Want to learn German but don't have time for extra lessons? You turn on your phone dozens of times a day anyway—turn each of those starts into a micro-review. Every time the screen lights up, a card appears with a German word: its article, how it's actually pronounced, its Polish meaning, and a sample sentence with translation. Tap to reveal, then swipe: "I know it" or "show again."
The app's sole purpose is the lock screen: it shows a card with German vocabulary every time you turn on the screen. Every other screen in the app is solely for setting up this learning experience on the lock screen and for viewing your progress.
The German spelling reveals most of the sound, but it leaves three things hidden—and this card is built around them. Gender: Polish has three genders, so gender itself isn't new to you. The new thing is that German denotes it with a separate word—"der," "die," or "das"—which you have to pronounce and memorize, and the genders don't match at all with Polish: "łyżka" is feminine, but "der Löffel" is masculine; "słońce" is neuter, but "die Sonne" is feminine. Therefore, each noun on the card has its own article, read with it, and a plural—because "der Tisch, die Tische" and "das Buch, die Bücher" are learned as a whole. Vowel length: Polish doesn't distinguish between them, while "Staat" and "Stadt" or "Miete" and "Mitte" differ only in how long you extend the vowel. Stress: "umfahren" means "to run over (someone)" or "to go around," depending on which syllable you place it on. The IPA marks both length and stress on each card—exactly what the spelling doesn't. You have an advantage in two things: you know the word-final "hund" from Polish ("Hund" is [hunt], like "chleb" [xlep]), and the German "w" is /v/, as in "Wasser."
What you get:
• 10,000 German words arranged by actual frequency of use, in 6 levels.
• ABC Course (Level 0): 75 cards with the German alphabet and its sounds, to start from scratch—long and short vowels, ä, ö, ü, and ß, the diphthongs ei, au, and eu/äu, and what gives Poles the most trouble: ü and ö, two different ch (in "ich" and "ach"), z pronounced as /ts/, v pronounced as /f/, and sp and st at the beginning of a word. • Article and plural for each noun.
• IPA pronunciation with stress and vowel length on each card, plus an example sentence with translation on each card.
• Spaced repetition (Leitner boxes): Each word returns just before you would have forgotten it.
• Multiple-choice quiz: Fill in the blanks in the example sentence.
• Synonyms and antonyms as quick chips.
• German speech synthesis reads the word aloud, including the article, and the entire sentence.
• Favorites for words that won't come to mind.
• Search and browse all 10,000 words.
• Daily notifications remind you to stay on track.
• Statistics: daily streak, words seen, known words, words learned, quiz performance.
• Choose a theme, card font, font size, display frequency, quiet hours, and daily limit for new words.
Written for Poles. Polish has borrowed a whole layer of words from German—"Dach" means roof, "Rathaus" means town hall, "Urlaub" means vacation, "Friseur" means hairdresser—this app thrives on this, right down to its false friends: "Kunst" means art, not craftsmanship; "Mappe" means briefcase, not map; "Puppe" means doll, not bottom; "Rente" means pension, not an annuity; "Pension" means boarding house, not salary; "Dom" means cathedral, not house.
100% offline after installation: no internet, no account, no server, and the developer doesn't collect any of your data. The card appears above the lock screen and never bypasses or weakens your PIN, pattern, fingerprint, or face unlock.
Free, with ads. Prefer to learn without them? A one-time purchase removes them forever.
A few seconds each time you unlock. Thousands of words in a year. Get started today!
German on the Lock Screen: 10,000 Words, der/die/das, IPA, Examples, Offline