14 ms·

Luis von Ahn, co-founder and CEO of Duolingo

157 points by prostoalex 7y ago

ColinWright 7y ago
Still doesn't have European Portuguese. And yes, I've dabbled enough to know that I could learn Brazillian Portuguese and try to convert, but I've also dabbled enough to know that to do so would be really hard, and leave behind some undesirable remnants.
- santiagobasulto 7y ago
  > I've also dabbled enough to know that to do so would be really hard. No, that's not true. Learn Brazilian Portuguese and you'll be 95% there. The major differences are in the voçe vs. tu (second-person singular pronoun). There are other differences (mainly pronunciation), but the core of the language is the same. Source: I'm from Argentina and learned Brazilian (travel often). I have a few Portuguese friends and I have 0 issues talking and understanding them.
  - ColinWright 7y ago
    Talking with and understanding them is not the remnant to which I refer. I'm not sure I can explain it, but I've found in generally, converting a "near enough" version to a "proper" version is something I find difficult. Experience of my own learning tells me that if I start with Brazillian PT then I will forever be labelled as a speaker of Brazillian PT, even if I try hard to leverage it across into European PT. Understanding and being understood is not the entire point here. Having said that, I'm finding virtually no resources for learning Euro-PT, so I'm likely to have to resign myself to always being thought of as a speaker of Br-PT, despite living a few hundred kms from Portugal. (BTW - thanks for the response, it is a useful data point)
  - jgrahamc 7y ago
    Yes. But I live in Portugal now and I don't want to speak like a Brazilian. I want to speak like a European Portuguese person. Duolingo should clearly label their "Portuguese" as "Brazilian Portuguese" as the pronunciation differences between the languages are massive and there are grammar and vocabulary differences.
zojirushibottle 7y ago
has anyone used duolingo for an extensive period of time and can confirm it helps with actually speaking a new language? my experience with tools like these is that they help build vocabulary but you can't actually hold a conversation for a long time...
- Dobbs 7y ago
  One of the hardest parts of learning a language is just that building enough vocabulary so you can start stumbling your way through speaking it. Duolingo, Drops and similar are never going to be "the one tool" that you need. But they are a useful way of building some of that initial knowledge to then start reading (childrens books), having horrifically slow bad conversations, and the other things that allow you to learn the language.
  - graeme 7y ago
    Have you learnt a language? Important qualification to comments in this thread. I’ve learnt languages with immersion and Pimsleur. Sadly I haven’t found Duolingo useful at all. The effort to actual useful knowledge ratio is high. Other helpful resources: Assimil, Anki, and Conversation exchange. Mundo Lingo is good for that if they have an event locally.
    - jddj 7y ago
      As someone who followed the same method (DuoLingo for vocab, start reading, start talking) and now speaks a second language fluently, I'm not OP but I'll go ahead and vouch for their comment.
      - graeme 7y ago
        Great! Did you complete the tree, or just do some then switch to reading and talking?
        jddj 7y ago
3dprintscanner 7y ago
Duolingo works reasonably well when used as a supplementary aid to learning a language. I've found that it has reasonable utility when combined with taking a physical class as a low-effort boredom filler for building familiarity with the vocabulary of a language. What I find pressingly missing is any meaningful way of learning about the grammar of a language. When learning German there was absolutely nothing in the lessons which even hinted at the rules of tenses, cases, conjugations etc and the lack of that content stunts the possibility of building much more than a rote-learning knowledge of a language. The app does seem to have a great gamification mechanic and is good at driving user engagement, so I guess they have that though.
