Anki is an offline-first flashcard program that I use along with other methods.
this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2026
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Privacy
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I will look into this, thanks for taking the time to make a recommendation :)
Anki + Yomitan is the goat. Download some dictionaries of your target language, load them into Yomitan, and now you can search words on any website with selectable text and instantly make a flashcard out of the word. Watching a video in browser? Use asbplayer to load subtitles onto the video/movie and select the text from that too. Wanna watch not in browser? Use mpvacious with mpv.
Find yourself a card format you like and some cute addons (I use Ankimon [Pokemon]) for Anki so you don't fall into that "it looks so dull!" trap because the SRS system it uses is no joke. I have years old vocab on there that I still remember, and medical students aren't joking when they say it saved them.
I just love this app so much.
The fastest way to learn a language is with the comprehensible input method. You watch videos, all of which are 100% in the target language. The early videos are easy, involving simple things, and using props and gestures to provide the context for understanding. As you learn more, the videos progress and become more difficult. It's amazing how quickly you pick up things and retain them. There is a lot of comprehensible input material for Spanish, French, and English, but you can use children's television shows like Peppa Pig where there isn't specific material for the target language. Here is a beginner video in Spanish.
I second Dreaming Spanish. OP could use Materialous/NewPipe or whatever method they use to watch YT anonymously. Anki also works.
Most privacy-friendly way would probably be using a textbook.
Thank you. Feel a bit stupid for not thinking of this. Don't suppose you have a recommendation for a book on learning Spanish?
Go to your local college or university bookstore, see what they're using, then go and find it cheaper somewhere else.
My partner is quite a fan of the Ollie Richards story learning books. I think they have a couple of those for Spanish.
you can't learn how to pronounce correctly through a textbook. You need hispanophone connections, environments withWhom/where you can't speak english
A book you get from your local library.
- Pimsleur language learning ( learn at instinct-level, not the prompted-stuff or memorizations that many other language trainings work at )
- Tandem app ( probably not great for privacy, been awhile since I tried it ), you help someone learn your language, & they help you learn the target language one you want
- simplified short-stories, books of collections of the things..
- TV in the target-language
- songs because they wire-up your other-hemisphere ( right-hemisphere for the 85% of people who have language in the left ) with the language, & that reinforces the language's patterning
- flashcards for the stuff that actually requires you to remember specific arbitrary things, like difficult words, or whatever, for random moments throughout the day
Some of this I got from a book by a guy who knew .. 29 or something? .. languages & worked for the CIA.
Other stuff ( songs ) from science news, & my discovering that language-destroyed-by-stroke people could sometimes still communicate through picking a song which had the idea they were trying to communicate..
I have a bad time learning anything through hearing, though, so .. language-learning seems itself to be kinda broken ( I learned English before anything, & it was my 2nd wave of braindamage which took much learning from my life, not the autism 1st-wave ).
These are the best tools I know-of.
I wish I could learn languages.
I wish everybody learned other-languages, to understand just how diverse humankind's meanings can be..
_ /\ _
Try to decide what your threat model is. A language learning app (except harvesting traditional device id and such) doesn't reveal very important info to anyone.
The only know which language you learn and your approximate level. Sure that's better if there's a more private way of doing it, but the core principle of learning a language doesn't reveal very much.
Textbooks and teachers.
Date a native speaker of that language for a while.
I tried, but my wife put a stop to it.
Actually not bad advice if they are into you badly speaking their language to them at first 😂
I have a suggestion that is not FOSS, but it is privately held so the pressure to be profitable each quarter is not at all the same as publicly held companies.
Check out the privacy policies of LingQ and Rosetta Stone. Idk if they’re good, but I know they’re the most efficient language-learning apps right now. They require the least amount of minutes using them to achieve the highest scores in standardized language tests.
They require the least amount of minutes using them to achieve the highest scores in standardized language tests.
What's the source of this info?
Thanks! If I'm reading that second link correctly, they rank "Babbel" with a higher score than LingQ and Rosetta Stone?
Yeah, the green number shows the improvement, and Babbel users improved more. What the green number doesn’t tell you is how much time it took to get there. If you look at that, Babbel is more inefficient than LingQ and Rosetta Stone.
Interesting, thanks!
Find a local special interest group that gets together to practice. Check meetup.
You can also try to find some kids shows in the language you're interested in. I'm sure sesame street has been dubbed into many languages by now.
That made me curious! Muppet Wiki says 70 languages and some dialects on top.
A book with CDs to listen to.
Anki
You can try Language Transfer
It’s completely free. Free (and ad free) iOS or android app, free audio file downloads. There’s also a course on music theory.
A real course with a real human teacher.
Wouldn't this require sharing information with the school that organizes the course and any vendors that support them? Schools, payment processors and student information systems eventually sell or leak data.
Babel mini app in delta chat ;p
Man I love those apps in Delta, finally some functionality that’s actually useful for once.
📖+✏️🗒️+👂+👄
Yeah honestly, there's no replacement for textbooks, paper and pencil when it comes to learning a new language
I mean, to each their own, but when I was learning Japanese, I did just that: I immersed myself into the language with as many senses (?) as possible. Reading, writing, listening, imitating (called "shadowing"), literally talking to myself, plastering my walls with glossary and example sentences, forcing myself to read them out loud every time I would pass by one of the words or sentences hanging from my walls. Right until I realized that I had hit a barrier that could only be overcome by moving - at least temporarily - to Japan, which I did, but that's another story.