Learn a new language on the go with one of these three mobile apps.
Free for iOs
No joke, you can learn a second language for free with Duolingo — and no pop up ads either! In this mostly text-based app, you learn a new language by translating sentences. When you come across a word you don’t know, you can learn more about it from other people’s translations. And the sentences actually come from real-world texts on the web, and that’s the goal of the company: To translate the web into other language.
Courses are available in Spanish, English, French, Portuguese, Italian and German.
Busuu Free for iOs and Android; $5 for additional lessons
Busuu is a bit different that Duolingo in that it’s a more visual learning experience. The program alternates grammar and vocabulary lessons with listening-comprehension, interactive games and short writing assignments that are corrected by other Busuu users who are native speakers. You can even video chat with native speakers to practice your new language skills. The other perk about this app is that you don’t need internet to access the lessons — you can download them before you hop on a plane, for instance. Busuu’s apps are offered for 11 languages.
Vocabulary app free for iOs and Android; monthly subscription prices vary.
The Babbel app more of a vocabulary companion to the bigger Babbel online package. Each app includes 3000 vocabulary words with images, pronunciation and sentence examples; plus, you can use voice recognition feature to see if you’re pronouncing words correctly. Like Busuu, Babbel covers 11 languages and its website offers more in-depth courses, but you have to buy a subscription for those!