Learning a new language can be challenging, so it’s important to make the language learning apps fun and exciting to keep up momentum. At the same time, we think it’s important for people to regularly challenge themselves with tougher lessons, even if it might be outside their comfort zone. Finding the right language learning game app that you can trust and are worth your time is essential.
You will find these games for language learning helpful because they are readily available at your fingertips. Audiovisual content is essential to language learning. Stories can guide learners through new words and grammar. Foreign language games can provide you with a fun study break while you’re still studying.
Few apps create language-learning experience by introducing new words, phrases and concepts with interactive lessons. Few apps use artificial intelligence to adapt the course to the learner's level and helps them to progress faster. Few apps uses quizzes, visual aids, learning games so they can track their learning and compete with themselves.
Read also: Best Spanish Learning Apps
You can choose the language you would like to learn from our collection of language learning apps to get started in Spanish, French, Chinese, Hindi, German, Italian, English and more.
Here is the list of free language learning apps that will guide you through learning a language from start to finish or help you sharpen language skills that you may already have.
- Best Free Language Learning Apps
1. Duolingo (iOS, Android)
Duolingo is the world's most popular language learning app and is completely free. This free language app is available to use on the main devices you own, from your desktop, tablet, and smartphone. The majority of users on Duolingo are beginners who are just getting started in learning a new language. Most users are language hobbyists that enjoy the gamification of the app, and are passively learning. The fantastic web app comes with equally free mobile apps that let you practice your language on the go, and the iPhone app is, like the website, the best free English learning app you can find.
DuoLingo turns learning language into a game. Each lesson is broken down by subject matter, and users must complete exercises that integrate reading, writing, listening and speaking to advance to the next level. The app records your progress and uses smart phone notifications to encourage regular use. Duolingo is designed for English speakers to learn more than 30 languages. People learn languages by practicing listening, reading, writing, speaking and conversation with Chatbots.
Free Version: Free membership comes with all the essentials, such as complete courses, stories, audio lessons and leagues.
Supported languages: Spanish, French, German, Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Irish, Danish, Swedish, Turkish, Esperanto, Norwegian, Ukrainian, Hawaiian, Russian, Polish, Hindi, Welsh, Hebrew, Vietnamese, Hungarian, Greek, Swahili, Swedish, Romanian, Indonesian, Czech, Navajo, Klingon, High Valyrian
Duolingo works online through the website, as well as via the app for Android, iPhone, iPad, and Windows 10.
Cost: Free with in-app purchases
2. uTalk - Learn 150+ Languages (iOS, Android)
uTalk is a language-learning app for beginners and intermediates. It covers over a hundred different languages and topics relevant to most people. Each language has lots of learning and practice material, including recordings of native speakers.
The app's purpose is to help grow learners' knowledge and proficiency in some of the most useful phrases across various topics. Native speakers use phrases and words you can listen to and record yourself saying in the app for comparison. The native speakers include male and female voices, which will help build real-world recognition skills and make it easier to match your pronunciation.
Supported languages: Spanish, French, German, Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Irish, Danish, Swedish, Turkish, Esperanto, Norwegian, Ukrainian, Hawaiian, Russian, Polish, Hindi, Welsh, Hebrew, Vietnamese, Hungarian, Greek, Swahili, Swedish, Romanian, Indonesian, Czech, Navajo, Klingon, High Valyrian
uTalk is available for iOS, Android, Windows devices.
3. Rosetta Stone (iOS, Android)
Rosetta Stone is a language learning app that enables you to learn your chosen foreign language from scratch or as a revision tool, making use of a compelling range of activities. It makes use of an impressive variety of European language pairs, in multiple combinations. Rosetta Stone boasts a truly comprehensive selection of language pairs and unceremoniously hits the ground running with its language-learning content.
In conclusion, as a stand-alone app for language learning, it does represent a challenging piece of language-learning software, with a scope for independent customisation by the user.
With Rosetta Stone you can learn Arabic, Dutch, Finnish, English, Spanish, German, Hindi and more languages through fast, simple, and fun games. You will be acquiring knowledge by translating to the language you are learning and not vice versa.
