Which app is the easiest for beginners to learn a language?
Short answer
For most beginners, Duolingo: it is free, it can start you at the very beginning of a course, and its lessons are bite-sized. [1] If you want grammar explained as you go, Babbel is also built for beginners, with lessons of 5 to 15 minutes by its own figures, but it needs a subscription. [2]
Duolingo’s exercises ask very little of a first-time learner, such as tapping the words you hear. [1] In the first weeks you get short words and sentences but little explanation of why they work, and that is where Babbel differs: its lessons explain grammar in short steps. Babbel teaches 14 languages, but not Chinese. [2]
For Mandarin, Busuu has a course and adds corrections from native speakers, and our guide to apps for Mandarin also covers HelloChinese, Pleco, and Du Chinese. For Spanish, Dreaming Spanish has hundreds of hours of video graded from absolute beginner up, so you can listen from the first day.
LingQ and conversation apps like Speak are better saved for later: LingQ suits intermediate learners or beginners willing to look up most words, and Speak works best from about A2. Our Duolingo alternatives guide covers each of these apps in more depth.
How we built Second Language for beginners
Duolingo makes starting easy, but a beginner hears little of the language in use. In Second Language you start in a village where the villagers, quests, and puzzles are all in Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, or English. New words come up as you talk to people, every sentence has audio, and hints are in your own language. It suits complete beginners who want to hear the language in conversation from day one; the free intro course has about 2,500 practice sentences over 5 to 10 hours.