Lingo7 is a mobile app for learning Vietnamese 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 Vietnamese.
Every Vietnamese sentence is shown side by side with its English translation. You read naturally, absorbing Vietnamese 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 Vietnamese 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 Vietnamese. 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, Vietnamese translation on the other. Audio, word saving and spaced-repetition work out of the box.
Want to read a real book in Vietnamese, but the words and grammar are still too hard? Lingo7 rewrites the whole book in easier Vietnamese, same story, same characters, same ending. Just simpler words and easier grammar, so you can actually read it through.
What this means for you:
Không có gì chân thực hơn tướng số, khi được xem xét cùng với cách cư xử. Nghệ thuật đọc quyển sách mà Trí tuệ Vĩnh cửu bắt buộc mỗi sinh vật phải trình bày trang của riêng mình với cá tính được viết trên đó, có lẽ là một việc khó khăn, và ít ai nghiên cứu.
Tướng số là đúng khi bạn nhìn vào cách cư xử. Nghệ thuật đọc gương mặt cùng với tính cách của họ là khó. Có lẽ nó cần kỹ năng tự nhiên. Nó cần sự kiên nhẫn và nỗ lực.
Hand-picked stories, summaries and articles, already prepared for Vietnamese 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.
Vietnamese is FSI Category III (about 1100 hours). The six tones are the biggest challenge for English speakers, as mispronouncing a tone changes meaning entirely. However, Vietnamese grammar is very simple with no conjugation, no gender, no cases, and no plural forms. Reading Vietnamese builds vocabulary while the Latin script makes it accessible.
Yes, Vietnamese uses a modified Latin alphabet with additional diacritical marks for tones and vowel modifications. This system (Quoc ngu) was developed by Portuguese missionaries in the 17th century and officially adopted in the early 20th century. It makes Vietnamese the most readable Southeast Asian language for Westerners.
Yes, Vietnamese has six distinct tones: level, rising, falling, broken (dipping-rising), heavy (low falling), and asking (falling-rising). Each syllable carries a tone that is part of its meaning. Reading Vietnamese with audio helps train tonal recognition, as tone marks in writing indicate which tone to use.
Vietnam has one of the fastest-growing economies in Southeast Asia, with major manufacturing, technology, and service sectors. Many multinational companies operate there. Vietnamese language skills are increasingly valuable for business in the ASEAN region.
Expert guides and practical advice to help you read books in Vietnamese.
An honest, level-by-level guide to the best Vietnamese books to learn the language by reading, from beginner graded readers to Truyện Kiều, with tones and tips.
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 →Vietnamese connects you with 85 million speakers, a rapidly growing Southeast Asian economy, a rich literary tradition, and a vibrant culture that blends Chinese, French, and indigenous influences.
Vietnamese is a tonal language with six tones that distinguish word meanings, uses the Latin alphabet (unique among major Southeast Asian languages), has an isolating grammar with no inflection, and classifies nouns using an extensive system of classifiers.
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