Lingopie Review: the best foreign language subtitles

Lingopie is a platform created by and for language learners who enjoy learning foreign languages by watching TV. The idea behind this Lingopie review is that you’ll be so motivated to keep watching good shows, motivation will be easy peasy.

That said, how do you know if Lingopie is the right language learning resource for you? In this Lingopie review, we’ll discuss its benefits, limitations, and Lingopie alternatives.

Getting started watching foreign language TV

You can use Lingopie to learn 10 languages:

Your Lingopie account grants you access to all 10 languages at any time. There’s no effort in switching languages either, which we’ll see in a second.

Lingopie review: watching and learning

You’ll see a Netflix-like page with all the shows Lingopie has to offer, separated by genre and, more importantly: every show and movie has an icon, front and center, of the country the media is from, which makes it easy to find the most relevant content for your language learning.

This dashboard/TV catalog is truly beautiful and genuinely motivating to start expanding into all sorts of languages. It’s easy to see that using Lingopie to learn a language requires minimal effort, especially if you’re in the habit of watching TV for hours on end once you’re hooked (guilty as charged).

I have one qualm about the search function: I like how you can search for different accents and genres (a la Yabla) but there is no option to search accents AND genre AND length, which is very basic functionality.

Because of this limited searchability, I stuck to Castilian Spanish content and chose something that looked interesting.

Roll over the show you want to watch to get a very brief synopsis of the plot, as well as how long that content is. The show I chose was only 3 minutes long, which surprised me. Usually we think of shows to be anywhere from 20 minutes to over an hour long, which can be overwhelming when it’s in a different language.

These short little clips are more like YouTube videos than anything else, if you don’t want to make the time commitment.

Before the show starts, you get a preview of the important vocab on the righthand side. While it’s labeled “Vocab for your level”, it’s mostly just an indication of the level that show is at – if you’re comfortable with these words, you’ll mostly understand the show.

For what it’s worth, that’s all you’ll need to know if you need to go up or down in difficulty. You don’t need to know all of the exact definitions of all of the words, nor do you need to know which context each word should be used, or all of its conjugations. These are the details that you’ll learn as you immerse yourself in the shows you’re watching.

Then, as soon as I pressed play, I got a “grammar coach” pop up. Judging by the answer I got, this is basic AI. Obviously with my first attempt the grammar is very simple, so I tried it again with a sentence with more complex grammar.

It’s not amazing, but it is a start. As of this latest update, AI is still pretty new so we’ll see how this develops. I hope that it’ll go from just naming the verb tenses (which is undoubtedly better than nothing) to explaining the concepts and/or linking to helpful content.

After clicking out of the grammar coach, here are Lingopie’s basic features in action.

Lingopie’s platform allows you to easily:

• read the transcript while watching the show
• translate any word or phrase in real time
• listen to any word or phrase independently
• save vocab to review later
• practice shadowing (listening to native audio and repeating)
• loop lines from the transcript
• change the speed of the show
• add/remove the native/target language subtitles

Lots of handy tools that are intuitively placed within the platform itself, and very aesthetically pleasing! These two features help Lingopie to stand out in the world of streaming foreign language content.

Reviewing vocab with Lingopie

After watching for some time, you’ll want to review the vocabulary you’ve collected. Lingopie offers a couple of ways to do this, all of which are slightly different and depend on your goals for any particular study session.

Let’s take a look at all 3 options.

Pop Quiz

The first type of vocab review is right within whatever you’re watching. Just click over to the “My Vocab” tab after collecting a few words and try the Pop Quiz.

This is a very simple way to connect the vocabulary you’re learning with the meaning in which you learned it – review the vocab with the exact video clip you found it in. This is a 10/10 execution of this concept, and blows the competition out of the water (looking at you, Trancy).

The pop quiz function is the easiest way to review a particular piece of media, especially right after seeing the terms for the first time. You don’t have all of your terms from all of your shows all in one quiz, so you can easily get this fresh vocab into your brain.

Flashcards

If you want to review all of your terms from all of your media in one study session, you’ll have to click over to the “Review & Practice” section.

Just like with the pop quiz, the flashcards section reviews your terms paired with their content. There’s slightly more functionality here though: click the card to flip between the word and its translation, and then tell Lingopie how well you know the term: know it, not sure, or no idea.

