With over 40 Afrikaans resources, there are definitely some resources that could be essential as you begin learning the language.
Explore our carefully compiled list of resources for learning Afrikaans and find the ones that meet your preferences.
…40+ Afrikaans Language Resources – Lots of Free Options!Read More »
40+ Afrikaans Language Resources – Lots of Free Options! Read More »
Ready to dive into learning Afrikaans but not sure where to start? If you’re a beginner eager to kickstart your Afrikaans language journey, look no further!
With an abundance of language-learning resources online, finding the right one that fits your learning style can be overwhelming. That’s why we’ve done the legwork for you. We’ve tested various Afrikaans resources from courses, apps, podcasts, YouTube, and other local media to make a curated list of the best apps to learn Afrikaans.
…Best Apps to Learn Afrikaans for Beginners: Get Started NowRead More »
Best Apps to Learn Afrikaans for Beginners: Get Started Now Read More »
If you’re planning to travel to or work in multiple countries in Africa, it can be helpful to learn Afrikaans, a southern African language that is also the official language of South Africa.
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Mondly is a language-learning app that teaches basic vocabulary and grammar structures. It seems most appropriate for learners with little to no exposure to their target language.
The activities mostly rely on passive recognition of vocabulary and phrases, and therefore are not very challenging. However, they are varied enough that you probably wouldn’t get bored with short, daily practice sessions.
Although I wouldn’t recommend Mondly to anyone looking to seriously learn a language, it may be appropriate for individuals studying languages with less available resources, or for individuals who are preparing to travel abroad.
Both the interface and the course itself could be designed better. *Edited on Nov 22* It has made many improvements this year. We will update soon.
It’s decent for learning vocabulary, but I thought a lot of the material wasn’t explained very well.
It’s fairly inexpensive.
There are several options… $9.99 per month for one language, $47.99 per year for one language
Free
Struggling to find beginner-level Afrikaans or Yoruba reading materials? Spanish books relevant to Equatorial Guinea instead of Spain or Colombia? Stories in Nigerian Pidgin or Cape Verdean Creole? African Storybook has thousands of free-to-read children’s stories in various African languages, from Acholi through to Zinza. Most of them were written by African authors. The website is best for beginner and lower-intermediate students. The stories are generally designed for young children, with easy-to-read sentences that introduce you to basic vocabulary and some variation in tenses. The difficulty is graded from one to five, with five being the most challenging. You can normally find the English translation of the book, too, although you would probably be better off using a dictionary. Don’t give up if at first you don’t see your language on the website. Some languages have been entered with their English name, others with their original name, and others under several different names. For example, for Swahili, you would need to look under “Kiswahili”, while French texts are under “French”. Frustratingly, not all languages on the dropdown menu currently have texts. According to African Storybook, they have a greater number of books for languages in Kenya, Uganda, and South Africa. However, as this initiative continues to grow, hopefully they’ll have stories for more and more languages.
African Storybook Mini Review: Free Reading Practice Read More »
From around $10 per 50-minute class
AmazingTalker is an italki and Verbling competitor that lets you book classes with language teachers and academic tutors of your choice. It has a lot of attractive features for students, but teachers complain about high commission rates and lack of support. It boasts a 3% acceptance rate for teachers and a 100% satisfaction guarantee. If you’re not happy with your class, they’ll rebook you another one for free. There are lots of teachers to choose from, or you can also use their AI Matching Service to find a tutor. The teachers’ profiles include videos, reviews, and their résumé. However, AmazingTalker doesn’t seem a great choice for teachers. It charges English and Japanese teachers astonishingly high commission rates of up to 30%. While these rates fall as teachers earn more through the site, they have to make $1,500 a month before the commission reaches levels comparable to italki and Verbling. Making it worse, there’s an additional 8% fee for payment processing and tax that all teachers have to pay, no matter what language they teach. There have also been complaints on Reddit from teachers claiming to have been harassed by students and fellow teachers. However, we cannot corroborate these. Given all this, we’d recommend trying italki (review) or Verbling (review) first. Alternatively, check out our guide to the best platforms for online language classes.
AmazingTalker Mini Review: Not Our Top Pick for Web Classes Read More »
Verbling is an online language-class marketplace where you can take lessons with teachers of your choice. It has some student-friendly extra features, including a built-in online classroom, flashcards, homework calendar, and a filing system for lesson materials. There are also useful but disorganized forums where you can discuss languages, share writing for critique, and do free language drills and exercises.
The lessons are generally high quality and well structured, plus the filters make it easy to find teachers who specialize in everything from accent reduction to interview preparation.
