Hola a todos,
My friend and I started making a language learning app about a year ago, which was originally to help me with Spanish but was soon expanded to more languages.
I found that once I was past the Duolingo/Babbel stages the best options seemed to be singularly-focused flashcard apps, like Anki or Quizlet.
Since I needed separate apps for a dictionary, usages, etc., it took too long to create cards and decks. This is especially true when reading Spanish books or forums, so I ended up getting a bit unmotivated to learn. I just wanted to quickly lookup a word, and add it with its pronunciation to a good spaced repetition flashcard system. Also, I needed the ability to quickly pin contextual phrases or create phrase cards without spending an hour building them every time.
Since this combination of features didn’t exist in one app, and being a software developer, I ended up just building it. So here’s what I created:
1. A good dictionary
2. Frequency data on words – so if a word is uncommon I don’t need to waste time learning at my stage
3. Ability to lookup any word and favorite for instant flashcards
4. Contextual learning – easily pinning phrases to vocabulary cards, and phrase flashcards
5. Highest quality AI voices for pronunciation
6. Ability to build any custom phrase and instantly turn into a flashcard. Also be able to tap any of the words in the phrase to quickly look it up
7. Daily study streak for motivation
8. Ability to organize words in decks easily – move between decks/reset/etc
9. Copy a bulk list of words or text and drop in to have instant flashcards without making them by hand
10. Play my phrase deck in the background for my own custom “podcast” – for example, play Spanish phrase first, then a pause, and then the English phrase
11. Daily custom reminders for favorites
12. Ability to lookup words in other apps from Spanish, or lookup an English word and see Spanish translations
13. Light/dark themes
14. Pleasant and intuitive user interface
I feel like it’s just at a point where the app is really solid (even though there’s still a 100 features planned lol) and has been a huge help to my own learning. I’m hoping others find it useful as well.
We tried to keep as much free as possible, but with a subscription cost for anything that hits heavily on our servers, AI voices, and language processing services, we had to offset it with a premium plan. So the vocabulary and dictionary part is pretty much all free, but features having to do with phrases, bulk features, and AI pronunciation are under premium.
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On Android for now but iOS is coming soon.
Link: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.olsonmartin.dictionary_app](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.olsonmartin.dictionary_app)
Here’s a quick screen capture using some of the features: [https://streamable.com/ey1pp8](https://streamable.com/ey1pp8)
