Simply Fluent
An app for reading in the language you are learning.
Simply Fluent is a reader for iOS and Android. Select a word and you see what it means in that sentence. Save it, and it stays highlighted in every book you open after that, and it becomes a flashcard.
Reading a book in the language, sooner.
Most people learning a language never read a book in it. It looks too hard, so they wait until they feel ready. Simply Fluent is made for the time before that: you read a story you would choose anyway, and the words you don't know are explained on the same page.
It is not a course, and there are no lessons to finish. You read, you save the words you want to keep, and you practice them when you like. Streaks, stats and achievements are there for people who want them.
- the year it started
- 2018
- languages with books to read
- 45
- languages it translates
- 131
- languages for the app itself
- 42
It started with one book in Dutch.
- 2018
A paper book and a phone
Marco Ivarsson was learning Dutch with apps, evening classes and meetups, and none of it was fun. So he tried to read Harry Potter in Dutch with a translator on his phone: unlock it, type the word, spell it right, find the place on the page again. He gave up after a couple of pages. He kept looking up words he had looked up one page earlier.
- Dutch
Building the reader he wanted
He had never built an app, and in 2018 there was nothing like it for language learners, so he built one after work and on weekends. Every evening he read a few pages to test the latest version. He finished his first Dutch book, then read a stack of them. One day he understood the people speaking Dutch around him, and he could watch films without subtitles. The app had no audio yet. All of it came from reading.
- Spanish
Doing it again, on purpose
For Spanish he used Simply Fluent and nothing else, after a few weeks of flashcards for the first few hundred words. Four months after he started his first Spanish book he was in South America: about two months in Ecuador, then five weeks on his own in Colombia, getting by in Spanish, then Ecuador again.
229hreading in Spanish
- Portuguese
A first book of 300,000 words
About three years later he started Portuguese with nothing but his Spanish. His first Portuguese book was 300,000 words long. He finished it in 26 hours of reading, and then had his first conversations in Portuguese.
150hreading in Portuguese
- 2.0
Every screen rebuilt
The first version of the app was buggy, and it had grown in too many directions at once. Simply Fluent 2.0 rebuilds it: a new reader with three themes, a new flashcard system, books graded by level, reading challenges and clearer stats.
A small company in Estonia.
Simply Fluent is made by Simply Fluent OÜ, a company registered in Estonia. Questions about the app, your subscription or working together go through the contact page.
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