Learn a new lingo with these great apps

Always wanted to learn a new language? Or perhaps you’d like to be able to say more than just “por favor” and “gracias” on your summer hols? Well, the good news is you needn’t look any further than your smartphone or tablet.

You could go old-school and enroll in a nightclass, buy some CDs, or even a book. But this is 2018, so get with the times, and download a language app instead.

Tech solutions to learning a language have some major advantages over those belonging to the old school: they allow you to fit your learning around your lifestyle, and, more often than not, work out a lot cheaper than formal lessons.

With so many foreign language apps at your fingertips, it’s never been easier to learn a new lingo at your own pace.

Duolingo

This is one of the best known language apps out there – and not for nothing.

Duolingo is a science-based language education platform that has organically become the most popular way to learn languages online. There are currently 18 courses available for native English speaker, including some lesser learned languages like Vietnamese, Ukrainian and Swahili.

Memrise

Memrise was selected by Google as the overall Best App winner in the 2017 Google Play Awards. The app uses games, humorous chatbots and over 30,000 native speaker videos to unlock your language learning superpowers.

Lingvist

Lingvist claims to teach you a language in just 200 hours – and while that might sound fanciful, thousands of users swear by it.

Lingvist uses machine learning to adapt to you, based on what you know, to level-up your language learning power with trackable progress.

Babbel

Babbel is one of the more traditional language learning apps on the market, offering lessons in 14 different languages.

The neat thing about Babbel is that it focuses on conversational learning and explains grammar rules as you go. It’s fun to use, and you can also download lessons to work through when you’re offline.