I do love this app and think it’s worth the money, overall. The best features are being able to click the captions and automatically add flash cards. Also, you can advance or go back using the captions, so that makes following along really easy.
My only complaint is that some of the translations are wrong and seem to be produced by machine translation. One example-literal/word-for-word, doesn’t make sense at all. So, I’ll know it’s a set expression, I just can’t remember quite what it means. Another example- the word isn’t translated at all and just rendered as a transliteration. Machine translators do this when the word is colloquial and not commonly known. If they fixed that I’d give it five stars for sure, everything else is perfect.
That being said. The captions are still way better than what you find on other apps, and I do think it’s worth the price.
Developer Response
Hi StevieD543, thank you very much for your feedback. It's great to hear you have considered Lingopie to help you learn a new language. We're working hard to improve the quality of the translations. This app is just what I’ve been looking for. I was a solid francophone 20 years ago and would like to revive my abilities. The shows are engaging and with subtitles you can click on any word to see the translation. It saves the words you looked up and reviews them with flash cards. You can even see the clip where it was used in the video. I’m really impressed and happy there is a family plan so my husband can practice too.
There are frequent misinterpretations. The captions are frequently wrong with simple things like masculine versus feminine and singular versus plural forms. I wonder what else is incorrect. That defeats the purpose of learning from the app because a person will learn incorrectly. The captions should be read and written by humans that actually pay attention, not a program or someone not paying attention.
Needless to say, I will not be renewing this subscription.
The developer did reply to my review to ask if I reported the mistakes. Here’s my reply: I paid for the subscription. It is not my job to report the mistakes, which are a lot. The developer’s reply is insulting.
Also, there needs to be a search feature to input a show’s title. Also, there needs to be a way to narrow down shows by region like Columbian Spanish versus Argentinian Spanish.
Invested in it thinking that the subtitles would match what’s being said, well they don’t, I regret it. I could have just canceled it after the trial but I really thought they were going to match and paid the year subscription. Do the trial, as it may not help you. I am very disappointed. Even chrome has good videos with subtitles. And for free.
I am literally speechless. I mean this app is one-of-a-kind! You get the subtitles, AND you can press on the words you don’t know, AND they get automatically added to a list to review later? I mean this app is so versatile it is insane! Then it lets you review new vocabulary by playing the part of the video/movie where you added it so you can see it in context? Yes! I mean, insanely brilliant!!! It loops parts you want to hear over and over again. When logged in to website, you can see the lines of dialog just passed and the lines coming next. Brilliant! You can pause, switch languages, on and on and on and on! I am love with Lingopie! Exactly what I was looking for to learn not just one language but more! So easy! Insane! Did I just die and go to foreign language heaven?? Now you gotta do JAPANESE, please! Lingopie, I love you!
They have a LOT of issues to fix. Contacting customer service is guaranteed. I set up an account that wasn’t being found by lingopie. So I was not able to be remembered after loggin in and I was not able to watch videos after paying. Lingopie created a new account for me and now the app works for me. I love it. This will help me greatly learn Russian.
The best and fastest way to learn a language is total immersion! But even that has its challenges. This TRANSLATES any words you don’t know, creates a video clip/quiz and keeps your list for later review. Ingenious!!!
Used this before they had an app and were still a website. Due to them not having a app, it wasn’t easily accessible and hard to save my place. They have so many great shows and even in Spanish they let you know which region the show is (ex: Mexico, Columbia. Honduras) so that you can see the differences. When I cancelled it, I received a email from one of the founders who told me they were sorry to see me go and offered me a student discount and told me they hoped to see me back and that they were planning on getting an app within a few weeks of that. I look forward to restarting where I left off because some shows on here are not only great, funny but it’s very helpful for learning languages.
Immersion learning has always been strange to me as its touted by people who swear it as a singular resource. All you need to do is spend three years watching TV in [language] and you’ll get it eventually!
While I never doubted that watching TV in your target language has it’s benefits, I’d say the struggle really lies in finding content that meets the following criteria:
1) at your comprehension level
2) is something that interests you
3) there is a good amount of content
I have found it very difficult to find engaging ways to implement TV within my own learning journey which has set me back some as far as listening comprehension goes. Upon finding LingoPie, I can say that I have found plenty of things that meet the above criteria.
Within one week and only about 2 hours of TV, I have already added about 300 words into my flashcard reviews. Not only am I gaining a simple flashcard, but used in an authentic way you won’t find in many other locations.
When using the app for iPhone the greatest feature of the app does not work. That is the script dreaming below the video does not show on the app, that only works if you open the webpage on your phone. Another issue is that you cannot stream the shows from your phone to your television and nor can you stream theShows from your computer to your television, either. This means that in order to use the best functionality of LingoPie it must be used on your laptop or PC. I still gave it three stars because I think that this is an amazing platform for language learning. My only other complaint is that for the German language there really aren’t that many shows available.
StevieD543
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