-
Hi everyone,
I hope you've had a great week of learning languages and coding! As someone learning Swedish myself, I know how tough it can be—especially if you're shy like me and feel awkward speaking with native speakers. Reading news articles? Even harder, with all the unfamiliar words.
That’s exactly why I built Ordböcker: an all-in-one dictionary app to make Swedish learning easier and less intimidating.
With Ordböcker, you can instantly look up any word on a webpage—just double-click it. You’ll get definitions from multiple trusted sources with one click on the icon. Vocabulary is the biggest challenge when reading Swedish news—that’s exactly what Ordböcker helps with.
For example, my wife, who’s an intermediate learner, prefers svenska.se for Swedish–Swedish definitions. I’m still a beginner, so I stick with Glosbe.
Here are some dictionaries I find helpful and set as default, but you can suggest more:
Beginner-friendly:
Glosbe (Swedish–English)
Reverso (context examples)
Captionz (YouTube examples)
Intermediate:
Svenska.se (SAOL, SO, SAOB—all in one)Ordböcker also lets you export your word history to Anki flashcards with just one click—super handy if you’re serious about remembering what you’ve learned.
If you haven’t tried Anki yet, it’s a fantastic app that helps you review words over time using spaced repetition (a fancy way of saying it reminds you just before you’re about to forget).
Honestly, Anki is my secret weapon for learning languages. I owe half my Swedish vocabulary to it—and now with Ordböcker, adding new words takes less effort.
Swedish verbs change differently, so I also wanted it to find the root form of words—not all dictionary tools can do that. Certainly Dictionariez is more focused on English, and don’t really prioritize Swedish. For example, when I look up the word fart, I want the Swedish meaning to show up first in Ordböcker.
If you’re already using Dictionariez and mainly learning Swedish through English, I recommend switching to Ordböcker. It offers most of the same features but prioritizes Swedish over English.
My tip? Don’t take on too many new words at once—stay motivated, not overwhelmed.
Focus on words you actually see and hear often. It’s more useful to really know 10 common words than to half-remember 100 rare ones.When you add words to Anki, keep the cards simple. Just the word, a short definition, maybe an example sentence. If a card feels like homework, you’ll end up skipping it.
Try to review a little bit every day. Even 5–10 minutes of Anki goes a long way—consistency really is the secret.
And remember, you don’t have to understand everything right away. Getting the general idea is already a win!
If you try out Ordböcker, I’d love to hear what you think. Got suggestions, ideas, or something that’s not working? Your feedback helps me make it better for everyone learning Swedish!
Download links
Support me!