Request for some critique on our startup

Great idea, lousy execution. Besides the problems others have already mentioned, it's slooooooooowwwwwwww. Also, two very serious fundamental problems:

1. Many of your translations are wrong. I took the Spanish lesson. All of the Spanish verbs are infinitives, but the English translations are all gerunds.

2. Learning a language one word at a time doesn't really teach you the language. You need to learn more than just vocabulary, you need grammar, conjugations, declinations, etc.

But I hasten to add, the idea of a language tutor that keeps track of what you know and only drills you on the stuff you don't is a really good one and very promising if you can actually make it work. But it's not an easy problem. (For an aspiring entrepreneur this is a good thing. If it were easy someone else would have done it already.)

I noticed that it took some time to process each answer. If I had made this, I would probably have loaded the answers and image URLs for each lesson only once, in a single JS file (preferably a static file). Then you would not have to connect to the web server for each answer.

And try to keep the user's progress in a cookie if it's possible. Make the login optional if a user wants to save their progress permanently.

OK, ruthless criticism ahead!

It lists 6 languages, plus "other languages", but won't let me even see what the others are without registering. ("Hi, Joe's Repair Shop." "Hi, can you replace the clutch on a '96 Volvo?" "Let me get your name and number before I answer that." "...")

The flowers that overwrite the words on the top-right of the page are kind of annoying.

The "help", "about", "staff", etc., links are all 404, which doesn't exactly look promising.

It claims "3000 words in 3 months", which is over 30 words a day. This seems pretty incredible. I've studied several languages, and I don't think I've ever learned 30 new words in a day (much less consistently for months!). According to " rel="nofollow">http://www.balancedreading.com/vocabulary.html>, "The average student learns about 3,000 words per year in the early school years -- that's 8 words per day". So I'm skeptical a webpage will help me learn something 4x faster than when it was basically my full-time job.

It says "Read more in our “About the system” page", but I see no such page or link. Do I have to register for that? (What's the point, then? If I have to register anyway, I'll just try it.) Do you have any people who have learned 3000 words in 3 months with your method?

It's not clear if this is written, or verbal. Will I be hearing native speakers? Or is the goal of this simply to read a newspaper?

On the Chinese section (using IE), the pictures won't display. Also, the characters don't display. Being able to read pin-yin is useless in a Chinese speaking country. Maybe pin-yin and characters should show.

Your design is good, I like the colors and buttons.

The second page is a nightmare, too much content not enough call out/ organization, just calls to action.

Registration is painless, contrary to the feedback here.

The app is easy to use, but it's missing something. What I'm not sure...?