Black Friday deals on some of my favorite language learning apps
and a request for okra recipes
Dear language-speaking humans,
I once heard a wise person say “Never buy anything on sale: you always end up spending more money than you need to and purchasing things you can totally live without."
I liked this rule so much that I firmly decided that one day I would actually adopt it.
Another rule I hope to adopt is “Never buy okra no matter how healthy it looks because you have no idea how to cook it.” But until that happens, after every trip to the market, you can reliably find some okra rotting at the back of my fridge.
And after every Black Friday, you can find… well we don’t need to talk about that.
Seriously, though, I have managed to go through this entire year while spending very little money on learning resources. I might be a language (tool) maniac but I’m also a single working mother of two on a tight budget.
I did try the free trial version of almost every single language app on the planet1 and I did pay for the few that I found particularly useful.
I wanna tell you about a couple of tools that I’ve used and liked at different points this year and that happen to be on sale now for Black Friday.
I recently saw this graph showing the usage market share of all language learning apps out there. While most people know only about Duolingo and a couple of other big apps, most of the really good stuff is hiding in the “Other 19.4%.”
I’m not getting anything from promoting these apps (except for Glossika where I get a small commission). These are just tools that I have used and found helpful.
Importantly, for all these, you have to sign up on the web (not through the App Store / Google Play) to get the discount.
Two caveats:
No tool is going to work for everyone. Just because I like it doesn’t mean you will.
No tool is gonna make you magically fluent. They’ll help you a little bit along the way. But in the end, it’s a good idea not to become too dependent on any of them.
Also, none of the apps I’m going to tell you about explicitly teaches you grammar. You have to either already know a little bit or be comfortable figuring things out from the context.
But if you have been stuck on Duolingo for a while, any of these would be a good next step.
LingoPie
LingoPie helps you learn by letting you watch videos in your chosen language. It’s available in nine languages: Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Chinese.
I didn’t actually use it when I was learning Portuguese but I’d heard good things about it, so when I learned that it’s on sale I signed up for a trial version to see what it’s like, and I generally liked what I saw.
These are not your boring learner’s videos, but actual movies and shows that normal people enjoy watching in their free time.
Every video comes with subtitles. At any time you can click on any word and see its meaning. It looks like this:
You can also save words and have LingoPie quiz you on them later. When it quizzes you, it replays the part of the video where that word was used so you’re not just memorizing words out of context.
There is also a cool AI tutor that explains grammar points upon request.
It uses a selection of TV shows, Netflix, and Disney+ shows. In other words, you’re just watching your favorite videos and learning the language along the way. Which is the best way to learn, IMHO.
In terms of content, I only searched for movies in Portuguese, and while there is a lot, I haven’t found enough to entertain me for an entire year. But maybe that’s because I like watching cartoons and there aren’t many there, because Disney+ isn’t available in my country.
LingoPie’s annual subscription sells for $70 right now (about $6 per month) which is 60% off their regular price, and you get to try it free for a week before you decide.
FluentU
FluentU is another app that lets you learn through videos. Like LingoPie, it has subtitles, lets you save words, and then quizzes you on them.
Unlike LingoPie, rather than showing you whole movies, it shows you short clips (a couple of minutes each). I like it because watching a 2-minute video is very doable and gives you a nice feeling of accomplishment.
I found their content more engaging than LingoPie maybe because it has a lot of Peppa Pig videos. But I also wish they had more full-length movies.
They do have a Netflix extension in beta, but I haven’t been able to get it to work.
FluentU has ten languages: Spanish, English, French, Chinese, German, Japanese, Russian, Italian, Korean, and Portuguese.
I used them for Portuguese back in the spring but canceled after my free trial because $20 a month seemed a little too steep. It’s 40% off now making it $12 a month (annual) and you can try it for free for 14 days.
Language Reactor
While we’re at it, I have to tell you about a tool that I did use a lot this year to learn from videos. It’s called Language Reactor and it’s not on sale now but it’s already reasonably priced at $6 per month AND it has a free version. They have about 50 languages and their extension works on many Netflix and YouTube videos so even for a relatively unpopular language like Finnish, I had a lot to choose from.
It has all the same things as LingoPie and FluentU minus the quizzes.
They have a ‘human translation’ and a ‘machine translation’ and one of them (I don’t know which one) consistently glitches in the following way but I still love them very much (maybe even more so):
Glossika
I have written about Glossika here before. It feeds you sentences in your target language starting from very simple sentences and gradually increasing the difficulty. That’s all there is to it. You hear a sentence in your favorite followed by the English translation. Each new sentence is repeated five times per round.
In addition to the “learn” mode, there is a “review” mode that lets you hear all the sentences you’ve heard before.
It is based on the idea that 1) the best way to expand your vocabulary (the only way really) is to hear words in context and 2) to remember something you have to hear it several times.
The beauty of Glossika is that all you need to do is listen. You can use it on the go while walking your dog, scrubbing your bathroom sink, or watching your kid’s gymnastics practice.
Glossika isn’t cheap ($13 per month for one language and $30 if you want all 60) but now you can get it at 50% off which is pretty cool.
If you sign up through this link, in theory, you get an exclusive 30-day trial (not a 7-day trial as it says on the landing page). But in practice, if you want the 50% off thing, you need to make sure to purchase the paid version before November 30th. Add the coupon code GBF24 at the checkout to get the discount.
Importantly, if you sign up through an iOS or Android app you can still use the coupon code but the discount will only be valid for one year. If you sign up through the website you’ll get this price for as long as you’re using the app.
Clozemaster
Clozemaster, like Glossika, lets you learn by immersing you in sentences, but here you get to type and fill in a blank in each sentence.
Here too, sentences get progressively more complex and are repeated at strategically spaced intervals.
Maybe you’re saying, well Duolingo can do that as well. And it can, but I choose Clozemaster any day because I like apps that don’t bullshit me with gamification or slow me down by design, but use gamification to help me make progress.
Clozemaster has a free version and a paid version. In the free version, you’re limited to 30 sentences per day. In the Pro version, there is no limit, and you can do other things like favorite sentences and go into a hands-free (listen-only) mode.
The Pro version is 50% off now so something like $7 per month. It is available in 60 (!) languages.
Plus it’s adorably retro. Just look at this:
Well now that I’ve said the words “on sale” way too many times, I’m going to decompress by looking up okra recipes.
If you find this post useful, consider buying me a virtual okra coffee. I will be so very grateful.
Not even close. There are so many of them out there. But I believe I’ve tried most of the good ones.