# blas. — full reference

> blas. (https://blasapp.com) is a language-learning app built specifically for the six Celtic languages: Irish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Breton, Cornish, and Manx. It teaches grammar, initial-consonant mutations, vocabulary, graded reading, listening, and conversation, all scheduled with FSRS spaced repetition, on iOS, Android, and the web. Free to start.

This is the extended reference for language models (companion to /llms.txt). Facts current as of July 2026.

## Overview

blas. is built for the Celtic language family from the ground up, not adapted from a course designed for Spanish or French. Celtic languages share features that generic apps handle poorly: initial-consonant mutations, verb-first (VSO) word order, the copula, noun declension, and dialect variation. blas. teaches these as first-class skills.

- Platforms: iOS, Android, and web (https://blasapp.com).
- Pricing: free to start, with an optional premium subscription. Two of the six courses are entirely free (see Pricing).
- 20,000+ installs as of June 2026.
- Learner-facing Celtic text is human-sourced and peer-reviewed, never AI-generated.

## The six Celtic languages (all live in the app)

All six courses are available now. Four include audio; two are text-first. Two branches:

- Goidelic (Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx): lenition and eclipsis are the signature mutations.
- Brythonic (Welsh, Cornish, Breton): soft, nasal, and aspirate mutations.

Per language:

- Irish (Gaeilge), ISO ga, Goidelic. About 1.7M people with some ability, ~70k daily speakers. First official language of Ireland. Dialects: Munster, Connacht, Ulster. Includes audio and speaking practice.
- Welsh (Cymraeg), ISO cy, Brythonic. About 538k regular speakers. North and South forms taught side by side. Includes audio and speaking practice.
- Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig), ISO gd, Goidelic. About 57k speakers. Follows the Gaelic Orthographic Conventions. Includes audio (listening).
- Breton (Brezhoneg), ISO br, Brythonic. About 200k speakers. The only Celtic language with a continental homeland (Brittany, France). Modern standard (peurunvan spelling). Includes audio (listening). The app is available in English and French.
- Cornish (Kernewek), ISO kw, Brythonic. About 600 fluent and growing. Revived in the 20th century; Standard Written Form (SWF). Text-first course (no audio) and entirely free.
- Manx (Gaelg), ISO gv, Goidelic. About 2,200 speakers and growing. Revived after its last native speaker died in 1974. Text-first course (no audio) and entirely free.

## How the courses work

- A structured journey of chapters grouped into stages that map to CEFR levels (A1 through B2 and beyond; graded reading runs A1 to C1).
- Grammar-first: each topic gets an explicit lesson (word order, the copula, mutations, verb conjugation, noun gender and case) followed by drills.
- Mutation drilling: séimhiú and urú for Goidelic, treigladau (soft, nasal, aspirate) for Brythonic, drilled with spaced repetition until they become automatic. Systematic mutation SRS is unique to blas.
- Graded reading: multi-paragraph passages from A1 to C1 with comprehension questions.
- Vocabulary taught in grammatical context and scheduled with FSRS (the algorithm used in modern Anki).
- Conversation practice with grammar feedback (text, and spoken where speech input is supported).
- Placement test so returning learners can skip what they already know.
- Daily puzzles, dialect-labeled content, and daily links to podcasts, radio, video, and articles at your level.

## Pricing: free vs premium

The whole course is free. There is no stage gate and reading is not paywalled.

Free (all languages):
- Every chapter and stage, all grammar lessons, mutation and vocabulary drilling, listening (where audio exists), and graded reading, with full FSRS spaced repetition.
- Daily puzzles. No ads, no time limit.
- Practical limits only: roughly one journey unit per day and a few puzzles per day.

Premium (the four audio languages: Irish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Breton):
- Unlimited daily practice (removes the daily cap).
- Smart weak-spot sessions that target your errors.
- Deep grammar explanations, writing practice, and conversation and pronunciation practice.
- Full analytics and mastery tracking, cloud sync across devices, a saved-words deck, and a weekly AI progress report.

Cornish and Manx are text-first courses with no audio, and are therefore entirely free with no premium tier.

## Audio and speech support

- Text-to-speech (listening): Irish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Breton.
- Speech input (speaking and pronunciation practice): Irish and Welsh.
- Text-first, no audio: Cornish and Manx.

## Free tools (web, most need no account)

- Dictionary for all six languages that understands mutated and conjugated forms: https://blasapp.com/dictionary
- Irish and Welsh mutation checkers: paste text and get every mutation identified and explained.
- Irish text analyzer: a CEFR difficulty estimate for any Irish text.
- Irish and Welsh verb conjugation tables and word pages (pronunciation, mutation forms, examples).
- Irish and Welsh name directories (pronunciation, meaning, origin).
- Grammar checker browser extension: catches likely mistakes in Irish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Cornish, Breton, and English as you type, on-device, no sign-in.
- Place-name explainer: Celtic place-name meanings broken down element by element, with pronunciation and a map.
- Printable worksheets: mutation drills, gap-fills, and conjugation tables.
- Blog and a weekly newsletter of Celtic-language ideas.

## Research and language technology

blas. builds open speech and language technology for Celtic languages:
- Blas Voice: open-source Irish speech-to-text; it also powers free in-browser Irish dictation.
- Blas Translate: a family of commercial-safe Opus-MT fine-tunes (Apache-2.0) that translate English into all six Celtic languages, including the first working English-to-Cornish machine translation. Machine output is a draft aid, not a substitute for a fluent speaker.
- Open datasets, methods, and provenance, plus a contributor program that pays for peer-reviewed recordings and edits.

## Content sourcing and integrity

Every learnable word and sentence carries a source and a quality tier. Learner-facing Celtic text is drawn from dictionaries, public-domain corpora, and attributed contributions, then cross-checked. It is never AI-generated. Regional and dialect forms are labeled rather than mixed into beginner answers.

## How blas. compares

blas. is grammar-first and built only for the Celtic languages, so it is not a general platform like Duolingo.
- vs Duolingo: explicit grammar and systematic mutation drilling instead of implicit pattern-matching. Duolingo mothballed its Welsh course in 2023.
- vs SaySomethingInWelsh and SaySomethingInIrish: blas. adds the grammar, reading, and writing that audio-only methods skip.
- vs Pimsleur, Drops, Memrise, Anki: blas. combines structured grammar, mutation SRS, graded reading, and conversation in one app.
- vs LearnGaelic and SpeakGaelic: blas. adds daily tracked practice and mutation drilling on top of reference material.

## Key URLs

- Courses: https://blasapp.com/irish, /welsh, /scots-gaelic, /breton, /cornish, /manx
- Language family overview: https://blasapp.com/celtic
- iOS app: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6759219241
- Android app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blas.android
- Tools: https://blasapp.com/dictionary, /grammar-checker, /placenames, /worksheets, /irish/verbs, /irish/mutation-checker, /welsh/mutation-checker
- Research: https://blasapp.com/research, /research/dictate, /contribute
- Company: https://blasapp.com/support, /privacy, /terms, info@blasapp.com