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Tongue of Fire is all about giving you control over your own learning: what we call a "trust the user" mentality. Most other language sites are built with a "one size fits all" mentality, teaching exactly the same content to everybody and having everybody complete the same drills in one linear path. At Tongue of Fire, we believe that one size does not fit all, so we strive to return power over your education back to you.

Here, you can learn literally any word you want, whenever you want. We have a recommended curriculum of words, but you are free to skip around it as much as you like and design a vocabulary that's tailor-made for your life.

Also, we've split practice sessions up into individual skills so that you can focus on whichever one you need. Do you need to improve your listening? You can practice that on the AI page for as long as you'd like. Does your conjugation need work? You have unlimited access to those drills on the Conjugation page. Do you want to explore the details of every Chinese character in your words? You can visit the Characters page to learn the written form, pronunciation, or meaning (your choice) of any or all of them.

We're not the only website that gives AI feedback, but we are the only one that does it for free. You never need to spend a dime to get unlimited access to the detailed, thoughtful, and personalized fine-tuning that's possible with AI on Tongue of Fire.

While the other language learning sites are constantly deciding what you need and what you don't, we at Tongue of Fire trust you to make that decision for yourself. We've provided the tools: now it's your choice what to make of them. Whatever you may choose to learn with us, we know it will be spectacular.

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Our name is a reference to the Bible in the book of Acts, chapter 2. That passage describes the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended on every one of the apostles in the form of a tongue of fire and miraculously enabled them to speak foreign languages that they had never learned. That ability changed their lives and the lives of thousands of others as they traveled the world and spread the good news of Jesus.

We strive to help you discover your own tongue of fire: your God-given capacity to learn and speak whatever language you choose with fluency (regardless of how old you are). While it won't be instantaneous like it was for the apostles, we're convinced that, if you put in regular effort, you can master your language more quickly than you think and use it to travel the world.

As Christians, we also hope that this site can help our Christian users better glorify God by connecting with His children who don't speak English. With your language abilities, you'll be able to be a friend to a lonely exchange student or forge transformative relationships with international communities on mission trips. Language barriers were put in place by humanity's rebellion against God (Genesis 11), but you can help us break them down and replace those barriers with the love of Jesus.

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Typing in your target language usually requires you to install a keyboard for that language: not a physical keyboard, but a different digital system for mapping your physical keys to characters. Even if your language uses the Latin alphabet (the same alphabet as English), if it has accent marks, you may still need to install another keyboard to type them. Here's how to do that:

For Windows users:

• Open the Settings app
• Click Time & Language
• Click Typing
• Click Language & Region
• For languages with Latin scripts (that use the same alphabet as English):
  • Click the three dots next to English (United States)
  • Select Language Options
  • Click Add a keyboard
  • Click United States - International
  • You now have two keyboard inputs! You can press ⊞ + space or click ENG - US in the bottom-right corner to switch between them. Here's how to type some common accent marks and special characters while using the US - International keyboard:
    • acute accent (á): ', vowel (press and release ', then press and release any vowel key)
    • grave accent (à): `, vowel
    • dieresis/umlaut (ä): ", vowel
    • circumflex (â): ^, vowel
    • tilde: ~, vowel
    • ñ: Shift + ~, n or Alt + n (press n while holding Alt)
    • cedilla (ç): ', c or Alt + ,
    • scharfes S (ß): Alt + s
    • angle quotes (« and »): Alt + [ and Alt + ]
    • Inverted exclamation and question marks (¡ and ¿): Alt + 1 and Alt + /
    • Any of the characters above can be capitalized by holding Shift while pressing the main letter (ex. type Ñ with Shift + ~, Shift + n or Alt + Shift + n)
  • Your language may have even more characters not listed here. If so, you can type those by installing a keyboard for your language (explained below under "For languages with non-Latin scripts") or by looking up its Alt-code here. You can use that code to type the character by holding the Alt key, typing the code on the number pad on the right side of the keyboard, and releasing Alt.
• For languages with non-Latin scripts:
  • click Add a Language
  • search for your language
  • click it and click Next
  • select all the optional features you want (the keyboard is automatically included)
  • click Install
  • The installation process can take up to an hour. If it has not finished after longer than that, try restarting or updating your computer.
  • Once it finishes installing, your new keyboard is ready! You can press ⊞ + space or click ENG - US in the bottom-right corner to switch between them. Go here to learn the layout of your particular keyboard.

