Getting started
Supported languages
As of 2 September 2026 MemDecks offers 16 study languages: Armenian, Greek, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Ukrainian, Serbian, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Croatian and Turkish. Every one of them is learned from English — English is the pivot, not a study language — and every one of them has translation, images and text-to-speech audio. Support depth differs, and the table below states exactly how.
The 16 study languages
| Language | Native name | Script | Transliteration | Audio | Phrase Builder |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Armenian | Հայերեն | Armenian | Yes | Yes — Gemini voice | Yes |
| Greek | Ελληνικά | Greek | Yes | Yes — Gemini voice | Yes |
| Russian | Русский | Cyrillic | Yes | Yes — standard voice | Yes |
| Japanese | 日本語 | Kana and kanji | Yes | Yes — standard voice | Yes |
| Chinese | 中文 | Han | Yes | Yes — standard voice | Yes |
| Korean | 한국어 | Hangul | Yes | Yes — standard voice | No |
| Arabic | العربية | Arabic | Yes | Yes — standard voice | No |
| Ukrainian | Українська | Cyrillic | Yes | Yes — standard voice | No |
| Serbian | Српски | Cyrillic | Yes | Yes — standard voice | No |
| Spanish | Español | Latin | Not needed | Yes — standard voice | Yes |
| German | Deutsch | Latin | Not needed | Yes — standard voice | Yes |
| French | Français | Latin | Not needed | Yes — standard voice | Yes |
| Italian | Italiano | Latin | Not needed | Yes — standard voice | Yes |
| Portuguese | Português | Latin | Not needed | Yes — standard voice | No |
| Croatian | Hrvatski | Latin | Not needed | Yes — standard voice | No |
| Turkish | Türkçe | Latin | Not needed | Yes — standard voice | No |
"Transliteration: not needed" means the language is written in the Latin alphabet, so MemDecks does not generate a Latin rendering for it. "Phrase Builder: no" means no lessons have been authored for that language yet; every other MemDecks feature still works.
English is the pivot, not a study language
Every MemDecks card has English on one side. You can learn Japanese from English and Greek from English, but you cannot make a Greek-to-Japanese card: MemDecks has no pair that does not include English. This is a deliberate structural choice — the word catalogue, the topic packs, and the pump queue are all keyed on English lemmas — and it applies to all 16 study languages.
You can translate in either direction inside a pair. Typing an Armenian word gives you its English meaning, and typing an English word gives you the Armenian. Both directions produce the same card.
How audio differs between languages
All 16 study languages have text-to-speech audio. Armenian and Greek use a Gemini voice profile chosen for those languages; the other fourteen use the standard Google text-to-speech voice. Audio is generated in the background and stored, so playing a word plays a stored recording rather than triggering a synthesis call.
A card can exist before its audio does. If you save a word that MemDecks has never spoken before, the card is usable immediately and the speaker button becomes active once generation finishes — usually within seconds, occasionally later.
Transliteration and non-Latin scripts
Nine of the 16 study languages use a script other than the Latin alphabet: Armenian, Greek, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Ukrainian and Serbian. For those, MemDecks shows a Latin-letter transliteration under the word, so a beginner can attach a pronunciation to a shape they cannot yet read.
Armenian and Greek use a deterministic transliteration written specifically for those alphabets — the same input always produces the same output. The other non-Latin languages use a general romanization service. Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Croatian and Turkish get no transliteration because they do not need one.
MemDecks also ships an on-screen keyboard for the non-Latin study languages, so you can type a word in the target script without changing your operating-system input method.
Can a language be added?
The set of visible study languages is a deployment setting, not a code change, so adding a Latin-script language is cheap. A non-Latin language needs more: its script has to be described, its transliteration chain chosen, and its keyboard layout supplied.
There is no published roadmap for the next language as of 2 September 2026. Requests go to support@memdecks.com.