Prismatext

Prismatext

About this app

Learning a language is hard. Studying a foreign language requires hundreds of hours in a time-starved world. Prismatext meets you where you are, and offers an effortless method for learning a language: recreational reading!

Using an innovative method called "diglot weave," Prismatext books blend foreign words and phrases into classic literature for context-based language learning.

At the start of a Prismatext book, you'll be reading in English. Very shortly thereafter, you'll be reading in English and a little bit of your target language. Prismatext will begin replacing words and phrases with their translations—not too many, of course, but enough for you to notice. If you get stuck, give the words a tap to bring up their footnote: you'll find their meaning there, as well as a way to hear those same words spoken.

The more you read, the more new words you'll discover. Prismatext introduces new words incrementally, allowing you to grow your vocabulary gradually. As you go, you may find yourself using the footnotes less and less. You'll be introduced to—and learn—hundreds of new words and phrases. By the end of the book, you may not even need the footnotes. And if you do, that's fine. Every great journey needs footnotes.

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PRISMATEXT WORKS
• numerous peer-reviewed studies from around the world agree: diglot weave is one of the most effective learning methods for foreign language vocabulary retention
• beginners welcome! The Prismatext experience is seamless and effortless

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LEARN 15 LANGUAGES
Arabic, Chinese (simplified), Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish

YOUR PACE
Read at exactly the same speed you would a standard book

USEFUL VOCABULARY
Prismatext analyzes each book individually, and selects useful words and phrases from each one

HEAR IT SPOKEN
In-app audio pronunciations keep you from guessing how words sound

SAVE IMPORTANT WORDS
Hang on to notable translations and their context in the book, or share them with friends

REGULAR UPDATES
Prismatext books improve with time. Your bookshelf can only get better!

OFFLINE READING
Once a book is downloaded, it can be read offline.

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You will need to purchase books from the Prismatext bookstore.

Ratings and reviews

Keeps randomly closing. Seems very expensive to be so buggy. Also you can't just buy however many books you want. You get only one or two credits per month, depending on your membership, and there's no option to buy more credits or buy more books. Please fix. This could potentially be a game changer for those of us who learn by reading, but you have to work on it and improve it. Also bigger font sizes would be great.

This is exactly what I wanted to help with the next stage of my language learning. I love the way you can choose from three different "densities" of vocab and sometimes I switch between medium and high depending on how ambitious I'm feeling. Very happy with the choice of books as well. Thank you so much for making this and for adding some of the less common languages, it has helped my Dutch very much!

The last few updates to the app rendered it unusable. Your bookshelf won't even load most of the time. Lost my bookmarks when they updated to the new version too. Other than the fact that you've got to wrestle with the app to even access your bookshelf, it is a good way to pick up vocabulary, not so much grammar and sentence structure in my experience.