Learning Swahili will unlock opportunities: you will be able to travel through over a dozen countries, make friends across East Africa, get a new job, or enjoy powerful TV shows and poignant books in their original language.
…How To Learn Swahili Online – Tips and Tricks To Get You StartedRead More »
How To Learn Swahili Online – Tips and Tricks To Get You Started Read More »
Duolingo is one of the most popular and well-known language apps around, and it’s not hard to understand why: it’s free, easy to use, and will teach you over 30 languages.
…The Best Duolingo Alternatives: Fun, Gamified Language AppsRead More »
The Best Duolingo Alternatives: Fun, Gamified Language Apps Read More »
Learning the Malayalam language might not be easy, but it’s worthwhile: it will help you explore the beautiful state of Kerala, make Malayali friends, and enjoy some of India’s best movies and books.
…Learn Malayalam Through English: A Complete Self-Study Guide For Beginners and UpRead More »
Learn Malayalam Through English: A Complete Self-Study Guide For Beginners and Up Read More »
Freemium; $8.99/month, $35.99/year, $59.99/lifetime
DeerPlus, also known as LingoDeer Plus, is a cute, gamified app from the makers of Lingodeer. It sets out to teach you words, phrases, and grammar through 11 different games, but it’s best used as a supplementary tool. You’ll drill vocabulary, build phrases, select the right particles, decide if a sentence is grammatically correct or not, do conjugation exercises, answer listening comprehension questions, and more. What you won’t do is learn the material prior to being tested like you do with LingoDeer (review), DeerPlus’ sister app. DeerPlus is a fun supplementary tool that would work well alongside most resources, but especially LingoDeer. However, it’s a shame that there aren’t SRS features in what is essentially a review app. A word of warning: you can study in a range of languages, but not all the games have been translated. We were shocked when we switched from studying Japanese via Spanish to Japanese via English and discovered grammar and “integrated” games in addition to the five vocabulary and phrase-based ones we had been playing.
DeerPlus Mini Review: Fun Supplementary App Read More »
€2/month via Patreon or lifetime access for €10–€20
Spanish speakers can use Euskera Metodoeseyde to add gamification to their Basque vocabulary studies. However, we’re not sure it’s the most effective option. The app consists of one simple game: you are shown a Basque word and have to type in the word in Castilian Spanish, press accept, and then press verify. To help you, you can view a photo and occasionally an information board. At times, the choice of photo is misleading or relies on knowledge of Marvel superheroes. We couldn’t see a logical pattern behind how often the words are shown, and you don’t get the chance to view the word lists. As such, we wouldn’t recommend it for beginners. It can be buggy, and the payment and signup settings are frustrating. We opted for the Patreon subscription and so weren’t allowed to access the app until three weeks later. Meanwhile, for one-off payments, you have to purchase via email rather than through Google Play or the App Store. All things considered, Euskera Metodoeseyde is not our first choice of vocabulary tool. Clozemaster is an extremely similar resource, but it’s free and introduces you to vocabulary in context. Meanwhile, Anki automatically shows you the flashcards you find most challenging.
Euskera Metodoeseyde Mini Review: Buggy Basque Vocab App Read More »
Free
2Seeds Swahili hails from an older version of the internet: one where a public charity would create a Swahili language course on a free WordPress.com blog for their Project Coordinators. Yet while dated, the content is good. Each blog post takes a separate grammatical function or topic, with the ambitious aim of taking you from phonetics and greetings to mastering the subjunctive and imperative in just 12 posts. As you might expect, these posts don’t make for quick or light reading: they are long and full of tables, embedded audio recordings, thorough grammatical explanations, worksheets, and answer sheets. We wouldn’t recommend using 2Seeds Swahili alone or instead of a more modern course. It’s highly useful but intense. Instead, we would suggest using it alongside a course like SwahiliPod101 (review) or Mango Languages (review), or to supplement vocabulary apps such as Drops (review) and YouTube channels like Swahili Dar Language School (review).
2Seeds Swahili Mini Review: Good Grammar Breakdowns Read More »
Free
At first glance, this app appeared basic but promising. However, it soon proved too buggy to use. Learn Swahili Speak Swahili contains word lists and audio recordings for basic Kenyan Swahili words in 28 different categories. It uses native audio recordings that are so slow it almost seems unnatural. You’ll never struggle to work out the pronunciation with this app. The problems started, however, when the first ad popped up. After we closed it, all audio recordings stopped working. We had to uninstall and reinstall the app for it to work again. On our second try, we went to the Translate function and typed in “hello”. Having done that, the app wouldn’t let us scroll down to see the translation. Even if this app were glitch-free, it still wouldn’t be a great resource. You would need to pair it with a flashcard app to drill the new vocabulary, as there are no in-built exercises or quizzes. However, until these bugs are fixed, Language Corner’s Learn Swahili Speak Swahili app seems too frustratingly buggy to use.
Learn Swahili by Language Corner Mini Review: Too Many Bugs Read More »
Freemium, the “full” apps cost $2.50–$23.90
The Samba Kamara/Linguarena apps include Learn Swahili, Learn Wolof, Learn Bambara, and Apprendre l’allemand. For each language, you can either download the free app or the “full,” paid-for one. There are a lot of things we like about these apps, but ultimately, we felt overwhelmed using them. We tried out the Learn Swahili app and were impressed with a lot of the features: the native audio, the language demonstrated in context, the cultural notes, and the sheer amount of content that you can learn. However, with few exercises and opportunities to drill the material, we found ourselves not remembering much and feeling demotivated by the sheer amount of vocabulary there is to memorize. These apps might make for a good supplementary or expansion option if you’re already studying a Swahili, Wolof, or Bambara course. Alternatively, if you use these apps alone, be prepared to do lots of drilling.
Samba Kamara/Linguarena Apps Mini Review: It’s Hard Work Read More »
Free YouTube channel; courses start at $30/month
Swahili Dar Language School is a YouTube channel and online course provider. We’ve only been able to try out the YouTube videos, but we’re fans of the high-energy delivery and detailed grammatical breakdowns. The YouTube channel has content for beginner, intermediate, and high-intermediate learners. Most of the videos focus on grammar, but there are occasionally vocabulary-based ones. In each video, teacher Sayi Michael appears with his whiteboard. His engaging teaching style makes the grammatical information easy to process. Make yourself comfy before pressing play, though: the videos last from 12 to 50 minutes. On his website, you can subscribe to courses for one month, six months, or one year. Each course has 24–34 video lessons. Since there is a lot of information in these YouTube videos, you’ll likely benefit from drilling them with flash card apps like Anki (review) and making your own sentences.
Swahili Dar Language School Mini Review: Great Video Lessons Read More »
Free
Malayalam Aksharamala is one of our favourite apps for learning the Malayalam script, but it’s far from perfect. Plus, you’ll have to put up with over-the-top audio, since it’s designed for young children. Using Malayalam Aksharamala, you can select different symbols to practice drawing. The app will show you the stroke direction, although the stroke number and order can be confusing. (You might like to pair it with a workbook or the Malayalam Alphabets app to get this information.) We also found that it sometimes struggled to follow our strokes. What we like about Malayalam Aksharamala, though, is that it includes audio recordings of the script and also gets you to practice choosing it from other similar-looking symbols. We think this practice will be invaluable in helping you to not just be able to draw the symbols but also distinguish them when reading.
Malayalam Aksharamala Mini Review: It’s Pretty Good Read More »
