Babbel - Language Learning Reviews

Steals money

Dudley Muffin

Takes $63/year even when not subscribed stay away!!!

I very rarely do these review things. I’ve wanted to know another language for the past 16 years. Sure, I took Spanish for 2 years in high school but I had a teacher ruin my interest during the 2nd year. I also completely failed French in college. But now thanks to Babbel, I can actually start learning one of the non-Roman languages at my own pace. Starting with Russian. I actually started a couple years ago but then got sidetracked by other aspects of life, but I’m just re-starting now. I really like the listening to the phrase to make sure you understand the translation not just “on paper” but audibly also. The having you say a word/phrase/letter to make sure you say it correctly is really cool too. The matching from language of focus to primary language, and then flipping from primarily language to language of focus is really helpful. I just really enjoy this app so far.

Decent app

cant even review easy

Everything except when you are repeating the words works well. No matter how many times I say things it always says it’s not right. Simple things that I know are correct.

Speech recognition is awful!

ccchhh333

I've been learning Spanish through Babbel for a few weeks. I like the variety of exercises and order of material that is presented, but the speech recognition exercises simply don't work. I know I'm using the app correctly, as I am able to get about 1/4 of these challenges in the first try. But for the others, I fail no matter what I try - I even recorded the demo audio on another device, played it back, and still failed! I practice in a silent room and have tried different microphones to no avail. Since the speech recognition is the main selling point of the app for me (otherwise, I'd be just as well off with books and pre-recorded lessons), I have to give it a low rating. I occasionally have encountered other small glitches where the interface will not scroll, will misalign elements in a matching exercise, or just freeze and require me to restart the app. But none of these are as frustrating or frequent as the speech recognition problems. As above, I have otherwise enjoyed learning with Babbel. *Addendum: I keep the app up-to-date and have observed this on the latest version at time of writing.

Doesn’t work on my IPad

Labfam2

This app works on my iPhone, but does not work on my iPad. It worked once, for one lesson, but now all it does is send me to a subscription page. What’s the deal? I have paid for a lifetime/all languages subscription. It should work on my IPhone and my IPad. Labfam2

If Doulingo and Babbel had a baby

Board-gamer

I used Doulingo for years and I’ve learned so much more for my short time using Babbel. Babbel is more logical. It introduces vocabulary in an order you’re more likely to used and need it if you were to travel. They also explain vocabulary and grammar. But its not good at checking for comprehension nor giving you a lot of repetitive practice. In other words, new vocabulary is introduced too often in a single course. But Babbel gives you a solid start on learning a language but, you’ll need more tools to practice and remember vocabulary. If you’re looking to purchase language lessons, I’d recommend paying for Babbel and using the free version of Doulingo for practicing vocabulary.

So far great, but… a big caveat

ilovesushidude

Really great language learning app so far, maybe even my favorite of the ones I’ve tried (DuoLingo, MemRise, Drops, etc.) since it includes more than they do and therefore I feel I’m learning more in it. Also I like the style of how the app functions overall. Other apps throw you right in and this one does too but does a better job of it by giving at least some background and pacing it better (especially important since apps like Drops and Memrise make learning other alphabets much harder imo). The relatively simple layout of the app helps keep from getting distracted and instead helps focus on the learning which is great. My gripes? I think they should make it much easier to repeat the audio (for example after learning a term the button or just text should be able to be clicked again to hear those terms or phrases again). UPDATE: They’ve been made aware of this issue and many other issues on their “Wishboard” which is full of suggestions/requests made by paying users. However, despite several of those requests having literally hundreds of upvotes by fellow members and being 2 years old in some cases, the Babbel team has done literally nothing about them. That is bad customer service and it is a shame since Babbel is a great app but has some areas it desperately needs to improve and easily could if they actually cared about resolving the things on the Wishboard instead of just putting it up there as basically a place for people to vent pointlessly as of now. Also, the free version has such a tiny preview that it would imply the premium version is lacking content. Luckily I just took the risk based on the reviews and was pleasantly surprised but I definitely think they need to expand the free preview so people can actually know whether they want this to be the app for them or not.

So so

middle finger8769

Slightly better then Rosseta stone, but not much. Found a free app that is much better about making things stick. This app spent very little time on very few basics before accelerating into more advanced language. The intake process at the beginning is a waste of time. I am wanting to learn Spanish for work, but this app has yet to cover any work related dialogue, and catapulted right into travel, and tourist attractions. So far the little bit that I have retained from the learning platform of this app has been very useless for the purposes that I purchased it for. Don’t waste your money!

Duolingo

-31348

Duolingo is both free And much better.

Keyboard is glitchy

emiemigirl123

I love the content, but unfortunately the keyboard is so glitchy it won’t type certain letters and then I get questions wrong that I had the right answer for.