📚 Free Vocabulary Flashcards
0 ready-made beginner decks across 6 languages — every essential word listed with its English translation, free to read here and free to study with spaced repetition.
Start studying free →How to use these decks
Every deck is a curated list of the highest-frequency beginner words for its topic, shown with English translations — free to read with no account. When you are ready to actually memorise them, sign up free, save a deck, and study it with spaced repetition: the app schedules each word back just before you would forget it, so a few minutes a day is enough. Start with greetings and numbers in your chosen language, add one new deck a week, and within a month you will have the few hundred words that carry most everyday conversations.
Every deck, by theme
The same eight themes are covered in all 6 languages, so you can start from the topic you actually need rather than the language you are studying. Each link below jumps straight to that deck.
Numbers 1–20 — 🇪🇸 Spanish · 🇫🇷 French · 🇩🇪 German · 🇮🇹 Italian · 🇵🇹 Portuguese · 🇸🇪 Swedish
Why numbers unlock everything
Numbers are the most practical vocabulary in any language: prices, times, dates, phone numbers, addresses and quantities all run on them. The first twenty matter most — most European languages build every larger number from these pieces (twenty-one, twenty-two…), so master 1–20 and you effectively own the whole counting system. The decks above cover the same twenty numbers in six languages. A study tip: drill them out of order, not as a recited sequence — real life asks you for "seventeen" cold, never as the seventeenth item in a chant. Spaced repetition in random order builds exactly that instant recall.
Greetings & Basics — 🇪🇸 Spanish · 🇫🇷 French · 🇩🇪 German · 🇮🇹 Italian · 🇵🇹 Portuguese · 🇸🇪 Swedish
Why greetings come first
Every conversation in every language starts the same way — a greeting, a please, a thank you. That is why polyglots always learn these words first: they are the highest-frequency vocabulary in existence, they work in every situation, and locals warm to you instantly when you use them. The six decks above give you the same core set — hello, goodbye, please, thank you, yes, no, sorry — across six languages, so you can compare how each language handles politeness. Learn one language's set with spaced repetition in a day or two, and you will never stand silent in a shop or café again.
Days & Months — 🇪🇸 Spanish · 🇫🇷 French · 🇩🇪 German · 🇮🇹 Italian · 🇵🇹 Portuguese · 🇸🇪 Swedish
Why learn the calendar words early
Making any plan — a booking, a meeting, a ticket — needs the days and months, which makes them some of the first vocabulary you actually deploy in the real world. They also hide lovely history: in most European languages the days are named for planets and gods (lunes/lundi from the Moon, martes/mardi from Mars), so learning them across languages doubles as a small mythology lesson. The decks above cover all seven days and twelve months in six languages. Learn the days first (only seven words, used constantly), then the months, and note that unlike English, most European languages do not capitalise either.
Family Words — 🇪🇸 Spanish · 🇫🇷 French · 🇩🇪 German · 🇮🇹 Italian · 🇵🇹 Portuguese · 🇸🇪 Swedish
Why family words matter
Family is one of the first things people ask about in any culture — where you are from, who you live with, brothers and sisters. The words are short, ancient and remarkably similar across European languages (mother: madre, mère, Mutter, madre, mãe, mor), which makes this one of the most satisfying topics to learn side by side. The decks above cover the immediate family across six languages. A useful pattern to notice: the informal words for mum and dad (mamá, maman, Mama) are nearly universal — among the oldest and most stable words in human language. Ten minutes a day locks the whole set in within a week.
Food & Drink — 🇪🇸 Spanish · 🇫🇷 French · 🇩🇪 German · 🇮🇹 Italian · 🇵🇹 Portuguese · 🇸🇪 Swedish
Why food vocabulary pays off first
The first real conversation most travellers have abroad is ordering food — which makes this the most immediately rewarding vocabulary you can learn. Menus, markets and cafés become readable, and locals genuinely appreciate the effort. The decks above cover the staples — bread, water, coffee, meat, fruit — across six languages, and you will notice how much travels between them (café, chocolate, banana are near-universal). Study tip: these words are concrete, so attach each to a mental image of the food itself rather than the English word — picture the bread when you see "pain", and the word sticks twice as fast.
Travel & Directions — 🇪🇸 Spanish · 🇫🇷 French · 🇩🇪 German · 🇮🇹 Italian · 🇵🇹 Portuguese · 🇸🇪 Swedish
Why travel words are your safety net
Airport, train, ticket, left, right, where is…? — travel vocabulary is the set you reach for under mild stress, in stations and streets, often in a hurry. That is precisely why it rewards spaced-repetition practice: you want these words automatic, not "on the tip of my tongue". The decks above cover the same travel essentials across six languages. Two habits help: learn "where is…?" as a single fixed chunk (¿dónde está?, où est, wo ist), because you will say it constantly; and drill left/right until instant — they are the two words you cannot afford to confuse while someone is pointing.
Colours & Adjectives — 🇪🇸 Spanish · 🇫🇷 French · 🇩🇪 German · 🇮🇹 Italian · 🇵🇹 Portuguese · 🇸🇪 Swedish
Why colours and adjectives come next
Once you can name things, you want to describe them — the red one, the big one, the cheap one. Colours and basic adjectives are the simplest description toolkit, and shops, markets and menus run on them. The decks above cover the core set across six languages. One structural note worth knowing early: in most Romance languages, adjectives usually FOLLOW the noun (vino tinto — "wine red") and change form to match it, while Germanic languages like German and Swedish put them before the noun as English does. Learning the words now makes those grammar patterns obvious later, instead of abstract.
20 Most Useful Verbs — 🇪🇸 Spanish · 🇫🇷 French · 🇩🇪 German · 🇮🇹 Italian · 🇵🇹 Portuguese · 🇸🇪 Swedish
Why these twenty verbs carry the language
A small set of verbs — be, have, go, want, can, do, say, see — does a staggering share of the work in every language; linguists estimate the twenty most common verbs appear in the majority of everyday sentences. Learn them and you can start assembling real thoughts, even with rough grammar: "I want coffee", "we go tomorrow". The decks above give you that core twenty across six languages. Fair warning that they are also where irregularity lives — "to be" misbehaves in every language — so learn the infinitives here first, and let the conjugations come gradually through use rather than tables.
Why flashcards work for vocabulary
Vocabulary is a pure memory problem, and spaced repetition is the most efficient memory method cognitive science has found — reviews at expanding intervals, timed to the moment before forgetting. It is how medical students survive anatomy and how polyglots stack languages. Read more in our study guides, or browse our 149+ free flashcards by topic.