Stories

Read German news without stopping to look a word up.

Every word in every story is translated before you open it, and translated for the sentence it sits in. Tap one and the meaning pins above the paragraph. The paragraph does not move. You do not leave the page.

3 stories a month on a free account.

Stories a month, free
3
Lookups while you read
0
Tools beside every story
4
Tap a word. The meaning pins. You keep reading.
  1. Three German news stories on a shelf, each one marked B1.
  2. The first opens: the German passage, and a bar telling you to tap a word.
  3. One word takes a tap, gesperrt, and the bar fills with the word and what it means in this sentence.
  4. Under it sits the plain form, sperren, with a link to the full dictionary entry. The passage never moves.
01Why it is hard

A translator tab open beside the text is not reading.

You have the vocabulary from your course. Then you open a German news site and the first paragraph carries six words you have never met. You copy one into a translator, read the answer, come back, and the sentence has gone. So you start it again. By the fourth word you are not reading the story, you are processing it.

Nothing is wrong with your German. This is what happens when the text lives in one window and its meaning lives in another.

Reading German news is not a warm-up exercise, either. It is what the Lesen paper puts in front of you, and what a job listing, a letter from the Bürgeramt or a company handbook will expect of you later.

02The mechanism

Every word is already translated when the story reaches you.

Nothing gets looked up while you read. A story is glossed once when it is added, word by word, and stored alongside the text. A tap costs one frame and no waiting.

What comes back is the meaning for that sentence. In a story about a street closed to cars, gesperrt returns as closed off, which is what it means there, not the headword a dictionary would hand you. The plain form sits underneath, sperren. When Lingio's dictionary holds that word there is a link straight through to the full entry: every tense, every form, examples in your language.

Then it stays. The meaning holds above the paragraph while you read on, so the line you were in the middle of is still where you left it.

  • One tap. No typing, no second window.
  • The meaning for this sentence, not the dictionary headword.
  • The plain form underneath, linked to its full entry.
03Two ways through

Read it in German first. Then check whether you had it.

Original gives you the German alone, every word tappable. Translation gives you the same story split into sentences, each German line followed by what it says.

Read in Original. Where you are unsure of a sentence rather than a word, switch to Translation and see how close you were. You are checking your own reading rather than being handed the answer before you tried, and both readings are the same story on the same screen.

Translation

Viele Geschäfte fürchten weniger Kundschaft, doch die meisten Anwohner begrüßen den Umbau.

Many shops fear fewer customers, but most residents welcome the rebuild.

Im Herbst soll die Straße wieder öffnen.

The street is due to reopen in the autumn.

04The right column

The story does not stop at the last sentence.

Four things sit beside every story, and each of them already knows which story you are on.

Words

The words worth keeping from this story, each listed once, in the order you met them. The ones Lingio's dictionary holds link through to their entry; the rest show their meaning where they stand.

  • Pulled from the story you are reading, not from a generic list
  • One row per word, however many times it appeared
  • The dictionary link opens the full entry, not another gloss
Words
Hauptstraßemain street
gesperrtclosed off
Radwegecycle paths
Innenstadttown centre
Kundschaftcustomers

Discussions

One thread per story, so what another learner made of the same article is on the same screen as the article. Free accounts read the thread; posting comes with Pro.

  • The thread belongs to this story, not to a general forum
  • Readable on a free account, from the first story you open
  • Every reply is attached to the article it is about
DiscussionsHauptstraße wird zur Fahrradstraße
Amara · learner

Took me three passes to see that gesperrt is doing the work of a whole English clause here.

Tobias · learner

Same. The Translation tab helped, but only after I had guessed first.

Notes

Write on the story while you are still in it, and keep the note to yourself or share it so anyone else reading that story sees it.

  • Written in the reader, saved against the story you wrote it on
  • Private by default, shared when you flip it
  • Shared notes show up for the next person on the same article
Write it on the story. Flip to Shared. The next reader sees it.
  1. A note panel with nothing in it yet: an empty title, an empty note, set to Private, and Save note out of reach.
  2. A German title lands, then the note's first line, and Save note becomes available.
  3. The rest of the note is written, its bold and its code arriving already formatted, and the note is switched from Private to Shared, which means anyone on this story.
  4. Saving it puts the note under the composer, with Stories marked as where this one lives.

Quizzes

When a story carries graded questions, they sit here. Marking happens on the server, and the answer key never reaches your browser before you submit.

  • Graded against the story you have just read
  • Nothing on screen to copy the answer from
  • Your best attempt is the one that counts
05Finding the next one

Mark it read. The shelf keeps count.

Every story ends with a mark-as-read control, and the card on the shelf carries the mark afterwards. Filter to Unread when you want something you have not been through, or to Read when you want to go back over one you have.

Stories carry tags. Tap one and the shelf narrows to it, so you can read around a subject rather than down a list.

06Free and Pro

3 stories a month, free.

The shelf itself costs nothing: the titles, the covers, the tags, the search, all of it, on a free account, always. Opening a story is the thing that counts, and a free account opens 3 in a month.

Opening one you have already opened this month does not count twice. Re-read it as often as you want; the count is of stories, not of visits.

Pro takes the monthly count away.

07Questions

Before you start reading

Start today.

Your first step to Germany, Austria or Switzerland starts today. Come in as a founding member, and pay the founding price.

The founding price is open for a limited window. Register and pay while it is open and you keep that price on every Pro renewal after it. So make a start, and learn German in the one app that carries all of it.

Founding price
$299the price it goes back to
$89.00
per year$7.42 a month
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