Featured by Apple on the App Store
Book by book, you go from looking up every other word to reading whole pages without stopping.
This is the reader from the app. Select a word you don't know, add it to your dictionary, then swipe to the next page and see what happens to it.
The library has books in each of these. Translation works in 131 languages, so you can add your own books in the others too. See the full list.
El tren llegó a la ciudad poco después del amanecer. Clara bajó al andén con una maleta pequeña y un libro viejo bajo el brazo. No conocía a nadie, pero no tenía miedo.
Compró un café en la estación y se sentó junto a la ventana. Afuera, la ciudad empezaba a despertar: una persiana que subía, un tranvía, dos vecinos que discutían sobre el tiempo. De repente se dio cuenta de que entendía casi todo lo que decían.
"It's too hard to read in the language I'm learning."
Select a word you don't know and you get the meaning it has in this sentence, with its other meanings after it. You don't leave the book, and you don't guess from a list.
"I have to start with children's books."
Short stories and full-length classics. Or bring your own book.
"I don't have time to sit down and read."
Any book can be read aloud, including the ones you add yourself, at the speed you choose and without a connection. The page turns by itself, so you can listen on the bus and keep your place.
"I can't learn a language on my own."
Every word you save becomes a flashcard. Your stats show the words you have read, saved and memorized, and the hours behind them. Streaks are there if you want them, and easy to ignore if you don't.
Researchers have measured how many words it takes to read a book, and how people learn them. Here is what they found, and where Simply Fluent fits in.
A word family is a word with its related forms, like read, reader and reading. Classroom courses cover a small part of that. UK school learners of French finish their GCSE knowing fewer than 1,000 French words, and A-level with about 2,000.
School figures count single words. A word family holds one or more of them, so the real gap is wider than the chart shows.
Adult learners read a short story in which some words had been replaced with words they couldn't know. The more of the words they knew, the more of them understood the story.
Each group had 16 or 17 readers, and understanding meant getting at least 12 of 14 questions about the story right. A page is counted as 300 words. The researchers estimate that reading without help starts at about 98%: around 6 unknown words on a page.
A reader who knows the 2,000 most common word families knows about 88% of the words in a novel. That is more than 30 unknown words on every page.
In one study, learners reading a story remembered more new words when the meaning was printed beside the word than when they had a dictionary or no help.
Simply Fluent puts the meaning beside the word. Select a word you don't know and you see what it means in that sentence. Save it, and the meaning shows every time it comes back, in every book, so a page with 30 unknown words is one you can still read.
The common words come back on every page, so the first books teach them fast. Rarer words take more reading. Paul Nation estimated how many novels it takes to meet each word at least 12 times, one band of 1,000 word families at a time.
Each bar is one band of 1,000 word families, from the 2nd thousand most common to the 9th.
A word you learn in one book is a word you know in every book after it, so the next book has fewer unknown words on each page. By Nation's figures, reading an hour and 40 minutes a day, five days a week, at 150 words a minute, adds up to about 3 million words in 40 weeks: enough to meet the 9th thousand words 12 times each.
In rural Fiji, primary schools learning English were given 250 storybooks each. Children aged about 9 to 11 read them in class, in place of part of the usual English course, with no extra time spent on English.
Year 4 pupils. After two years, vocabulary scores in the storybook schools were about 10% higher.
Nation, I.S.P. (2006). How large a vocabulary is needed for reading and listening? Canadian Modern Language Review, 63(1). Milton, J. (2006). Language Lite? Learning French vocabulary in school. Journal of French Language Studies, 16(2). Milton, J. (2013). Measuring the contribution of vocabulary knowledge to proficiency in the four skills. EUROSLA Monographs, 2. Hu, M. & Nation, P. (2000). Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language, 13(1). Hulstijn, J., Hollander, M. & Greidanus, T. (1996). Incidental vocabulary learning by advanced foreign language students. The Modern Language Journal, 80(3). Nation, P. (2014). How much input do you need to learn the most frequent 9,000 words? Reading in a Foreign Language, 26(2). Elley, W., Cutting, B., Mangubhai, F. & Hugo, C. (1996). Lifting Literacy Levels with Story Books. Elley, W. (1997). In Praise of Incidental Learning.
"I tried to read Harry Potter in Dutch with a translator on my phone and gave up after a couple of pages. I kept looking up the same words. So I built the reader I wanted, and learned Dutch by reading with it."
Five-star reviews from the App Store and Google Play, as they were written.
Simply Fluent
I love reading. That’s how I became fluent in english and french. I’m currently learning german and needed a tool to help me translate my german books in french without having to use a dictionary or a translating app. I love how the words you save are getting memorized so that when you come upon one the translation is already there and you understand easily. This is the first time that I pay for an app ever because it simply deserves it. You can also import your own books and read them.This is a great application for improving both reading level in a language, and with text to speech can also be used to improve one's ear for the language. of course vocabulary as well. They reached out to me for feedback and personally helped me with some issues I was having, which was a very positive experience.Simply Fluent makes learning through reading incredibly easy and enjoyable. I especially love that the books are organised by language level, as finding the right books when starting a new language is usually frustrating, but this app removes that problem completely. The whole experience feels very smooth and intuitive. The daily challenges helped me to build a consistent learning habit. Highly recommended for anyone learning/wanting to learn a new language!I’ve started using simply fluent and what can I say, it’s simply effective. Reading helps me keep my Spanish while simultaneously learning new vocabulary and I absolutely love it. 10/10 recommend!Usually hesitant but i really like the intuitive UI, design and way to go about learning. Can recommend!I have been learning languages ever since I can remember and speak 3 fluently. Simply Fluent is clearly the best I tried so far - reading is the best way to fully embrace any new language and the UX is designed in a way that makes it really pleasant to go back regularly.I’ve been using this app for a few weeks now and it is great.I love reading and I’m also learning Spanish so it’s the perfect combo. You can translate words you don’t know and then memorise them later with a flash card game. Highly recommendI love the way this app works, so easy to read and translate new words into any language!Everyone starts with 30 days of Premium. Cancel any time before it ends and you aren't charged.
Yes. Free flashcard decks teach the first 100 words of a language, so you can start before you can read a page. They cover French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, German, Hebrew and Russian for English speakers, and more languages are being added. If the language uses an alphabet you don't know yet, a free course teaches the letters for Hebrew, Russian, Greek, Ukrainian and Korean. After that, start with the short stories in the library.
The library has books and short stories in 45 languages, from Arabic to Vietnamese. Translation works in 131 languages, so you can add your own books in 85 more. See every language.
Yes. Add EPUB, TXT or Markdown files, or paste in text. PDF needs Premium. Books with copy protection (DRM) can't be added. The free plan includes one book of your own, and Premium has no limit.
Yes. The app gives you instructions to send to ChatGPT, Claude or another assistant. The assistant asks what the story should be about, which language, how hard and how long, then writes it as a file. Import the file, or paste the text, and read it like any other book.
If you cancel before the 30 days end, you aren't charged. Your account moves to the free plan and keeps every word you saved, every flashcard and every statistic. Translations and insights then come from your account's allowance of 150, which you have from the day you sign up. Lookups during the trial don't use it, and it doesn't reset. Every friend you invite can add more.
Yes. A book you have opened stays on your phone, and the words you saved show their meaning without a connection. Looking up a new word needs a connection, so save it to look up later. When you're back online, the app looks up every word you saved and you choose which ones to keep.
Books in 45 languages, and 30 days of Premium for everyone.
