Lingopie Review: A Promising Video-based Learning Platform with Areas for Growth

Lingopie is a language-learning platform that enables you to watch foreign-language films and learn simultaneously. It integrates language learning tools into a broad library of videos to teach languages in a natural way.

In my opinion, it's a strong option for learning with contemporary hits, though it has several significant shortcomings that prevent it from reaching its full potential.

What Is Lingopie?

Lingopie was established in 2018 and promotes itself as "the world's only language learning application that uses real TV shows and movies to help you learn a new language." This is a bold statement, considering other platforms like Lingflix and Yabla already offer this and more.

What truly distinguishes Lingopie is its access to many modern shows, movies, video, and audio options. Lingopie has its own video library, but it also works with other streaming subscriptions to turn them into a language-learning experience.

Lingopie works by displaying dual-language subtitles and a target-language transcript of the video as it plays, allowing you to click on any word in the subtitles to see its meaning. Collect words from videos, then get tested on them to help you remember.

The platform is designed to be accessible for all levels and new shows are added regularly. Lingopie currently offers content in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French, German, Russian, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese.

A Breakdown of Lingopie Features: The Good and the Bad

A great selection of shows, movies and videos

The main attraction of Lingopie is its excellent selection of recent shows. These aren't just English shows translated into other languages—they're original productions in their native language. For example, you can watch Geronimo Stilton's adventures in Italian or enjoy anime in Japanese.

Switching between languages is very simple, so you can explore multiple languages in one session if you're an aspiring polyglot. I browsed all the languages, and the show selection is impressive regardless of the language you're learning. This means you learn your target language from authentic, native-speaker content.

If you're learning Spanish, Lingopie also provides TV guides with special quizzes and vocabulary flashcards for every episode. This is currently only available for three Spanish shows: "Casa de Papel," "Vis a Vis" and "Club de Cuervos." I'd love to see this feature expanded to more shows in other languages!

A variety of listening options with music, audiobooks and podcasts

If you need a break from shows and movies, you can switch to other audio content.

You can listen to music, which is accompanied by music videos. Music is organized into themed playlists, like "romantic Spanish songs," so you can find something that suits your mood. Audio-only options are great when you need a change, and I appreciated the option to not stare at the screen for my entire learning session.

There are also some audiobooks and podcasts available, if you can locate them. I had to scroll down to find them, as the content types aren't well categorized beyond the main page, and I couldn't find them through search.

Some languages also have a "kids" section. Once you enter it, the other options disappear, which is useful if you're letting your kids learn and don't want them navigating to adult content. However, it's quite easy to click "exit kids," so supervision is still necessary!

This feature is also helpful for adults, since learning with children's content can be an effective way to start with authentic media.

Learner-oriented playback features

So, you have all this great video and audio content. How do you actually learn from it? Lingopie covers this with integrated learning features.

Each video has subtitles, and you can click on a word as the video plays to see its meaning. You can also slow down the playback if you need more time to understand it.

During video playback, a sidebar appears with three sections: script, my vocab, and grammar.

The script tab shows the transcript. You can scroll freely and click on any word to see its meaning or skip the video to any line directly from the transcript. Words considered at your level are marked with a star. While I found this a bit arbitrary, it could be useful for anyone unsure which words to focus on.

When you click on a word, it's automatically added to your vocab list for that video. That's where the "my vocab" tab comes in. This is where you'll find all the words you've collected from various videos.

Here, you can delete words, mark them as "known," or listen to their pronunciation. When you click on a word, you can see the last video clip where you encountered it, a record of how many times you've reviewed it, and the last time you saw it.

Once you've saved a number of words, you unlock quiz mode. You can start the quiz anytime you want, allowing for a flexible learning experience.

The final tab is for grammar, which I'll cover in more detail next.

Not enough detail and potential errors in grammar info

The grammar section of the Lingopie playback sidebar lets you see a grammar breakdown of any line from the transcript. This could be a very useful feature if it were created or reviewed by a language expert, but it appears to be AI-generated.

