Which language app teaches useful words?

Course apps like Duolingo and Babbel choose the words for you. Babbel's own help centre says you can't add your own words to its review queue.

So the best app for useful words does 2 jobs. It starts you on the most common words, then it adds the words you meet in your own lessons, conversations and reading.

What makes a word useful?

A word is useful when you'll hear it or need to say it soon. That depends on how common the word is in the language. It also depends on how often you meet it in your own week.

Frequency does most of the work at the start. In Davies's 2005 count of spoken Spanish, the 1,000 most common words covered 87.8% of the words people said. The first 2,000 covered 92.7%.

Nation and Waring (1997) found the same shape in English. About 2,000 word families give around 96% coverage of informal speech.

Then the curve flattens fast. I explained why the word-frequency curve flattens, with the numbers for each step.

That flat part is where frequency stops choosing for you. Nation (2006) puts comfortable listening at 6,000 to 7,000 word families, for 98% coverage of spoken text.

The words between 2,000 and 7,000 are different for a nurse and for someone with Italian in-laws.

So "useful" has 2 parts. The first 2,000 or so words are the same for almost everyone. After that, the most useful words are the ones from your own life.

For the first part, any good list works. I compared every published frequency list for Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese, with the corpus and date of each.

Why do language apps teach words you'll never use?

A course app writes one path for every learner. It can't know your job or the people you talk to, so it teaches what a typical beginner might need.

Babbel's homepage promises course material "tailored to your proficiency level, interests, and time commitment" (read 17 Oct 2026). Its help centre says its review queue holds only words from lessons you finish (read 5 Sep 2026).

In Babbel's own words: "It is not possible to manually add random words or phrases to your review."

Learners notice the gap. I counted complaints in 13,183 one- and two-star App Store reviews of 30 language apps, fetched 17 Oct 2026.

An AI model checked each match and confirmed 78 complaints about useless or odd words and sentences, across 18 apps. Babbel had 15 of them and Duolingo had 14.

Treat 78 as a lower bound. A keyword search picked the reviews first, so the count missed any complaint worded some other way.

A 2-star App Store review of Duolingo says the "words it teaches you are far from common words you are likely to use". A 1-star App Store review of Babbel complains about "learning words I won’t use in a normal conversation".

Where does each app get its words?

The table shows where 8 apps get the words they teach, and whether you can add your own. Each row comes from the company's own site or help pages, on the date shown.

2 rows need a caveat. The 80% figure is Lingvist's own claim, and its page gives no source for it.

Clozemaster's sentences come from Tatoeba, a set that users curate. Clozemaster's FAQ warns there will "probably be a few errors here and there".

Anki's manual takes a side on decks: "Creating your own deck is the most effective way to learn a complex subject". The cost is your time, because you write every card by hand.

How can you test an app's words in 5 minutes?

Run this test during an app's trial, before you pay.

1. List 10 words you needed this week and didn't know.
2. Count how many of the 10 words the app teaches.
3. Add 1 missing word to the app's review queue.

If the app teaches most of your 10 or lets you add them, its words will follow your life. If it teaches 2 and step 3 fails, the course will keep choosing for you.

Repeat the test after a month with a fresh 10 words. One pass in week 1 proves little, because your needs grow past the beginner topics fast.

Who writes the sentences on Verbamor's cards?

In Verbamor, you supply most of the words. You can record a lesson or conversation of up to 90 minutes. You can also import an audio file, paste text, or search for a word in the Translate tab.

Ask the other people before you record a conversation. You choose which words or phrases to save, and each new word becomes 2 cards in one review queue.

FSRS-6 schedules every card. Before you have any recordings, there's Essentials, a starter deck of about 650 common words per language in a fixed order.

AI writes the rest of each card. Claude and OpenAI models write the card text, the example sentence and the picture. Automated checks run on them, and no human reviews them.

The 2 recordings on each card are generated speech with a native accent. If a word is wrong, you can flag it on the lesson results.

So I can promise you relevant words. I can't promise hand-picked sentences, and AI sentences go wrong in ways learners spot fast.

A 2-star App Store review of Falou says "Stupid AI made sentences that no one would say in real life". That risk applies to Verbamor's sentences too.

You can't edit a card's text. You can add a personal note, swap the picture for your own photo, or remove the card from your review queue.

When should you pick something else?

A total beginner with nothing to record yet should start from a frequency list or a course. My comparison of frequency lists names the published ones. Verbamor's Essentials stops at about 650 words, and after that the app needs your own lessons or text.

If you want a full course, pick Babbel. Its homepage promises "helpful grammar tips" inside the lessons. Verbamor has no course, no curriculum and no grammar lessons.

Verbamor's grammar cards come only from your own mistakes, taken from your recordings or pasted text.

If you learn by reading long texts, pick LingQ. It builds lessons from content you import, and it helps you review the words you mark.

If you want to write every card yourself, pick Anki. You control all of the text, and you also do all of the typing.

If you use Android, Verbamor won't work for you. It needs an iPhone or iPad, and there's no Android or web app.

Verbamor teaches Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Russian. It costs US$19.99 a month with no trial, or US$129.99 a year with a 7-day trial (US prices, 21 Sep 2026).

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