Babbel – Learn Languages

The German course is worth every penny if you're at A1 or A2 level and seek to get solid grounding. Its strongest point is that it makes grammar a lot easier to learn than the usual high school course so you learn to speak correctly from the get go. It could use a bit more vocabulary but the one it features is repeated enough times to learn it thoroughly through regular revisions. If I were to add something to it, it'd be excercises that ask the user to form full phrases. Overall, it's a 5 star app and I'd recommend it to any beginner.

I started using the app couple of days ago to learn French as I always wanted to. It worked well at first but now it seems impossible to write anything. When there are two words to write or two different places to write in the same task it starts to play up. When I press space it turns off. I thought it was my phone at first but it work perfectly fine on every other app and everything else just not this. Happened to anybody else?

I've tried several language apps, and so far I find this one most effective. Good grammar explanations. If you have trouble with speech recognition stuff, I suggest you tinker with the microphone sensitivity level. Also the customer service staff are very helpful and prompt with their responses. Only downside is that it's a bit more expensive than other language apps.

I am learning Spanish at school and this app helps me so so much thank you for making this wonderful app and I would recommend this if you are learning a different language and having a bit of trouble talking or writing something. This is a great app. (I actually nearly pressed 4 stare,ooops).

I have been learning Norwegian and having never done it before I have come so far in an incredibly short space of time. It is easy to use the app and as a result putting in 20mins or more a day is easy. Best way to learn in my opinion. I can't wait to go back to Norway and try out my language skills now :-)

I have only been using it for a couple of days to learn Spanish but I am not overly impressed. When doing the dialogue exercises, it suddenly introduces new words that wasn't in the word practice lesson before. Also, it explains some grammar but i think the explanations could be better with more of exercises to practice the grammar just learnt. Also not enough revision exercise and quizzes to reinforce learning

Overall it's the best self study app that I've tried. However I wish it continued the lessons beyond the basic level. In general the app functions well, but sometimes the exercises don't work correctly. Probably there are a few tech glitches that need ironing out.

Okay now that I've started using it more although it does separate formal and informal it still doesn't explain the words themselves and how they change. Maybe I just haven't gotten that far yet to see that change but so far a little problem.

I was looking for Latin American Spanish. This app has content appropriate in Spain. Just started it so I'm not sure if I will be getting it for another month yet. I don't like learning parts I'll never use, vosotros for example

Do NOT trust this app! So first I was really excited to learn German. I bought it and made an account. Then, I did the first 2 lessons- perfect! After that it said I have have to get premium package to have any other lessons. My heart sank. I would not install it unless you want to pay just to learn the basics.

Great app. Easy and real grammar but voice recognition sucks. Cannot recognise anything I say. Funny as I tried using a recording of a friend who speaks native French and it still said what he said was wrong. Gave me something to laugh about. Please fix this.

I like this app. I really do. It's great, efficient, at least. I have one problem alone though... it says "Learn any language with Babbel!" Buuuuut, you can't learn any language. I wanted to learn Greek, but it isn't on there. Please add greek.

Does the job of teaching me words. There are currently no alternatives to babbel for Indonesian. Otherewise, the app has bugs and glitches and is not fun to use. Looks like it should be reimplenented from scratch. Use Duolingo instead.

I've heard a lot of great things about this app and after reading a recent article about it, I downloaded it immediately. The article (which was written by babbel itself), said I could learn Portuguese. Only after downloading the app did I realise it meant "Brazilian Portuguese". Please make this distinction clearer, they are similar but the accents make them almost two completely different languages to a new speaker. I am semi-fluent in Portuguese because my family is Portuguese so I picked up this app to improve and am disappointed that it is Brazilian Portuguese. There is nothing wrong with Brazilian Portuguese and I'm at a level where I can understand it, but for the most part people who do not know there is a difference will be, without knowing, learning the incorrect dialect for if they wanted to visit Portugal. I guarantee most people will assume Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese are the same. Please correct this, I strongly believe you are misleading people.

I wanna speak Japanese so I could know the lyrics in some Japanese songs. :3 My first language is English, and before installing this app, I can understand a bit of cat. I have a problem... Lol

Started learning Norwegian a few months ago, tried a few apps but they focus too much on dictionary words, I like that Babel has full conversations quite early in the course (although sometimes is depressing to see how far you are). My only complaints are about considering a mistake if you add 2 spaces (by mistake :D) in written exercises. And about voice recognition, rarely works but the most annoying is that there is no feedback.. like "you got the pronunciation of 'e' wrong" or something.

Great for learning. Worth the money. It actually teaches you the rules of the language as you go along and reviews lessons and words regularly to reinforce your learning. The practices get progressively harder. They have different excercises: matching, pictures, unscramble letters, and fill in the blank. Some of the fill-in-the-blank questions are within made-up conversations so you end up learning what's conversational along the way as well as new vocabulary that you won't be quizzed on yet. The lessons are short enough for you to do it every day (~15min) and so it's ideal for the consistency required for language learning.

It can't recognise me saying the simple word gracias. Never had this problem with any other app. No there is no background noise, it's all your apps fault. Too bad it looked promising.

Typing is almost impossible. The app uses its own keyboard not my default one. You press a letter and it writes a different one. I have the same experience you have seen in other reviews. It's a shame, because otherwise it's a great app.

