Serbian

Home Serbian 5

Memrise

Quick Review

4

Summary:

Memrise is a super popular language-learning app available online and on mobile. It functions much like a gamified flashcard app, and it offers a lot of content for free. A lot of the content is user-created, and there is a premium subscription that provides access to additional features. Memrise can be a great tool in your arsenal, but you’ll need more to learn a language seriously.

Quality

The mobile app looks great and is easy to use, but the website is clunky. Works very well for memorization.

Thoroughness

There are quite a few official Memrise courses, and the number of user-created courses is massive, but you’ll benefit from using additional resources.

Value

The free version of the app provides a lot of value, but the paid version doesn’t offer much more.

I Like…

The spaced repetition software is effective for memorization

The huge range of available content

It’s more interactive than other flashcard apps

I DON’T LIKE…

It’s not enough for continued language learning

Website navigation is clunky

Premium version isn’t much more valuable than the free version

Languages

There are currently official Memrise courses for 21 languages.

Among others, these include: Spanish, French, Chinese, German, Italian, Arabic, Korean, Japanese, Russian.

If you count the user-generated courses, the list of languages is nearly endless.

Price

For the full version of Memrise, the subscription prices are:

$8.99/monthly
$59.99/annually
$139.99 – lifetime subscription

Signing up for a free account with Memrise automatically gives you access to limited versions of their official courses.

Visit Memrise

(more…)

By Brian Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian Assamese Azerbaijani Basque Belarusian Bengali Bosnian Bulgarian Burmese Cantonese Catalan Cebuano Chewa (Chichewa) Croatian Czech Danish Dari Dutch Dzongkha English Esperanto Estonian Fijian (ITaukei) Filipino Finnish Flemish French Galician Georgian German Greek Greenlandic Gujarati Haitian Creole Hausa Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Igbo Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese Kazakh Khmer (Cambodian) Kinyarwanda Korean Kurdish Kyrgyz Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) Lao Latin Latvian Lithuanian Luganda Luxembourgish Macedonian Malagasy Malay Malayalam Maltese Mandarin Chinese Manx Maori Marathi Mongolian Neapolitan (Napoletano) Nepali Nigerian Pidgin Norwegian Oromo Pashto Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Sami Samoan Sardinian Scots Scottish Serbian Shanghainese Shona Sicilian Sindhi Sinhala Slovak Slovenian Somali Spanish Swahili Swedish Swiss German Tajik Tamil Telugu Thai Tibetan Tigrinya Tswana Turkish Turkmen Ukrainian Urdu Uzbek Vietnamese Welsh Wolof Xhosa Yoruba Zulu

uTalk

Quick Review

3.7

Summary:

uTalk is a software program and mobile app offering learning material in over 140 languages. Its approach is based on learning keywords and phrases through gameplay. It covers a wide range of phrases, each spoken by a female and male native speaker, consequently offering listening and pronunciation practice.

uTalk is most useful for beginners who want to get started in a language by learning key phrases. It could also be useful for intermediates looking to fill gaps in their vocabulary and pronunciation, but it does not offer any in-depth language instruction or grammar explanations.

It’s also worth mentioning that for some languages, such as Basque, the occasional overly literal translation leads to small errors and unnatural phrasing creeping in. However, we haven’t seen instances in which this would result in you being misunderstood, and there’s no denying uTalk’s value for languages with fewer learning resources.

Quality

The app is very user-friendly, and the content is mostly useful, but little variation in practice activities can become repetitive.

Thoroughness

The app does a good job of teaching key words and phrases, but review opportunities aren’t as transparent or comprehensive as they could be.

Value

The price is very low, there’s a lot of content, and the right learner could get some serious practical use out of the resource.

I Like…

The number of languages on offer is staggering.

Each phrase is recorded by a male and female native speaker. This was especially helpful in learning pronunciation.

You frequently get to hear recordings of yourself producing the language. I found this motivating and informative.

I DON’T LIKE…

The Memory Game exercise felt like a waste of time. It’s difficult to get a perfect score even if you know the language well.

I kept wishing there was a way to choose which phrases I could practice in games instead of them being randomly selected.

Price

$2.99/month on a monthly basis and can be canceled at any time
$1.67/month for a year-long subscription
$1.00/month for a two-year subscription

*This is the price for the more popular languages like Spanish, German, Arabic, etc. Less common languages such as Afrikaans and Tibetan cost slightly more.

VISIT UTALK

(more…)

By Alex Arabic Ainu Bosnian Cantonese Croatian Danish Dutch Esperanto Estonian Filipino Finnish French German Greek Hawaiian Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Italian Japanese Korean Mandarin Chinese Maori Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Russian Samoan Serbian Spanish Swedish Thai Turkish Vietnamese

Drops App

Quick Review

3.9

Summary:

Drops is a phone app for iPhone and Android that covers 33 languages. Daily games test the user on thousands of vocabulary words, and many of these words are ideal for everyday use. Drops has an entertaining, user-friendly interface, but it also lacks grammar lessons, and it works better for some languages than others. For anyone looking to supplement their vocab lessons, this app is worth considering; however, the free version might be more worthwhile than the paid version.

Quality

Though cute and easy to use, some visuals are hard to distinguish.

