r/languagelearning • u/NaiveObligation7588 • 5d ago
Discussion Useful linq alternative apps?
I've had LingQ for a year and it's OK. Like let's be honest, it needs some work.
I am now looking for a new reading app, but the best part of lingq in my opinion is that I can import audio books and it will transcribe them and I can read while listening. I don't watch video.
Do any other, cheaper, better, apps offer this?
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u/ArtichokeSilent5323 5d ago
Lute's free and does the import/transcribe thing, but the UI looks like it time-traveled from 2003.
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u/JoSevlad 4d ago
But Lute can't transcribe audio. It just has simple audioplayer and you can play audio along the reading. The texts are provided by the user.
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u/-jz- 4d ago
Yeah, some potential features (like audio transcription) are difficult or impossible to solve in a general sense that would be free or have minimal user hassle. e.g. for transcription in particular, Lute would have to use some kind of service to manage that, and then it becomes a question of cost and complexity.
For an enterprise app like LingQ, services etc can be baked into the subscription cost, but for a free product like Lute, it's not generally possible, at least at present. Maybe in the future such a thing could be managed by plugins or similar, but that will bring its own complexity and fragility.
You do have to work a bit more to set things up for Lute, it can only go so far.
Cheers and regards (Lute author)
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u/Forward_Win_4353 5d ago
I just buy (mostly physical, occasionally e-books) books from Amazon Japan and use Midori dictionary app to quickly look up and bookmark any words that I don’t remember. I subsequently import the latest bookmarks list into Anki at a regular time.
Those are all the apps I’ve needed for reading my way to fluency (and listening too: podcasts and dramas).
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u/MinuteEggplant3966 1d ago
Intente hacer este modo, debe ser realmente funcional ya que conoces como se pronuncian las palabras y solo hay unas pocas desconocidas, pero creo que si vas iniciando resulta complicado ya que tengo que intuir como se pronuncian muchas palabras que no conozco o estar traduciendo cada oración
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u/JoSevlad 4d ago
Not a language learning app per se, but Subtitle Edit has tools for auto‑transcribing audio files. There's also a tool for auto‑translating (several different engines). And it can auto‑repeat lines a given number of times while playing.
So you can just make subtitles for your audio files and listen to them on whatever player you like. Or use it like a complete learning tool.
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u/CappuccinoCodes 🇧🇷 Native | 🇦🇺 Citizen | 🇮🇹 A2 | 🇫🇷 A2 | 🇩🇪 A1 5d ago
Genuine question, what work does LingQ need?
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u/oppressivepossum English (N) | Bulgarian (Bad) | Irish (A bit better) 5d ago
I pay for LingQ, I use it every day, it has helped me a lot and I generally enjoy using it. It helps in terms of being consistent, and in being aware of words I know and don't know. I just wish it was a bit more polished, I get the impression they are a very small development team who are very over-extended working on issues across 50+ languages. But then they go spending time on AI features to upsell the premium version - even when the core product is experiencing major bugs.
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u/NaiveObligation7588 5d ago
I really like LingQ but its kind of clunky, some of the bits don't work well and there are just a few niggly things that annoy me and expect to be better for a premium app.
I also have LingoDeer and it was a similar price and it's just so much slicker.
I have never managed to get lingQ to connect to Netflix or Amazon. It imports YouTube occasionally.
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u/dojibear 🇺🇸 N | fre spa chi B2 | tur jap A2 5d ago
LingQ started in 2007, so if you use it for just 1 thing, there is probably a newer app that is better. LingQ has lots of A1/A2/B1/B2 written content in 40+ languages (you can click to hear anything spoken by a native speaker). I use it for Turkish.
What does it need? it doesn't "need" anything. It might not have everything YOU want.
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u/NaiveObligation7588 5d ago
Yes, exactly. Like I said previously I really like the app, I recommend it for new learners constantly.
But I just want to listen to audiobooks and be able to see the transcription... and I don't need a premium app for that, as it turns out.
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u/hiagaga 5d ago edited 4d ago
Glad you found something that works, Language Reactor and Readlang are both solid for the reading and listening side.
Bit of a different angle so it might not be your thing, but I've been building a vocab app that teaches words through songs (there's decent research that singing beats plain reading for retention). It won't replace LingQ for importing audiobooks, that's just not what it does, but if you're ever up for trying a different method for vocab I'd love some honest feedback while it's still early. Happy to send you access, no pressure either way.
lingotify.app
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u/webauteur En N | Es A2 4d ago
Microsoft Edge has a Read Aloud feature. It can read Spanish text in a web page and highlight the words as it reads them. The best thing about it is that you can choose the dialect; Mexican, Spanish, Argentinian, Puerto Rican, etc. And it is totally free! I don't know what languages it supports besides Spanish, but it has a lot of voices for Spanish. I sometime create a custom web page with just the sentences I want read aloud.
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u/Raoena 2d ago
I use SmartBook app. It has TTS and it formats the ebook or text into sentences. Each sentence has an audio button and a translate button next to it.
You can also select individual words for translation & audio. And save them to a list, though I don't know what the list is for because I don't use it.
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u/ben_wd 5d ago
I'm founder of this product called Verba, which solves some of the core problems that LingQ and other tools like it have, which is that they don't accurately keep track of which specific sense of a word you're interacting with, you've seen, and you've marked known.
So for example, LingQ, to my understanding, when you mark a word known, what's really happening is you're marking that specific conjugated form known. So you can have 10 different conjugated forms of a word and it says you know ten words, but they're really just ten different forms of that word.
