What Try Convi is

A free phrasebook and practice app for the conversations you actually have on a trip: ordering the second round, arguing with a taxi driver, getting into a club, asking a pharmacist for something for your head. Three editions, 44 sections, over 500 lines, no account and nothing to buy.

Three editions, written separately

Spanish, Swedish and German are three independent bodies of content, not one set of phrases translated three ways. A Swedish line is what somebody in Stockholm would say in that moment, arrived at on its own. That is why the Swedish and Spanish editions do not have all the same sections as each other, and why the German one has separate Bavarian and Berlin sets. Machine-translating one edition into another would have been faster and would have taught people to sound like a translation.

• 🇪🇸
  Spanish (Spain)

  14 sections. Read the scenarios or practice them.

• 🇸🇪
  Swedish (Stockholm)

  14 sections. Read the scenarios or practice them.

• 🇩🇪
  German (Germany)

  16 sections. Read the scenarios or practice them.

What's on a scenario page

The most useful line first, then the exchanges in full: what they ask, what you say, and what they will probably say back. That last part is the bit textbooks leave out, and it is the reason a phrase you learned cleanly still leaves you stuck: you produced your line and then someone answered.

Lines carry warnings where they need them. A phrase markedCatalà is not Spanish, and one marked Bairisch will make you sound like a tourist doing an accent outside Bavaria. Register is flagged the same way, because the difference between friendly and rude is not something you want to discover in person.

Practice, and Talk Mode

Practice is a guided path through every section: rounds of eight, mixing situations, matching pairs and typed answers, so the line arrives when you need it rather than two hours later.

Talk Mode sits beside the path and is the other half of it. It holds an everyday conversation in the language: you walk up and say hello, the bartender asks what you're having, you type back, and what you order decides what comes next. Get it wrong and you are shown the line you were reaching for, in the language and in English, and the conversation carries on. There is no English on the screen otherwise, because a translation under every line is the line people read.

Who made this

Straight answers

Is it free?

Entirely. Every scenario, every language, and the whole practice section. There is no trial, no card and nothing held back for a paid tier.

Do I need an account?

No, and there isn't one to make. Your progress lives in your own browser, which is also the honest downside: clear your site data and it goes with it.

Which Spanish is this?

Spain Spanish: vosotros, caña, vale. It is not Latin American, and a lot of it would mark you out as a visitor in Mexico City. Swedish is Stockholm-weighted. German is Germany-wide, with Bavarian and Berlin handled separately rather than blended in.

Is any of it machine-translated?

No. Every line is written by a person and reviewed before it ships, and the test suite checks each edition for lines that accidentally teach the same thing twice.

Can I use it offline?

No. There is a service worker, but it exists only so reminders can reach you. It does not cache the site. Caching a phrasebook means somebody eventually reading a line that was corrected a month ago, which is worse than needing a connection.

Every section

All 44 of them, across the three editions.

Contact

hello@tryconvi.com. If a line is wrong, or nobody says it that way where you live, that is the most useful email we can get: say where you heard it and what you'd say instead.