Swedish flashcards with spaced repetition

Why flashcards work for Swedish vocabulary

Reading a word list feels productive, but recognition is not recall. A flashcard forces you to retrieve the answer from memory — what does vän mean? is it en or ett? — and that act of active recall is what moves a word from short-term familiarity into long-term memory. For Swedish this matters twice over: besides the meaning, every noun carries its en/ett gender and its inflection forms (hund, hunden, hundar, hundarna), and flashcards are the most reliable way to drill those facts together with the word instead of relearning them later.

Spaced repetition: review right before you forget

The second half of the method is when you see each card. Without review, most new vocabulary fades within days — the classic forgetting curve. Spaced repetition schedules each flashcard to come back just before you would forget it, with growing intervals as you master it. That is far more efficient than re-reading word lists: solid words rest for weeks while shaky words return the next day.

In SveLingo the schedule is automatic:

• Every saved word gets a mastery level from 0 to 5.
• Intervals adapt — words you miss return sooner, words you know rest longer.
• The daily review session is sized to fit your streak, not exhaust it: ten focused minutes a day keeps hundreds of words alive.

Flashcards built from a real dictionary

SveLingo flashcards are not bare word pairs. Each card is backed by a full Swedish dictionary entry: the English meaning, the en/ett gender, the complete inflection table, real example sentences, and Swedish pronunciation audio. When a card comes up you are one tap from the whole entry — see förstå or lagom for what that looks like. Look a word up once, save it, and it becomes a flashcard with all of that context attached.

Start from CEFR and SFI wordbooks

You do not have to build your deck word by word. SveLingo ships curated wordbooks aligned with CEFR levels A1–B1 and with SFI vocabulary, so you can start reviewing the most useful words for your level on day one. Not sure where to start? The free 5-minute level check estimates your vocabulary size and points you at the right wordbook. Words you collect yourself — from class, the news, or the street — go into your own wordbooks and join the same review schedule.

Free on web and iPhone

The dictionary is open to everyone with no account, and a free account adds saved words, wordbooks, and the daily spaced-repetition review. Your flashcards and progress sync between the web app and the SveLingo iPhone app, so you can review on the bus and look words up at your desk. When you want more than vocabulary, the free Swedish grammar book covers the patterns behind the words you are learning.

Create a free account and your first review session is one saved word away.