Free Version: You can download and use Rosetta Stone’s free version, though it’s highly limited.
In addition to the desktop site, Rosetta Stone is available as a downloadable app for smartphones and tablets.
4. Lingopie (iOS, Android)
Lingopie is a good language-learning app, best for intermediate and advanced learners, who want to improve their skills by watching TV and movies. Lingopie has videos and flashcards for learning six languages: French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. When you join and pay for an account, you get access to all the content in all languages.
The videos are all entertainment, like movies and TV shows, rather than lessons. There are some documentary-style videos, as well as instructional videos, such as short yoga classes.
With Lingopie, you can learn up to 8 languages: German, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Russian, Korean, Japanese.
Lingopie is available for iPhone,iPad and Android devices.
5. Memrise (iOS, Android)
Memrise is one of the most useful language learning app that use its community of users to teach and improve language learning for everyone involved. You can learn languages for free using Memrise.
Memrise uses an understanding of brain science and learning to make sure you’re truly absorbing new linguistic concepts. Courses are broken into different levels, which are all available for offline use on the app.
Free Version: A lot of content is free on Memrise, and it's actually really good quality. Without paying, you can learn a lot of words and phrases, listen to and watch native speakers pronounce different sentences, and learn basic grammar in your target language.
Supported languages: English, French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Norwegian, Danish, Japanese, Korean, Icelandic, Slovenian, Turkish, German, Swedish, Polish, Italian, Chinese, Russian, Mongolian
Memrise works online through the website, as well as via the app for Android, iPhone, iPad.
6. Mondly (iOS, Android)
The Mondly app is a leading language learning app worldwide. Mondly has a friendly interface that’s encouraging and attractive. If you are interested in expanding your new language skills, take a look at Mondly Pro which offers games, chatbots, and an offline mode for learning on the go. Mondly is a language app that uses machine learning, native speakers and augmented reality to help you gain fluency.
Mondly is the first to launch a VR app for learning foreign languages featuring speech recognition and chatbot technology. You can learn languages in augmented reality using Mondly AR app.
Free Version: If you use the free version of Mondly, you can only complete one daily lesson, the first unit of your target language course (six lessons), one chatbot conversation, and one vocabulary section. You can’t choose the topics, the difficulty, or which words you want to learn.
Mondly gives you the possibility to learn 33 languages from 33 native languages : British English, American English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Turkish, Persian, Hebrew, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Romanian, Afrikaans, Croatian, Polish, Bulgarian, Czech, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Hindi, Indonesian.
The Mondly Languages app is available on the web, as well as for Android and iOS devices. MondlyVR is a language learning app in virtual reality for Daydream, Cardboard VR and Samsung Gear VR compatible devices.
7. LingQ (iOS, Android)
LingQ is an interactive, language-learning app that progressively guides the user through language study in real-world, immersive contexts. The variety of languages on offer is quite impressive, ranging from Spanish, French, Italian, German, English, Chinese, to 25 others.
The app centres on purposefully-designed and authentic texts and podcasts, which the users can read and/or listen to at their own pace and according to their own ability level. Considering the user’s ability level, keywords are made to stand out and referenced to an in-app lexicon sourced from online dictionaries.
Free Version: You can use LingQ for free and access a lot of language content, but the features are limited.
25 Languages to choose from LingQ: Spanish, German, French, English, Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Gujarati, Korean, Polish, Romanian, Latin, Turkish, Norwegian, Czech, Greek, Finnish, Dutch, Ukranian, Esperanto, Hebrew, and Italian.
In addition to the desktop site, LingQ is available as a downloadable app for smartphones and tablets.
8. busuu (iOS, Android)
Busuu is a pretty slick language learning app gradually guides the user through the study of a new language. Busuu is a free language learning website that both connects you with millions of native speakers and gives you access to interactive resources to help you learn a new language. The website and language learning mobile app are both very user-friendly and simple to use.
The base app gives you a selection of languages to choose from, which exercises across a variety of topics tiered into the internationally recognised CEFR levels. The free lessons range from beginner and elementary up to intermediate. The app is geared at regular interval learning, whereby little and often will reap the greatest rewards, as part of a daily schedule in the app’s ‘Study Plan’. According to the dedicated website, the software already boasts and impressive 90 million users.
