15 Must-have Apps for Portuguese Learners
Language learning apps give you easy access to Portuguese learning experiences; you can pull them out in those otherwise lost moments when you’re in a line or on the bus.
But which apps are the best?
I believe there are 15 that truly stand out, and that should be considered for a place in any Portuguese learner’s pocket. Some of my suggestions are traditional language learning apps, some of them aren’t, but can be repurposed for our Lusophone ends.
Let’s take a look.
Contents
- 1. Best Dictionary App: WordReference
- 2. Best Immersive App: FluentU
- 3. Best Flashcard App: Anki
- 4. Best App for Busy Learners: Duolingo
- 5. Best App for Social Interaction: Tinder
- 6. Best All-in-one App: Busuu
- 7. Best App for Listening Practice: SoundHound
- 8. Best Translation App: Google Translate
- 9. Best App for Intermediate Learners: Clozemaster
- 10. Best App for Travelers: MosaLingua
- 11. Best App for Reading Practice: Readlang
- 12. Best App for Learning Games: MindSnacks
- 13. Best App for Extra Motivation: Semper
- 14. Best Vocabulary Builder: Vocabulando
- 15. Best App for Building Motivation: Habitica
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
1. Best Dictionary App: WordReference
Price: Free
If you’re going to choose just one Portuguese dictionary app, this should be your guy. (Are apps really dudes, you’re wondering? That’s what Portuguese speakers would tell you at least: it’s o app or o aplicativo.)
Whether you’re chatting over a caipirinha in Copacabana or trying to decipher samba rock lyrics, WordReference is going to give you pretty complete coverage of even the wildest corners of the Portuguese lexicon. The most interesting feature in my book is the English-Portuguese forum, which is an option at the bottom of any look-up you make in the app.
From there you can ask about both the dignified Portuguese that has somehow escaped dictionary editors’ attentions, as well as the coarse neologisms that they don’t deign to acknowledge. (My own near-decade of contributions to the forum tends towards the later, I’m afraid!) If relevant, previous forum topics also come up after the editorial content in your in-app searches.
The app can also conjugate any Portuguese verb, and gives sometimes-useful links to Google image searches at the bottom of entries.
2. Best Immersive App: FluentU
Price: Paid subscription, free trial available
Learning from a textbook is essential for the basics, but you will need to consume native material to progress in any real way when learning Portuguese.
Sometimes that content can be hard to find if you aren’t living in the country of your target language. And even when you do come across authentic content, such as movies and music videos, you have to contend with unfamiliar accents, fast speech and slang.
FluentU sets itself apart from other language learning apps by using real media made by and for Portuguese speakers, paired with learning tools to help you understand everything that’s being said.
Along with the curated video library, you get interactive subtitles, downloadable transcripts, multimedia flashcards and other handy features.
When watching a video, you can hover over any word to see an in-context definition, image and some grammar notes. Another tap will give you example sentences, audio pronunciation and other video clips that feature the term.
Alternatively, FluentU also functions as a video dictionary that can show you all the information above when you search for a term.
When you’re ready, you can test your new vocab knowledge with flashcard practice and personalized quizzes that challenge all language skills, including speaking.
3. Best Flashcard App: Anki
Price: Free
I think there’s something lovely and useful about the tactile feel of flashcards, but I’ve long ago given them up to memorize new vocabulary with this app. Its two key advantages over paper are that you can save audio (you can record a language partner or teacher) and it’s easier to keep with you than a stack of paper, so you’re likely to practice more often.
There are dozens of user-submitted Portuguese decks available covering common phrases, travel and verb conjugations, but I strongly urge you to instead make your own. You can make them on a computer and synchronize them with your smartphone, or just make them in the app itself. As with paper, the act of thinking about what you want to remember and then actually making the card often gets you halfway towards memorization by itself. Also, the quality of other users’ decks can vary and thus could contain errors.
See our full review of Anki here.
4. Best App for Busy Learners: Duolingo
Price: Free, paid premium version
Duolingo can be a good way to build vocabulary, in particular when used alongside other language learning methods. Once you determine your Portuguese level, you take on units that are designed around different themes, such as education and work. The focus is not on grammar, but rather on learning nouns, adjectives, verbs and tenses that allow you to communicate around a given theme.
Exercises include voice recording (listening to a sentence and then reading it out loud yourself), translation of phrases, matching photos to words, rearranging words to form sentences, and answering multiple-choice questions.
The app is designed to be cheerful and the sections are short so you can always fit in a quick session during those brief spare free moments.
See our full review of DuoLingo here.
