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Right now it's English/Spanish only. The single biggest limiter on how many people can actually use it today.
The gap between "context" and "translation" is the whole pitch, but it takes a moment to click for a first-time visitor. A short demo showing the before (a flashcard pair) next to the after (ten contexts) would make the difference viscerally obvious in five seconds, rather than requiring someone to read the explanation.
No visible free tier, just a trial, which is a reasonable business call, but it does raise the bar for someone to try it before they're sold on the idea.
I'd personally add flashy design for Gen Alpha and borrow some ideas from fintech UI's, but to each his own.
As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, Anki and Duolingo are the closest competitors and actually installed on my phone; however the methodology of LAFWords is more relevant for me.
By the way, immersion-only approaches (reading books, watching shows) arguably the "purest" version of learning-through-context and also could be considered as an alternative. But immersion is slow and undirected; I learn whatever words happen to appear. This app front-loads the specific words I try to learn, which is a real efficiency gain over waiting, say, for exposure.
That's an interesting concept; I would definitely like to try it out and see if it improves my language learning experience. LAFwords seems to be aimed at one of the common learning struggles: using (and understanding) a word in different contexts. It definitely sets it apart from the usual apps that are grounded in memorising stuff...
Would like to see more languages here for sure, for example Swedish or Japanese:)
I do struggle sometimes to put a word in context or go beyond the common 'How do I get to a library' level when learning a new language...
Thanks Alena! The "using and understanding in different contexts" framing is exactly what LAFwords is aimed at — glad it lands that clearly from the outside.
On more languages: Swedish and Japanese are both further out. Italian is v1.1 (~6-8 weeks post-launch), German v1.2 (~3-4 months). Northern European and East Asian languages come after those, once the pattern is proven on Romance and Germanic.
Appreciate the input.
English is my second language, and even though I live in the USA and am surrounded by native speakers, I still ask my friends what a phrase or a word means. With this app, I can practice using the vocabulary I actually need—like the words I asked my friends about, heard in movies, or read in books and articles. So basically, I practice the words I actually want to use in my everyday life. Simple sentences and imagery make them much easier to memorize.
From the insiders, I know what kind of updates are coming, so I can’t wait to use the app with more features
I prefer this app over others because here I am the one who controls what to learn.
Hey PH 👋
I'm a Russian native who learned English mostly by reading software docs over the years, long before any US classroom. The language didn't get into me through translation pairs. It crept in through contexts — the same word meeting me in different sentences and situations, until I knew its range without having drilled it.
Years later, driving Uber Eats after a layoff, I realized something counterintuitive: the speaking confidence I'd tried to build through structured study finally clicked from low-stakes, high-volume real interactions. The vocabulary required was tiny — but the freeze at the start of every conversation dropped overnight.
Those two threads — vocabulary lives in context, and confidence comes from felt range — are what LAFwords is built around.
Each word arrives across ten varied real-world sentences with native pronunciation and an image. Not to teach you the word in those exact ten situations — to give you the felt sense of its range, so you can use it in the hundred situations you haven't seen yet. Spaced repetition cements the contexts; the leverage is the spread.
Built solo for B1+ learners stuck between "I finished Duolingo" and "I can actually have this conversation." English + Spanish today, Italian and German on the roadmap.
7-day free trial, no credit card. Happy to answer questions.
@fatih915449 Two questions, two answers:
"Which 100 next?" — LAFwords isn't a pre-built deck; you decide the vocabulary. Words go in the way you actually meet them: something from a novel, a podcast you rewound, a conversation where the word wouldn't come. Each word arrives as a card with ten varied real-context sentences — so you feel the word's range, not one memorized pair. FSRS handles the when — bringing each one back at the moment you'd otherwise forget. So the "which" is you; the "when" is the algorithm.
"Bring in my Anki list?" — Not yet. One at a time for now. Bulk import is on the roadmap. One nuance worth flagging: an Anki deck built around word↔translation pairs is doing different work than LAFwords. LAFwords targets the words you've met but can't yet quite use in real conversation — the ten contexts building the range for the hundred you'll meet next. When bulk import ships, whatever you bring in from Anki should get auto-regenerated as full LAFcards — the ten contexts, image, and native pronunciation, built from just the word. That treatment is aimed at intermediate-to-advanced vocabulary — if your Anki list is that kind, transferring will pay off; if it's more beginner-drill material, LAFwords may not be the right place for it.
If bulk import matters to you, let me know your typical deck size and I'll bump it up the queue.
Congrats on launching, Andrey! Really like the "contexts, not translations" idea, I ended up doing the same thing back in my US days, just from reading books. You learn a word faster when you see it used in a few different real sentences than when you just see "word = other word" on a flashcard. As the Germans say, every comparison limps (they do really have this saying).
@konstantin_avksentyev Thanks Konstantin! Reading native books is honestly the gold-standard version of what LAFwords tries to compress. The app is basically an attempt to make that mechanism accessible to people who don't have unlimited reading time.
And thank you for "every comparison limps", it's going in my back pocket. Perfect Germanism.
Thanks Konstantin — "actual bottleneck vs fake bottleneck" and "vibe-memorizing" are both getting borrowed from you as of right now. Three responses:
The before/after demo idea (flashcard pair next to ten contexts) is strong — you're right that reading the explanation is a much slower path than seeing the contrast in five seconds.
On immersion: agree with your read exactly. Immersion is the pure version but slow and undirected. LAFwords tries to compress the same mechanism onto the words you actually want to learn — the efficiency angle is the point.
More languages: yes, planned. Italian v1.1 (~6-8 weeks post-launch), German v1.2 (~3-4 months). More after those.