Free Version: The free account has a lot of limitations, but it's decent enough if you're using busuu only to practice vocabulary with flashcards for one language, as that's all you get. Free users also get to try the first set of lessons for one language as a trial.
With Busuu, you can learn up to 12 languages: German, Spanish, Portuguese, French, English, Italian, Russian, Polish, Turkish, Japanese, Chinese, Polish
The busuu language learning is available on the web, iPhone, iPad, and Android devices.
9. HelloTalk Language Exchange (iOS, Android)
HelloTalk is a language exchange app that helps you practice languages you want to learn. It connects people who speak a language fluently with those who are trying to learn the same language, and (hopefully) vice versa.
HelloTalk connects native speakers with language learners based on nearby location or a specific destination worldwide. HelloTalk has good privacy settings. You can restrict who can reach out to chat with you by age, language, and "same gender only."
Free Version: You can use HelloTalk completely for free, although the free version is ad-supported. You get all the core features and don't miss out on anything important.
Hello Talk supports 150+ languages including English, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, Mandarin Chinese, Cantonese, Portuguese, German, Italian, Russian and more.
Devices: Android,iOS
10. Babbel (iOS, Android)
Babbel is a language app that promises to help users expand their linguistic horizons by learning up to 14 different languages. Babbel app provides digestible lessons that you can fit into even the busiest of schedules. At Babbel, our experts made a conscious decision to tailor courses to people who speak your native language.
Babbel works well as an introduction to a foreign language. Courses range from beginner level to intermediate, but less popular languages only have beginner material. The courses are straightforward and easy to use and can be a great addition to your language learning routine.
Free Version: If you want to try Babbel before you buy, you can sign up and access the first few lessons of each course for free. The free version of Babbel is very limited though.
Babbel offers 14 languages: German, Spanish, French, English, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Polish, Dutch, Turkish, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Indonesian and English.
Babbel is available on iPhone, iPad, macOS, Windows and Android devices.
11. LingoDeer - Learn Languages (iOS, Android)
LingoDeer is an education app that teaches nine different languages through the use of fun, interactive games and activities. If you're looking to learn a foreign language in a fun, stress-free way, that's not only interactive but informative, this app has you covered.
LingoDeer is an excellent language-learning experience, for adults, as participants learn to read, write and speak any one of the nine languages included. For adults, the lessons are repetitive and easy to participate in successfully.
The app allows you to interact with the above languages in a structured and contextualised way, which the users can follow at their own pace and according to their own ability level. Through self-study, these lessons and the subsequent review exercises focus on reading, listening, and writing skills to gradually reveal key terms, linguistic structures and rules.
Free version: For all courses in LingoDeer, everything in Alphabet, the first unit (e.g. "Nationality"), Test Outs, Flashcards, Reviews are available for free
Languages to learn within LingoDeer app include Chinese, French, German, Korean, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Vietnamese.
Devices: Android,iOS
12. Beelinguapp: Learn Languages (iOS, Android)
Beelinguapp helps you to learn languages with audiobooks and music. It is a storytelling app that allows the user to consecutively read a mirrored text, but in two separate languages at the same time. The app also serves as an audiobook and uses what it calls ‘karaoke reading’ to allow any user to follow the audio in the text on both sides.
Beelinguapp is a reading app aimed at helping language learners to improve their reading skills. The apps allows you to read a number of stories available at Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced level. The stories are available in 10 languages, varying between fairy tales, news, science papers and novels.
With Beelinguapp, you can learn up to 13 languages: German, Spanish, Portuguese, French, English, Italian, Russian, Polish, Turkish, Japanese, Chinese, and Hindi.
Beelinguapp is available for iPhone,iPad and Android devices.
While learning a new language may seem like a daunting task at first, it becomes a lot easier when you take the right approach. Though you may enroll yourself in a language class, chances are you can’t take out enough time for that. Having read our list of the best language learning apps, you can now choose any one among them that best suits your needs. So which language app are you using or planning to use?
By Educational App Store