Hear the word

Tap the big word at the top and your device reads it aloud. Every word in the lists on the other screens can be tapped in the same way.

Keep a word for later

Tap the star and the word goes into your favourites, so you can come back and practise those words on their own — or hear them read aloud, with the Listen button on the Favourites screen.

Give your answer

In multiple choice, tap the answer you think is right. When you type, write the word and press "Check" — or press "I don't know" if you would rather just be shown it. With flashcards there is nothing to get wrong: press "I knew it", or swipe the card to the right, and press "Show me", or swipe it to the left, when you did not. The translation is shown either way before the next card, so you can check yourself. Because nothing marks a flashcard but you, one is worth half the points of an answer the app checked, and saying you did not know a word costs nothing.

Small differences are forgiven

When you type, capital letters, apostrophes, hyphens and punctuation make no difference, and a missing accent is forgiven where nothing depends on it. A mark that tells two different words apart still counts — in Portuguese, avô is grandfather and avó is grandmother, and answering one when the other was asked is a wrong answer. If a word has more than one correct translation, any of them is accepted.

A clock, only if you want one

Normally a question waits as long as you need. On the Customize screen you can give yourself 2 to 30 seconds instead; when the time runs out the word counts as a mistake and the round carries on.

On to the next word

A right answer turns green and a wrong one red, and the correct answer is always shown. The next word arrives after a couple of seconds, or waits for you to press "Next word" — whichever you chose on the Customize screen.

The small "i" beside a control

Tooltips are off to begin with. Switch them on under Tooltips on the Customize screen, and a small round i appears beside the controls on every screen. Pressing one opens a single line saying what the control beside it does; press it again, press anywhere else, or press Escape to close it. On a computer you can also rest the mouse on a button, or reach it with the Tab key, and the same line appears without pressing anything. With tips off, neither the marks nor the lines are drawn at all and nothing else about the app changes.

Leaving in the middle

The ✕ at the top ends the round. The answers you have already given still count towards your statistics.

Favourites

The words you starred. Here you can hear them, practise only them, or take the star off again. Every pair has a list of its own.

Words to improve

A list that fills itself: every word of the app's own list that you get wrong joins it, so nothing you stumbled on is lost. Words you added yourself never join it — they are practised from the My words page instead. A word leaves the list after two correct answers in a row, or when you press the 🗑 beside it. You can also clear the whole list. Switch the collecting on on the Customize screen — it starts off.

My words

Add words of your own: both sides of the pair you have selected, and the level they should belong to. Your words are asked from one place only — the "Practise them" button on the My words page. They do not join the level rounds or the mix, they cannot be starred, they never join the words to improve, and they are not counted in the statistics; a round of them scores on screen and leaves nothing behind. You can change a word, delete it, or download all of them as a text file to keep. Up to 300 words in all the pairs together, and 60 letters in each field. A word you add belongs only to the pair it was added under — Spanish against Japanese is not the same list as Spanish against Hebrew. If you practise a short list of your own words as multiple choice, the app fills the rest of the answer buttons with words of its own from the same level, so there is always a real choice to make; only your words are asked.

Statistics

How many rounds you have played, how many answers you gave and how many were right; a chart of the last seven days; how much of each level you have already met; the five words you get wrong most often, with a button to practise exactly those; and your most recent rounds. The numbers are for the language you have selected.

Customize

Everything you can adjust, grouped by what it changes — the direction and the quiz type, appearance, practice, speech and saving. The list is just below.

Advanced Learning

Advanced Learning reads a set of words out loud in both languages, one after the other. On the home screen it is the wide amber band under Customize, and it opens on the level you practised last — Level 1 until you have chosen one. Nothing is spoken until you press Play, and Pause stops it wherever it has reached. On the screen you choose the level the words are drawn from — the same three levels as on the Customize screen, or Mix Levels, which draws from all three — how many times each word is read before the next one arrives (once, twice or three times; once to begin with), and the pause between the two languages and the pause before the next word. At the end you can hear the same set again, hear a new set, or go home. The Favourites and Words to improve screens each have a Listen button of their own, which opens Advanced Learning on that list instead of a level: a round's worth of its words — as many as "Words per round" is set to — drawn at random, with no level to choose; when the list holds more than that, the end of the set offers other words from it. The whole set can be read more than once too — once, twice or three times; once to begin with.

Five Games

Five small games for meeting the words another way: a space shooter, a shooting range on the ground, a wall of bricks, a snake in a garden, and a game of checkers against the computer. The tile opens one screen with all five on it: pick one at the top, and the others stop. In the space game your ship fires by itself and swaps between thirteen weapons every three seconds. In the shooting game you are on the ground at dusk: you move the sights over clay discs, balloons, tins and stars and fire, six shots to a magazine, and you leave the dark disc with the cross on it alone. In the brick game you move a bat along the foot of the screen and keep a ball up against a wall of bricks; some bricks drop a capsule worth catching, and the dark one costs a life. In the garden game you steer a snake to the fruit, and it grows a segment for each one it eats; the fence and its own tail cost a life, and so does the dark mushroom, which is best left alone. In the checkers game you play against the computer: your pieces move diagonally, jump over the computer's pieces to take them, and become kings on the far row; when you can jump, you must, a board you win brings a stronger opponent, and a board you lose costs a life. Any of the five is played with the arrow keys, W A S D, or with a finger or the mouse — dragging in the first three, a swipe or a tap beside the snake in the garden, a tap on a piece and then on its square in checkers; Space fires or serves, or in checkers picks a piece and then its square, and a tap on the play area does the same. Every so often the game stops and asks you one word from the pair chosen on the home screen, at the level chosen on the Customize screen, with a few answers to choose from, then carries on by itself a moment after you answer. A right answer adds to the score and gives a lost ship or life back. Under the play area you choose how often a question comes — 3, 5, 10, 20, 30 or 60 seconds, 5 to begin with — and how many are asked each time, one, three or five; all five games read the same two choices. Those choices hold until you close the page and are deliberately never saved, so a page reloaded starts from 5 seconds and one question again — and so does the choice of game, which opens on the space game every time. Nothing else from any of the games is saved either, and a question answered there changes no statistic, no favourite and no list. P pauses and M switches the sound off or on; those letter keys, and W A S D and R, obey the keyboard switch on the Customize screen, and the Pause and Sound buttons on the screen do the same thing.

The Play and learn band on the home screen, and the same band on the Customize screen, open the games too.

Vocabulary check

Twenty-one quick multiple-choice questions, seven from each of the three levels, easiest first and with no clock; "I don't know" counts as wrong. At the end it shows how many you knew at each level and suggests which level to start at, and one button sets that level and starts a round — you can change the level on the Customize screen whenever you like. It is a rough guide to single words only, given with no guarantee — not a test of your language level — and your answers and the result are not saved or sent.

Today's quiz

Some days the site offers a quiz of words chosen for that day, behind a button on the home screen. Each word comes with four answers and no clock; "I don't know" counts as wrong. The quiz changes at midnight on your own clock. Your answers and the score are not saved or sent: the site counts only that a visit answered the quiz and that it reached the result.

A message from the site

Now and then the site may show a short message from its operator in a window on the home screen — news about the site, a change or a planned break. Each message appears once on each device, and Close puts it away. It appears in the language it was written in, without translation. While the home screen is open, the page asks the site every few seconds whether there is a new message; nothing about you is sent, and reading or closing a message is not counted.

A message may also close by itself after a few seconds, with the time left shown under it. Keep open stops the countdown so you can read at your own pace, and resting the mouse pointer on the window pauses it.