Find a penpal, learn a language, discover the world.
Three years ago I joined Interpals.net to learn and practice Spanish. On this platform, you can meet people from all over the world and talk with them. You can indicate that you're looking to learn a language, make friends, exchange post cards, and even flirt with other members if they want.
I had no idea if this website was any good but, oh well, why not try it anyway. With thousands of people online, there had to be some interesting people on there to talk with. And so I made an account and had some interesting conversations. It definitely helped me in my journey to learn Spanish as well. Now, three years later, I'm back at it again to maintain my current level.
In those couple of years when I was away, it seems that nothing has changed. So, I decided to write this review for people who are looking to do a language exchange or find penpals online.
Casual chatting, mostly.
Interpals isn't the best place to go if you want to learn a language quickly. The average person is not necessarily a good teacher in general, so if you're looking to learn a language really well, it may be better to do an actual course. Most people on Interpals want to chat casually with others. However, there are some people who like longer conversations. If you like that, you're in the right place too, but you might be searching for your perfect penpal a little longer than others.
Boys talk to girls, and girls talk to boys.
That's basically the meta of the game. Of course you're free to contact whoever you want, but that is still what happens most of the time.
I'm going to be honest here. There are a lot of weird people on Interpals, both male and female. If you're a 20-year old girl, expect messages from weird perverted people, and immediately delete them (...or reply to them if that's your thing). Or, for example, a Dutchman like me gets a lot of visits by girls from Asian countries like Indonesia, Thailand, and South Korea. If you just created an account, it may feel like you've ended up on a dating site, but unfortunately, that's how the game goes. Let's say you have to deal with a lot of people you don't like before you find an interesting person to have a good conversation with.
BUT there's a fix for that!
Privacy settings. The configurations on Interpals allow you to tweak for preferences a lot. The most important thing in your privacy settings is who can send you messages and who cannot. You can change the age and location of people you want to block. For example, if you're getting a lot of annoying messages from Nigerian princes, you can block everyone from Nigeria and not worry at all anymore. Or in my case, I'm not interested in people who don't speak Spanish, so I blocked the whole of Africa and Asia. Of course, this is not because I have something against them, but the reason I'm on Interpals is to speak Spanish. Another example: if you're receiving messages from very old people or very young people and you're not comfortable with that, you can also tweak that.
Interpals is great.
All in all, Interpals is the best language exchange platform on the internet. Yes, there are some downsides to it, but the privacy settings allow you to filter out 95% of the problems. After that, prepare yourself for meeting a lot of cool people and lots of good conversations. If you're looking to casually practice a language, or if you just want to meet new people and make friends, I definitely recommend this site. I'm loving it too.
- Thumbnail source
- Read my previous post HERE.