SpanishDict Review: A Reliable Reference but Lacking in Native Content

Since 1999, SpanishDict.com has been one of the (if not the) strongest Spanish dictionary and translation tools on the web. What started as a straightforward dictionary has adapted to become a comprehensive resource for learners. 

I took a deep dive into the fairly thorough and mostly free Spanish learning program. I found that it was perfect for beginners, but not so much for those who are past the basics and require native media for contextual learning.

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What Is SpanishDict?

If you’re a Spanish learner, you’ve undoubtedly been to SpanishDict at some point in your studies. SpanishDict.com, also known as SpanishDictionary.com, is a mix between a Spanish-English dictionary and language learning platform. It provides translations, definitions and examples for words and phrases in both languages. The site also offers educational resources, including grammar lessons and vocabulary guides.

The website was founded in 1999 by Jeremy Cummings and Martha Cummings and is now operated by Curiosity Media, whose slogan is: “Helping the World Speak English and Spanish”—and it has the resources to back it up. In addition to SpanishDictionary.com, the program also hosts inglés.com and the Spanish learning program, Fluencia. Altogether, the three websites boast a reach of over 100 million people per year!

The dictionary is without a doubt one of the most important resources for Spanish learners on the internet, with countless features to help you along like conjugations, full-sentence translations, a thesaurus, many example sentence and much more. 

The Spanish learning program implemented within the website is a solid addition to its offerings, albeit better suited for beginners and lacking in a few targeted skills. 

SpanishDict Features

A Robust Dictionary and Translator

First and foremost, SpanishDict is a powerful dictionary. And it doesn’t hide its best features behind a wall, either—you don’t need an accont to use the program as a dictionary.

Look up any word for a definition, pronunciation, thesaurus and tons of examples from “the wild.” The latter is one of my favorite sections, because it shows how the word I’m looking up is actually used. These examples aren’t reviewed for accuracy—they seem to be pulled from online resources like websites and articles—but they provide an excellent look at each word you’re learning. 

I also appreciate the section that shows phrases where the word appears, with links to definitions and audio prounciation. The website also makes it easy to learn even more about words by linking to related articles for each word you look up (where available) for additional information. 

The dictionary lookup feature has everything you could possibly want to check, including slang and even entire sentences or paragraphs. I gave this a shot by entering a sentence and the website not only gave me the translation of the sentence, but also a breakdown of each word and its useage and definition. 

Vocabulary and Grammar Resources

While I usually come to SpanishDict to look up specific words, the website also turns this on its head and gives you ways to learn directly from within the website. It does this by providing visitors with a huge number of themed vocabulary lists. There are even vocab lists and lessons based around Spanish learning textbooks, so you can have easy access to a vocabulary study guide to accompany your textbook studies. 

Also available without an account is the word of the day, the random word button, a robust conjugation tool and many articles with detailed explanations of grammar concepts—to name just a few features. 

When I spent some time clicking around within the website, I found that I quickly got sucked into it. I might have come to the website to check the definition of one word, but I was soon exploring the word of the day (bostezar — to yawn), testing how many words I knew for body parts in Spanish (perhaps unsurprisingly, the only word I didn’t know was las nalgas — buttocks) and clicking on the “random word” button over and over (through sheer chance, I kept getting cognates).

Before long, I decided to sign up for a free account so I could access the features that I couldn’t get to without one. Because, believe it or not, all the features I mentioned above can be used without even signing in! 

Interactive Spanish Learning Program

As soon as I signed up for SpanishDict with a free account, I was immediately invited to begin learning with the website. I was surprised to learn that the dictionary site, which I’ve used countless times for Spanish word lookups and examples of more obscure words in use, now has its own complete language learning program. 

I found the program to be easy and enjoyable to use, featuring a simple design with just enough pops of color to keep my eyes as engaged as my brain. The program had me listening to spoken Spanish, filling in blanks, typing in answers and forming sentences by organizing words in the right order.

At one point I decided to disable the audio questions. I found, weirdly, that instead of skipping over them entirely, the questions still show up but are marked with “Listening questions are disabled” with only “Continue” as an option to move forward. I suppose this is done because the audio is still transcribed, so you can read what you’re not hearing, but I thought that it broke up the lesson’s interactivity.

Each lesson is also complemented by in-depth explanations covering vocabulary and grammar aspects. However, I almost missed this because it’s not integrated into the body of the lesson. Instead, it’s found in a tiny icon between your points and the settings icon. There’s a lot of excellent information in this tab, so I was surprised that it wasn’t part of the main quiz section.

You also earn points as you complete lessons, which gave the gamer in me a little dopamine rush every time I watched my points increase.

Logical Lesson Progression

When I first entered the program, it assumed that I’m a complete beginner. If this is too easy, the program does allow you to test out of lessons and skip ahead to checkpoints, but I personally found this too difficult to do.

