Read real stories from chapter 1. The useful words come first.
Graded stories in Spanish written only with words you have been taught, a grammar article and drill for every point, a whole games arcade, printable worksheets and the next lesson by email. All built on the 1,000 words that make up about 80% of everyday speech.
Read the curriculum freeFree week of Plus when you want itThen $5 a month for every language
Not a beginner? Take a 2-minute level test
Want to say it right too? Learn to read IPA
Quick taster
3-word session
A quick mix of exercises - recognise, recall, type and build each word. Miss one and it comes back round until it sticks.
Read a real story in Mandarin
在家的早上
Top 1,000 words
。，。。
Today I go home. I'm hungry and want to eat. My friend says there is food on the table.
Every story is built from words you have already met, and the odd new one is listed before the text, so you can read it without a dictionary. Tap a word you've forgotten. Browse Mandarin stories
Grammar, with the gotchas in German
The four cases
der Mann
the man (the article says who does what)
- subject (nom.)
- der Mann
- object (acc.)
- den Mann
- to, for (dat.)
- dem Mann
- of (gen.)
- des Mannes
Word order will not save you. Der Hund beißt den Mann: the dog bites the man. Den Hund beißt der Mann: the man bites the dog. Same order, and only the articles tell you who got bitten.
Short guides built on examples: the rule, why it matters and where it trips people up. German grammar
Learn by email
See what's in the emailYour daily learning tasks SPANISH: 2 NEW WORDS Preview - from your next lesson, "More people, more words": - ella - she, her - nosotros - we, us (masculine or mixed group) FRENCH GRAMMAR TIP: The article English drops but French demands Preview - coming up in "French articles: le, la, les and un, une, des" French has a third article system English lacks: the partitive du, de la, de l', des, marking an unspecified amount. Je mange du pain is I eat bread. Je mange pain is not a sentence. When in doubt, put the article in; French over-articulates by English standards. Je mange du pain. I am eating (some) bread. One quick question (ten seconds, keeps your streak): The Kilo Lingo team Spanish words: Learn via email is on for Spanish. French grammar tip: you turned this on.
The daily email is part of Plus, for every chapter and every word list you pick (GCSE, HSK, core 5,000). Your free week includes all of it.
Take it off the screen
Every lesson, story and grammar topic comes with a printable worksheet. Handy for teachers, or for studying away from a glowing rectangle. Tap one to open it.
The maths is on your side
A handful of words does most of the work. Spend your time on those.
- of everyday speech from 1,000 words
- 80%
- core words that do the heavy lifting
- 1000
- languages, more to follow
- 11
- hours to conversational Spanish (FSI)
- ~600
of everyday speech from 1,000 words
core words that do the heavy lifting
languages, more to follow
hours to conversational Spanish (FSI)
The most frequent 1,000 English word families make up about 81-84% of the running words in spoken English (Nation, 2006); the exact share differs by language. Sources and their limits are on the methodology page. FSI hours from the US Foreign Service Institute difficulty rankings.
Learn IPA · Free to read
Read the pronunciation in any dictionary
Those letters between slashes, /bɑːθ/, tell you exactly how a word sounds. Most learners skip past them. Ten short lessons teach you to read them, with drills built from real recorded words instead of a chart to memorise. Every lesson is free to read, and the drills in the first two are free too.
Today's IPAdle: guess the word by its sounds. Free, every day.
One word, two accents
The highlighted symbol is the part that changes. General American and British RP.
BATH. British RP uses the long vowel of father; American uses the short vowel of cat.
Every clip here is a synthetic voice imitating that accent, not a recording of a native speaker. Transcriptions are broad: what a typical speaker of the accent does, highlighted where the accents differ.
Every course has its own IPA page
Every sound of the language on its own chart, with example words.
- Spanish IPA
- French IPA
- Mandarin IPA
- English IPA
- Esperanto IPA
- Latin IPA
- German IPA
- Italian IPA
- Portuguese IPA
- Russian IPA
- Japanese IPA
New to all this? Start with the schwa, the commonest vowel in English, or what a diphthong is.
Pick your language
Each card says what makes that language easy or hard for an English speaker, and the newer courses say how big they are so far.
Say "I need" this week. Read a whole story by the end of chapter 1.
Every word and grammar lesson is free to read, and stays that way. Plus switches on every graded reader past chapter 2, the story drills, grammar practice, the whole arcade, printables and lessons by email: free for a week, then $5 a month for every language.