5. Best App for Social Interaction: Tinder
Price: Free, paid premium version
This is not usually thought of as a learning app, but if chatting with a hunky Brazilian or alluring Angolan gets you practicing more Portuguese, that’s hardly an opportunity to be missed. Some find that a little bit of romantic intrigue can also further motivate learning; you might be a little more careful with your use of prepositions if you’re trying to sound charming.
If you live in an area devoid of Portuguese speakers, you can buy the paid version of the app and then set your location to whatever region has your target accent. You can (and really should) be honest about your intentions. For example: Só quero praticar o meu português. (I just want to practice my Portuguese.) Of course, I have heard that love sometimes happens even in spite of one’s best intentions…
6. Best All-in-one App: Busuu
Price: Free limited access, paid premium version
Like Duolingo, this has a cheerful interface that’s meant to keep you coming back for continual improvement. The app focuses on 150 important topics that are intrinsic to basic Portuguese, and you advance through a variety of levels.
In the app, you learn vocabulary from pictures that are a bit generic (not particularly designed to show you Portuguese cultures), so it’s best to follow up with some practice with native speakers to ensure that you get exposure to Lusophone ways of experiencing the vocabulary.
Fortunately, there is some interactive functionality included in the app; you can submit practice exercises and get messages from native Brazilians and Portuguese people who will correct and respond to your work.
See our full review of Busuu here.
7. Best App for Listening Practice: SoundHound
Price: Free
Music is one of the main focuses for many Portuguese learners, such as finally getting to understand the lyrics of their favorite songs (fado, samba, pagode, marabenta, etc.). When I was first studying the language ten years ago, it would often take some effort to track down a song and its lyrics. Now you can do all of this within the SoundHound app instantly. Just push a button to recognize whatever song is playing, and then tap the button to run a search for the lyrics.
In my experience, this is the best app for tracking down Brazilian popular music and instantly getting the lyrics on your screen as you listen. It also shows some basic information in English about the better-known artists. You can bookmark your favorite songs for future reference.
8. Best Translation App: Google Translate
Price: Free
Machine translation is famously inaccurate, but Google Translate can sometimes be pretty good at giving you an idea of what is meant by a particularly puzzling Portuguese phrase. It also offers a dictionary-like lookup for single words, and while WordReference is better as an editorial dictionary, Google Translate can sometimes be a bit better at interpreting your crazier misspellings and figuring out what you meant.
It also offers spoken translation and can also translate the text in the pictures you take with your smartphone’s camera. It’s functional enough to almost make you question the hours of study you put into learning Portuguese! But, I emphasize, only almost.
9. Best App for Intermediate Learners: Clozemaster
Price: Free limited access, paid subscription available
Clozemaster came as a deus ex machina for intermediate and advanced learners in a plethora of resources geared heavily towards beginners. It has an interactive gamified approach to reinforcing your vocabulary in context by going through sentences and filling in missing words (the clozes).
The sentences are extracted from film and TV subtitles provided by Tatoeba, which ensures great variety as far as dialects and vocab, with a great dose of authenticity as far as phrasing.
At this moment, Clozemaster has over 100 language pairings (native language to target language), 10 of which—including our beloved Portuguese—have sentences grouped by difficulty. Oh, and by the way, the Portuguese-from-English pair comes with a whopping 94,000+ sentences to play with, so you’re in for some intense language action.
10. Best App for Travelers: MosaLingua
Price: Free limited access, paid premium version
MosaLingua is an Anki-esque app built around the praised Spaced Repetition System but in a unique combination that makes “MOSA Learning” a trademark method. It is primarily focused on Brazillian Portuguese.
MosaLingua’s target is tourists, with categories such as accommodation, shopping, emergencies and such. This, however, should in no way put you off if you’re just a learner with no immediate travel plans.
Aside from the obvious benefit of providing a language survival kit, MosaLingua does come with a set of handy and rather original extra features.
For one, the audio aids: This app allows you to record yourself on the flashcards and compare your pronunciation to that of native speakers.
We then have the dialogues, which are perfect for practicing intensive listening thanks to the options of enabling a real-time transcript, as well as subtitles in your own language.
Because the content is accessible offline and there’s a recently-added hands-free mode, you can also use these dialogues to do some extensive listening on the go, be it at the gym or while shopping or anywhere else you can think of.
11. Best App for Reading Practice: Readlang
Price: Free limited access, paid premium subscription
Staying in the realm of SRS, I present to you, Readlang: the immersion tool which allows you to read texts in your target language and get instant seamless translation.
Full disclosure here: It hasn’t been launched as a mobile app yet, but it was designed with mobiles and tablets in mind, so you’ll have no problem using the website on your phone. The devs were even kind enough to provide instructions on how to open it in full screen mode so that it looks and acts exactly like a proper app.
