Your own version

Your own Duolingo-style vocabulary drills on your iPhone

Duolingo teaches languages as a free game, course by course. If what you need is the words for your trip, your partner's family or your job, describe your own word list to Borel. It writes a native drill app in Swift that quizzes you, reads each word aloud with the iPhone's voices and keeps a daily streak, on your iPhone.

Updated . Borel isn’t connected to Duolingo.

A prompt to start from
“A vocabulary drill app for Portuguese. I add words with their English meaning and a topic like food or small talk, or ask the AI to suggest 20 words for a topic. A daily drill of 15 cards mixes multiple choice, typing the answer and saying it aloud; the iPhone reads each Portuguese word out. Words I miss come back the next day. Keep a daily streak.”

About Duolingo

What people like about Duolingo

In our words, from what Duolingo says about itself.

  • Language learning set up as a game, and free to use.
  • Super Duolingo's unlimited hearts, no ads and lessons that practise your mistakes.
  • A family plan that puts six Super accounts under one yearly payment.

Duolingo calls itself 100% free; Super Duolingo, alone or as a family plan, is the paid extra, and we didn't find its price on Duolingo's own pages.

Made for you

What your own vocabulary drill can do

What the prompt above builds, and what you can change by asking Borel in plain words.

  • Your words, not a course

    The 300 words you need for Lisbon or your in-laws' dinner table, typed in or suggested by AI.

  • Heard and spoken

    Every word read out by the iPhone's voices, and answers you say aloud turned into text.

  • No hearts to lose

    A wrong answer brings the word back sooner instead of costing you a life.

  • Words by situation

    Ordering food, small talk, the pharmacy: drill one topic before you need it.

Said plainly

How it's different

  • There's no course, grammar teaching or story lessons; it drills the words you give it.
  • Spoken practice checks which words it heard, not your accent.
  • There's no leaderboard; your streak is the only score.
  • Your app isn't Duolingo and won't look or work like it: it has only what you ask Borel to build, and none of Duolingo's own content.
  • Your data stays in your own app: on your iPhone by default, or in your app's own database in Borel's cloud if you add accounts.

How to get yours

From the prompt to your home screen

  • 1

    Start from the prompt

    Change anything in it first: names, rules, screens. Borel asks what it needs to know, then writes the app in Swift and SwiftUI.

  • 2

    Use it in your browser

    It opens in a live iPhone simulator streamed from Borel's Mac, at no cost. Building starts free, with 5 free credits a day, up to 30 a month.

  • 3

    Keep it on your iPhone

    With Pro, from $20 a month, Borel Companion installs it with a free Apple ID, up to 3 apps at a time, and renews each one every 7 days while it runs.

How to make a language learning appThe screens it needs, what it keeps, the iPhone features it can use and what to ask for next.See the guide

Frequently asked questions

Yes. Borel apps can call Borel's AI without an API key, so yours can suggest words for a topic; check them with a native speaker if you can.

Yes. The iPhone's built-in voices speak many languages, and Borel uses Apple's speech synthesis to read each word.

Any language you can type. Reading aloud and speech to text depend on the voices and languages your iPhone supports.

No. It drills your own words. Pair it with a course, a teacher or a phrasebook for the grammar.

Make your own vocabulary drill

Start from the prompt on this page and change it until it's yours. Borel builds it while you watch.