As someone who often uses AI for language help, I know how inaccurate it can be with language and grammar explanations. This means you should view the grammar breakdown with some caution, as not everything written there may be accurate.

The grammar information for each vocabulary word is also not detailed enough. For instance, for "viviermos," the program only states it's a plural verb, omitting crucial details like its tense.

That said, the grammar section can still be helpful. It can assist you in breaking down the sentence into its components to understand how they fit together. The "grammar index" feature goes further by color-coding parts of speech in the subtitles for visualization.

Review features get repetitive and lack context

When it's time to review the words you've saved from videos, Lingopie offers some features to help. You can record yourself saying the sentence and hear it spoken by a machine voice. I thought this was a great addition, as many platforms overlook speaking practice.

You can also review saved words with three exercises: flashcards review, pop quiz, and word master... though all are quite similar, just presented differently. All three involve showing you a word and having you choose the meaning from four options. There's nothing wrong with this format, but presenting them as distinct exercises seems unnecessary.

I also encountered an issue due to a lack of context in the quizzes. The review doesn't account for words with multiple meanings. In one case, I was shown "grande" in Spanish, which I know means "big," but since the version I added from a video meant "great," that was the "correct" answer here.

Flashcard review doesn't have this issue because it shows you the clip where you found the word, and I wish this was consistent across all reviews. When reviewing flashcards, you can mark words as "no idea," "not sure," or "I know," and Lingopie will presumably adjust how often you see each word based on your familiarity.

Lingopie Phrasebook shows words as they appear in media

When learning with Lingopie, all the words you discover come from the videos themselves. You can't look up words you want to study and find videos where they appear.

However, the Lingopie Phrasebook is a great feature that addresses this. It's a video dictionary that lets you "learn any word as it appears in TV scenes," and it's available without an account. The phrasebook allows you to look up words in select languages and see their definitions along with short clips from shows and movies where the word is used.

This isn't integrated into the main platform—you'd need to have the phrasebook open in another tab to find videos containing your target vocabulary. I really wish it were part of the main program, as I found it incredibly useful for seeing words in context!

Private and group lessons (but only in some languages)

Lingopie seems to be currently testing classes and lessons. Classes are only available in a few languages, and the idea is that you can join a group lesson or book a one-on-one class with a tutor.

The group classes are listed alongside other videos and don't have their own section. It's unclear from their presentation if these are included in your subscription or if they're interactive or livestreamed. I was unable to search for them in the platform to get more information.

I also found some pre-recorded lessons for beginners, but these were very limited and seemed to only be available in Spanish.

Private lessons have their own section and clearly state that you can book four 45-minute private lessons for $80. Unsure if this is right for you? You can try a free class with a teacher.

Active community and developer support on Discord

I was surprised to find that Lingopie has a Discord server that is fairly active. This is a space to chat with other learners and, more importantly, a direct line to the developers.

And they are quite responsive! The developers are on Discord, chiming in to correct typos and answer questions.

They also frequently incorporate user suggestions. When I logged in, I saw a developer personally informing a user that their suggestion had been added to the platform.

With this kind of community and openness, I'm confident the platform will continue to improve and hopefully address the issues mentioned in this review.

Learning with other streaming services is promising but buggy

One of Lingopie's biggest attractions is its integration with other streaming services, but this is also one of its least polished aspects.

To use Lingopie with other services, you need a subscription to that service. Once set up, the service adopts Lingopie's learning sidebar, including the script, vocab, and grammar tabs.

However, when I tried to use this feature, I encountered numerous problems that made it difficult to use.

Clicking on any line in the transcript didn't navigate to it. In fact, it did nothing. I couldn't check individual word meanings from the transcript, though I could still check them in the currently playing subtitles.

Things worked a bit better on mobile, but since the Lingopie mobile app has its own issues, it's not as effective.

From other user reviews, I'm not the only one experiencing these problems. But given the developers' responsiveness on Discord, I wouldn't be surprised to see this improved soon.

Missing key features on Lingopie mobile

I wanted to see how Lingopie works on mobile, so I downloaded the app and tried it. My mobile experience began with a daily challenge, which had me match some of my saved vocabulary words to their meanings.

