Your dictionaryCore
Every word you have gathered for a language, with its translation, its type and your own notes. Search it, edit it, throw words out of it. Each language pair keeps its own.
About Vocabi
A vocabulary app you can walk around in.
Vocabi is a language-learning app built on one idea: the words you gather should add up to something. You collect words into your own dictionary, practise them until they stick, and spend them on a forest world that opens as your vocabulary grows. Eight languages are open today, and the whole thing runs in a browser.
Early access, and free while it lasts. Anyone can sign up through Tester Central.
Rings, from the middle out: the clearing at 26 m, the birch grove at 320 m, the meadow edge at 470 m, the villages between 1.05 and 1.35 km, and the veil 2 km out. Distances are compressed to fit. Dimmed bearings are landscapes already in the ground with their word pairs still being built.
Three moves, and then you are back at the first one
Nothing here is scheduled for you. There is no course to fall behind on. The whole app is one short loop you can run for two minutes or an hour.
Gather
Read something and keep the words you did not know. The Reader takes any passage you paste and hands back a definition for anything you tap. The world gives words out too, from villagers and from what you find lying around in it.
Practise
Flashcards, four games and AI practice all draw from that same dictionary, so nothing you study is a stranger. A word counts as learned once you have it right 80 percent of the time across at least five tries.
Spend
Harvesting a word you know mints energy, and energy is what you walk on. Walk far enough and you reach the next village, the next quest and the next set of words worth gathering.
The point of the third move is the part most vocabulary apps skip. A word you learned and never used again is a word you are about to lose, so in Vocabi the only way to get anywhere is to spend what you know.
What is in the app
Every one of these reads from and writes to the same dictionary, per language pair.
FlashcardsStudy
Two-sided cards drawn from your dictionary, with a meter on each word showing how close it is to learned.
ReaderStudy
Paste a passage in the language you are learning. Tap any word to see what it means in that sentence, then keep it or leave it.
The alphabetStudy
For Georgian, Armenian, Arabic, Ukrainian and Japanese, start with the letters. Trace each one, hear it, and find it by sound. There is an old inscription in the world that starts making sense as you go.
MatchyGame
Match word to translation, round after round, against your own deck.
Word BlocksGame
Build a whole sentence out of blocks, either into the language you are learning or back out of it. Pick a direction, or let it mix.
CrosswordGame
A puzzle laid out from words you already gathered, with a small budget of hints and a tally of how many you solved clean.
VerbacidGame
A witch, a villager on a chain, and three verb forms between them. Conjugation practice with something at stake.
The world is the reason to keep going
Vocabi's world is one forest, roughly four kilometres across, and you walk it in first person on a phone. You wake in a small clearing with a home plot beside it. Everything after that you have to earn.
You navigate by scenery, not by a minimap. Twelve wedges radiate out from the clearing, each one 30 degrees wide, each carrying a language and a landscape that goes with it: taiga to the north, boreal forest east, Mediterranean hills south, an apricot-blossom highland due west. Turn around and the horizon tells you where you are. That is the compass at the top of this page, and it is the actual layout of the map.
Out along each wedge are villages built in the style of their language, with keepers and villagers who talk to you in it. Nothing in the world is written in your own language unless you have earned the words to change that. Back at the clearing, your cabin goes up piece by piece out of materials you harvested, which is to say out of words you learned.
The forest itself is grown by PhytoEngine, the plant and terrain engine behind every tree you see, and Vocabi is its showcase. The clearing, the birch grove and the ring around them are walkable now. The outer wedges open one at a time.
Languages you can learn
Vocabi teaches from English, Portuguese or French. Pick the one you already have, then pick what you are after. You can run more than one at a time.
Open now
- Georgian
- Spanish
- French
- Portuguese
- German
- Polish
- Armenian
- Arabic
- English
Being built
- Ukrainian
- Japanese
- Russian
The app's own language
Vocabi's buttons and menus speak English, Portuguese and French. The world is a separate matter: signs, villagers and quests are written in the language you are learning, on purpose, from your first minute in it.
Questions
What does Vocabi cost?
Right now, nothing. Vocabi is in early access and anyone can sign up through Tester Central. At release there will be a free tier carrying light ads, so the app stays open to anyone who wants it, and a premium subscription at $5 CAD a month that drops the ads and adds more on top. First of those is live voice conversation with the villagers.
Do I need an account?
Yes. Vocabi has no guest mode, because your dictionary and your progress are the product and they have to follow you between devices. Sign in with Google or with a Moo account.
Does it work on a phone?
It is built for one. Vocabi is a web app: open it in your browser and add it to your home screen to keep it close. An Android build is in beta on Tester Central, and the Play listing is not up yet.
Is this a course?
No. There is no syllabus, no daily target and no streak to break. You decide which words matter to you, and every tool in the app is pointed at the ones you chose.
Can I learn more than one language at once?
Yes. Add another language whenever you want. Each pairing of a language you know with a language you are learning keeps its own dictionary and its own progress.
What happens to my data?
Your account details, the words you gather and your practice results are stored so the app can hand them back to you on your next device. Nothing is sold and nothing feeds advertising. The privacy policy has the full list.
Vocabularies grow here
Start in the clearing with nothing. Leave with a forest you can read.
Open the appFree while we are in early access. Sign-ups are open to anyone through Tester Central.