Learn Swedish
Swedish grammar is small and familiar, and almost the whole difficulty of the language sits in a handful of sounds — two that English does not have at all, one of which hides behind five different spellings. iLexiBox front-loads exactly those, because a learner who has them has removed most of what makes Swedish hard to say and, more to the point, hard to hear.
Start at the alphabet
The Swedish on-ramp is written by hand, not generated, and it is 475 cards long. Every card is spoken in a recorded Swedish voice, and what you get right is scheduled for review rather than shown again at random.
- 29letters
- 10digits
- 16pronunciation rules
- 300core words
- 60everyday phrases
- 60sentences
Three of the pronunciation cards, exactly as the course teaches them:
- sju — the sj-sound is the one sound Swedish has that English simply does not: a soft breathy rush made far back in the mouth, with the lips rounded. It hides behind five spellings — sj, skj, stj, sk before a front vowel, and the -ti- of -tion. There is nothing to compare it to; copy it off the audio.station — station
- tjugo — the tj-sound is a different, lighter one: start from the “ch” of “cheer”, take the “t” off the front and let what is left hiss. Spelled tj, kj, or k before e, i, y, ä, ö.köpa — to buy
- gata / göra — g has two lives, decided entirely by the letter that follows it: a hard “g” before a, o, u, å and consonants, a plain “y” before e, i, y, ä, ögärna — gladly
Then material that does not run out
Once you are reading, the level is the point. The Text Generator writes Swedish at the CEFR level, length, topic and format you ask for, so the step up is a setting rather than a new book. Speaking scores you word by word as you read aloud. The Conversation Partner talks back. The Translator explains a sentence instead of replacing it, and the Corrector marks what you wrote and says why.
Above the on-ramp sits the Path — a station map from A1 to C2 with grammar, vocabulary and checkpoint stations — and Words & Notes, where everything you save comes back on a spaced-repetition schedule in seven quiz styles.
2,373 photographs, 2,337 of them captioned in Swedish
The album is a photograph for every word, shelved by category, each caption written in Swedish and spoken in a real recorded voice rather than synthesised on the fly. It doubles as a game: see the picture, spell the word. Free to replay.
What Swedish actually costs a beginner
The sj-sound is a soft breathy rush made far back in the mouth with the lips rounded; there is nothing in English to compare it to, and it is written sj, skj, stj, sk before a front vowel, and as the -ti- of station. The tj-sound is a different and lighter one. And g leads two lives decided entirely by the letter after it: hard before a, o, u and å, a plain y before e, i, y, ä and ö. Beyond those, Swedish is pitch-accented, so anden is the duck or the spirit according to melody alone. All of it is copied off a recorded Swedish voice.
54 languages in the app, CEFR A1–C2.