Tunik brings bedtime stories to children on iPhone and Android
Tunik, an app that brings Armenian folklore to life for children, arrives on Android this month, joining the iPhone and iPad app that launched earlier this year. Built by a small Armenian team, Tunik narrates the stories generations of Armenian families grew up with. The narration is in Armenian, by native voices, and every tale is illustrated in the style of an animated film, so that a child in Glendale, Paris or Moscow can fall asleep to the same stories as a child in Yerevan.
For most children of the diaspora, bedtime is the only Armenian-language moment of the day. The Tunik library holds more than 90 illustrated stories, from the epic of Sasuntsi Davit to Hovhannes Tumanyan’s fables and new originals such as “September First,” a story about a boy’s first day of school released for the new school year.
Read-along for children who speak before they read
Tunik’s newest feature shows the Armenian text word by word as the narrator speaks it, in the manner of karaoke, with an optional Latin transliteration for children and parents who understand Armenian but struggle with the alphabet. It was built for the family that wants their child to keep the language, not only to hear it.
Tunik carries no advertising, complies with COPPA, participates in Google Play’s Families program and places nothing purchasable within a child’s reach. Stories can be downloaded for flights and road trips and a bedtime timer lets the narration fade as the child falls asleep.
Tunik is partnering with Armenian day schools, Saturday schools and church communities in the United States and France. Teachers receive free classroom access and families a partner discount, with the aim of making Tunik the bridge between diaspora children and the language of their grandparents.
“Every Armenian parent living abroad knows the moment. Your child answers you in English, and you realize the language could end with you. We built Tunik for bedtime because bedtime is the one moment every family still has. If a 5-year-old in Los Angeles asks for Kikos by name, we have done our job,” said Tunik founder Mesrop Ishkhanyan.
For more information, visit the Tunik website.
