Short lessons written entirely in the language you're learning. Pictures and context explain every new word, so you never need a translation.

Try it: tap any word in the headline.

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How a lesson works

  1. A flashcard from lesson 1: the word 'England' under a picture of England.
    The definition card for 'countries': flag maps of England, France, Germany and Italy, and the sentence 'England, France, Germany, and Italy are countries.'

    Every word comes with a picture or a definition

    New words arrive as flashcards with an image, or with a short definition written in the language you're learning. Never a translation.

  2. A match-the-pairs exercise: the words Italy, France, England and Germany beside their maps, to be paired up.
    An exercise from lesson 1: 'England and Italy are ___ in Europe', answered with 'countries', highlighted in green.

    Practise without the pressure

    Quick exercises between the sentences. Tap any word for its meaning, and if you get one wrong, it simply comes back later.

  3. A listen-and-repeat card: 'Italy is a country in Europe.' with a speaker button and a microphone button to say it back.
    A choose-the-picture card from lesson 1: the word 'Italy' under maps of France, Italy, England and Germany.

    Pick the right picture, say the right phrase

    Picture checks show whether a new word has stuck, and speaking cards have you say whole sentences out loud.

Try it yourself

Loquelo works like a feed: one card at a time, and you swipe up for the next. Swipe right when a card felt easy and left when it was hard, and the lessons adjust to you.

A short lesson about animals, playing on its own. Pick a language, tap any word to see how Loquelo explains it, or take over and swipe through it yourself.

9:41

Click, drag or scroll on the phone to try it

Supported by

Loquelo originated in the vibrant Cambridge startup ecosystem and is supported by many initiatives connected to the University of Cambridge and beyond.

King's College Cambridge E-LabSPARK Incubator 2.0, King's College Cambridgeai@cam, University of CambridgeElevenLabs Startup GrantsOxford Cambridge Fellowship

The natural method

Stephen Krashen on how we acquire language

You didn't learn your first language from a dictionary. You worked it out from what you saw and heard, always a little beyond what you already knew. Loquelo is built the same way.

The idea is not new. In the twentieth century, the Danish Nature Method courses and Hans Ørberg's Lingua Latina per se Illustrata taught whole languages through the language itself, one carefully graded text at a time. Classrooms still use Ørberg's book today.

But the method never made it off the page. It has lived only in printed textbooks, most of them decades old and out of date, with no audio, no pictures you can tap and nothing that adapts to you. Loquelo brings it into an app: each lesson adjusts to your answers, and every word you meet comes back in later lessons right before you would forget it.

Why we're building Loquelo

There are very few things at which a two-year-old outperforms you, but language learning is one of them. How is that possible?

Hi, we're Karol and Jeremi. Apart from a passion for language learning, we share a frustration: most language learning is built on translation. It's the one thing a toddler doesn't need, and the one thing all existing apps refuse to abandon.

That's why we built Loquelo, which gives you the toddler's method with an adult's head start. From your first lesson, you're fully inside the language you're learning. And lessons adjust to you, keeping you right at the edge of what you understand, where learning happens fastest.

You'll make mistakes, just like any two-year-old. Good. That's how it works, and Loquelo will never punish you for it.

Because Loquelo never leans on your native language, it works whatever language you speak, including for the roughly 45% of the world that mainstream apps leave out simply because they don't offer courses from their language.

No toddler ever needed a translator, and neither do you.

  • Karol Wapniarski

    Karol Wapniarski

    Co-founder & CEO

    • King's College
    • University of Cambridge
  • Jeremi Jaksina

    Jeremi Jaksina

    Co-founder & COO

    • Trinity College
    • University of Cambridge

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