- Boltgolt 7y ago
  The web version of Duolingo used to have detailed explanations for each lesson that explained a lot of grammar, they seems to have disappeared recently
  - nyordanov 7y ago
    They are still there, but they've changed the UI and removed the lesson permalinks, so it's now harder to both find and use these explanations. Click on a lesson's circle and there is now a lightbulb icon which opens the detailed lesson.
matt_the_bass 7y ago
I speak English (native), French and German. I’m currently learning Dutch with Duolingo. I’ve only used the iPhone app for about 2 months at the free tier. I’ve already learned similar languages the traditional way and I go to the netherlands at least 1-2x year for work. Personally, I feel I get enough value from Duolingo to make it worth my time. But I admit I’m a particular use case. IMHO it is not was way to learn language if it is one’s only tool. But then again neither is only classroom instruction or only books or only tv. I think that is where people get hung up on critiquing it. I see it as ONE valuable tool in my toolbox.
- matt_the_bass 7y ago
  FYI recent discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21702424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21702424
yuchi 7y ago
I’ve been using Duolingo to restore my limited knowledge of Japanese and worked pretty well. I managed to keep a two month every-day habit, but collapsed as soon as I skipped few days — there’s something to learn about too much aggressive gamification here. Nonetheless I suggested my mother and grandmother to start using it to get better at their english and they’ve been using it every single day since 8 months ago — and I’ve seen incredible results. They start to understand basic online content and they are asking me to translate content less and less every week. This is an incredible result IMHO.
kgraves 7y ago
I'm hesitant to use duolingo, after seeing the amount of funding rounds and VC capital they have taken. I would steer clear of using it. Are there any free and open source alternatives to duolingo out there? I wouldn't want to use something that could shutdown after an 'incredible journey'.
- amrrs 7y ago
  On the contrary, Wouldn't you want to use something so that it could save their day especially theirs being an "incredible journey"?
- cptwunderlich 7y ago
  I don't think there is anything comparable OSS wise. Creating such an alternative wouldn't only be very difficutl tech-wise, but someone would also have to create the content. Anyway, I've been using Duolingo since ca. 2014 and it didn't shutdown... Plus, it's free - what do you have to lose? Your progress on some language learning app? You won't lose the knowledge gained.
  - angry_octet 7y ago
    It isn't free -- you have to watch ads, which detracts severely from the learning and enjoyment.
    - oska 7y ago
      Plus being a betrayal of their user-base which is heavily weighted towards young and impressionable learners. And, by the way, a betrayal of their initial promise, that they would never do advertising (expressly stated in the first promo video they released, which is still on YouTube).
  - kddavis 7y ago
    You ever hear of a thing called opportunity cost? Some people interested in learning a foreign language actually have a compelling desire to learn said language.
  - 7y ago
walterkrankheit 7y ago
It's true that it's tough to learn a language from scratch with just Duolingo - only language classes truly worked for me. But as a means of review or for giving my friends who would probably never learn the language properly a leg up, it's invaluable. Rosetta Stone used to be a $700 investment and this made it obsolete.
nmfisher 7y ago
I learned Mandarin and German pre-Duolingo, both to reasonable levels of proficiency. I've messed around with Duolingo a few times, just to get a feel for how useful it is. I came away feeling that it was about the same level as flashcard vocabulary learning - useful, but only a small part of the pie. Vocabulary is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to be able to carry on a conversation. Mandarin in particular is more difficult, since you need to grind through hours and hour writing/rote learning characters to improve your vocabulary. The one thing that noticeably accelerated my proficiency was having an actual conversation with a native speaker (host family/tutor/etc). That's not something that Duolingo really replicates. Self-plug - coincidentally, earlier today I just released a small tool for Mandarin learners to practise their tone recognition! I've been working on a larger app and this seemed like something that would have helped me when I first started out. App is currently live @ https://fluent.academy https://fluent.academy - I'll be introducing more functionality for Mandarin learners in the near future, so would really love to hear from students of any level.
- noname120 7y ago
  Conversely, there is this to train tone pronunciation. :) https://mandarintonetrainer.com/games https://mandarintonetrainer.com/games
  - nmfisher 7y ago
    Yes, I have come across that one too! Acoustically speaking, tones are actually really interesting. Are you associated with that site?
    - noname120 7y ago
      No I'm not. I always disclose it when I'm associated with anything that I promote.
