Ten languages, one memory technique
Every word arrives with a hook.
Most language apps show you a word and hope. This one hands you a picture that makes it stick, then works out the exact day you are about to lose it and asks again.
Thirty days, no card. Free for students when a teacher brings a class.
gato
cat
sounds like gateau
A cat sits in the middle of a birthday gateau, licking icing off its paws. The candles set the whole cake alight, so the word is masculine.
15 of 2718 hand-written hooks. The rest are in the app, and you can rewrite any of them.
The thing nobody tells you
You have met this word four times. You still do not know it.
Seeing a translation is not learning. It leaves the word floating with nothing attached, and the next time it appears you recognise the shape and not the meaning. That gap is where most people quietly give up, usually somewhere around week three.
Two things close it, and they have been known for fifty years. Give the word an image so it has somewhere to live, and ask for it again at the moment you are about to lose it. Doing both, every time, for every word, is the entire product.
The three parts
A memory technique, a scheduler, and a library that unlocks itself.
Take any one away and it is an ordinary app. Together they are the reason a word you met on Tuesday is still there in March.
The hook
A real word in your own language that sounds like the target word, plus one vivid picture tying it to the meaning. Gender rides inside the picture, so the article comes back with the word.
Read the hooksThe schedule
Every card carries how long your memory of it lasts and how hard it is for you. The next review lands on the day recall falls to your target, which is roughly a third fewer repetitions for the same retention.
See the mathsThe stories
The library reads your card states and tells you what share of each story you already know. Cross eighty percent and reading starts teaching you on its own.
Open the libraryOne word, start to finish
What actually happens to a word you meet tonight.
Not a feature list. This is the path a single word takes, and every panel beside it is drawn from the real thing rather than mocked up for the website.
It arrives with a picture
The word shows up attached to an English word that sounds like it, and one scene joining the two. If the language has gender, the scene carries the cue, so the article is not a second thing to learn later.
It gets a curve, not a slot
From the first answer the card carries two numbers: how long your memory of it lasts, and how hard you personally find it. The curve below is the real function those numbers feed, and the dot is where the next review lands.
The gaps stretch as you earn them
Seven good answers in a row and the same card is three years out. Miss it once and only that card resets. Nothing else in your collection is punished for one bad morning.
And then it turns into reading
Around ninety words in, the easiest story in your language crosses the share you can already read. These are real entries from the Spanish starter list, keyword and all.
A hook, as shipped
gato
cat
sounds like gateau
A cat sits in the middle of a birthday gateau, licking icing off its paws. The candles set the whole cake alight, so the word is masculine.
Your recall for that one card
Recall for one card, drawn from the scheduler's own formula. The review is placed where the line crosses ninety percent, not on a fixed ladder. Answer it well and the whole curve stretches; miss it and it steepens.
Seven good answers on one card
- 110m
- 25d
- 316d
- 453d
- 55.5mo
- 615mo
- 73.2y
Seven consecutive good answers on one card. A single miss anywhere resets the front of that ladder and leaves the rest of your collection alone, which is the part a class-wide review schedule cannot do.
Words you would be holding by then
Reading, sooner than you think
A story you can actually read on day nine.
Every story reports what share of its words you already carry. Tap anything underlined.
El gato de la ventanaA1
Tap an underlined word. In the app the same tap also tells you whether that word is already in your collection and when it is next due.
Why a picture
A word you have only seen is a word you are about to forget.
Reading a translation once puts a word nowhere in particular. A keyword hook gives it an address: a thing you can already picture, joined to the new meaning by something absurd enough to stay put.
The technique is old and it is boring in the best way. It has been studied since the seventies, it works across languages, and it is almost never built into software properly.
- A hook you write yourself beats a better one somebody hands you, so yours always wins in your own reviews
- Your teacher can write one hook for the whole class in thirty seconds
- Joining words like el and de get an honest usage note, because a picture cannot hold a joining word
The cue never varies. Once fire means masculine it means masculine in every scene you ever read, which is why the article comes back with the word instead of after it.
What is in the box
Everything a serious learner ends up wanting, in one place.
The parts below are all shipped and all working. Where something is not built yet it says so on the roadmap rather than here.
Flashcards that know you
Four answer buttons, keyboard shortcuts, undo, and a session that ends when the work is done rather than when a counter runs out. Learning steps for brand new cards, then the real scheduler takes over.
Audio on every word
Spoken by the device rather than streamed, so it works on a plane and costs nothing. Each language picks its own voice, and Portuguese defaults to Brazilian.
Hooks generated when you are stuck
A sound engine that finds a real English word inside the target word and builds a scene from it. You can always overwrite it, and yours always wins.
Memory palaces
Put ten words in rooms you already know. Walk the route, recall the room, recall the word. The oldest trick in the book and still the strongest.