Lingopie also keeps track of your progress for you, including where you got the term, how many times you’ve reviewed it, when it was last seen, and the option to listen to it again or remove it from the list.

As you can see, if you want the actual native audio, it has to be in one of the features where the term is shown with the video clip. Otherwise, you’ll be listening to the robot recording.

Word Master

Lingopie’s third method for helping you review the vocabulary it teaches you is via Word Master. This vocab game is the only one that does not use the original video content to help you remember the words.

I’m not blown away by this option. The thing that makes Lingopie special is using the video content to connect the vocab words to their meaning.

If this featured another more active activity – typing in the words, for example – it might be more useful, but otherwise this isn’t much different from creating your own flashcards yourself.

Lingopie’s Chrome extension vs Language Reactor

While Language Reactor has essentially cornered the market for using Netflix to learn a language, Lingopie now has a similar Chrome extension that you can use with your normal Lingopie account.

With the Chrome extension you can see which Netflix shows Lingopie has translated for you, giving you that many more options to learn your target language.

As I said, this puts Lingopie in direct competition with Language Reactor, so let talk about some pros and cons, Lingopie vs Language Reactor.

Quantity of content

Language Reactor is a free Chrome extension that helps language learners use YouTube and Netflix to learn a language by pulling out the subtitles that already exist (most of which are automatically generated by YouTube) and make it easier for us to use them.

This means that Language Reactor’s content is essentially limitless; as long as there are new shows on Netflix and new videos on YouTube, there will be new content to learn a language.

Lingopie, however, is limited by the content they have available on their platform.

Quality of subtitles

Because Language Reactor tends to use automatically generated subtitles, they’re not always totally precise. And while this may not be a make-it-or-break-it kind of thing for many language learners, it can lead to confusion.

For example, it can be very difficult to recognize if it’s a particular vocab word that’s new, or if it’s a new phrase, or if it’s region-specific slang. This can require significant research that some language learners would rather not do.

Lingopie’s subtitles are not automatic. So if you want to just be told what a word or phrase means, there’s no competition.

Vocabulary review

As we’ve discussed in this Lingopie review, this platform makes it very easy and enjoyable to review the vocab you learn within its original context. You don’t have to do any other work, besides clicking over to a different section.

Language Reactor, however, takes some elbow grease. If you already have a flashcard system that you enjoy, like plugging new vocab words into Anki for example, then this may not be an issue. However, if you’re looking for a new approach for learning new vocab by watching videos, Lingopie makes all that much easier.

Lingopie review: pricing

Due to Lingopie’s high quality platform and subtitles, it is a paid resource. However, if the ease of use is what you need to learn a language consistently, then it is absolutely worth it. Plus, Lingopie offers a 7-day free trial to try everything out.

Click here for Lingopie’s updated pricing.

Lingopie review: alternatives

While I believe Lingopie is the most beautiful and user-friendly, it’s not the only way to learn a language by watching TV.

If you enjoy the curated content but want some more flexibility in how you’re studying the language, FluentU may be a good Lingopie alternative for you. As I mentioned, it’s not nearly as pretty as Lingopie, but what it lacks in design it makes up for in study strategy.

A similar alternative to both Lingopie and FluentU is Yabla. Again, not very pretty, but it can be fun to play around with.

Finally, if you’re willing to do some behind the scenes tech and macgyver your language learning just a little bit, Language Reactor paired with an Anki or Memrise deck is a budget-friendly alternative that could work just as well.

Should you use Lingopie to learn a language?

Lingopie is an excellent way to learn a language with TV and subtitles. In fact, it’s the best in the market in 2 ways:

• teaching you new foreign language vocab with the context of video, and
• providing top tier, easy-to-use subtitles.

Especially for that first bullet point, context is key when learning new vocabulary, so if you’re looking for a way to pair new vocab with a TV show you enjoy, I would recommend giving Lingopie a try.

However, it’s important to keep in mind that regardless of what they say, you do need to be at a certain level of listening comprehension to make the most out of a resource like Lingopie. Even in the beginner level video at the beginning of this Lingopie review, it uses intermediate-level grammar.

If you’re a total beginner, I’d recommend you start out with basic vocab first.

Want to use Lingopie’s 7-day free trial? Click here to get started.