Built to keep Iraqi Arabic in the family
Gool — "say it" in Iraqi Arabic — began with an Iraqi parent's wish for his own children to practice the language they hear from family. It is being built for other families facing the same distance between generations.
Why Gool exists
The story is ordinary, which is rather the point. A family leaves Iraq. The parents keep speaking Iraqi at home. The children grow up hearing it every day, understand most of it — and answer in English, because English is what school, friends and every screen around them run on.
Then a grandparent calls, and the conversation is shorter than it should be. Not because there is nothing to say, but because the words to say it with never got enough practice.
Gool started as one parent's attempt to give his own kids somewhere to practice that. Iraqi Arabic in particular is hard to find material for: many mainstream Arabic courses teach Modern Standard Arabic, which is the right choice for reading and formal study, and not the same as the spoken Iraqi Arabic used in family conversation. So the app teaches the spoken register instead — the words a family uses at home.
Designed for children, not adapted from an adult course
Plenty of good language apps are built for adults and then made friendlier. Gool was shaped the other way round: it starts from what a child can do, and the age band on a profile changes how a lesson is presented.
- A five-year-old listens and taps a picture, then gets a turn to say the word out loud. Getting one wrong costs nothing.
- A nine-year-old also has to recall the word rather than only recognize it, and a lesson can be lost and retried.
- A teenager works without picture hints, and sees the Arabic script alongside the romanized spelling.
The parent side is shaped the same way: the account, the settings, the progress and anything involving money belong to the grown-up, and a child's screens have none of it. How Gool works goes through it step by step.
What we value
Gentle practice
A few minutes a day, with streaks and spaced review to bring a child back — not long sessions, leaderboards or pressure.
Parents in control
Adults own the account, the settings and the purchases. There are no ads, no chat, and no way for users to contact each other.
Children's privacy
A child profile holds a name or nickname, an age band, an avatar and progress. No birth date, no photo, no location. Speaking clips stay on the device.
Honest claims
We would rather say what Gool does today than what it will do eventually. Where content is still being reviewed, the pages say so.
Who operates Gool
Gool is owned and operated by KOIQ Labs LLC. That is the company named in the Terms of Use and the Privacy Policy, and the name that appears on a Gool Plus payment.
For anything at all — a question, a problem with a payment, a privacy request, or a correction to an Iraqi word — write to gool-app@koiq.ai. It reaches the people building this.
Help shape Gool
Gool is small and actively being built, which means feedback still changes it. Two things are especially useful right now:
- Language corrections. If a word, spelling or usage is off for how your family says it, tell us. Iraqi Arabic varies, and the wording is still under review.
- What is missing. The words your children need and cannot find in Gool are the best guide to what to build next.
There is no community, no forum and no newsletter to sign up to — just an inbox that is read. The Gool blog is where we write things up as they change.
Try it with your family
The first unit is free, runs in any modern browser, and needs no payment details. That is the honest way to find out whether Gool is any use to your children.