However, it can be slightly pricier than alternatives, so if you’re on a tight budget, you may want to look elsewhere. It also has fewer languages than some of the bigger competitors, so it might not be a good choice if you want to study Azerbaijani, Khmer, or Yoruba.
There are some less experienced teachers, but I found the lessons to be more consistently high quality than on italki.
The classroom technology, flashcards, and filing system are fantastic for learners and easy to use.
Some teachers charge more than on italki, but you get better classroom technology, more privacy, and fewer disorganized teachers.
Prices are set by the teacher and range from $6 to $75+ for an hour-long lesson. You can get discounts for buying packs of 5 or 10 lessons with a teacher. Every new student gets one free trial lesson, after which they’re $6 each.
20% OFF Lesson packages! See details on the website. Ends soon!
I’ve got a confession to make: italki is one of my least favorite online language-learning resources. However, it was my go-to option for a long time, and I understand why people love it: it’s cheap, has teachers in nearly every language imaginable, and the app has a bunch of extra community features.
…Verbling Review: Online Classes With Helpful Revision ToolsRead More »
Verbling Review: Online Classes With Helpful Revision Tools Read More »
Freemium; $9.99/Month
Looking for a language resource that keeps things simple, effective, and fast? Elon.io might be exactly what you need.
Elon.io is a web-based app that’s designed to help you learn languages quickly. With over 25 languages available—and more to come—the platform focuses on teaching through sentence translation. Each sentence has grammar explanations, which you can skip if you’ve already mastered the grammar. You can also sign up for a free account to keep track of your progress.
The courses are practically endless. When you get to the end of a course, a new lesson is automatically generated, ensuring that you’re always progressing and never running out of learning content. The AI translation is very good, producing high quality material that gets more complex as you advance. Additionally, Elon.io implements a spaced repetition system to ensure you retain new vocabulary more efficiently. Furthermore, there is a built-in Q&A feature for every sentence that provides answers to any of your grammar related questions.
Compared to Duolingo and similar apps, Elon.io helps you learn faster. After just 10 lessons, you’ll have learned 900 words and lots of grammar, including tenses.
The platform does have a couple of downsides—if you’re away for a while, you might come back having to do just reviews before learning new lessons. Also, the interface isn’t as refined as other apps, but with an almost infinite lesson library to help boost your vocabulary and grammar, Elon.io is a great resource to try out.
Elon.io Mini Review: Quickly Learn Vocabulary and Grammar Read More »
Free
Glosbe is a dictionary that serves over 6000 languages. Most words have a list of definitions, conjugations, declensions, and similar phrases (although these phrases are hit or miss when it comes to how relevant they are to the initial entry). Many of the entries are created by community members, who can add and edit translations, example sentences, pronunciations, and images. Also, the site does not use text-to-voice pronunciation — as a result, some words may not have any pronunciation. It’s important to note that some of the content is not checked by the creators, such as the example sentences. Be careful if you are trying to learn new phrases from these lists, as although many of them are correct, there are a few that may lead you to learn inaccurate vocabulary or grammar. Additionally, less commonly studied languages may be listed as available, but only contain a few lines of content. Overall, Glosbe may be a helpful tool if you can’t find dictionaries that specialize in your target language. However, SpanishDict is a far more comprehensive option for Spanish learners, as is Pleco for Chinese learners and Kanji Study for Japanese. You can also check out Forvo, a dictionary resource for native speaker audio files that has strict rules on community contributions.
Glosbe Mini-Review: Thousands of Languages With Some Errors Read More »
Freemium, Gold Memberships start at $6/mo
My Language Exchange has been growing since 2000. Although the website seems out of date, it still has an active community of millions of language-learners who speak almost 200 native languages (including less commonly studied languages). You can choose a pen pal by reading their bios, or there is a chat room available for you to instantly connect with a language exchange partner — note that if you create a Gold account, you can initiate chats with other users, but as a regular user, you will have to wait to be contacted. Using the Cormier Method, the website provides tools to help intermediate speakers effectively practice with other learners. It advertises a Chat Companion with lesson plans to accompany your exchange, or lesson plans developed by teachers (although the quality of these resources varies drastically). You can also find language teachers on the site, but given that the transactions take place directly between you and the teacher, you may feel safer using a 3rd party platform like italki or Verbling. Although there are outlines on how to participate in language exchanges, how these outlines are followed depends entirely on you and your partner(s). My Language Exchange will help you build connections with other learners, but it’s up to you to plan how to practice. The concepts can also be used with any language exchange platform, such as Lingbe, italki, Tandem, and Amikumu.
My Language Exchange Mini-Review: Millions of Active Users Read More »
