Built for Parents, by Parents

What we make

Their First Words is one calm app with two libraries. The first is 1,000+ illustrated words in 16 categories — animals, food, body, home, feelings, and the rest of a small child’s world — grouped into three stages you choose from: First Words (0–24 months), Growing Words (2–3 years), and Word Builder (3–5 years). One card is one picture and one word.

The second is 500+ everyday phrases across nine kinds of moment — “I Want & I Need”, “How I Feel” and “Talk With Me” are three of them. These are the sentences a child grows into once naming things is no longer enough — the step from “milk” to “I want milk.” Both libraries speak all eight languages, each in a female and a male native voice, and all of it is bundled in the app, so it works with no signal at all.

How the cards are made

One picture, doing the work alone. Every word gets a single illustration, and it has to communicate the word with no caption and nothing outside the card to lean on. That is the test a new word passes before it ships: does the picture land with a tired parent, on its own? If not, the word comes out and something more concrete takes its place.

Voices, then ears. Every card is spoken in all eight languages in both voices — 24,000+ clips. Each is native to its language, and produced with a professional studio-grade speech service rather than recorded in a booth — which is how every one of the 1,547 cards sounds the same in all eight. Machines screen them first: every clip is transcribed back and compared with its card, its edges measured for a clipped start or ending. Then a person listens. Nothing ships on a machine’s say-so, and a regenerated clip goes back into the queue to be heard again.

Translations get their own pass. Before any audio is made, every language is checked for two different words that came back as one word — the eagle and the vulture a child would only ever hear as the same thing. What the check flags goes to someone who speaks the language, and no language’s voices ship until its whole set has been cleared.

What we won’t do

• No ads. Not on the free words, not later, not ever. Nothing in the app is for sale to anyone but you.
• No subscription. One $9.99 purchase opens both libraries and stays open. Nothing renews, so there is nothing to remember to cancel. Apple Family Sharing is on; Google Play has no in‑app‑purchase family sharing.
• We don’t sell your data. We don’t share it with advertisers, and we don’t track you across other apps or websites.
• Nothing to keep up. The app counts the days you practice, never the days you missed, and it sends no notifications to pull you back. A week away costs you nothing.
• Auto Play stays off until you turn it on. For the moments you need both hands it advances the cards for you, with an optional Lock that ignores stray taps — but it is off by default, and nothing here is built to keep a child watching.
• We won’t claim the app teaches your child by itself. Babies pick up language from a live person, not from a recording (Kuhl, 2003). So the app hands you the words — you point, you say it, your child copies you. You are the teacher; this is the prop.

Privacy

The app works without an account — and without one, your child’s name, progress, and favorites stay on your device and never reach our servers; signing in is optional, and only then is that data saved to the cloud so it follows you to another device. We collect no date of birth, analytics stays off unless you switch it on, and there are no ads or advertising identifiers — the full detail is in the privacy policy.

The Their First family

Four more, made by the same two parents and in the same spirit — every one of them free, and not one of them carrying an ad.

• Their First NumbersCounting 1–10 · free
• Their First PuzzlesAnimal puzzles · free
• Their First PatternsPatterns & early logic · free
• Their First TidyGentle tidy-ups · free