Lernkartei: German Flashcards

Lernkartei (German for a flashcard box) is a German dictionary with flashcard training, built for learners of German. Everything works offline: the dictionary lives on your phone, nothing is sent anywhere, and there is no account. The interface is in German, which is the point: you learn the language in the language. If you would rather start in English, switch it to English in the settings.

DICTIONARY

Over 160,000 entries with short English meanings, German definitions, examples, articles, plural and conjugation forms, and pronunciation. About 9,000 words have two example sentences written at their level. Search understands inflected forms ("ist" leads to "sein", "Häuser" to "Haus") and English ("house" finds "Haus").

CARDS THAT GET TO THE POINT

The back of a card shows what you actually want to know: "Haus" means "house", "gehen" means "go, walk". No long explanations, no rare senses in the way.

SIX WAYS TO PRACTISE

Flip the card and swipe right if you knew it, left if you did not. Pick the English meaning out of four, or type it. Type the German word for an English meaning, where a small slip does not count as wrong. Only hear the word and choose its meaning. Or find the word missing from an example sentence. Switch modes any time in the settings.

READY-MADE DECKS

Eight levels from A1.1 to B2.2: up to B1 with the words of the Goethe-Zertifikat word lists, in the order a course brings them, and for B2 the most common words of that level. Plus the 4000 most frequent words, topic decks (travel, food, work, family, home, health, weather, shopping, body, clothes, feelings, nature and more) and decks by part of speech: the most common verbs, adjectives, and nouns by gender. Every deck shows its first words before you add it. A word list from your course becomes a deck with one tap, and any deck can be shared as a list.

GRAMMAR

17 topics in 52 steps, from articles and plurals through verb forms, cases and adjective endings to relative clauses, the subjunctive and the passive. You practise with words at your level or with your own decks. After a wrong answer the rule is shown underneath, and a rules page explains everything again at your own pace.

READING, DICTATION AND SENTENCE BUILDING

80 short texts on everyday topics, ten per level, with a translation and questions on the text. Tap any word to look it up. In the dictation you hear a sentence and write it down; in sentence building you put an example sentence back together.

SPACED REPETITION

A proven scheduling method plans every card individually: what you know comes back less often, what you struggle with comes back sooner. You decide how many new words a day come in. A daily goal, a streak and statistics with a forecast, a calendar of your practice and your hardest words show where you stand.

BACKUP AND ANKI

A backup takes your decks and progress to a new phone. Existing Anki packages import with front and back, and your decks export as .apkg files.

LIGHT AND DARK

Follows the system setting, or stays fixed to light or dark.

Dictionary data comes from the German Wiktionary under CC BY-SA 4.0.