Spanish, one image per word
Spanish words, hooked to images too ridiculous to forget.
An English sound-alike gets you in; one ridiculous image keeps the word. Try it on the card.
Free. You help pick the images. No account, no sign-in. What's free, and how images are picked.
What's the Spanish for dog?
That's the whole method. 200 words like this in the app, each one spoken aloud.
How a word sticks.
Cerradura is the lock. Say it out loud: seh-rrah-DOO-rah. Somewhere in there is English, and a member heard "cereal door".
So the picture is a door made of a cereal box, padlocked shut, cornflakes pouring out of the keyhole. The lock and the cereal are one object. Next time you hear cerradura, the cereal door comes back, and the lock comes with it.
That's the whole method. It has a name, the keyword method, and it has been tested on Spanish learners since 1975. We start the image for you; the one that sticks is the one you replay in your head. The method, and the research behind it.
The ground colour has a job too: coral means the word is feminine, teal means masculine. You learn the gender without being asked to memorise it. And no image ever contains writing, so the word has to come from you.
Why the pictures are ridiculous.
"Casa means house" is gone by tomorrow. A house with a casserole lid isn't. Memory keeps what is vivid, surprising and a little rude, and throws the sensible away. So everything in an image does something: a dog rowing is remembered, a dog standing near a pear is not. Abuelo, "a boil, oh!", is a grandfather in a pot of boiling water, and you will not forget it. Not every card is wild, though. Strange only works when it stands out from its neighbours, so the wildest images go to the hardest words.
Free, and built by the people using it.
The app costs nothing and asks for no account. It opens with 200 everyday words, each with a short Spanish sentence read aloud, and you set your own review dates. Your progress stays on your phone.
The images come from the community site. Members upload their own, free, or make one with our generator; everyone votes; the winner ships to every phone. Plus and Studio exist only to pay for generated images, which cost real money each. What each plan includes.
How votes are weighed, how reputation moves, when a word settles: every rule is written down, with the numbers. Read them.
Help out.
None of these is a job, and none of them rewards volume. Being right is what earns standing.
- Vote. Two buttons on every image: helps me remember, or doesn't. Vote with the eventual winner and your next vote weighs more.
- Submit an image. Upload your own, or type a sound-alike and let the house draw it. An image chosen for the app is a badge on your name.
- Suggest a word. Missing one you needed this week? Propose it. Accepted words carry your handle.
- Comment. Say why an image works or doesn't; the author sees it.
- Report. Something that shouldn't be there goes back behind the gate until a person decides.
Remember anything, not just Spanish.
The same two moves, turn it into an image and make the image do something, work on shopping lists, speeches, phone numbers and the name of the person you just met. Short tutorials: a list, the memory palace, numbers, names and faces. To go further, start with Moonwalking with Einstein. Books worth reading.
Spanish first.
The method doesn't care which language. Every language gets its own community, word list and images, with the same voting, reputation and safety rules. When Spanish is running well, the next one opens. Want to start one for your language? Say so in the community.
The guides.
Long enough to answer the question you actually have. Every number in them is the number the site runs on.