One of the most important things to learn when learning a new language is expanding your vocabulary. It’s not always an easy task, especially if you consider how some languages have extensive vocabularies. The English language, for example, has more than 170,000 words. French has 100,000 words, German has 135,000 words, and Spanish has 100,000 words.
If you think learning new, foreign words is challenging enough for grown-ups, imagine what it’s like for young kids. That’s why I truly appreciate apps that help kids learn new languages in a fun way. Vocabubble from Marbotic is a good example for this. The app includes 200 words available in four languages: English, French, German, and Spanish.
Inspired by Pictorial Webster’s Dictionary
Vocabubble features a unique set of drawings — mostly are inspired by illustrations in the Pictorial Webster’s Dictionary by John M. Carrera. The illustrations are organized based on the first letter of their names. For example, in English, abacus, acorn, arrow, and artichoke are all grouped in the letter A. In Spanish though, they may be located in different groups based on the first letter of their Spanish names.
You start playing by choosing a language and a letter. Then, you can tap to make a letter appear. You can play with up to 10 letters at a time. You can even tilt or rotate your iPad to have the letters move around the screen. Tapping on the letter will change its color.
If you tap and hold on a letter, it will turn into a picture. For example, if you tap and hold on the letter B, you will get one of the following pictures: balloon, bamboo, bear, beetle, bicycle, boat, book, or butterfly.
You can double tap on a picture to change it. You can also tap and hold to enlarge it. Its name will then be displayed underneath. This helps if you find a new word and you want to know how it’s written.
Parents Need to Know
I’m not familiar with the non-English languages included in Vocabubble, but based on my brief testing with these languages, I can see that the app adds one additional letter group for ñ in Spanish. The French and German sections have the same 26 letter groups from A to Z.
Once you have learned all the words in the English section, you’re welcome to try the other languages. That would help your kids to learn how to pronounce these words in different languages. For parents who have been looking for great vocabulary apps in non-English languages, you should definitely give this app a try.
Vocabubble works great without any Internet connection. It doesn’t include any third-party ads, in-app purchases, or links to social networks.
Things I Like
Once in a while, I find apps like Vocabubble, which allows even myself to learn new things. In addition to learning vocabularies in non-English languages, I also found myself learning new English words. Here are some of the less familiar words that you won’t typically find in other apps: caribou, chimpanzee, daffodil, dodo, ferret, gazelle, gnocchi, gnu, juggling pin, knot, llama, orca, oryx, and many more.
I also like how the app includes a background sound in some of its pictures. For example, you’ll hear a strum in guitar and a loud neigh in horse.
Vocabubble is an app dedicated to introduce up to 200 words in four languages: English, French, German, and Spanish. Some of the words are quite common, while others are not so common. If you’re looking for a fun vocabulary apps in any of these languages, you should definitely give Vocabubble a try.