To understand what I have been building over the past 6 months we have to dive deeper into my own personal life. I come from a mixed immigrant family. My mom's side are Armenian Egyptians and my dad's side are Coptic Egyptians. Being born and growing up in the United States I had a mixed, at times, confusing identity. I am 100% American. When my friends need an example of a classic Southern Californian native, I fit the description to the tee. At the same time, I've grown up with this rich but at times disconnected cultural identity of being Egyptian. The Egyptian identity can be so cool. We always have large family gatherings for even the smallest celebration. There is a closeness amongst family members and a deep tie to the culture that came from Egypt. The tangible things like music, food, and dance. Then the intangible things like values, traditions, and communication. I have family all over the world and the part that connects us all together is the fact that we all carry that shared Egyptian identity.
At my current age, I am starting to see that this split identity isn't something that needs to be separated, but can work together. I can be the socal surfer searching for waves and belly dance at a wedding at the same time. As a child, I used to push the Egyptian culture away due to a lack of understanding. The missing piece has always been language. I would sit at a family dinner and not say a word since the entire conversation was in Arabic. I've only had a handful of real conversations with my grandma since she prefers speaking in her native tongue of Arabic. I have felt so disconnected from the heritage that defines a major part of me because I don't have the ability to communicate with it. This is what has led to my recent 6 month journey.
Starting in January 2026, my mom reminded me of my aunt's friend who teaches Egyptian Arabic. This was not the first time I've thought about learning over the past 10+ years, but the first time where there was a clear call to action and a direct ability to attempt learning. So I started classes. Early on, it was getting me more acquainted with the alphabet and learning new words, but I didn't have a clear path on learning how to converse. I didn't have clear direction on what would be useful for me to learn and the general guidance was to practice the things we did in class in between sessions. Some things were good to practice, but a lot of the holes in my abilities weren't getting addressed. I started to look for other resources to help fill these gaps in between lessons and landed on utilizing generative AI.
AI is a large language model (LLM), as the name implies it is really good at language. Right now there are millions of Egyptian using it in their native tongue training the LLM with even better capabilities. It was the best resource I could find to teach me the differences between I like (Ana baheb) and you like (enta betheb). I started realizing patterns and identifying the gaps in my language capabilities. The challenge with it as a general coach is there is no lesson diversity or continued practice. If I used it everyday to learn I would have to spoonfeed the curriculum that I don't even know is right. That is when I started building Glyph.
Glyph was not a tool for the public it was my own daily learning practice. Every time I clicked on a generated lesson, I was teaching myself. I wasn't going to a linguist to tell me what needs to be done to teach someone. I saw what was working well and what wasn't and changed the app to take the most effective parts of my experimentation. As I was progressing in the language, I was making the next learner pack and was using it to learn the exact next thing that was important for me to know. It is built so every lesson pushes your abilities to converse in the most optimized way to enhance your speaking capabilities. At this point, I decided it was time to turn this passion project into a real product.
Glyph is my offering that aims to help others like me that have grown up in the culture but disconnected from it. My aim is for myself and others to sit at the family dinner table and participate not spectate. To have conversations with those in your life that prefer their native tongue over English. I want to help unite the American identity with the Egyptian culture and heritage.