I’m a high intermediate Spanish learner but I had to slog through the complete beginner lessons because testing out requires you to know all the topics covered and be able to choose and type your answers.

Basically, I kept flunking out because I don’t know my sports and because my spelling wasn’t perfect (like when I translated “I go to the beach in August” to “Voy a la playa en ogosto” instead of “Voy a la playa en agosto.”). And since free users can only attempt one test per day, this means that for now, I’m stuck learning how to introduce myself all over again. 

Nevertheless, I explored the rest of the program, which can be seen in its entirety on the “Learn Spanish” tab. The lessons are pretty comprehensive, spanning all the way from beginner topics to more advanced ones, beginning with the basics of saying hello and introducing yourself, and moving up in difficulty from there.

It also focuses on actual usable language learning rather than simply teaching words in isolation. For instance, along your learning path, you’ll learn how to make new friends, give advice, visit various Spanish-speaking countries, apply to school or a job and much more. 

A Customizable Experience

As you learn, you can save vocabulary words to personalized lists, whether you add them manually or import them from a document or spreadsheet. With a free account, I also unlocked the ability to complete themed vocabulary quizzes, try my hand at conjugation drills and customize what appears in the quizzes. 

This latter was particularly useful, since I was able to change the lessons to suit my learning style. You can opt in or out of listening questions, manage the video speed and set whether writing questions require accent marks. You can even choose which regional variation you want to hear, Spain or Latin American Spanish. 

For me, this meant that I could choose Latin American Spanish since I’m studying to communicate with my Peruvian mother-in-law, leave the speed at normal to suit my current level and turn off the need for accent marks because I mostly plan to communicate bt speaking, not writing. This level of customization is impressive, and I love how I was able to mold the learning experience to align with my learning goals. 

Even More Features with a Premium Account

The free version of the learning program is ad supported, but the ads are pretty minor and non-intrusive. You can learn Spanish with SpanishDict with just a free account, but a Premium account gives you more features to play around with.

A Premium account unlocks a voice recognition feature, offline access to the app, the ability to jump to any level in the coure and the ability to translate text, images and documents and a spell-checker powered by spanishchecker.com. By upgrading, you also access slang, idiom and regional phrasebooks, download exclusive study materials and conversation starters and obtain one-page grammar study guides.

Premium also, of course, removes ads completely. 

You can try Premium for seven days, after which you can choose from different subscription plans: yearly at $59.99, six months at $39.99 or monthly at $12.99.

Mobile Apps for iOS and Android

If you prefer to take your learning on the go (and who doesn’t, these days?) you can do that with the iOS and Android app versions of the program. 

The apps have everything that the website includes, from the incredible dictionary to the learning program. It’s even more bright and cheery, and beautifully optimized for the phone screen. However, the unobstrusive website ads don’t translate quite as well to the mobile apps, and I found myself getting frustrated with them on mobile. 

Overall Impressions

User Friendliness

The website has a clean and friendly interface, with colorful icons accompanying each of the program’s features. The design seems to know when to focus on quantity and when to take a step back.

For instance, when you start a lesson, all distractions are eliminated as you go through questions centered and large in your browser window. But when you look up a word, you get a wealth of information on one page, presented with tabs for easy navication. 

Effectiveness

 

All the dictionary and reference elements of SpanishDict are beyond a doubt among the best resources you can find online. 

The learning program is just icing on the cake. You’re probably already visiting the website to use its translation and lookup capabilities. Why not stick around and use it to study the language, as well?

The lessons have enough variety to keep learners engaged and make sure you get grammar practice in addition to vocabulary gain.

With the free plan, you’re quite limited in your learning path and the language skills that you can practice, but you’ll still be making rapid progress since lessons are quick and simple enough to get through quickly. 

Plus, finishing a lesson earns you points and shows your placing on a leaderboard, giving you that sweet dopamine boost.

Authenticity

Using the website feels like talking with a very knowledgable Spanish professor. But, while the lessons do try to target all the language skills, they’re missing a couple of elements that would make them a comprehensive language lesson. For instance, the Premium subscription includes speaking questions and a writing workshop, but aside from those features and the occasional typing question, there’s no way to get writing or speaking practice. 

There’s some authenticity included in vocabulary lookups, as you can see how any word is used in example sentences from around the web. There are also a number of native speaker-led grammar lessons, most of which need a Premium account to access. 

Besides these, there are no other native-speaker media to interact with, nor are there any community features as far as I could find.

To be fair, though, none of these things are the focus of the program or website—but it’s something you should be aware of going into it if you’re looking for a serious study tool.

I’d recommend the SpanishDict learning program alongside another program that does target the skills that SpanishDict misses, like italki for authentic speaking practice and FluentU for authentic listening and contextual learning.

 

Spanishdict.com is well worth visiting if you’re a Spanish learner. It’s a fantastic resource that’s now home to a pretty well-designed learning program. And thanks to this SpanishDict review, you’ll know exactly what you’re getting into!