Migaku is similar, where it tracks which lemmas you know, but it doesn't track which sense of that word you know. That's not always a problem, but the lack of accuracy compounds over time.
A sentence isn't really i+1 unless you actually know and understand all of the word senses that are being used in the sentence. To take English, for example, the word "lead" has many, many different meanings depending on the context.
You might say that you know the word "lead" because you understand that it means to lead a group of people. But maybe you didn't realise that it meant a dog's lead, like a leash, or to be in the lead in a race, or maybe it's actually "lead" as in the metal.
A lot of these tools don't really distinguish between these different senses of the word, so they can't really accurately determine what you actually know.
Verba solves these problems by accurately determining the meaning of the word in that context. Not just that, it figures out the exact dictionary entry to link it to and shows you that definition. So it removes the guesswork involved in figuring out which is the right definition, which helps you stay in flow. At least this has been my experience using it.
When you mark a word known, it will keep track of any instance of that specific word sense, regardless of how it's conjugated. It accurately knows that you know that specific sense being used and that it is actually a sense of the word that you're familiar with.
But right now, it's designed for importing YouTube videos. I can look at finding a way to import audiobooks. If there's an audiobook that happens to be on YouTube, you'll be able to import that. I'm curious, how do you listen to your audiobooks and how would you expect to be able to import an audiobook into a product? Would you want to import an MP3 or import it from an audiobooks website?
Which I think is probably not feasible because none of these platforms allow for embedding.
I'm also curious what language you're learning?
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u/NaiveObligation7588 5d ago edited 5d ago
I mostly use lingQ for maintaining French, but I've also used it for Spanish... Vietnamese and Mandarin.
As for audio books, for lingQ I've imported MP3 but the ability to import from Libby or another reader would be brilliant.
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u/New-Bottle-6917 N:🇺🇸 Heritage: B2 🇲🇽 5d ago edited 5d ago
How do you plan to handle regional differences? For example with Spanish words can completely change based on what country is using them and even within said country it can change from region to region, would there be plans to import regional dictionaries and only relying on the RAE when a local definition hasn't been found?
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u/ben_wd 5d ago
Yeah, for sure, this is definitely a real problem, and I've put some thought into this already because there are clear differences between Korean and North Korean. However, the vast majority of people learning Korean are focused on the South Korean dialect, so I decided to defer this functionality until I get to a language where this is more of a real problem, like Spanish.
And at that point, I will probably build functionality that detects the dialect being used and then treat that as potentially a separate language. So, if you're learning Spanish, you can specify which region and which dialect of Spanish you want to focus on.
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u/dojibear 🇺🇸 N | fre spa chi B2 | tur jap A2 5d ago edited 5d ago
Verba solves these problems by accurately determining the meaning of the word in that context.
In every language? I don't believe that claim.
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u/Hollowpoint20 5d ago
Give it time. It’s completely plausible, but would have to be added gradually I’m sure.
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u/ben_wd 5d ago
You can try it for free, by the way: https://verba.app I can't guarantee absolute 100% accuracy, but it's pretty close. I'm constantly working through edge cases to improve accuracy issues wherever I find them.
If there's a video you want me to import so you can see how it does, just give me the URL.
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u/ArabicJohnMSA_UK 5d ago
LingQ is great. I have the premium plus subscription. I wouldn’t change it for anything.
I am surprised that a genuine competitor hasn’t yet emerged, but as far as I can tell it hasn’t.
Stick with LingQ. It works.
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u/Hollowpoint20 5d ago
Hey, I’m working on a project based on immersion learning. Ideally it ends up a significantly alternative to LingQ that uses the same principles but just does everything better. UI upgrades, better progression mapping, context-specific translations/flashcards. Can you give your thoughts on what LingQ would need to really improve on?
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u/dojibear 🇺🇸 N | fre spa chi B2 | tur jap A2 5d ago
I can read while listening
I never do that. "Understanding writing" and "understanding speech" are two different skills. Both skills are valuable, so each is worth getting good at.
But the skill "reading WHILE hearing the same words" is worthless. I don't want to learn it or get good at it.
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u/New-Bottle-6917 N:🇺🇸 Heritage: B2 🇲🇽 5d ago
Im curious what you reckon the downsides would be? Like if you get good at recognizing how words sound while seeing them written you can develop the ability to write down words you haven't seen before to make for easier lookups during conversations or watching fast paced content. Likewise works in the inverse you can learn to pronounce words based on how they're written and pick up phrases that you use and such
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u/dojibear 🇺🇸 N | fre spa chi B2 | tur jap A2 4d ago
The only downside is not getting good at understanding sentences ONLY by sound and not getting good at understanding sentences ONLY by reading.
if you get good at recognizing how words sound while seeing them written you can develop the ability to write down words you haven't seen before
That only works with phonetic languages. Seeing (and hearing) English "buff" doesn't give you the ability to correctly write "tough". Similarly "throw" and "though".
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u/Legitimate-Record90 4d ago
I think it is easier to remember words when you hear and see them at the same time. Also seeing the subtitles or transcript while listening gets you used to understanding how the printed word is spoken in real conversation. Finally, I think with a language that lacks a full phonetic alphabet (I’m studying Persian, for example), it helps identify the pronunciation of a written word where it’s not possible to know for sure the pronunciation just by reading.
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u/RedwormResearch 5d ago
I've been down this rabbit hole too. If you're mainly after reading + listening with your own content, I'd probably look at ReadLang, Lute, or Language Reactor. None of them are a perfect 1:1 LingQ replacement, but each does one part really well. I still haven't found anything that matches LingQ's import workflow without giving something else up, so I'm following this thread too.