English Core out now · 1,000 words · 40 clusters · 38 lessons
English
The world's second language, taught as one.
Listen · Read · Repeat · Rate · Fight
You're reading this page in English — so the course is probably not for you. It teaches English as a foreign language, in a German, Spanish, Japanese, or Simplified Chinese learning interface, and it never explains English in English.
Not available in English
That isn't a gap in the localization table. It's the design.
Every card teaches one English word — with a translation, a translated example sentence, and study notes in the learner's language. The whole game speaks that language too, menus to boss fights. From the first card, English is the thing being learned, never the thing doing the explaining.
If English is your first language, this program teaches words you already know. Your English packs are Adept and Advance — already free in the base game — and the Roots Series is where your own climb continues.
The first 3,000 words of English in three packs, met entirely in German, Spanish, Japanese, or Simplified Chinese.
A page to pass along — and Adept, Advance, and the Roots Series for the English you don't have yet.
The first thousand words
Five tiers, forty clusters of 25 cards, each cluster gated by a boss fight.
English Core is the highest-frequency thousand, walked in order: the engine verbs and little words that run every English sentence, then people and home, the town and the working day, and by the fifth tier the language of law, state, and the wider world. The example sentences grow with you and never run ahead of what you've been taught. Finish Core and you'll have read more than 7,000 words of English in context.
The core engine — have, go, the little words — first footing, people & home, how it feels.
Body & heart, time & measure, kith & kin, getting it done, town & table.
Work, verbs in motion, time & place, law & order, out in the world.
Crime & court, folk & feeling, school & work, land & place, gathering pace.
Strife & law, state & law, everyday scenes, raising the stakes — to the last page.
The learner's language, on every card
Card 1 of English Core — the word have — exactly as it ships, in each of the four.
All 3,000 cards across the program carry all four languages, with no gaps.
The road to 3,000
Three packs, 1,000 words each, in sequence. Core is out; the store pages for both extensions are already up.
The highest-frequency thousand, in five tiers — the foundation everything else stands on. Requires the base game.
out nowThe next thousand by frequency — the same method, one tier higher. Requires Core.
next in sequenceThe third thousand of the journey — the long tail that reads like fluency. Requires Pareto 1.
next in sequenceFlashcards as an integrated system
- Fibonacci SRS
- Rate each card 0–5. The better you know a word, the longer before it returns — spaced repetition on Fibonacci intervals.
- Boss fights
- Each of the forty clusters is gated by a duel you can't win without confronting and overcoming your most difficult words.
- Graduation
- Beat a cluster and its cards leave your daily deck for good. The deck gets smaller as you learn.
- Your language
- Translation, translated example, and study notes in German, Spanish, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese on every card — and the interface speaks all four, plus English.
- Audio
- Clean English Piper text-to-speech on every word and example sentence. It is synthesis, not a recording of a speaker — and we say so.
- Two spellings
- American English base with a full British spelling option — colour or color, at the flick of a setting.
- Lessons
- 38 reference lessons — word order, articles, tenses — each firing at the card where you first need it, readable in the learner's language.
- Frequency
- Words arrive by how often English actually uses them: the thousand that carry the most language come first.
Questions
The things people ask before they buy.
I'm a native English speaker — should I buy this?
No. It teaches the first thousands of English words — words you already know. Your English packs are Adept and Advance, free inside the base game, and the Roots Series teaches you where your language came from.
Which languages can I learn English from?
German, Spanish, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese. Every card carries its translation, translated example sentence, and study notes in all four, and the game interface speaks each of them. No English is needed to play.
Do I need anything else to play it?
Yes. English Core is a DLC for the FlashBoss base game, so you need the base game as well. Pareto 1 requires Core, and Pareto 2 requires Pareto 1 — the packs build on each other in order. On Windows 10 you also need Windows Terminal — a free, secure download from the Microsoft Store.
Can I see the word lists before I buy?
Yes — all three. Core, Pareto 1 and Pareto 2 are on the word lists page, free to read before you buy. There is also a playable boss-fight demo in the browser: try the demo.
Pass it on.
A thousand words to stand on, three thousand in sequence — met entirely in the learner's own language.
or hand the learner their page: Deutsch · Español · 日本語 · 简体中文