte stepped down as CEO and was replaced by Arne Schepker. In March 2020, a

works council A works council is a shop-floor organization representing workers that functions as a local/firm-level complement to trade unions but is independent of these at least in some countries. Works councils exist with different names in a variety of re ...

was elected that represents the employees of the Berlin office. In 2021, Babbel launched Babbel Live, offering online tutoring classes to customers.

Concept

Babbel is a premium,

subscription The subscription business model is a business model in which a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a product or service. The model was pioneered by publishers of books and periodicals in the 17th century, and ...

-based language learning app for web,

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

and Android. Babbel currently offers 15 different languages from seven display languages (

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

(US + UK), French,

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

Brazilian Portuguese Brazilian Portuguese (' ), also Portuguese of Brazil (', ) or South American Portuguese (') is the set of varieties of the Portuguese language native to Brazil and the most influential form of Portuguese worldwide. It is spoken by almost all of ...

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

and

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

). Babbel's original learning content is developed in-house by a team of over 100 educators and linguists. There are beginner, intermediate and grammar courses,

vocabulary A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the la ...

lessons, as well as courses with

tongue-twister A tongue twister is a phrase that is designed to be difficult to articulate properly, and can be used as a type of spoken (or sung) word game. Additionally, they can be used as exercises to improve pronunciation and fluency. Some tongue twisters p ...

idioms An idiom is a phrase or expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached to the phrase; but some phrases become figurative idioms while retaining the literal meaning of the phrase. Categorized as formulaic language, ...

colloquialisms Colloquialism (), also called colloquial language, everyday language or general parlance, is the linguistic style used for casual (informal) communication. It is the most common functional style of speech, the idiom normally employed in conver ...

, and sayings. Courses for a given language may be aimed at a specific audience: for instance, English may be learned as " PR English" or "Marketing English." In August 2017, Babbel announced that it had partnered with

Cambridge English Language Assessment Cambridge Assessment English or Cambridge English develops and produces Cambridge English Qualifications and the International English Language Testing System (International English Language Testing System, IELTS). The organisation contributed ...

to create a low-cost online English test. The test assesses beginning and intermediate students' reading and listening skills (up to level B1 and above of the

Common European Framework of Reference for Languages The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment, abbreviated in English as CEFR or CEF or CEFRL, is a guideline used to describe achievements of learners of foreign languages across Europe and, increasing ...

). Every test features about 70 questions from a bank of hundreds of options which—like Babbel's lesson content—reflect real-life communicative situations, including recordings of radio broadcasts and conversations for listening tasks. Juliet Wilson, director of assessment at Cambridge English, explained to Professionals in International Education News that “...until now it’s been difficult for nline learnersto know whether they are really learning the right skills, or to demonstrate their real level,” going on to say that the Babbel English Test would “give learners reliable evidence of their progress and a certificate of achievement that demonstrates what they have learned.”

Corporate branding and campaigns

Branding

The word ''Babbel'' is derived from the Hebrew verb בָּלַל (bālal), meaning to jumble or to confuse your words. It is also a pun on the biblical

Tower of Babel The Tower of Babel ( he, , ''Mīgdal Bāḇel'') narrative in Genesis 11:1–9 is an origin myth meant to explain why the world's peoples speak different languages. According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language and mi ...

— a gigantic

ziggurat A ziggurat (; Cuneiform: 𒅆𒂍𒉪, Akkadian: ', D-stem of ' 'to protrude, to build high', cognate with other Semitic languages like Hebrew ''zaqar'' (זָקַר) 'protrude') is a type of massive structure built in ancient Mesopotamia. It has ...

whose construction was interrupted when the workers' languages were made mutually unintelligible by God.

Douglas Adams Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author and screenwriter, best known for ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''. Originally a 1978 BBC radio comedy, ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' developed into a " ...

used the same idea in his ''Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' to name the Babel fish, a symbiotic fish that serves as a universal translator. Babbel is also a

homophone A homophone () is a word that is pronounced the same (to varying extent) as another word but differs in meaning. A ''homophone'' may also differ in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, for example ''rose'' (flower) and ''rose'' (p ...

and

anagram An anagram is a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of a different word or phrase, typically using all the original letters exactly once. For example, the word ''anagram'' itself can be rearranged into ''nag a ram'', also the word ...

of the English verb '' babble.''

Campaigns

Babbel's content marketing arm publishes a digital magazine with written and video content in seven different languages. The topics range from behind-the-scenes looks at how Babbel lessons are created to profiles of Babbel customers and language learning tips from the company's didactics team. In November 2016, Babbel launched a television ad campaign in the UK and

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

. Two television spots were created by the advertising agency

Wieden+Kennedy Wieden+Kennedy (W+K; earlier styled ''Wieden & Kennedy'') is an American independent global advertising agency best known for its work for Nike. Founded by Dan Wieden and David Kennedy, and headquartered in Portland, Oregon, it is one of the l ...

. Sophie Bodoh, Creative Director at Wieden+Kennedy commented, "Everyone has different motivations for learning a language, but we recognised one common truth that applies to every new learner: They have some kind of fantasy about what it will be like to speak a new language confidently. Using the familiar cinematic worlds of different countries, we show Babbel customers playing out their own unique language-speaking fantasies."

Reception

PC Magazine ''PC Magazine'' (shortened as ''PCMag'') is an American computer magazine published by Ziff Davis. A print edition was published from 1982 to January 2009. Publication of online editions started in late 1994 and have continued to the present d ...

'' gave Babbel a mostly positive review, stating it was reasonably priced and well-structured, but more challenging for beginners than similar services. The New York Times'

Ali Watkins Ali Watkins is an American journalist who writes for ''The New York Times''. Along with two colleagues, she was a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for a body of work consisting 10 articles spanning from March 3, 2014, to July 14, 2014. Watkin ...

described Babbel as "approachable and simple."

Awards

The language learning platform was one of the finalists for "Best Web Application or Service (EMEA)" in TechCrunch's Europe Awards 2009. In 2011, Babbel was awarded the "Comenius EduMedia Seal" and the "Erasmus EuroMedia Seal of Approval" for "Babbel for Companies“ courses targeted at the business sector. In 2013, Babbel received the "digital 2013" award and the "Innovate 4 Society" award at

CeBIT CeBIT was the largest and most internationally representative computer expo. The trade fair was held each year on the Hanover fairground, the world's largest fairground, in Hanover, Germany. In its day, it was considered a barometer of cur ...

. In 2016,

Fast Company ''Fast Company'' is a monthly American business magazine published in print and online that focuses on technology, business, and design. It publishes six print issues per year. History ''Fast Company'' was launched in November 1995 by Alan Web ...

recognized Babbel as the most innovative company in education.

References

{{reflist, 2

External links

Babbel.com
Multilingual websites Social networking language-learning websites Internet properties established in 2007 Wikis German educational websites Proprietary language learning software Android (operating system) software