For Mac users:

• For languages with Latin scripts (that use the same alphabet as English):
  • Mac devices can actually type most accent marks and characters from other languages without adding another keyboard. Here's how to type a few common accent marks and special characters:
  • Most accent marks: press and hold a key to see some variations of that letter, then press the number displayed next to the one you want.
  • acute accent (á): option + e, vowel (press e while holding option, release option, press any vowel key)
  • grave accent (à): option + `, vowel
  • dieresis/umlaut (ä): option + u, vowel
  • circumflex (â): option + i, vowel
  • tilde/ñ: option + n, vowel/n
  • cedilla (ç): option + c
  • sharfes s (ß): option + s
  • angle quotes (« and »): option + \, option + shift + \
  • oe and ae ligatures (œ and æ): option + q and option + '
  • Inverted exclamation and question marks (¡ and ¿): option + 1 and option + shift + /
  • macron (ā): option + shift + ,
  • breve (ă): option + shift + .
  • Any of the characters above can be capitalized by holding Shift while pressing the main letter (ex. type Ñ with option + n, shift + n)
  • Your language may have even more characters not listed here. If so, you can type those by installing a keyboard for your language (explained below under "For languages with non-Latin scripts")
• For languages with non-Latin scripts:
  • Open the System Settings app
  • Scroll down on the left and click Keyboard
  • Click the Edit... button next to Input sources
  • Click + in the bottom left corner
  • Search for your languages, click the keyboard you want (if multiple keyboards are offered), and click Add.
  • Your new keyboard is ready! You can switch between your keyboards by pressing the fn key in the bottom right corner of your physical keyboard.
  • To learn what the keys do on your new keyboard, navigate back to the keyboard settings, click Edit... again, and click the keyboard. It will show you a picture of a keyboard with the new character displayed on each key. You can view even more options by holding shift or option while viewing the keyboard.

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There are lots of great, psychologically based strategies to memorize vocabulary more quickly. Here are a few:

1. Space out your practice. Your brain is better at memorizing information when you rehearse in many short sessions rather than one long session. If you practice for short periods of time throughout the day, even just for five minutes, your subconscious will have enough time to solidify what you learn after every single session. Try practicing for five minutes, three times per day (fifteen minutes per day) to see how spacing improves your memory.
2. Use recognition first, then use recall. There are two different ways to study: recognition, which shows you the answer and lets you associate it with the prompt, and recall, which requires you to retrieve the answer from your memory. Recognition is easier and faster, while recall is more effective overall. It’s best to combine the two by getting to know new vocabulary with flashcards (a form of recognition), then moving on to typed practice (a form of recall). Try that, and you’ll be able to remember your words more often.
3. Come up with mnemonics. Mnemonics are tricks to remember a word by comparing it to a more memorable word. For example, to remember that the Chinese ‘kao’ means ‘test’, think of sitting down alongside a class full of cows to take a test. Or to remember that the Russian ‘ruka’ means ‘arm’, imagine your arm replaced with a giant rook (the chess piece). The best mnemonics are as ridiculous as possible, and they also take advantage of sensory imagery (sights, sounds, smells, etc.). Try coming up with a weird mnemonic whenever a word seems abstract or random: it almost always makes the word more memorable.
4. Don’t be afraid of repetition. It’s perfectly normal to need to repeat a word many times to learn it. If you find yourself forgetting words right after you mark them Familiar, try learning fewer new words and instead taking more time to review your Familiar words over and over. It may be boring, but repetition is key to any kind of learning.

Just like all skills, your memory will improve as you use it, so don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t come naturally to you. If you combine these four strategies with regular practice, soon you’ll find yourself learning words way faster than you thought you could!

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You probably don’t see your words because they’re stored in a different status from the one you’re looking at. Change the value of “Status” in the top right corner and see if they appear. There’s an explanation of what status is in the following question.

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Status refers to how well you’ve learned a word. For each language, you have four lists of words, one for each status: To Learn, New, Familiar, and Learned. The status system is designed for you to add words to To Learn, then move words from New to Familiar to Learned as you practice them (click the button on the Word Drills page to do this) to help you stay organized. Here’s an explanation of each status:

• To Learn: These are the words you’ve decided to learn, but haven’t started yet. Whenever you have fewer than five words in your New list, words will be automatically moved from the top of To Learn into New until you have five again. We recommend building a long list of words in To Learn so that you can learn them gradually over the next few weeks or months.
• New: These are the words you’ve just started learning. As mentioned above, they automatically refill from To Learn so that there are always five New words. That way, you’ll never be overwhelmed with too many words you don’t know yet. Since they’re new to you, we recommend learning them with flashcards instead of typed practice.
• Familiar: These are the words you know pretty well, but still need to practice some more. We recommend practicing these with typed practice every one to three days and only marking them Learned when you can consistently get them right. This list will get pretty long, and that’s all right.
• Learned: These are the words you’ve memorized by heart. You can stop focusing on words so much once you mark them Learned, but it’s worth studying these words every once in a while to make sure you still know them.

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You can change your preferences by going to the Preferences page, changing whatever preferences you want, and clicking Save at the bottom of the screen.

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To add or archive a language, visit the Preferences page. To add or remove a tense or case, visit the Words page, select your language and type (type should be “conjugation” or “case”), and click Add Tense or Add Case.