A bilingual alphabet app for kids
If you are raising a child away from the country whose language you grew up speaking, you already know the pattern. Preschool arrives, English takes over, and the second language quietly becomes the one the child understands but answers in English.
Learnimals is not a fix for that — nothing you install is. What it does is make the second alphabet as ordinary and available as the first one, on the same device, in the same app, in a form a two-to-six-year-old will actually sit through.
Four alphabets, not one alphabet with subtitles
Learnimals teaches letters, numbers, colors and shapes in English, Russian, French and Spanish. All four are complete: interface and spoken audio, not a translated menu over an English voice track.
- Russian is a real Cyrillic alphabet — 33 letters, with its own recordings. It is not the Latin alphabet transliterated, and not 26 letters with a few extra glyphs bolted on. А, Б, В, Г are taught as А, Б, В, Г.
- English, French and Spanish have 26 letters each, each recorded separately in that language. The French e and the Spanish e are different sounds, and they are different recordings.
- 665 audio files ship inside the app. Every item has one recording for the learning cards and a second one for the games, in each of the four languages — 332 plus 332 — plus the background music track. That is where the number comes from; it is not a marketing round-up.
- Numbers 1–9, 12 colors and 14 shapes are spoken in all four languages too. Colors and shapes are the easiest vocabulary to lose first, because they rarely come up in a school day.
Nothing is machine-read on the fly by the device's text-to-speech. Every word a child hears was recorded in advance for that specific language, so pronunciation does not drift with an OS update.
Switching between them takes one tap
The language is a flag button in the top corner of the app. Tapping it switches everything at once — interface, card labels and every spoken word. There is no setup screen to revisit and no separate download per language: all four ship in the app from the first launch.
In practice that means a family can do the same twenty cards twice, once in each language, and a child hears the same picture named two ways in the same sitting. It also means the parent who speaks the heritage language and the parent who does not can both use the app without reconfiguring anything.
Why one app instead of two
The usual alternative is one polished English app plus whatever exists for the other language — often something with a different interface, different rules and a different level of care. Two apps means two learning curves for the child and two subscriptions for you.
One app means the second language is not the odd one out. The child already knows how the cards work; only the voice changes. That is a small thing, and it is most of the difference between a heritage language that feels normal and one that feels like homework.
What this app does not do
Being honest about the edges saves you a download:
- It teaches letters and words, not sentences. This is alphabet, number, color and shape vocabulary for ages 2–6. It is not a course, there is no grammar and no reading instruction.
- There is no translation mode. The app does not show two languages side by side or say a word twice in a row. You switch, and it is in the other language.
- There are no per-child profiles. Learnimals has no accounts at all, which is good for privacy and means progress is shared per device rather than per child.
- Four languages, and only four. English, Russian, French, Spanish. If you need another one, it is not here, and this page will not pretend otherwise.
Practical details
- iPhone and iPad, iOS 17 or newer.
- Free to download. All four categories and unlimited flashcard learning are free, as are four of the game modes, capped at one play a day; Premium lifts that cap, adds the two puzzle modes plus the 3D number models and AR, and removes ads.
- Works without internet once installed — the audio is on the device, not streamed. The one exception is the 3D number models, which download once on first use.
- Ads in the free tier are configured for a child audience; the exact settings are written out here.
Try it
Learnimals on the App Store — free, so you can check the recordings in your language before deciding anything. Questions go to samozvanecmac@gmail.com, and they are answered in English, Russian, French or Spanish by the person who made the app.