Evidence-based learning technique
Improve your German while enjoying world's best books
Lingo7 is a mobile app for learning German 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 German.
Every German sentence is shown side by side with its English translation. You read naturally, absorbing German 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 German 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 German. 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, German translation on the other. Audio, word saving and spaced-repetition work out of the box.
Want to read a real book in German, but the words and grammar are still too hard? Lingo7 rewrites the whole book in easier German, same story, same characters, same ending. Just simpler words and easier grammar, so you can actually read it through.
What this means for you:
Es gibt nichts Wahres als die Physiognomie, in Verbindung mit dem Auftreten betrachtet. Die Kunst, jenes Buch zu lesen, von dem die Ewige Weisheit jeden Menschen zwingt, seine eigene Seite mit dem darauf geschriebenen individuellen Charakter zu präsentieren, ist vielleicht schwierig und wird wenig studiert.
Die Physiognomie ist wahr, wenn man das Benehmen betrachtet. Die Kunst, Gesichter mit ihrem Charakter zu lesen, ist schwierig. Vielleicht braucht es natürliche Begabung.
Hand-picked stories, summaries and articles, already prepared for German 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.
German is rated FSI Category II, requiring about 900 hours of study. While its grammar is more complex than Romance languages due to cases and gender, English and German share thousands of cognates. Reading German texts with parallel translations accelerates vocabulary acquisition significantly.
The FSI estimates 36 weeks (900 hours) of intensive study for professional proficiency. However, basic reading comprehension can be achieved much sooner due to shared Germanic vocabulary with English. Consistent reading practice shortens this timeline considerably.
Immersive reading combined with grammar study is highly effective. German has four cases (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive) and three genders that are best internalized through repeated exposure in context rather than rote memorization.
Germany has the fourth-largest GDP globally and is the economic powerhouse of the EU. German proficiency opens doors in engineering, automotive, finance, and scientific research. Many multinational companies headquartered in Germany value bilingual employees.
Expert guides and practical advice to help you read books in German.
A curated, honest guide to the best German books for learners at every level, graded readers, accessible classics, and real literature, plus how to read them 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 →German unlocks access to the largest economy in Europe and a rich literary tradition from Goethe to Kafka, plus major scientific and philosophical texts in the original language.
German is famous for its compound nouns that can grow to virtually unlimited length, three grammatical genders, and a verb-second word order that sends verbs to the end in subordinate clauses.
Find the best German books for your level →
The best apps to read books in German, compared →
Download Lingo7 and start learning a language today