Meet Lyra
She's a Superb Lyrebird — the bird that can copy almost any sound it hears. Nature's polyglot.
Why a lyrebird?
Learning a language is mostly listening closely and echoing what you hear until it's yours. No animal does that better than a lyrebird. She hears a sound, practices it, and reproduces it so faithfully that the forest can't tell the difference. That is the whole idea behind LingoJour: Hear it. Echo it. Own it.
Her tail is your language collection. Each colored tip is one of the languages you're learning — Spanish is orange, French is indigo, and so on. Study one language and her tail turns a single color; open Polyglot Mode and every color shows. Add a new language and she grows a new plume.
The real bird
- The best mimic on EarthA lyrebird's voice box has the most complex set of muscles of any songbird. Males copy the calls of twenty or more other species so well that the original birds answer back — and they've been recorded imitating kookaburras, camera shutters, car alarms and chainsaws.
- Named for an instrumentIn full display the male's tail sweeps up and over his head: two broad, barred outer feathers curve like the arms of a lyre, with a veil of lacy silver filaments between them. It takes him about seven years to grow it.
- An Australian originalThe Superb Lyrebird (Menura novaehollandiae) lives in the wet forests of south-eastern Australia. It's one of the largest songbirds in the world — about a meter long, tail included — and spends most of its life on the forest floor.
- Learned, not inbornYoung lyrebirds learn their repertoire by listening, practicing and refining it over years. Their songs are passed down through generations: some populations still sing sounds no living bird has heard first-hand.
- A national iconThe lyrebird appears on Australia's 10-cent coin and has been a symbol of the country's wildlife for over a century.
Her moods
Lyra is a companion, not a nag. She celebrates when you finish and naps when you're away. She never scolds.