Evidence-based learning technique
Improve your Czech while enjoying world's best books
Lingo7 is a mobile app for learning Czech by reading real books. Every sentence appears as parallel text, so you tap any word for an instant translation, hear native narration, and save new words to review later. It works on iOS and Android, and you can import your own books in Czech.
Every Czech sentence is shown side by side with its English translation. You read naturally, absorbing Czech vocabulary and grammar in context, no stopping to look up words.
Turn on the audio and follow along with your eyes, a great way to level up your Czech listening and pronunciation.
Spaced repetition is one of the most rigorously studied learning techniques of the last century, repeatedly shown to outperform cramming and re-reading by a wide margin. Lingo7 tracks every word you tap while reading and brings it back for review right before you'd forget it. 14 different exercises, from quick recognition to active recall, typing and pronunciation, strengthen memory from every angle.
See a word and pick the correct translation from four options
Listen to a word and choose the correct translation, trains your ear
Build the word letter by letter from scrambled characters
See a word and a translation, quickly decide if it's correct
Pronounce the word and get instant accuracy feedback
Try to recall the translation from memory before revealing it
Your favorite novel, your work textbook, your kid's bedtime story, drop any EPUB, PDF or DOCX into Lingo7 and it becomes a parallel-reading experience in Czech. No book is off limits.
Drop in an EPUB, PDF or DOCX and Lingo7 instantly turns every page into parallel reading, original on one side, Czech translation on the other. Audio, word saving and spaced-repetition work out of the box.
Want to read a real book in Czech, but the words and grammar are still too hard? Lingo7 rewrites the whole book in easier Czech, same story, same characters, same ending. Just simpler words and easier grammar, so you can actually read it through.
What this means for you:
Není nic pravdivějšího než fyziognomie, je-li spojena se způsoby. Umění číst tu knihu, kterou Věčná Moudrost nutí každého lidského tvora představit s jeho vlastní stránkou s napsaným individuálním charakterem, je obtížné, možná, a je málo studováno.
Fyziognomie je pravdivá, když se podíváte na způsob chování. Umění číst tváře a jejich charakter je obtížné. Možná to vyžaduje přirozenou schopnost. Vyžaduje to trpělivost a úsilí.
Hand-picked stories, summaries and articles, already prepared for Czech with audio and parallel translation.
Real stories from language learners around the world
The 5 principles every polyglot uses, built into Lingo7.
Principle: Extensive reading, consuming large volumes of text you can mostly understand, is one of the most research-backed paths to fluency (Krashen's input hypothesis). The trick is removing friction so you can read a lot without stopping.
How Lingo7 helps: Parallel translation sits right next to the original, no dictionary lookups, no breaking flow. Turbo mode highlights words in rhythm if you lose your place, so you can devour pages instead of decoding them.
Principle: Spaced repetition is one of the most rigorously studied learning techniques of the last century. The idea: review each word just before you would have forgotten it, that's when a single repetition strengthens memory the most.
How Lingo7 helps: Lingo7's spaced repetition system tracks every word you save and brings it back at the optimal interval. You don't schedule anything, the algorithm handles timing, and 14 different exercises keep memory sharp from every angle.
Principle: Polyglots don't memorize every word in order, they focus on the ones that pay off. High-frequency words dominate everyday language: a few hundred of the most common words are enough to start understanding real books, conversations, and articles.
How Lingo7 helps: Two frequency-ranked starter collections built from corpus data, the 100 most popular words to get off the ground, then 250 more for real traction. Available in 49 languages. Learn the minimum that gives you the maximum, instead of chasing a dictionary you'll never finish.
Principle: Boring textbooks kill motivation. Polyglots choose texts they actually enjoy, favorite books, articles, scripts, because interest is what sustains daily practice for months and years, not willpower.
How Lingo7 helps: A large, growing library across genres, classic novels, contemporary articles, topic summaries. You pick what you actually care about, not what a textbook assigns. Interest does the hard work of keeping you consistent.
Principle: Real progress happens when reading, listening, vocabulary, and pronunciation reinforce each other. A word you've read, heard, and pronounced is remembered in a way that isolated drilling can't match, overall results grow stronger than the sum of individual exercises.
How Lingo7 helps: One session covers all four: you read a page with parallel translation, listen to the narration with word-by-word highlighting, tap new words to save them, and practice pronunciation on the ones you learn. Four skills trained in parallel, in 7-15 minutes a day.
Czech is FSI Category III (about 1100 hours). Its seven cases, complex declension tables, and consonant clusters present challenges. However, Czech spelling is highly phonetic thanks to diacritical marks, and regular reading practice helps internalize the case system through natural exposure.
Czech and Slovak are mutually intelligible, sharing about 86% lexical similarity. Speakers of both languages can generally understand each other without translation. Learning Czech gives you effective passive understanding of Slovak, nearly doubling your potential audience for reading material.
The Czech Republic has a strong economy, rich literary tradition (Kafka, Kundera, Hasek), and vibrant cultural scene. Prague is a major European hub for tech and tourism. Czech also serves as an excellent gateway to other Slavic languages due to its central position in the language family.
Expert guides and practical advice to help you read books in Czech.
An honest, curated guide to the best Czech books for learners at every level, graded readers, children's classics, and real literature, plus how to learn Czech by reading well.
Read more →MethodologyWhat CEFR level can read books? A reader's guide to A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2: the can-do descriptors, rough vocabulary size, and what to read at each level.
Read more →MethodologyWhat comprehensible input is, Krashen's input hypothesis and the i+1 idea, why it matters, its honest limits, and how to find your level by CEFR with reading.
Read more →Czech opens the door to Kafka, Kundera, and Capek in the original, connects you to Central European culture and history, and provides a strong foundation for understanding Slovak, Polish, and other Slavic languages.
Czech features the unique consonant r-hacek (r with caron) that functions as both a consonant and a vowel, has seven cases with complex declension patterns, and can form sentences without vowels like "Strc prst skrz krk."
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