Learn your partner's language from the life you share

An app to learn your partner's language has to pass 2 tests. It has to teach that language. And it has to let you study the words your partner and their family really use.

I build Verbamor, so discount my pick a little. This page has no affiliate links, and every figure about another company carries the date I read it.

Verbamor teaches Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Russian. You record a family dinner, with everyone's permission, and the app turns the words you pick into cards. FSRS-6 then schedules when each card returns.

If your partner's language isn't one of those 5, Verbamor can't help you. The list below shows which apps cover more.

Does the app teach your partner's language?

Check the language count before anything else. Each number below comes from the company's own page, on the date shown.

• Verbamor: 5 languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian), from the app, 17 Oct 2026.
• Babbel: 14 languages, from babbel.com, read 5 Sep 2026.
• Rosetta Stone: 25 languages, from rosettastone.com, read 12 Oct 2026.
• Mondly: 41 languages, from mondly.com, read 17 Oct 2026.
• Pimsleur: 50+ languages, from pimsleur.com, read 21 Sep 2026.
• LingQ: 50+ languages (its homepage lists 53), from lingq.com, read 17 Oct 2026.

A count only tells you a language is there. Find your partner's language by name on the app's store page before you pay.

If your partner speaks a language outside Verbamor's 5, I'd try LingQ first. Its homepage says you can "import any content you find" and turn it into a lesson.

If your partner speaks Spanish, French, Italian or Portuguese, how those 4 languages differ tells you what will be hard in yours.

Why do courses miss the words your partner uses?

A course teaches the words its writers picked for everyone. Your partner's family has its own words: nicknames, kitchen words, the thing your mother-in-law says when the phone rings.

Mondly, for example, says it trains you "with 40 practical topics" (mondly.com, read 17 Oct 2026). A 1-star App Store review of Mondly complains of "unnatural conversations that I can’t imagine hearing in real life".

A 1-star App Store review of Babbel says it in 8 words: "people don't talk like that in real life". A 1-star App Store review of Duolingo describes "slogging through phrases totally irrelevant to me".

Babbel also keeps your own words out of its review. Its help centre says: "It is not possible to manually add random words or phrases to your review" (read 5 Sep 2026).

So a word you hear at your partner's family table can't enter Babbel's review unless a Babbel lesson teaches it.

How do you learn from your life together?

Here's the routine I'd follow with Verbamor on an iPhone.

1. Ask everyone at the table if you can record them.
2. Record the dinner in the Record tab.
3. Choose the words and phrases you want to keep from the results.
4. Do your daily review.

One recording can run up to 90 minutes. That covers a long family dinner or a Sunday call with your partner's parents.

Did someone record the call on another device? Import that audio file in place of step 2.

Between recordings, save a phrase your partner says in the Translate tab. It saves a single word or a whole phrase. Use it for the line your partner says every morning, or the joke the whole family repeats.

Long-distance couples can paste text instead. A message thread you're part of works, up to 80,000 characters, if the people who wrote it agree.

You set the daily load: 5 to 60 reviews and 5 to 30 new words. Each new word becomes 2 cards.

You grade each card yourself with 4 buttons: Forgot, Hard, Good, Easy. Nothing is typed, and the app never marks an answer wrong.

Set a goal countdown to a date ahead, like a wedding or a first visit to the in-laws. Studying works offline, so a long flight to see the family still counts.

For choosing which words from a conversation are worth keeping, read how to remember words from a conversation. For microphone placement, read how to record a language lesson.

How can your partner help without giving lessons?

Your partner already speaks the language all day. The trouble starts when they become your teacher.

I think "teach me" sessions are hard on a couple. Your partner gets tired of translating, and you feel tested at your own kitchen table.

So give your partner a smaller job. They talk normally. You capture what they say in a recording or the Translate tab, and FSRS-6 decides when each card returns.

Your partner can still explain what a word means in your house. Add that as a personal note on the card, like "what Nonna says when the pasta's ready".

You can also replace a card's picture with your own photo. Then "la nonna" can show your actual nonna.

Verbamor has no AI conversation partner and no pronunciation scoring. For speaking practice, talk with your partner and their family at dinner.

Is it OK to record your partner's family?

Only with their permission. Ask everyone in the room before you record, every time.

Some places require every speaker's consent by law, so asking protects you too. Tell them what the recording is for: flashcards of their words, for you.

If someone says no, skip the recording. Save the phrases you remember in the Translate tab after dinner.

What should a total beginner add?

Verbamor has Essentials, a starter deck of about 650 common words per language, in a fixed order. Beyond it there's no course, no grammar lessons and no placement test.

Grammar cards in Verbamor come only from your own mistakes, taken from your recordings or pasted text. If you're starting from zero, a family dinner will move too fast at first.

So add a course or a tutor alongside it for the first months:

• Babbel for structured lessons in 14 languages. Babbel says all its content is voiced by native speakers (read 5 Sep 2026).
• Pimsleur for audio lessons of about 30 minutes each, in 50+ languages (read 21 Sep 2026).
• An italki community tutor, who typically charges $4 to $20 a lesson (italki, read 13 Oct 2026).

Who should pick a different app?

Pick something else in these 5 cases.

• Your partner's language isn't on the list. Verbamor teaches Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Russian only.
• You use Android or a computer. Verbamor runs on iPhone and iPad (iOS 16.4 or later), with no Android or web app.
• You want your pronunciation scored. Verbamor has no speech recognition on your voice and no AI chat partner.
• You want every card checked by a person. Claude and OpenAI models write Verbamor's card text, sentences and pictures, with automated checks and no human review.
• You want audio from human voices. Verbamor's audio is generated speech with a native accent.

If a card looks wrong, you can flag the word on the lesson results. You can't edit a card's text yourself.

What does Verbamor cost?

Verbamor has 2 plans. These are US prices. I read them from the app's own plan definitions on 21 September 2026.

• Explorer: US$19.99 a month, with no trial.
• Native: US$129.99 a year (about $10.83 a month), with a 7-day free trial.

The trial is on the yearly plan only. The app has no ads, and no hearts, lives or leagues.

Questions couples ask

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