Learn a language through stories.

Glowing Fables retells old fairy tales in simple, everyday German and French. You listen, read along and keep the words you meet, one story at a time.

Why stories

Learning a language should be fun. Long before textbooks, people learned words by hearing stories told again and again. A word you met in a story comes with a scene, a character and a sentence around it, and that is what makes it stick. So every lesson here is a story worth hearing. The tales are retold from the public domain, so they are yours to enjoy freely.

How it works

  1. 1
    Listen
    Every story is narrated, and each word lights up as it is spoken.
  2. 2
    Read
    Read along with an English line beneath each sentence. Tap any sentence to hear it again, and look up words as you go.
  3. 3
    Review
    Save the words you want to keep. Spaced repetition brings each one back just before you would forget it, inside the sentence where you met it, because a word in context is easier to remember.
  4. 4
    Practise
    Nothing due today? Practise your words anyway, as often as you like.
  5. 5
    Keep going
    Your streak counts the days in a row you have been learning.

Watch, then learn

Every story is free to watch on YouTube. This site is where you learn from it: part 1 of every story is free, and every part is free to read. A pass opens the audio, word review and quiz on every part, in every language, for $10 for 3 months or $30 for a year. You pay once and nothing renews. See pricing.

How the lessons are made

Each story is written with the help of AI and then reviewed by people before it goes live. Mistakes can still slip through. If you spot one, sign in and use the report button on that sentence or picture in the player. We read every report and fix the story.

Who we are

Glowing Fables is made by the team at PlainLab. Questions, ideas or a story you'd like to see? Write to hello@glowingfables.com.