PONN.IO

PONN.IO is a free place to learn a language by playing, reading, listening and watching. Everything works in the browser, in your own language, and none of it asks for an account.

The games are the part nobody expects. Say a word out loud and a car assembles itself in 3D around you. Name what you see and a room comes out from under the plaster. They are not exercises with a score, and new ones keep arriving.

They run on the same words you can study on their own — each with a picture, a translation and a recorded pronunciation, grouped by everyday topics. Drill them as flashcards you mark as known or still learning, or collect the ones you need and print a paper deck for the table.

The books are shown with a translation aligned to the original line by line. Tap a word for its meaning, hold a sentence for the whole line, or switch on a mode that keeps the translation running underneath as you read. There is also the other way round — a book in your own language with single phrases in the one you are learning, and a lever that decides how many of them you want.

Many of the books are narrated by real voices, in several languages, and the audio follows the same sentences you are reading. Read and listen together, or just listen.

Alongside them sits a catalogue of hand-picked video channels for learners, where every clip carries its level, its speaking speed and the accent you will hear.

The site itself speaks many languages, so what you read is in yours and not in English by default.

Alongside the parallel-translation books there's a second way to read, which we call the Blender. It's a book in your own language with sentences and phrases of the language you're learning woven into the text. You keep the thread of the story and pick the new language up from context, without stopping to look anything up — the technique known in English as the diglot weave. It works from the first day, when a whole foreign book is still out of reach.