What Readlang does for you, in a nutshell, is help you learn while you read by clicking on any words or groups of words that you don’t know in order to get the translation.
When you’re done reading, Readlang remembers the words you translated and includes them in flashcards for you to practice afterward, complete with their original context. You can even export the flashcards to use in Anki should you find that more convenient.
The reading material is entirely up to you. There’s an integrated library that features an interesting collection of public texts (mostly song lyrics and news articles), however, if nothing there tickles your fancy you can also upload your own texts just as long as they’re in a plain text or .epub format (you can convert them for free using Calibre).
12. Best App for Learning Games: MindSnacks
Available: iOS
Price: Free limited access, paid premium version
Since gamification is where it’s at right now in the language learning world, MindSnacks follows the trend and invites you to learn Portuguese by playing 9 unique and self-declared “addictive” games.
The games definitely are great entertainment, so much so that you actually start to feel guilty for having so much fun when you’re supposed to be learning. But rest assured, learning you are thanks to MindSnacks’ personalized algorithm that favors memorizing and retention.
Although it also packs quality lessons designed by Ivy League teachers, the games are really what sets apart MindSnacks from other apps out there.
And while we’re at it, let’s take a minute to appreciate the fact that we live in an era where you can learn Portuguese by popping balloons, feeding a frog and freeing fish from bubbles, all through your bitesize smartphone screen.
13. Best App for Extra Motivation: Semper
Available: Android
Price: Paid subscription, free trial available
This app makes you answer word puzzles every time you unlock your screen and/or open other applications.
Once the question pops on your screen, it’s as easy as one, two, three: a swipe right means you got it, a swipe left throws you an extra puzzle and a swipe upwards lets you skip the round altogether.
As underwhelming as this may sound, these regular mini-tasks, consistent with the concept of microlearning, sort of force you to learn something every time you unlock your phone, which is apparently about 80 times a day.
It makes its way into your routine no matter how busy your lifestyle is because it ties in with the natural breaks you take and thus the right time to learn a new word becomes…well, semper.
There are several packages available for Portuguese but you also have the option of creating your own, even importing content from Excel files or Quizlet. You also get to choose the time of the day when you want Semper to be active, as well as which other apps will be integrated.
14. Best Vocabulary Builder: Vocabulando
Available: Android
Price: Free
The name, coined using the word vocabulário (Portuguese for, you guessed it, vocabulary) and the verbal termination “-ando,” is an indicator of the goal of this app, which is to get you playing around with Portuguese words.
Specifically, it deals with the most commonly mixed-up words and expressions, a source of many headaches for learners and native speakers alike.
Vocabulando works by presenting you with quizzes, conducted at first by a “Professor K. Walla” and then, as you make progress, by increasingly more demanding and interesting characters such as Frankie DeCluck and Doug Muchwowski (get it?). The old school music and sound effects are a good match to the endearing silliness of the characters.
This app is as free as they get and provides just as free monthly updates. With an iOS version rolling in and two more Portuguese educational games on the way, we’re definitely keeping our eye on these folks.
15. Best App for Building Motivation: Habitica
Price: Free
Anyone learning a language on their own is familiar with the occasional rough patch when it just isn’t working out and enthusiasm turns into frustration. More often than not, the burnout stage is what will lead to giving up altogether.
Enter Habitica, previously known as HabitRPG, an app designed for building motivation and self-improvement using roleplaying game (RPG) mechanisms. Put simply, it’s a task management site that doubles as an RPG.
You input the tasks or goals you want to achieve, perform them and progressively earn gold, gear and other forms of virtual rewards. You can even form guilds with other Habitica players and encourage each other’s progress.
It can be quite an effective aid to Portuguese learners and even more so when paired with the Pomodoro technique, detailed here in the paragraph on intensive listening practice.
For instance, you could form a general habit like “Listen to podcasts” or “Summarize news articles” and couple it with daily tasks like one hour of extensive listening or 2 Pomodoro sessions of assignments. After all that good work, enjoy the special prizes unlocked by your progress or set your own custom reward, such as watching your favorite TV show.
The app is completely free and highly addictive. Because believe it or not, there’s no better incentive for memorizing that vocab than slaying a dragon as a wizard with a pink fox for a sidekick.
If you’re carrying these 15 apps in your pocket, I’m confident that you’ll be on a quick route to better Portuguese. These foster a kind of smartphone addiction that will actually improve your mind, and most of all, your interactions in real life.
Hopefully, your Portuguese will flow better as you’re chatting the evening away on a sandy beach in Itaúnas, or whatever lesser use of the language that you might come up with.
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)