Works offline, installs like an app
Install it from the browser onto a phone or a desktop and it runs in its own window. Reviews you did on the train sync when you are back.
Graded stories in every language
Tap any word for its meaning and whether you already hold it. Each story reports the share of its vocabulary you carry before you open it.
Classes, assignments and a gradebook
Join codes, five kinds of assignment, and a gradebook that recomputes from the review records rather than storing a score somebody has to trust.
For teachersScripts treated as scripts
Readings for Japanese and Mandarin, transliteration wherever the alphabet is new, and right to left throughout for Arabic.
A thirty day forecast
See the heavy week before it lands, and slow the new words down instead of abandoning the whole thing on a Tuesday.
Your data leaves with you
Export every card, every review and every hook you wrote as JSON, whenever you want, without asking anybody.
What a first month looks like
Fifteen minutes a day, and where that gets you.
At the default of ten new words a day. Raise it or drop it whenever you like; the schedule absorbs the change rather than falling over.
Day one
Ten words, ten pictures
About twelve minutes. Nothing to configure first, and no placement test to sit through before you are allowed to learn anything.
Day nine
The first story opens
Around ninety words held. The easiest story in your language crosses the share where reading it stops being decoding and starts being reading.
Day thirty
Reviews settle down
The early words have moved to gaps of weeks, so most of the daily fifteen minutes is new material again rather than repetition.
The term after
It stops being a habit you maintain
Cards you answered well seven times in a row come back years apart. The collection gets bigger and the daily work does not.
Those day counts come from the default settings and the shipped weights. Your own numbers will differ, which is why the app shows you yours rather than ours.
For classrooms
The report that changes what you teach on Monday.
Most classroom language platforms tell a teacher how far a student got through a lesson. This one tells you which twelve words the class is losing, ranked by how often each student forgets them.
Classes in one code
Six characters, no vowels, so nothing mistypes into a real word. Students join from their own account and keep it when the year ends.
Mastery, not completion
Per student and per word: held, learning, leeches, weekly reviews, accuracy, streak, last seen. Completion tells you somebody clicked. This tells you what they know.
Fix it once for everyone
A word near the top of the trouble list usually has a weak hook, not a lazy class. Write one class hook and it lands for all thirty of them.
The library, counted
Nothing on this page is a placeholder.
Every number here is counted from the files that ship with the plugin, and the test suite fails the build if the count and the page disagree.
Pick a language
Ten languages, each handled properly.
Readings for Japanese and Mandarin, transliteration for every non-Latin script, and right to left throughout for Arabic. Not an afterthought bolted onto a Spanish app.
What it costs
One price per teacher. Students never pay.
No per-student fee and no seat maths at the start of a term. The free tier has no trial to run out, so nothing is deleted when you stop paying.
Free
$0 always
Ten new words a day, one language, the first twelve stories, and your own hooks.
Create an accountLearner
$79 a year
Everything unlimited, all ten languages, every story, and a full export. Or $9 a month.
Start the trialTeacher
$149 a year
One teacher, up to two hundred students, and the students never pay a penny.
Start the trialDepartments and districts are priced per teacher seat with volume terms. Ask for a quote or read the full comparison.
Keep reading
The parts of this that are worth an evening.
The blog
How the scheduler decides, why a keyword beats a translation, and what goes wrong when a class shares one review queue.
Read the writingThe podcast
Short episodes on memory, teaching and the awkward parts of building software for classrooms. Nothing is behind a signup.
ListenThe letter
One email a month: what shipped, what broke, and one memory technique you can use whether or not you ever pay us.
SubscribeBefore you ask
The questions people actually send.
Is this flashcards with extra steps?
Flashcards are in here, and so is the scheduler that makes them worth doing. The difference is what happens on the first meeting. An ordinary deck shows you a word and a translation and leaves the remembering to you. This one hands you a picture first, which is the part that decides whether the card is easy or miserable for the next six months.
Do I have to use the hooks you wrote?
No, and you probably should not for long. A hook you write yourself is remembered better than a better one somebody handed you, which is why yours always wins in your own reviews. The shipped ones are there so your first week is not homework.
How long does this take a day?
Ten new words a day is the default and it is about fifteen minutes once your reviews build up. You can raise or lower it whenever you like, and the progress screen shows a thirty day forecast so you can see a heavy week coming and slow down before it lands.
What happens to my students at the end of the year?
They keep the account and the schedule. That is the whole point of putting the memory model in the student rather than in the class. A year of work does not evaporate when a licence rolls over.
Is there an app to install?
It installs from the browser onto a phone or a desktop and runs in its own window. On Android and desktop use the install icon in the address bar; on an iPhone use Share, then Add to Home Screen.
Start with ten words tonight
Thirty days free, no card. When the trial ends the account drops to the free limits and nothing is deleted.