- hawkice 7y ago
  Some of those recordings are bonkers haha. 得 in particular seemed... Worthy of a double check. And 二（or 儿？) Had a surprising cadence to it. Swell idea though. Mobile support is a bit rough but not unusable.
keiferski 7y ago
Personally, I've found Duolingo to be almost universally worse than any other language product. It seems to have become successful and widely-known purely from marketing. It is the current generation's Rosetta Stone. In general, I recommend Glossika or Pimsleur over Duolingo. Depending on the language you're learning, there are also more niche sites that do a far better job; Turkish Tea Time or RealPolish.pl are some good examples. https://turkishteatime.com https://turkishteatime.com https://realpolish.pl https://realpolish.pl
- CGamesPlay 7y ago
  Interesting. I strongly dislike Duolingo (because it seems very focused on passive recall, aka multiple choice), but think pretty highly of Rosetta Stone. I haven't looked at either of Glossika or Pimsleur, but Glossika's page title is "AI-based effective language learning" which immediately reeks of marketing blather. Why do you recommend them?
  - keiferski 7y ago
    Yeah, their new branding is a little strange. But the original Glossika method (which the new software still essentially does) is to teach a language only via phrases - not grammar trees, isolated vocabulary words, or anything else. I’ve found this approach to be more fruitful than the abstract one most books and programs take.
    - yorwba 7y ago
      > the original Glossika method (which the new software still essentially does) is to teach a language only via phrases Based on the screenshots, it looks like they maintain a "memory level" for each phrase and presumably do spaced repetition to keep that level above a certain target. Am I right in assuming that if you fail a review because you forgot what one specific word means, you'll get the exact same sentence next time, rather than a different sentence using the same word? I have a system for personal use that does the latter, but I haven't yet found a good interface for indicating why I got the sentence wrong. My current implementation is to have a huge list of checkboxes for every aspect of each word (dictionary form, spelling, pronunciation, etc.) that could potentially be forgotten independently.
mantap 7y ago
I see duolingo as a kind of modern equivalent to the language textbooks we had in school. You aren't going to seriously learn a language using it, but it gives you enough of a taste that you might be motivated to decide to pick up a language after using it. I do think that using duolingo too long is an inefficient way to learn a language even at beginner level, I wouldn't use it for more than a few weeks before graduating to a SRS like Anki. For intermediate to advanced I really love clozemaster. It's especially good for learning grammar, you probably want to supplement it with some pure vocabulary in an SRS.
sharcerer 7y ago
Does Duolingo have Spaced-repetition? Spaced-repetition tools like Anki are quite customizable too.
- angry_octet 7y ago
  Yes it does that. A bit too much actually, Duolingo is painful if you already understand so vocab.
- rgoulter 7y ago
  I used DuoLingo for quite some time before using Anki. My experience with Anki was much better. My experience was that I was much better at recalling vocabulary from using Anki than DL. Possibly because the "yes/no" to DL is at a phrase/sentence level rather than per-word. Without putting effort in, DL makes it easy to recall what the DuoLingo-defined accepted translation of phrases is. It's easy to fall into the habit of 'gaming' it and just remembering the answer in a very shallow sense. With Anki, using flashcards of words, the 'effort' you need to put in is being honest about whether you recalled the word. I felt that when I started using Anki, I was much better at answering DL.
angry_octet 7y ago
Can we pause for a moment to appreciate the manifest destiny of a name like Severin Hacker?
- shacker 7y ago
  :)
johnkpaul 7y ago
I have a 2201 day streak playing Duolingo. I love Duolingo. I have taken Spanish and French that whole time and German for a few years. I find Duolingo to be an extremely fun game. My wife and I really enjoy trying to speak other languages and even more so now that we have talking children. I can speak passable Spanish and can string together broken sentences in French to be effective (they get what I mean) and hilarious to native speakers. Duolingo has never purely taught me a language. If my wife didn't know Spanish and learning French like me, I would have never been able to practice enough in the real world to know. I enjoy using Duolingo immensely. For me it is a fun way to toy around with a hobby I've had for years without committing myself to dedicated training costs and time.
