The best AI apps to practice speaking Hebrew

What you need to practice speaking Hebrew

Hebrew takes work. In our ranking of 67 languages it’s the 32nd hardest for English speakers, at 5,552 effort points. That’s almost twice what Spanish takes (2,941), a bit less than Russian (6,067) or Arabic (6,480), and right next to Greek (5,505).

The alphabet is the quick part: 22 letters, and most people can sound out words within a couple of weeks. What makes Hebrew hard is reading without vowels, and getting gender right at full speed, in a real conversation.

• No vowels on the pageHebrew is normally written without its vowels. ספר can be sefer, a book, sapar, a barber, or siper, he told. The dots and dashes that mark vowels, called niqqud, show up in children’s books and poetry, and hardly anywhere else. You read from the words around it. Until then, you want the pronunciation above each word.
• Verbs for him and her“You” and most verbs change with who you talk to. Do you want coffee? is אתה רוצה קפה? (ata rotse kafe) to a man, and את רוצה קפה? (at rotsa kafe) to a woman. And רוצה is spelled the same both times: without vowels, you only hear the difference. Your own gender counts too. A man says אני גר (ani gar), I live, a woman אני גרה (ani gara).
• Three-letter rootsMost words are built from a root of three letters. כ-ת-ב is writing: כתב (katav), he wrote, מכתב (mikhtav), a letter, כתובת (ktovet), an address, התכתבנו (hitkatavnu), we wrote to each other. Knowing the root helps you guess new words. Using it means picking the right pattern and the right ending while you talk.
• Sounds from the throatThe ר is said at the back of the throat, close to a French r, and ח is the kh in Scottish loch: חבר (khaver), friend. Most Israelis say ח and כ the same way, so you hear one sound and have to learn which letter it is. The quickest fix: say your sentence, then hear a native speaker say the same one.
• Lots of Hebrew you understandSpeaking activates the words you have. New words come from input: videos, podcasts and texts where you already understand most of it.
• Lots of speaking timeHebrew takes almost twice the hours of Spanish, one of the easiest languages for English speakers, and most of them should be spent talking. A few minutes a day won’t get you there.

A complete fluency system, not just a speaking app

Our speaking practice is the heart of Teacher AI. But speaking alone won’t make you fluent, and neither will input alone. You need both, and you need to see it working. With Hebrew that matters even more: apart from a few words like שלום (shalom), almost every word is new to you, so you need to meet each one many times.

So Teacher AI is a complete fluency system. Input grows your Hebrew. Speaking activates it. And we track every word along the way, to get you to real fluency as fast as we can.

1. Step 1Input grows your vocabularyWatch Hebrew YouTube videos and podcasts, and read stories written at your level, with the transliteration above every word. You always see how much you already understand, and every word you tap becomes a flashcard. How Watch and Read work.
2. Step 2Speaking activates itRecognizing a word isn’t the same as saying it, with the right form for a man or a woman and the right pattern from its root. Talking with your teacher, for as long as you like, is how words move from “I know that one” to “I just said it”. Every mistake gets fixed, with a Why?.
3. Step 3We track every wordYour passive words are the ones you understand when you read or hear them. Your active words are the ones you’ve used yourself. You see both grow, how your time splits between input and output, and how many words to your next level.

Brand new to Hebrew? Start somewhere else first. Teacher AI works best from about A2, once you can handle simple everyday sentences. Before that, you just don’t have enough words yet for open conversation. So learn the alphabet and the basics with Duolingo, which teaches Hebrew for free and has a tab for the letters, or with Pimsleur. Then come back when you want to talk.

What it looks like in Hebrew

Here’s what a moment of practice looks like. You answer, your teacher replies with the pronunciation above every word, and if you made a mistake, your sentence gets fixed right there.

A card for every word you tap

Tap any word, in a conversation, a video or a story, and you get its card: what it means, how to say it, what kind of word it is, and an example with a translation. Tap play to hear it.

