linguafolks vs Memrise
frlisez n'importe quoi à votre niveau exact
Memrise retired user-made mnemonics in 2022. linguafolks builds one for every word, automatically.
Memrise is a vocabulary app built on spaced repetition, with video clips of native speakers saying the words in context.
For years Memrise was the place mnemonics lived. Its "mems" were user-contributed memory hooks: a picture, a pun, a small piece of nonsense that made a word stick. For a lot of learners they were the reason the app worked at all. They were removed in September 2022, and nothing replaced them.
What Memrise kept is still good: a mature spaced-repetition engine, a large course library, and video of real native speakers saying the words, which is genuinely valuable and which we do not have. But the memory hook is gone, and the thing that generates a hook, sitting down and inventing one for every word you meet, is exactly the work most people will not do.
linguafolks generates it. For a word you want to remember, it looks for an anchor in a language you already speak that sounds like the target word, fuses that anchor with the word's meaning into one scene, and draws it. It is not a claim about neuroscience; it is a claim about effort. The hook that gets made is better than the hook that does not.
Three things Memrise doesn't do
- The mems are gone
- Memrise's user-contributed mnemonics were removed in September 2022 with no replacement. Making a good mnemonic by hand is real work, and it is work most learners skip. linguafolks makes one on request: an anchor that sounds like the word, fused with its meaning, and drawn.
- Words, not the texts they live in
- Memrise teaches vocabulary through curated courses, so the words arrive in an order somebody chose. linguafolks starts from something you actually wanted to read, rewrites it to your level, and takes the vocabulary out of that, so the words you study are the words that were in your way.
- No vocabulary-size placement
- Courses are chosen rather than measured. linguafolks begins by estimating how many words you know and drives text difficulty from that number, then updates it as you learn.
Words that stick
ptaprenda vocabulário mais rápido
Every word gets an anchor, something you already know that sounds like it, fused with the meaning into a single scene, and then drawn. If it makes you smirk, it is doing its job.
baleine
means whale
French
ballerinaA graceful ballerina twirls on stage, her body morphing into a massive whale mid-leap.
pays
means country
FrenchpayA traveler at a border checkpoint paying gold coins to enter a vast, sprawling country.
raser
means shave
FrenchrazorA gleaming razor blade shaving off a thick beard in one smooth stroke.
Read anything at your exact level.
frlisez n'importe quoi à votre niveau exact
The text is rewritten to sit within reach, hard enough to grow and easy enough to finish, with the original beside it so you can see what changed and check yourself against it. Tap any word to find out what it means and keep it.
FrenchLe café se trouvait quasiment déserté à pareille heure. Des effluves de café chaud imprégnaient la salle. Quelques clients s'entretenaient à mi-voix près de la devanture.
Elle tergiversa longuement avant de passer commande. Le serveur patientait près du comptoir, sans hâte aucune. Elle jeta finalement son dévolu sur un chocolat chaud et une part de tarte.
Il consigna la commande d'un hochement de tête. Au-dehors, la pluie ne faisait que commencer. Elle ouvrit son livre et fit abstraction du reste du monde.
EnglishThe café was almost empty at that hour. A smell of hot coffee filled the room. A few customers were talking quietly by the window.
She hesitated a long time before ordering. The waiter waited by the counter, in no hurry. She finally chose a hot chocolate and a slice of pie.
He noted the order with a nod. Outside, the rain was just beginning. She opened her book and forgot the rest of the world.
FrenchLe café était presque vide à cette heure-là. Une odeur de café chaud remplissait la pièce. Quelques clients parlaient tout bas près de la fenêtre.
Elle a hésité longtemps avant de commander. Le serveur attendait près du comptoir, sans se dépêcher. Elle a enfin choisi un chocolat chaud et une part de tarte.
EnglishThe café was almost empty at that hour. A smell of hot coffee filled the room. A few customers were talking quietly by the window.
She hesitated a long time before ordering. The waiter waited by the counter, in no hurry. She finally chose a hot chocolate and a slice of pie.
One minute, then a real number
estu nivel, medido
Fifty words, forty real and ten invented to catch over-claiming, give an estimated vocabulary size and a CEFR band placed to Lower, Mid or Upper. Everything downstream reads that number. And it keeps moving: each word you confirm you have learned is added, so the level follows you without a retake.
Where Memrise wins
No product is better at everything, and a comparison that pretends otherwise is worth nothing to the person reading it.
What Memrise does better
- Video of real speakers is a genuinely good idea and we have nothing like it.
- The spaced-repetition engine and course library are mature and large.
- Far more languages than we support.
- Strong mobile apps with years of polish.
Where linguafolks falls short
- Grammar exercises exist in French and English only. The other four languages have reading and vocabulary.
- There is no audio and no speaking practice anywhere in the product.
- We generate texts rather than curate them, so there is no hand-edited library to browse.
- Six languages: French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese and English.
- It is a new product, without the years of polish the established apps have.
Plainly, then
Choose Memrise if
- Hearing native speakers say the words is what you want most.
- You want a large catalogue of ready-made courses to work through.
- Your language is not one of our six.
Choose linguafolks if
- You miss the mems and do not want to write your own.
- You would rather learn words from things you chose to read.
- You want your level measured rather than assumed.
Questions
- Are the mnemonic scenes proven to work?
- We do not claim that. Mnemonic techniques are long-established in memory training, but we have not run efficacy trials on ours and will not pretend otherwise. What we claim is that a hook gets made instead of skipped.
- Can I choose which words get a scene?
- Yes. Scenes are generated for words you ask about, typically the ones you did not know in something you just read.
- Is there spaced repetition?
- Vocabulary you keep comes back for practice, but Memrise's scheduling engine is older and more sophisticated than ours.
Find your level first.
It takes about a minute and needs no account. Whatever you decide afterwards, you will at least know where you actually are.
Claims about Memrise were checked in August 2026 against the company's own published material. Either way, check theirs before you decide. If something here is out of date, tell us and we will fix it.