Terms of Service

You agree to these terms by ticking the box when you create your account. We record which version you accepted and when.

If we change these terms in a way that materially affects you, we'll tell you at least 30 days beforehand and ask you to accept the new version in the app. Continuing to use Roots after a minor or clarifying change means you accept it; for material changes, we ask properly.

You must be 18 or older to create a Roots account. We ask your age before anything else at signup, and your age can be set only once. Roots does not currently offer accounts or profiles for anyone under 18.

Keep your login details to yourself, because you're responsible for what happens under your account. If you think someone else has access, email [email protected] and we'll help you lock it down.

Roots teaches languages that are under-documented, and several have no single settled written standard. Courses are built from research and volunteer native-speaker review, dialects differ from one another, and a good deal of content is still marked "needs native-speaker verification" right there in the app. Any translation, pronunciation guide, example sentence or cultural note may be incomplete, out of date, wrong, or correct in one dialect and wrong in another.

Treat Roots as a way back into a language: not an authoritative dictionary, not a translation service, and not a substitute for a fluent speaker. Never rely on it for anything safety-critical, including medical, legal, financial or emergency communication, or for any situation where being misunderstood carries a real cost.

If you spot something wrong, the in-app flag and vote tools exist precisely so you can tell us. Please use them.

Don't use the friend, message, nudge, feedback or report features to harass, bully, spam or impersonate anyone. Don't send unwanted sexual content, and don't upload a photo you do not have the right to use or that shows someone who has not agreed to it. Don't choose a username or display name that is obscene, hateful, or designed to impersonate someone else. Don't submit deliberately false, offensive or misleading corrections, translations or recordings. Don't scrape, reverse-engineer, overload or attempt to break the service, or try to reach data that isn't yours.

Don't submit content that infringes someone else's copyright, and don't submit example sentences that identify a real person.

Roots lets you see and exchange content with other people: profile cards, photographs, introduction notes and direct messages. We don't vet users and we don't verify that anyone is who they say they are. We're not responsible for what another user says, sends, does or fails to do, whether inside Roots or anywhere you go on from it, and you interact with other users at your own risk.

The report and block tools described below exist because of that, not instead of it: they're moderation, not a guarantee of anyone's behaviour.

Every exercise has a flag button for reporting wrong or confusing content, and you can report another user from their profile or from friend search. You can also block another user, which stops them finding you, adding you, or interacting with you.

We aim to acknowledge every report within 24 hours. If content or behaviour breaches these terms, we'll act. The ladder is a warning, then restricting a feature, then suspending the account, then closing it. Serious cases (threats, sexual content involving minors, targeted harassment) skip straight to closure. If you think we've got it wrong, email [email protected] and we'll look again.

Course content is bundled into the app, so removing something can take a redeploy on the web and an app update on iOS. We do the web side promptly and roll the iOS side into the next release.

You keep ownership of what you submit: corrections, feedback, votes and recordings.

For corrections, feedback and votes, you give us a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free licence to use and adapt what you submit to improve the courses. That's the whole point of submitting it.

Voice recordings made through Roots Volunteers are covered by the separate volunteer agreement you accept on that site, which deals with the recording copyright and, as Australian law requires, asks for your specific written consent to acts that would otherwise affect your moral rights, rather than pretending you can waive them. You can ask us to stop using and delete any specific recording at any time.

Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or modifies any guarantee, right or remedy you have under the Australian Consumer Law or any other law that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited. If anything in these terms conflicts with such a right, that right wins and this clause overrides the rest of these terms.

In particular, we don't say and don't mean that you have no remedy if something goes wrong. If we ever charge for anything and it isn't delivered as promised, your consumer rights, including to a refund where the law provides one, apply in full.

Subject to the section above, Roots is provided as it is. We don't promise it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that any particular feature will still exist next month, and to the extent the law allows we're not liable for indirect or consequential loss.

Where our liability can lawfully be limited but not excluded, it's limited to supplying the service again or, at our option, paying the cost of having it supplied again.

Subject to the Australian Consumer Law section above, and to the extent the law allows, you're responsible for loss we reasonably suffer that's caused by your breach of these terms, your unlawful use of Roots, or content you submit that infringes someone else's rights.

This doesn't apply to loss we could have avoided by taking reasonable steps ourselves, and it doesn't apply to any liability that can't lawfully be passed on to you. For almost everyone using Roots as intended, this section will never come up.

Roots is under active development, so features will come and go. We won't change or withdraw something you rely on without a reason, and the reasons we'd do it are: to comply with the law, to close a security problem, to fix an error, because a feature isn't working or isn't sustainable to run, or to improve or replace it with something better.

For a change that materially reduces what you get, we'll give you at least 30 days' notice in the app and by email where we have your address, and you're free to stop using Roots and delete your account before it takes effect.

You can delete your account yourself at any time, in the app: Profile, then Delete my account. That removes your account and its data, including your Connect card, photos and messages, permanently. There's no need to email anyone and no waiting period.

We can suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, following the ladder described above. Where it's practical and not counterproductive, we'll tell you why and give you a chance to respond.

We'll update the version and date at the top of this page whenever these terms change, and follow the notice process described in "Agreeing to these terms". Past versions are available on request.

These terms are governed by the laws of Queensland, Australia, and the courts of Queensland have non-exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute. Nothing here requires you to go to arbitration, and nothing here stops you joining a class or representative action. Those rights are yours.

Honestly though: email us first. Almost everything gets sorted out that way.

Questions about these terms, or anything else: [email protected].