- markhollis 7y ago
  That last sentence is exactly what I like about Duolingo. 716 day streak here. Without Duolingo, I would not have commited to at least some minutes spending with a foreign language. Now I can at least give directions in French. I managed to have 8 years of French at school without being able to do that in the end.
  - melling 7y ago
    I’ve been working on my own version of “DuoLingo” for iOS for 10 years now; longer than DuoLingo. I’ve never gained much traction. I’m looking for other ideas to help language learners. Recently, I’ve tried writing smaller apps to supplement what Duo provides because they have a great product and I’ll never compete directly as a solo developer. Anyway, any other small app ideas that people would like to see implemented? Game ideas that help with the necessary repetition, for example?
    - SkyBelow 7y ago
      One idea would be to use a wide variety of pictures for learning a particular word. If I am learning what the word for room is, if the picture is always the same picture of a bedroom, my mind will be building an association with bedroom instead of room in general. Also as someone trying to pick back up on my Japanese after letting it slide for a decade (well to be honest I never had more than enough to do greetings and basic restaurant ordering), many kana/kanji matching apps leave a lot to be desired. Katakana is a personal weak point and the apps I've tried all limit the extent of matches to picking one of the matching 3 or 4. Process of elimination makes it so that I can get 100% of these quizzes despite only knowing 80% of the material. Something that would allow customizing 10 or 20 possible answers to pick from would be nice. But I don't know if this would have any bearing on other languages to be worth developing (and there might be an existing app I just haven't found yet).
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cmrdporcupine 7y ago
I would love one of these vocabulary building apps if it came in the form of an Android Auto application that I could use while driving my 45 minute commute. Doesn't seem to exist, though.
michalu 7y ago
I learned couple of languages with the help of Duolingo. They claim t be the fastest way to learn a language. I recently realized is only valid if you don't want to put the work in. People who are not willing to put serious effort into learning a new language will find Duolingo useful. It's also useful if you come from similar language. E.g. you speak Italian and you want to learn Spanish (latin langauge). Or you're Czech and you want to learn Polish (slavic language, same grammar and compsition) But if you are serious about learning a language, Duolingo will only slow you down. You learn conversational stuff and progress often with big holes in the knowledge and understanding the core principles and structures of the language. For serious learners of a new language, keen to progress properly and fast Duolingo should be avoided.
- Fnoord 7y ago
  Duolingo works by means of repetition. The user can learn as much as they want. You need to define "serious learning" and "serious effort" if you want to make a well written critique. Which alternatives do you suggest? How much do they cost? How much time per month would you spend on these? Versus Duolingo? What is/are your end goal(s). In how many months would you reach your end goal(s)?
  - michalu 7y ago
    Serious effort is when you drill the grammar and memorise tense and forms of words. You'll have a base to build on. Take English for example, difference between past simple vs. past continuous is easier explained once than randomly coming across on Duolingo never fully comprehending the principle. Therefore it's faster. And form someone coming from non-Germanic language this will take time to comprehend, kind of like when you first learned some math concepts as a child, some took a while to click. Now take words and their past forms, give, gave, given. In order to use it in a natural way, you first have to drill and memorise many words ... not possible on Duolingo as one lesson you work with a bunch of "gave" and suddenly several lessons you use "given" ... Yes, you can learn language in way that you go China and you're able to make primitive conversations. I know a lot of people speaking French that they learned conversational way and all of them struggle with grammar and despite being able to talk and communicate fluently their language is not enough for professional level or academic level. E.g. my girlfriend and I speak English, a language native to neither of us ... we can live a complete life together and we can talk but to a native speaker her mixing of tenses and grammar would sound like nonsense. This is the case with many of my foreign friends who learned English in a conversational way. Duolingo does the best what it's designed for. It's a way to learn for the lazy, so it is a game.
