Key takeaways
- Before comparing features, check whether the platform actually offers your language — for the large apps that is a yes or no question and it settles most of the decision.
- "Available" can mean a produced course or a set of word lists contributed by other learners. Both are useful; they are not the same product, and the vendor's own language page usually says which you are getting.
- A flashcard scheduler like Anki ships with no content at all, which is exactly why it works for languages nothing else covers — you or someone else supplies the material.
- For a tonal language, whether the app teaches the sound system before the conversation is the single most consequential design choice it makes.
- No app makes anyone fluent, and none of the tools here are a substitute for time spent with fluent speakers.
Most language app comparisons assume the hard part is choosing between products. For anyone learning Spanish, that is true. For anyone learning Cantonese, Khmer or Malay, the hard part happens one step earlier: finding out which products cover the language at all, and what "cover" turns out to mean.
That single question eliminates more options than every feature comparison combined, and it is answerable in about five minutes.
Disclosure: this article is published by Reign Creative LLC. We publish Android courses for several of the languages discussed here, including the Cantonese course named below, so we have a direct commercial interest in you installing one. We have written this to be useful if you end up somewhere else, and the recommendations at the end genuinely point elsewhere in several cases.
Everything stated about another company's product was read on that company's own website on 3 September 2026 and is limited to what those pages said. Course catalogues change; check the current listing yourself before deciding.
Check availability before you compare anything
Duolingo's own introduction to its catalogue states: "We offer over 100 courses teaching 40+ languages," and a separate post on its blog describes it as "the free language app that teaches more than 40 languages." Those numbers are the company's own, and they are the right frame for the decision.
Forty-plus is a lot of languages. It is also a tiny fraction of the languages people actually want to learn, and which forty-plus changes over time as courses are added. So the first thing to do is not read a comparison article — it is to open the platform's own course list and look for your language. If it is there, the case for using the biggest platform is strong: more content, more polish, more people to ask when you get stuck.
If it is not there, the rest of this article is for you.
"Available" can mean two different things
This is the distinction that trips people up, and it is visible on vendors' own pages if you know to look for it.
When we read Memrise's pages for Cantonese, Khmer and Malay on 3 September 2026, each one described the offering the same way: Memrise teaches that language's vocabulary "with word lists created by other users." On the Cantonese page, Cantonese did not appear among the courses listed in the page's own navigation.
That is a description of a content model, not a criticism. Community-contributed word lists are how an enormous amount of rare-language study actually happens, and for a language with no commercial course anywhere they may be the best material in existence. But they are a different product from a sequenced course, and the difference shows up in practice:
- A produced course has decided what comes first. Someone chose the order of the grammar, the point at which the script is introduced, and what gets reviewed when.
- A word list gives you items. You are supplying the sequencing, the grammar and the judgement about what matters.
Neither is better in the abstract. But if you are a complete beginner in a language whose writing system you cannot yet read, "you supply the structure" is a much heavier ask than it sounds.
Memrise's own home page describes its produced-course method as built on native speaker videos with pronunciation practice, verb conjugation, sentence building and AI speaking practice, and states plainly: "You can start learning for free. Our paid plan unlocks extra features, but building confidence doesn't have to cost a thing." For the languages where that machinery exists, it is a serious product. The question is only whether it exists for yours.
Four shapes of tool
Once you stop sorting by brand and start sorting by what the software actually is, there are roughly four shapes, and they fail and succeed for different reasons.
The large course platform
Duolingo is the reference example. Its own blog describes a free app, and on the date shown said it offered "over 100 courses teaching 40+ languages". The same page describes Duolingo Max as adding "GPT-4-powered features like Video Call with Lily, chat roleplays with your favorite Duolingo characters, and personalized grammar explanations" on top of Super Duolingo. Where a course exists, this shape gives you sequencing, habit mechanics and scale.
The trade is inherent to the shape rather than to any company: producing a course is expensive, so coverage concentrates where demand is largest. The languages named across Duolingo's own pages we read are Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Greek and English — which tells you where the production effort has gone, not what the full catalogue contains. Go and read the catalogue.
The vocabulary platform with community contributions
Memrise, as described above. Enormous language coverage; two different content models underneath it. Check which one applies to your language on Memrise's own page for that language before you plan a study routine around it.
The scheduling engine with no content
Anki is the odd one out and the most under-appreciated tool in this article. Its own site describes it as "a flashcard program that helps you spend more time on challenging material, and less on what you already know," scheduling each card's next review "for when you're most likely to forget the information."
Critically, it ships with no study material at all. You build decks or download shared ones through AnkiWeb. The computer version is free for all major platforms, AnkiDroid on Android is described on that page as "free and developed by contributors," and the iOS app is a paid purchase that funds development.
That combination — free on Android, no content, best-in-class scheduling — makes it the default answer for languages nothing else covers. If someone has published a shared deck for your language, you have a study tool. If nobody has, you can still build one from a textbook. Nothing else in this article degrades so gracefully as coverage disappears.
What it will not do is teach you. There is no syllabus, no grammar explanation and no pronunciation model. Many people run Anki alongside a course rather than instead of one.
The audio method
Pimsleur publishes a Chinese (Cantonese) course. Its own page for that course describes audio-language instruction with supplemental learning tools, states that "each lesson takes just 30 minutes," and refers to Levels 1–5 steadily expanding speaking skills, with supplemental flashcards, quizzes, interactive exercises and a Voice Coach tool offering AI pronunciation feedback.
The page describes the course in terms of listening and speaking. If your goal is to talk to relatives or to get around a city, and reading is secondary or irrelevant, an audio-first method is a legitimate and well-established route, and for some learners it is a better fit than any screen-based course including ours. Check their site for how the course is sold and whether written Cantonese is covered anywhere in the product.
