The 1,000 words that run everyday Brazilian Portuguese, met twelve times each, in short stories written about you. About eight weeks.
James pede um café na padaria. A moça sorri e pergunta: Com pão de queijo? Ele diz: claro, e se senta perto da janela.
Most apps drill words out of context. Novela puts them where memory actually forms them: on the page, again and again, in stories you want to finish.
Reading research finds a new word needs around ten to twelve encounters in context before it's yours. Novela counts every one.
Webb (2007) · Nation (2001)Language is lopsided. The most common thousand words make up roughly four in every five words you'll hear and read day to day.
Word-frequency research · Zipf's lawIn ordinary books the rare words almost never come round, so you'd need about 470,000 words of reading. Novela counts every word and writes each page around the ones you're still missing, so none get left behind.
Derived from the frequency curveThe top words show up on every page; word number 1,000 might appear once in fifty. So every page Novela writes is built from the words you know, plus the few you still need to meet. Nothing is left to chance.
Reading opens everything else. Each room unlocks as your words grow, so you're always doing the next right thing.
Short stories about your own life, city and people, written from words you know. Tap any word for its meaning; listen along in native Brazilian voices.
Words and grammar unlock as your reading meets them. A memory hook for every word, and each one proven on three separate days, so it lasts.
Sixteen short films of one story. Each opens only when you know enough words to follow it, so you understand what you hear.
Sixteen real situations, from an Uber to a pharmacy to a party, then a live AI conversation partner who answers what you actually say.
About 40 minutes. The fast lane.
About 20 minutes. The steady lane.
Built by a learner. I'm James, a musician and teacher in Melbourne. I built Novela to learn Brazilian Portuguese myself, and I'm nearly 90% of the way through the 470,000 words. Now I want to see it work for five more people.