dghughes 7y ago
I like Duolingo because it's easy to get going and quick to take lessons during my free time. It's easy enough to get going and hard enough to feel like you're doing something but not so much you give up. The points system, scoreboard, and email prompts are a good way to encourage you without being annoying. The ranked scoreboard really has me wanting to stay there and compete to stay in the top 10 each week. One thing I miss is the speaking option. Not all languages offer it but some did and that option seems to be missing or at least on my device it is. Another problem is some languages are hit and miss with pronunciations if there are few native speakers. I know there are computer generated voices but sometimes there is no sample of the words at all (Irish being one example). Anything that gets people interested in languages is a good thing. Duolingo may not be perfect but it's a popular and easy to use app. We unilingual English speakers need to get to with the times and learn at least one second language, maybe even more.
- moojd 7y ago
  I've been using the voice-to-text included with the google keyboard on android to practice speech on duo. I'd be interested to hear from a native speaker how accurate the voice-to-text model is but I find it fun getting a computer to understand me in a different language. It can be pretty unforgiving for certain sounds that aren't in my native language so I feel like I really have to nail the pronunciation.
- deleted 7y ago
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- kddavis 7y ago
  This is really Duolingo in a nutshell... the complete gamification of language learning. You don’t actually have to learn anything as long as you “feel” like you’re doing something. > Anything that gets people interested in languages is a good thing. I don’t share this view. If you want to really commit to learning a language for some reason, that is fine and great and there are now countless resources to do so, getting language partners is easier than ever... but it’s not a moral imperative, and if you’re just spending time on activities that have no hope of leading to fluency it really is just a mastubatory exercise (albeit one that is more appropriate to talk about in mixed company), or basically a game... which there is also nothing wrong with!! I masturbate.. but then again I don’t lord it over everyone as some moral imperative. The more serious point: if Duolingo gets your rocks off, great, but as language learning tool it’s pretty poor. Sure you have to work to learn a language, but if you’re going to commit to that effort there are staggeringly better options, which given all the hype is a bit disappointing.
seanwilson 7y ago
I've used Duolingo and like it for learning grammar and vocabulary. Why would someone pay for it though? I would have been prepared to pay but I don't see why I would. The only paid features I see are to remove ads (which you rarely see compared to how long you use the app for), offline use (which isn't an issue if you have good mobile internet) and to skip to harder stages (which seems counterproductive). In terms of making an income, it feels they give far too much away for free. Do they make most of their money from the ads? Or so many people use it for free that it's okay if only a low percent convert?
- jborden13 7y ago
  Ultimately, I primarily opted for the paid version of DuoLingo to support their mission of free language learning for all. The ad removal and offline use (great for planes and while traveling) were secondary reasons.
  - yakshemash 7y ago
    I opted for the paid version for exactly the same reason, but I was sorely disappointed to learn that they don't allow the app to be installed in my home country when I went there for a visit and was hoping to introduce my young nephews to the joys of learning a foreign language. It happens that third world countries don't generate enough ad money to be part of the free language learning for all mantra. Needless to say, I didn't renew my subscription. I must admit though that the app contributed toward my goal of attaining reasonable proficiency in Portuguese in one year, though I got much more out of obstinately listening to podcasts and regular radio even though I understood little at the beginning, and also making native speaker friends online. I used https://www.hellotalk.com/ https://www.hellotalk.com/, an app to meet language learning partners to chat with, and where Brazilians happen to be extremely active and eager to exchange with people willing to help them with their English or French.
jonathanjaeger 7y ago
I use Duolingo for Portuguese and I would highly recommend sticking as much to desktop as possible, given that it requires you to work more at the exercises than on mobile. Better for ingraining concepts in your head. Duolingo, along with other resources, gave me a great foundation for when I added Italki and started talking to Brazilians in Portuguese for 30-60 chunks of time. I probably should have started Italki ("out loud" conversations sooner), but Duolingo's Portuguese tree definitely gave me a great start on vocab and all the different grammar types (subjunctive in Portuguese is intense!).
nandkeypull 7y ago
Clozemaster has been my go-to app for language study now. It uses the "sentence mining" concept advocated by Glossika to show you thousands of sentences and learn new vocabulary in context. After I got to a certain level, Duolingo and Rosetta Stone became too easy, and I found myself grinding on things that I already knew to try to get to "the good stuff". The signal-to-noise ratio was just too low. Anki was the next step up for me and improved my vocabulary by leaps and bounds, but it became tedious to look for example sentences and make new flashcards from them. Clozemaster does this automatically, and you can choose whatever difficulty level you like.
