The 6 Best Free Language Learning Apps of 2023

It’s really easy to get started learning a new language with Duolingo. Just open the app and then choose what language you’d like to learn to immediately begin the course. You don’t even have to create an account to start, but if you do, you can save and track your progress. 

This app begins by using text, pictures, and audio to help you learn a different language. The idea is to associate the sound of the translation with the visuals of the text and pictures, and then have you manually translate the audio back into your preferred language to help reinforce the new words. 

Every section you complete moves you forward to more difficult tasks, to build on your vocabulary and sentence structure. You have the option of testing out of several sections at once if you’re familiar with the language, and Duolingo will adapt the questions based on how well you do.

Languages You Can Learn: Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Italian, Korean, English, Chinese, Russian, Arabic, Portuguese, Hindi, Turkish, Dutch, Latin, Swedish, Greek, Irish, Polish, Norwegian, Hebrew, Vietnamese, Hawaiian, High Valyrian, Danish, Indonesian, Romanian, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Czech, Swahili, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Klingon, Navajo, Esperanto, Finnish

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Most of these apps teach you a language through exercises and progressive steps, while Google’s simply tells you how to write and speak anything you run through it.

You can use it to translate text, handwriting, and your voice. This means you can enter text manually, draw the text, or speak it to convert it into the target language. You can even save your favorite translations to refer to them quickly whenever you like.

Google Translate may be different, but it’s certainly a great tool if you’re stuck on a specific word or phrase, or if you prefer to target your learning to particular phrases and sentences only. It can especially prove to be beneficial if you’re speaking with someone that doesn’t know your language

It can also translate even when you don’t have an internet connection—just make sure you download the language pack before you go offline.

Another feature that makes this app a must-have if you’re traveling is instant translations. Available for only some languages, it’s a type of augmented reality that uses the camera on your phone to translate, in real time, any text you point your camera at, including foreign text displayed in a menu, written on a sign, etc.

Languages You Can Learn: Japanese, Dutch, Danish, Greek, Bulgarian, Swahili, Swedish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Welsh, Chinese, French, Hungarian, Korean, Czech, English, Persian, Latin, Bosnian, and dozens more

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Busuu’s app is easy to use and is flexible in how you work with the courses. Just choose a supported language you’d like to learn, log in, and then decide where in the course you’d like to start—Beginner, Elementary, Intermediate, Upper Intermediate, or Travel.

The words and phrases you’ll learn are very helpful for beginners who may already be around foreign speakers and need to learn words in context quickly.

The app teaches you vocabulary words and phrases, both isolated and in sentences, and then quizzes you as you move forward through the levels to test your knowledge. 

Languages You Can Learn: German, Spanish, Portuguese, French, English, Italian, Russian, Polish, Turkish, Japanese, Chinese, Polish, Arabic, Korean

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Memrise isn’t as smooth as Duolingo, but it is easy to work with, supports offline courses, and lets you learn a massive number of languages. You can start off simple or skip all the way through to more advanced lessons.

It’s unique in how it teaches new words and phrases. Words are put into sentences with similar sounding words from your preferred language to help build the connection for remembering them. You’ll also sometimes see multiple images that you can scroll through that overlay the foreign text with a recognizable image for added association.

Another method it uses is to teach a language is by mixing up the translations. This way you learn a few new words at once, and then you keep learning them over and over again in a different order to ensure you know them before moving you through to the next round.

Languages You Can Learn: English, French, Spanish (Spain and Mexico), German, Arabic, Korean, Japanese, Japanese (no script), Turkish, Chinese (Simplified), Dutch, Italian, Swedish, Portuguese (Portugal and Brazil), Russian, Norwegian, Polish, Danish, Icelandic, Mongolian, Slovenian, Yoruba

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Renkara Media Group has a separate mobile app for each language you’d like to learn. Each app is extremely simple to use, supports offline use, and varies only in the words they give you—all the features are the same.

Different methods of learning are included in these apps, such as flash cards, audio quizzes, spaced repetition, and others. A hands-free mode is perfect if you’re driving so you can learn without ever looking at your device.

These apps let you build your own study sets so you decide which words you focus on. This is great if you’re having trouble learning a handful of words—just put them in the same study set and learn them separately from all the rest of the words.

Languages You Can Learn: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Ukrainian, Turkish

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