I want to make short text adventures for learning foreign languages, so the engine can be pretty basic, but I haven't done any browser development, so I really have no idea where to go in the giant sea of engines and frameworks. Well, I say, "it can be basic", but I could potentially use database manipulation in the future for including a dictionary, although I don't want to look this far ahead. Not to mention that I've gotten pretty rusty in coding in general.

I've mostly dealt with Unity so far, and I'm hoping for something more light-weight.

Hey supermikhail!

You might like to check out something called Inform7 which is specifically designed for interactive fiction (text adventures).

http://inform7.com/

[update] in fact they even mention that it's been used to teach foreign languages so might be perfect for what you need... http://inform7.com/teach/teach/

I do remember playing some text-game which were working on Sugar Cuve here a link :

https://www.motoslave.net/sugarcube/2/docs/

I specifically want an engine with straightforward building for web, and I don't know if a very specialized text-adventure engine will cut it, because I'm quite keen on including sound in the form of pronunciation, and clicking on words for definitions.

It's been a long time since I used Inform7 but I do remember it being quite easy to build a web site around it.

http://inform7.com/write/publish/