I purchased the Spanish lessons and found the lessons to be very confusing. There's no instruction leaving you mostly to guess. I redid lessons repeatedly thinking I just missed something but that wasn't the case. I thought this would be a fun app to use but turned out to be more of a fustrating waist of money.

Am finding voice recognition completely arbitrary. I do turn off background noise and hold phone away but mostly give up trying to pronounce even the simplest German words. Also I just got stuck with numbers because I couldn't get numerals on the keyboard that comes up. Frustrating

It's pretty good, I would've continued using, but I don't have the money, thus having to cancel. But I'm having troubles canceling my account. I haven't paid a fee, do I need to pay a fee to be a member? If not will it still charge me?

Sometimes a word needs a character like a hyphen, and the keyboard doesn't offer that character So- wrong answer. :( Question answered. Review upgraded because the functionality was there, but not well documented. Excellent customer service, and a good app.

I find this Italian course excellent. The way it builds up from the beginning and progresses swiftly. I also like the extra chapters on verbs, areas of interest etc that look at the language in different ways to the beginners lessons.. My only request would be for a search facility or more indexing on what is in each section. I tried to find a bit on calendar dates for an essay and failed.

Good so far. Some small issues and good responses to them from the company. Review manager would be much better if it moved onto new words/phrases instead of repeating the same ones I can't remember.

Good but... I have used this before to better my German since I was rusty on it. And because I wanted to learn Greek I thought I'd come back and use the app again. Sadly it seems there is no Greek language to learn which is a shame because I had heard good things from here to. Other than that it works quite well.

Good app plagued by bugs. The keyboard is atrocious! 50% percent of the mistakes are caused by the keyboard not registering the correct key. Some words got rejected only for the app to show the exact same words as correct solution. The speaking exercises are sometimes shut down in the first 0.5 seconds before I even get the chance to speak. I wouldn't expect this kind of errors from a fairly expensive app.

It was great on iphone but the android version seems to have a misaligned keyboard. It registers the key above making it impossible to type answers correctly. A big problem when your space bar is at the bottom of the screen and you can't actually press it. Additionally, the keyboard greys out the letters that arent used making it too easy. The iphone version gives you the full keyboard challenging your comprehension better. Massive lags in keystroke and in loading the next screen or assessing your answer. Disappointing

Best tool I've found for learning French. The fact that you have to say and write what you're learning really helps it stick. Only reason I've not given it 5 stars is because would like to see a verb list alongside the vocab list that could be reviewed separately. It's hard to keep track of new verbs and a list with tenses would be a handy review tool

I've always struggled with Language's other than English.... This app is honestly keeping my interest and making multiple languages feel like a reality!

Great App, I like it. The cost is an issue. I am learning French and Portuguese in parallel (one to improve, one as a new language) but you have to pay for both courses separately which is terrible. It's one app so the cost should be combined. Due to this I will no longer continue my subscription

The languages are very easy to learn and they are very well put. But the thing that I do not like about this app is the fact that there are not that many country's to learn, I would really like to learn Chinese but because it only has a certain amount of languages I can't learn Chinese, so I would like if they added more languages but other than that this app is quite well made!

it's okay. duolingo is better. biggest annoyance is that babbel uses its own keyboard instead of the Android keyboard that I installed. that's a deal breaker. duolingo lets me use my slide keyboard which supports multiple languages. babbel turns out to be a waste of money. I wouldn't buy again. get duolingo.

Very good learning experience. There is a reason why it costs something as opposed to duolingo. Yes, wish it was cheaper, and i will stop using it now after one year because of the money, but the investment was worth it. I went from no word to fluent in Spanish within a few months

I discovered one problem so far. On Beginner's Course 1- Lesson 10, it will count against you if you do not enter the special "n" with the squiggly mark(~) above it. I missed 4 in Lesson 10 only because I could NOT enter "espanol" with the character ~ above the "n". My keyboard in the lesson does not give me that special "n~" option. What a disappointment! FOUR marks against me that I cannot "correct", because there's no way to do it.

I think this program is well structured and enjoyable to learn from, especially the German version, I don't know about the other languages though. I would rate it a five star if it we're not for the annoying keyboard. Almost every time you press a key for a particular letter, the letter above it appears. You have to press the key very low in order to get the letter you want. In one way it is too sensitive to where you press the key, and on the other hand as well you have to press a little hard for the key to work. Could that be fixed, as it is annoying. There is one suggestion I would like to make, for me anyways. I would love to be able to go back to a previous lesson, and go to a particular page, or exercise in that particular lesson WITHOUT having to redo the whole exercise over again. That would be a winner for me if it was possible to do that. Go on Babbel, I know you can do it, keep on improving!

I typed in "Korean" and this came up. Yet they don't support it yet. Good job on falsely tagging your app. Uninstalled immediately, sorry not sorry.

I tried the trial version and liked it very much. I planned using it to improve my Dutch and French and also learn two more language, German and Spanish. That however is not a possibility to me because of the price. I actually thought that you could pay one subscription fee and will have the possibility to learn as many languages as it offers. Is there any possibility to get a good discount if one intends to learn more than one language? That would be lovely.

I will give 5* as I feel that Babbel actually helps me learn useful and good everyday language and vocabulary. However the Babbel keyboard on the app is slow and awkward. Still it's easy to get used to.

I like the varied format. It's quick to access on my phone or laptop when I have a minute. Best of all I can work at my own pace, go back over things if I need to. Each lesson is not overly long and my learning is consolidated by the 'correct your errors' feature.