Klank

Learn the sounds of Dutch before the words.

Why

Klank is built by one learner, for one learner, who has lived in Amsterdam for nearly three years and still gets answered in English. Japanese stuck because of WaniKani: mnemonics, spaced repetition, and a strict order where nothing opens until the thing before it is solid. Dutch gets the same treatment.

The sounds come first because Dutch spelling is honest. Once the 29 sounds are automatic, a word you have never seen can be read aloud correctly, and every later step gets cheaper.

How it works

1The sounds29 cards: every vowel, the one spelling rule, the diphthongs, the schwa and the consonants that differ from English. Cleared when all are at Guru and the reading test is passed.
2The first wordsA hundred-odd words with mnemonics on the same engine, chosen so that the grammar in Step 3 comes for free.
3The grammar you already metWord order, de and het, past tenses, taught from the words you can already say.

A lesson teaches five cards and quizzes them, mostly by making you type what you hear. Every guide chapter ends in a quiz, the Quiz page tests any sounds you pick, and the games turn the same sounds into short rushes. Reviews come back after 2 hours, 4, 8, a day, then a week, two weeks, a month and four months. A miss sends a card back a stage. Your progress is saved in this browser and, if you sign in, merged across your devices.

Made with

Voices. 186 words are recordings by Dutch speakers who gave them to Wikimedia Commons, each credited by name in Settings. The rest are synthetic: Xander (Netherlands) and Ellen (Flanders), from Apple's speech engine, and the app says so every time one plays.
Type. Bricolage Grotesque by Mathieu Triay, Atkinson Hyperlegible by the Braille Institute, Gentium Plus by SIL. Icons by Lucide.
Method. The stage names, the intervals, the gated step and the tile quiz are borrowed with gratitude from WaniKani and Tofugu.
Stack. Next.js, React, Tailwind, shadcn, Supabase for sign-in and sync, Vercel for hosting. Designed with references from Mobbin.

The design system shows every colour, face and component.

Klank 0.1.0. Gemaakt in Amsterdam.

Why

The sounds come first because Dutch spelling is honest. Once the 29 sounds are automatic, a word you have never seen can be read aloud correctly, and every later step gets cheaper.

How it works

1The sounds29 cards: every vowel, the one spelling rule, the diphthongs, the schwa and the consonants that differ from English. Cleared when all are at Guru and the reading test is passed.

2The first wordsA hundred-odd words with mnemonics on the same engine, chosen so that the grammar in Step 3 comes for free.

3The grammar you already metWord order, de and het, past tenses, taught from the words you can already say.

Made with

Voices. 186 words are recordings by Dutch speakers who gave them to Wikimedia Commons, each credited by name in Settings. The rest are synthetic: Xander (Netherlands) and Ellen (Flanders), from Apple's speech engine, and the app says so every time one plays.

Type. Bricolage Grotesque by Mathieu Triay, Atkinson Hyperlegible by the Braille Institute, Gentium Plus by SIL. Icons by Lucide.

Method. The stage names, the intervals, the gated step and the tile quiz are borrowed with gratitude from WaniKani and Tofugu.

Stack. Next.js, React, Tailwind, shadcn, Supabase for sign-in and sync, Vercel for hosting. Designed with references from Mobbin.