What a tonal language and an unfamiliar script actually demand
Feature lists rarely capture this, and it is where beginner courses succeed or fail.
Tone is not decoration. In Cantonese, the same syllable carries different meanings at different pitches. Jyutping — the romanisation produced by the Linguistic Society of Hong Kong, whose own materials reference the original 1993 scheme — marks six tones. An app that teaches you vocabulary without first teaching you to hear and produce those contrasts is handing you words you will pronounce as something else. Whether the sound system comes before the conversation is the most consequential design decision a Cantonese course makes.
A new script is a separate project from a new language. Chinese characters live in Unicode's CJK Unified Ideographs block at U+4E00–U+9FFF; Khmer has its own block at U+1780–U+17FF. A learner of either is doing two things at once: learning to read, and learning to speak. Courses that acknowledge that split — teaching the script deliberately rather than assuming it — save you a month of confusion. Our Khmer beginner's guide and Thai script guide go through what that costs in practice.
And sometimes there is no script problem at all. Malay is written in the Latin alphabet, which removes the reading barrier entirely and puts the whole difficulty into vocabulary, affixes and usage. That makes it one of the more approachable starting languages, and it changes what you should look for in a course — see the Malay beginner's guide.
Where our Cantonese course sits
Learn Cantonese for Beginners is the specialist shape: one language, one sequenced path, built on the assumption that Cantonese is its own spoken language rather than a variant of Mandarin.
Twelve units run from greetings and introductions out through family, food, shopping, numbers, money, dates and time, transport, work, school, health, emergencies and social situations. Pronunciation gets its own foundation first — initials, finals, syllables, then tone contrasts — before conversation. Traditional characters and Jyutping appear together from the first lesson, so reading and pronunciation are learned at the same time rather than one bolted on later. Grammar is taught on Cantonese terms: word order, pronouns, classifiers, possession, negation, aspect markers, questions, comparisons, adjective placement and sentence-final particles.
Review is the part that holds it together. Daily Review, Speed Run Review, Mistake Rescue, Listening Blitz, Sentence Builder, Match Blitz and Dictation Mode all draw on material you have already covered, and a missed-questions list collects what you keep getting wrong. There is no hearts or lives system, so a mistake never blocks you. Cantonese-from-English and English-from-Cantonese are separate courses with separate progress. Where your device provides a Cantonese voice the app uses it, and falls back clearly when it does not.
It is free on Google Play, supported by ads, with optional in-app purchases; some locked lessons can be opened with a rewarded ad when one is available.
The honest limits: it teaches one language. There is no community, no live tutoring and no video call. Our courses are written and edited by our own team, and we do not claim they were reviewed by native speakers or professional linguists — where you see no named reviewer on an article or an app, no such review took place. And no beginner course, ours included, produces fluency; it produces a foundation you then take to actual conversation.
We publish separate beginner courses for Khmer, Malay, Thai and Russian on the same model, listed under language learning, and the Cantonese beginner's guide covers the language itself rather than the software.
Honest recommendations
If your language is on a large platform's course list, start there. Scale is a real advantage and free is a real price.
If your language appears on a platform only as community word lists, decide whether you want to supply the structure. If you are an experienced language learner, that is a fine trade. If this is your first language, it usually is not.
If nothing covers your language, use Anki with a shared deck, and find a grammar reference separately. It is free on Android and it does the one thing — scheduling review — that human willpower does worst.
If you want to speak rather than read, an audio method such as the Pimsleur course described above fits that goal more directly than a reading-and-writing course, ours included.
If you specifically want Cantonese with tones and characters from the start, that is what ours is built for, and it is why it exists.
If you want a tutor, none of these are that. Apps are a supplement to conversation, not a replacement for it.
How we checked, and a note on names
Every statement above about Duolingo, Memrise, Anki and Pimsleur was read on those companies' own websites on 3 September 2026 and is reported as what those pages said. We did not state which languages any platform does or does not offer beyond what its own pages showed us, because catalogues change and an out-of-date absence claim is worse than no claim. We used no screenshots, icons or brand styling.
Duolingo, Memrise, Anki, AnkiDroid, Pimsleur and all other product names and trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Their use here is nominative — for identification of the products discussed — and implies no affiliation, sponsorship, partnership or endorsement in either direction.
Good to know
Frequently asked questions
Which language app is best for a language that is not widely taught?
What is the difference between an official course and community word lists?
Does Memrise have a Cantonese, Khmer or Malay course?
Is Anki good for learning a language?
Does Pimsleur teach Cantonese?
Can any app make me fluent?
Sources
- Duolingo 101: How to learn a language on Duolingo (opens in a new tab)Duolingo, Inc. — accessed
- New on Duolingo: Better Courses, Updated Features—and Still Free! (opens in a new tab)Duolingo, Inc. — accessed
- Memrise — Learn a language (opens in a new tab)Memrise Ltd. — accessed
- Learn Cantonese with Memrise (opens in a new tab)Memrise Ltd. — accessed
- Learn Khmer with Memrise (opens in a new tab)Memrise Ltd. — accessed
- Learn Malay with Memrise (opens in a new tab)Memrise Ltd. — accessed
- Anki — powerful, intelligent flashcards (opens in a new tab)Ankitects Pty Ltd — accessed
- Learn to Speak Chinese (Cantonese) (opens in a new tab)Pimsleur, Simon & Schuster — accessed
- Jyutping (粵拼) (opens in a new tab)Linguistic Society of Hong Kong — accessed
- Unicode Character Code Charts (opens in a new tab)Unicode, Inc. — accessed
