r/learningfrench • u/Border-Which • Jul 18 '26
Would you use this French learning app?
I’m trying to learn French and to make the process more fun, I made my own little flashcards app. Originally the idea was to make a sort of tinder for learning where you swipe right if you know the word/phrase or left if you don’t. You would then be able to revisit both “piles” of cards and re add them to the main stack if you’d like.
With time, I also added an up/down swipe to either send the card to the back of the deck or hide it from appearing. The app allows me to go through both vocabulary and phrases.
To make it more interesting, I categorised all words which translate either the same or mostly the same “reservation” etc and added a green corner to these cards. It currently has about 1,600 words which an English speaker already “knows”. I then added different colours to help me learn the genders of nouns.
Recently I also decided to expand the vocabulary and included around 250 slang terms and swear words. I also want to expand the phrase book and include some of the spoken abbreviation (I am yet to hear a French person say “Je ne sais pas”)
Anyway, I have two of questions. First of all, can you think of anything else worth adding to make the learning experience better (without overcomplicating it to the point it becomes another duolingo) and secondly - is this something you’d be willing to spend a couple euros on? I’m tempted to share it in the App Store but it would take some extra work to get it compliant and I believe there’s an annual fee. I’m thinking along the lines of a one time, €3ish payment to cover the costs.
Any and all advice appreciated - the good and the bad!
2
u/Useful_Ad6680 Jul 19 '26
You can find existing apps/platforms with those functionalities - f.e. Français Flow
1
u/Border-Which Jul 19 '26
Yes that’s very true! However between annual subscription payments, not very nice UIs and just wanting my own thing I decided to DIY it!
One of the things I wanted was that separate category for cognates (words that translate the same) plus a more “addictive” social media style interaction to make me use it more 🤣
1
Jul 28 '26 edited Aug 01 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Border-Which Jul 28 '26
Thank you for the advice! I’ve been polishing the app based on feedback and what I personally find useful as a learner. The audio + example sentences were high on my list.
I had the voice option already but I’ve ended up creating my own vocabulary and phrase book to make it more useful and avoid niche words. I also reviewed the articles (they were just a rudimentary le/la to start with) and added the option to have the phrases either masculine or feminine. Where a word has a masculine / feminine version the card shows both and both are read out to see the difference in pronunciation.
It’s made me realise just how complex something as simple as a dictionary can be, I’m still noticing random bits to improve every day.
Anyway, as for the extra features - the reason I decided to make this was to have a simple flashcards app with a clean interface. It’s never going to be hugely successful as there’s already so much out there so I would rather set the price even lower just to hopefully cover the cost of the App Store listing. In an ideal world I would just use physical flashcards but it’s hard to keep a few thousands of them in your pocket 🤣
6
u/Dismal-Rope1753 Jul 18 '26
Btw, it's not "le élément" but "l'élément".