The summer travel season is well underway, and you and your loved ones might have plans to squeeze in one last trip before back-to-school season and autumn starts. If you’re traveling soon to a place where you don’t know the language well (or at all), then you’ll want to download a language learning app to your smartphone before you embark on your journey. These apps can help you whether you’re on your latest family summer vacation, a trip with friends or even a honeymoon.
“I always advise clients who book trips with us to use a language learning app if they don’t already know the language where they’re going. I’ve done it myself on my vacations,” says travel agent Liz Harnos, co-owner of Burr Travel, a Northport, New York-based travel agency. “These apps can help you learn enough that you’ll be able to order food, ask for directions and other basic things during your trip.”
Even if you have no travel plans in the near future and you just want to learn a new language for your own betterment, then using a language learning app on your smartphone or laptop can be the right choice for you. To find the best one, we tested five candidates over the course of five weeks. On our list were the premium (i.E., paid) versions of Babbel, Busuu Premium Plus, Memrise, Rosetta Stone and Super Duolingo. We tested each of them for ease of setup, design and features.
We learned two important things during testing: 1) some of the apps are easier to use than others, and 2) these apps can teach you the basics for up to 38 different languages, depending on the app. When all our testing was done, we found that Rosetta Stone emerged as the winner because of its easy-to-use design and the way it presented its lessons in the most logical manner.
Best language learning app overall
We liked the Rosetta Stone app’s easy-to-use design and logical lesson format. It helped us learn the basics of French rather easily. It's available in 25 languages, including Dutch, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Spanish. It offers a three-day free trial.
There’s a good reason why the language learning app Rosetta Stone is the gros chien (that is, the big dog) of the apps we tested. It’s well designed, flexible and assumes you are an adult when you first log in. It worked well on our smartphone, although it appeared in landscape mode rather than portrait mode. It also worked well on our computer as a web app.
When we started testing Rosetta Stone, we were asked to provide our email address, then we were asked to choose a language to learn. In the French version we chose, we were welcomed in French and then we clicked on “Get Started.” At this point, we were asked about our level of fluency. We were given choices for Beginner, Intermediate and Proficient. We chose Beginner.
We were then asked about our goals for learning the language, including travel, family, work or “basics and beyond.” We started with Travel. From there, we were presented with the core lessons and a reminder that we had three days left in our free trial. We were offered the chance to sign up immediately to get a discount.
When we started using the app, the first question we were asked was to choose our gender and indicate if we were a child or adult. This helped the speech recognition engine understand our voice.
Next, we were asked to test our microphone by counting to five. And that’s it.
The next step started with “Bonjour,” which we repeated into our microphone, and then we were off learning French.
Rosetta Stone started us off with a few words and a few short sentences. The examples were paired with photos illustrating what each represents, which is one of the reasons why it helps to spend at least part of the time using the app on a large screen. Using a smartphone, we can imagine it could be tough for some folks to see if pictures of children are boys or girls.
Good
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