After the quick challenge, I explored one of the videos. Videos are presented with the video playing on top and the transcript in your target language below. The subtitles for the current scene are shown in the video player, with an English translation.

You can pause to see word translations in the subtitles. When you click on a word, it's added to your word bank, and once you save a few words you can take a quiz. You can also try saying each line, skip ahead to any line in the transcript, and adjust the speed. So far, so good—I recognized all these features from the browser version.

However, I noticed several key features were missing. For instance, clicking on a word for a definition adds it to your vocabulary list, and there doesn't seem to be an easy way to remove it. I found this annoying—I'd prefer the choice to save the word or just see its definition.

The grammar tab is also missing, as is the option to highlight parts of speech, single out words at my level, and most customization options for quizzes and video playback.

On the other hand, videos from other streaming services are directly integrated into the Lingopie app, and I only had to sign in to my account to watch them.

Pricing inconsistencies across devices

While checking out the app and browser platform, I also looked at the pricing structure, and I found it confusing. There are some odd inconsistencies between platforms.

On the website, the least expensive plan is $12 per month for a three-month plan, which includes one language, and you can try a free trial for seven days. On the app, the lowest option is $11.99 for a monthly plan, and it doesn't mention the language limit or free trial.

Actually, the language limit doesn't seem to exist. I signed up for the lowest-priced plan and was given full access to all languages offered by the platform.

On mobile, you also get eight free minutes of watch time, though it's unclear if this is a daily or total limit.

It's also important to note that there's no true monthly plan, only quarterly. So if you sign up for the $12 per month plan, you'll actually be charged $36 every three months.

All these inconsistencies would have deterred me from signing up if I weren't reviewing the platform, so I hope Lingopie clarifies its details.

Lack of organization makes it hard to find features

I've mentioned this before, but it's worth repeating: locating some features and content required significant effort.

For example, when I first looked through the offerings, I noted audiobooks. But when I went back for details, I couldn't find them. A search yielded nothing, and I wasn't sure if they'd be under "TV catalogue" or "Music." I finally found the audiobooks by scrolling far down on the main page. I discovered the podcasts by accident as well.

This is compounded by the fact that not every language has every feature. Does Japanese have audiobooks and podcasts? I couldn't find them by scrolling, so maybe not—but it's hard to tell!

I had the same issue with lessons. Although you can click on "private lessons" to see those options, you can't easily navigate to group lessons. I still don't know if these lessons are always free or if only the first class is free. There doesn't seem to be a way to see all upcoming lessons, and I can only assume that since the feature is missing in other languages, it's only available in Spanish and French for now.

Lingopie in a Nutshell

So, is Lingopie worth it?

Despite some obvious issues, Lingopie is a good resource if you want to learn a language from authentic media. It has an excellent content library and some useful learning tools to get you started.

However, it's not as well organized as many other platforms I've used, and it doesn't develop its features as fully as I'd like. The vocabulary learning, for instance, is central to the platform, but the reviews and flashcards don't provide enough information to be a solid resource for building a language foundation.

That said, the active Discord community indicates the Lingopie team is continuously working on tweaking and improving their platform. Despite its current shortcomings, Lingopie is definitely a platform to keep an eye on!

Alternatives to Lingopie

Lingflix

Yabla

Yabla is one of the original "learn by watching authentic videos" platforms. It has all the features of Lingopie, but with video content and an interface that feels a bit dated.

Because it's been around since 2005, it has a vast selection of videos for its six languages. Like Lingflix, it uses embedded video clips in its learning features and has a dictionary with more grammatical detail than Lingopie provides.

Where Yabla really stands out is in its diverse and useful practice exercises. These have you practicing in several ways, including transcription, fill-in-the-blank questions, multiple choice, translation exercises, and even comprehension questions.

Unlike Lingopie and Lingflix, you need a separate subscription for each language you want to learn.

Despite its flaws, Lingopie is an enjoyable learning platform that teaches languages through full-length videos like movies and TV shows. And now you know all it offers, thanks to this comprehensive Lingopie review!