Free iPod Touch/iPhone Apps for Learning Spanish

After writing about the iRAE app, I thought it would be good to write more about iPhone/iPod Touch Apps that might be helpful for the Spanish language learner. All of these are free.

El Universal (Mexico) and El País (Spain) both have news articles, videos and other “authentic” materials for the Spanish language learner. Radio Nacional de España has five channels with which you can listen to music, news, weather, traffic, sports and more. (internet connection required)

WordReference is definitely a handy little app. You can access English-Spanish dictionaries, Spanish monolingual dictionary, Spanish synonyms dictionary, plus several others. You can also link to the WordReference’s forums via the app which comes in handy. (internet connection required)

SpanishPod has an app where you can look up words in their glossary with sample sentences. The sentences are accompanied by audio. Also, if you’re a premium member, which I’m not, you can also access their flashcard feature. (internet connection required for audio)

Stanza is one of my FAVORITE apps. I love to read and I really love the ability to load many books on my iPod Touch and take them wherever I go. Well, with this app, you can also download many books in Spanish. Right now I’m reading Drácula by Bram Stoker. Other authors represented include: Miguel Cervantes, Pio Baroja, Francisco de Quevedo, Benito Pérez Galdós and many, many others.

To find them within the app go to Online Catalog –> Feedbooks –> Public Domain Books –> Languages –> Español. You can also access Project Gutenberg books using the app as well. (internet connection required to download books)

TuneWiki is a rather unique app which I’m still trying to figure out myself, but still thought it was worth mentioning here. So far, I’ve been able to listen to some of my Spanish language music (from my iPod) and read the lyrics at the same time. Sometimes the lyrics aren’t very accurate, but others are… it’s hit or miss. You can also listen to radio stations from around the world and with some of them you can read the lyrics as the song is playing. Give it a try and let me know what you find. (internet connection required)