Content

Drops will teach you thousands of words and phrases, from transport and hobbies to astronomy and spices. Some languages, such as Japanese, have extra modules for culturally specific vocabulary.

Value

The free app is a great supplementary tool to help round out your vocabulary, but the paid app doesn’t offer many useful extras.

I Like…

The daily reminders keep me accountable.

If you already know a word, you have the option of swiping up and removing it from your lessons.

Though the app works better for some languages, the sheer amount of languages is a plus.

I DON’T LIKE…

It can be difficult to tell certain images apart, which means you’ll likely identify them incorrectly during your review.

Some of the categories seem to include random, unrelated words.

In languages where a noun’s grammatical gender or case isn’t obvious from the article, you won’t learn that information.

Drops only teaches you vocabulary, not grammar.

Price

A monthly subscription costs $9.99, a yearly subscription is $69.99, and a lifetime subscription is $159.99. You can use the app up to five minutes every ten hours for free.

Visit Drops

(more…)

By Alex Arabic Afrikaans Albanian Armenian Azerbaijani Balinese Balochi Belarusian Bengali Bosnian Breton Bulgarian Cantonese Chechen Cree Croatian Czech Dakota Danish Dari Dutch English Esperanto Estonian Filipino Finnish French Georgian German Greek Haitian Creole Hausa Hawaiian Hebrew Hindi Hmong Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Kalmyk Oirat Kazakh Khmer (Cambodian) Korean Kurdish Latin Latvian Lithuanian Luxembourgish Macedonian Malagasy Malay Mandarin Chinese Maori Mirandese Mongolian Nepali Norwegian Ojibwe Pashto Persian Polish Portuguese Punjabi Romanian Russian Scottish Serbian Slovak Somali Spanish Swahili Swedish Tajik Tamil Thai Turkish Turkmen Ukrainian Urdu Uzbek Vietnamese Welsh Wolof Yoruba Zulu

Transparent Language

Quick Review

1.8

Summary:

Transparent Language markets itself as “the most complete language-learning system for independent learners.” While there are lots of different exercises for you to work through in their Essentials Course, I thought that the material wasn’t all that helpful and that it got very repetitive. Although the courses might not be all that useful or in-depth, with over a hundred languages on offer it might be worth checking out if you want to learn the very basics of a more obscure language such as Buriat, Kazakh or Turkmen. But, even then, I’d try to find other resources first.

Quality

While the exercises are for the most part well-designed, diverse and easy to use, it is the core material itself that I found lacking.

Thoroughness

I hardly came across any explanations at all; practice was almost exclusively memorizing words and phrases.

Value

I would only consider using if it were free and I was studying a very rare language.

I Like…

I really like the fact that they offer up courses in languages that are usually overlooked.

It’s pretty well-designed, easy to use and has lots of different activities to work through.

I DON’T LIKE…

The core material is severely lacking in my opinion; it’s hard for me to imagine you’ll learn much grammar or how to form even a basic sentence yourself.

It gets very repetitive and so I didn’t find it that fun to work through.

You learn virtually nothing about the different cultural contexts of the languages you’re learning.

Their teaching methodology was the biggest issue for me, leaving you memorizing lots of words and phrases in isolation.

Price

There is a free two-week trial period for you to try it out. Otherwise, it is $24.95 per month or $149.95 for a whole year if you just select one language. If you want access to all of the languages it is then $49.95 per month and $249.95 a year.

Visit Transparent Language

(more…)

By Alex Arabic Armenian Azerbaijani Belarusian Bengali Bulgarian Cantonese Catalan Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Georgian German Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Kazakh Korean Kurdish Latvian Lithuanian Mandarin Chinese Manx Mongolian Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Uzbek Vietnamese Welsh

Glossika

Quick Review

3.2

Summary:

Glossika has learning resources for over fifty languages that impressively range from Armenian and Czech to Icelandic and Tagalog.

While not suitable for absolute beginners, lower intermediates could use the resource to familiarise themselves with sentences in their language of choice using Glossika´s intuitive approach.

Listening to native speakers and repeating what they say can help learners to improve their comprehension skills and spoken fluency.

While it is amazing that so many languages are included, learners would have to use numerous other resources alongside it. The cost is unjustifiably high.

Quality

The audio recordings are well made but other aspects could be improved

Thoroughness

Glossika covers an impressive number of languages but their method requires you to intuitively learn

Value

Polyglots may find the price to be fair but for most language learners it’s overpriced

I Like…

There are lots of languages available, including many that are rarely covered by other resources.

The subscription gives you access to all of the languages making it possible to study one language and review another at the same time.

It will force you to speak the language which will improve your confidence and prosody.

I DON’T LIKE…

As all of the languages cover the exact same material, the diversity of the languages and cultures are reduced to a simple formula with no cultural context involved in their teaching.

There are a fair amount of errors in the materials.

The cost is excessively high compared to other resources.

There are no explanations of grammar.

Price

You can try out Glossika´s learning method for free with their week-long trial. The monthly subscription costs $30 a month. The annual subscription costs $24.99 a month and will set you back 299.88$ in total.

Click the link below to save $5 on a subscription to Glossika.

Try Glossika For Free

(more…)

1 … 4 5