An illustration of three word cards, rebuilt for this page. On the real card, the wording depends on the word. Below: real screenshots of the web app.

Meet your Hebrew teachers

Two teachers, both from Tel Aviv: Noa and Yoni. Pick the one you like, or switch between them. It’s good practice: to Noa you say את (at) for “you”, to Yoni אתה (ata).

• 
  Noa Levi

  Tel Aviv · Israeli
• 
  Yoni Cohen

  Tel Aviv · Israeli

Input: Hebrew to watch and read, at your level

Here’s the input side up close. New words come from lots of Hebrew you hear and read, where you already understand most of it.

Watch and Read are on the web app for now, both with the transliteration above every word. Words you read along with, without tapping, count toward your passive words. Every word you tap lands in your flashcards. And when you’re done, you talk about it with your teacher.

• Any YouTube videoPaste a link to a Hebrew YouTube video, or an Apple Podcasts episode. An Israeli podcast, a cooking show, a Tel Aviv vlog: you pick. We turn it into a page you read along with, new words in yellow. No subtitles? On a paid plan we transcribe it for you, within a monthly allowance.
• Stories written for youRead writes Hebrew texts at your level, from A1 to Native, about anything you like, and suggests ideas from what you talk about with your teacher.
• How much you know, before you startTeacher AI keeps a list of every Hebrew word you’ve met: the ones you use when you talk, the ones you read or hear, the ones you tap. It checks every word of a video or text against that list and shows you the share you already know.
• The 80% rulePick videos and texts where you know 80% or more of the words. Then your brain fills in the rest from context. Under 70% is too much for now. 90% and up is easy and fun.
• Then talk about itOne tap on Talk about this starts a conversation about what you just watched or read. Retelling it is how new words become words you can say.

Teacher AI or Duolingo?

Lots of people start Hebrew on Duolingo: 1.3 million learners, it says. Good! So here’s how the two compare for speaking, with every Duolingo fact from Duolingo’s own pages.

The apps side by side

The apps, one by one

Where another app might suit you better

Head-to-head comparisons

Teacher AI vs Talkpal · Teacher AI vs Duolingo. All comparisons.

Other languages

SpanishSpain and Latin AmericaFrenchFrance, Belgium and SwitzerlandMandarin ChineseSimplified or Traditional, with pinyinCantoneseHong Kong, with JyutpingThaiWith spaces between words, and Paiboon+ or IPAJapaneseWith furigana or romaji, and a kanji countDutchThe Netherlands and Flanders, with Flemish voicesBrazilian PortugueseWith Brazilian teachers and well-known polyglotsItalianWith Italian teachers from Podcast Italiano and Vaporetto ItalianoGermanWith German and Austrian teachers, from Lingster Academy to Herr AntrimEuropean PortugueseWith teachers from Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra and Faro, and Portuguese With LeoEnglishWith American and British teachers, from Espresso English to English Like A NativeKoreanWith teachers from Seoul and Busan, and every dropped 요 fixedRussianWith the stress marked above every wordTurkishWith Can from Turkishle, and every ending fixed as you talkArabicWith teachers from Cairo, Amman and Jeddah, and a straight answer on MSA or dialectPolishWith teachers from Warsaw, and every case ending fixedSwedishPitch accent, en or ett, and nobody switching to EnglishIndonesianWith teachers from Bali and Bandung, for the Indonesian people actually speakHindiWith teachers from Delhi, Jaipur and Mumbai, and every missing ने fixedRomanianWith teachers from Bucharest and Transylvania, and every ending explainedCatalanFor when Barcelona keeps answering you in SpanishVietnameseWith teachers from Hanoi and Sapa, and every tone, classifier and pronoun fixedUkrainianWith two teachers from Lviv, and every case fixed as you talkGreekWith teachers from Crete and Thessaloniki, and every gender and ending explainedCzechWith Klara and Lukáš from Brno, and a Why? on every case ending