I’m gonna try my best to fit a pun into every title. That’s my new goal.
Anyway, I’d never heard of Lingvist until a few weeks ago. It was on a study guide for languages on Tumblr- or maybe Facebook? Wherever it was, I stumbled upon it accidentally (as I do with most things, honestly), took a peek at it, and decided that it was perfect for this blog. I’ve been waiting since then (a whole, perilous couple of weeks) to review it, and I’m super excited to finally use this website. So, let’s get started!
Price
Lingvist, like all the other sites I’ve reviewed so far, is a freemium site. What’s cool is that you get a free, 48 hour trial for their paid service, so you can see if you like it before you spend any money. As for actual prices, there are three payment plans available: $22.95/month, $15.98/month for three months, and $7.50/month for a year. But, like with Duolingo, there’s not really a lot you’re missing out on by not buying the premium version. You can still learn most of the words up on the site- 3,000 out of 4,000, as a matter of fact, which is still a lot. And you can review them as often as you like, which is great. The big thing is you can only learn 50 words a day on Lingvist Free, and can only perform one challenge daily, which I’ll explain later in the post. But, overall, same basic stuff.
Here’s a nifty little chart from their website to give you side-by-side comparisons:
Languages
Lingvist has four courses available for learning to everyone- German, Spanish, French and Russian. They also have Estonian, but it’s listed as a specialty course. And specialty courses, according to my handy-dandy chart up there, are only available to Lingvist Unlimited members, so unfortunately it’s not open to the public. But if you’re interested in learning Estonian, there you go.
Courses
There isn’t a lot of variation for courses in Lingvist. You get one course, per language, and, like with the other few sites (minus Memrise) there’s no variation to what course you can take. You get what you get. You also don’t get to pick which words you learn and when- they’re already selected for you, and you have to learn them in order to get to the next word or phrase in the lesson, so it is a bit restrictive in that sense. But everything is built upon- if you learn the word “woman”, you have to know it before you move onto the next card, which is “the beautiful woman.” It all connects together.
Here’s a picture of my lesson for the Spanish course I worked on for this review. I had to correctly answer “mujeres” in order to move on to the next part of the lesson(the word turns green when you get it correctly). But what’s neat are the little tips and tricks you get when you’re learning a new word, which you’ll see underneath the vocabulary card. So that’s always a bonus.
What upsets me the most, though, is the fact that there was no nature theme! Duo has trees, Mango has paths, Memrise has plants- there was a nice pattern going on here! 😡
How it Works
Remember in the last review how I said Memrise was a flash-card site? I’m taking that back. Lingvist is the epitome of flashcard. Even the lesson itself is like you’re looking at a card with a word written on it. Okay, moving on; Lingvist is a site that’s really focused on memorization. Like I stated before, it makes you memorize the current word before you’re even allowed to progress. The goal, however, is to get you to learn one hundred new words in your target language every day. The Lingvist creators say that’s the best way to learn a language, so technically you finish each lesson when you’ve learned those 100 words- which kinda creates a problem when you consider that their free program only allows you to learn 50 words every day.
Despite that little hiccup, though, after you get the word right the first time, it reappears every once-and-a-while throughout the lesson in order to make sure you still know it. And the more often you get it wrong, the more often it appears. As you keep answering correctly, it gradually disappears altogether, only showing up when it needs review. Like I stated earlier, there are little tips and tricks for each word when you first encounter it- points about grammar, parts of speech, the gender of the word, etc.- to help you understand it, which is a really neat feature. If you’re a memorizer, this is a good site to take a peak at. But, be warned, the robot that pronounces each word isn’t the best- actually, it kinda sucks. The letters get jumbled up, and it sounds like a mess, at least in the Spanish course. So if you’re really gung-ho about hearing the word pronounced, this might not be ideal.
Features
Lingvist has a lot of neat features to it that are open to all, subscription or no.
- Grammar Tips: I know I brought up the grammar tips for new words a few times now, but this is a totally different feature from that. There’s an entire section dedicated to teaching grammar, a picture of which is included below. There’s information about nouns, the alphabet, adjectives, and so much more. It’s a really incredible resource to have right at your fingertips.
- Challenges: The feature is like a section full of little tests, to see how well you’re learning. They range in difficulty, with the easiest challenges first, and come in four different categories: Speaking, Grammar, Listening, and Reading. It’s meant to be like a guide for you, to see if you’re really grasping what you’ve been studying on Lingvist, and it’s great to help monitor your progress in your target language. Although, remember, free users only get to complete one challenge everyday.
- Forum: Like with Duolingo, Lingvist has a forum filled with fellow language-learners that you can access entirely for free. While you can’t filter out by the language you want to learn, you can go to other forums that are written in other languages. It’s full of different tips and tricks to help make learning and practicing easier, all written by people who have tried them out, and know if they work.
- Mobile app: If you’ve been around for my past posts, you kinda know the deal with this one. I’m planning on reviewing the mobile app later (I’ll get there, I promise) but I think it’s important to make sure anyone interested knows that there is a mobile app that exists for this website.
- FAQ: This isn’t really a language-learning feature, but I just really liked the fact that the FAQ was so easily accessible on Lingvist. It’s literally a click away, and really just made it seem like you could ask the developers any question you had about the program and receive an answer. So I feel like that deserved a little shout-out.
Final Thoughts
Lingvist is a pretty neat site, overall. And, honestly, you do get a lot from using it. I wasn’t too keen on the way the lessons were structured- there didn’t seem to be much organization in the words they gave you, no overarching topics that would connect them together. It seemed almost random, which isn’t ideal for me. But, where Lingvist really shines, I think, is the incredible amount of resources it has to help you learn about the structure of the language and the words themselves: I haven’t seen any other site give you quite as much information about grammar and gender and parts of speech and nouns and everything else, as Lingvist does. It’s a great resource for learning how exactly the language works, and the challenges are a feature that I really enjoy!
I honestly don’t think I would pay for the service at all, unless you think the challenges feature is really neat and/or you’re really set on this 100 words a day situation. But you get access to pretty much everything Lingvist has to offer without paying a cent, so that’s definitely something to consider. Even if Lingivst doesn’t seem like the right website for you, I’d definitely take a look at it just for the resources they have available. Whether or not you choose to learn from their lessons is entirely up to you.
Bilingual on a Budget 