- throwaway41968 7y ago
  That's the approach I've had recently. Duolingo into Clozemaster, with generous helpings of Memrise on the side. Too bad Clozemaster is awfully limited in its free version.
OJFord 7y ago
I'm using Duolingo to learn Hindi, but not alone; I also have a couple of (Snell's) books. I find that a good combination - I favour reading as a means of study anyway, and that gives an understanding of the grammar, tips, gotchas, etc., and then Duolingo puts it into practice, tests me on it, and instills vocabulary and recognition of sounds and characters through repetition.
dang 7y ago
A large thread about Duolingo from a couple months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21702424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21702424
vonnik 7y ago
Since we're recommending other language tools, I've found the Michel Thomas method to be really effective. Better than Pimsleur: https://www.michelthomas.com/ https://www.michelthomas.com/
wwarner 7y ago
A great example of how a creative application of entrepreneurial spirit can make the world a better place.
andrewzah 7y ago
Duolingo functions on the premise that "being conversational" means "cobbling together words shakily into passable sentences". I find that people in general have a low bar for "being fluent" and "being conversational". Have you ever tracked a conversation you've had with your friends? A conversation can broach many different topics, and can go deep into those topics. Are you "conversational" if you can only say a few sentences and are completely out of your depth once the conversation switches to any other topic like politics, etc? No. Conversations can also last hours. Doing things like duolingo will never have you reach fluency or even being fully conversational. It may be a good start, but it should always be complemented by studying with textbooks or online resources like instructors on youtube. Anki (or memrise) is necessary to start memorizing heaps of vocabulary words so you can begin to have simple conversations. Glossika is good for making yourself practice saying sentences and listening to sentences. Native material is by far the most important aspect. That's how you find vocabulary and practice things like listening and shadowing along.
trhway 7y ago
sideways: reading about his sale of reCAPTCHA to Google stumbled on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReCAPTCHA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReCAPTCHA " In 2018, Google started beta testing a completely invisible reCAPTCHA system which does not present any human verification visually. Instead, the new system actively monitors user actions across the entire property and returns a score which represents the probability if it is a human or a bot." Once the bots successfully emulate humans ... what happens once the system concludes you're a bot? How do you prove that you aren't?
theriddlr 7y ago
I've done a beginners' course with a tutor but had forgotten most of it without regular practice. Duolingo is really useful for ingraining the language into my long-term memory. I would probably enrol in an intermediate course in the future when I can pass the test. I live in the UK where there is a big Spanish community and can easily go on holiday to Spain. I can make grammatically correct sentences in the Duolingo domains and can understand the gist of unknown [written] sentences using contextual clues and words similar to English. There is a Flag question icon on the app where you can read the community's comments for an explanation on the grammar.

157 points by prostoalex 7y ago

Still doesn't have European Portuguese. And yes, I've dabbled enough to know that I could learn Brazillian Portuguese and try to convert, but I've also dabbled enough to know that to do so would be really hard, and leave behind some undesirable remnants.

santiagobasulto 7y ago
> I've also dabbled enough to know that to do so would be really hard. No, that's not true. Learn Brazilian Portuguese and you'll be 95% there. The major differences are in the voçe vs. tu (second-person singular pronoun). There are other differences (mainly pronunciation), but the core of the language is the same. Source: I'm from Argentina and learned Brazilian (travel often). I have a few Portuguese friends and I have 0 issues talking and understanding them.
- ColinWright 7y ago
  Talking with and understanding them is not the remnant to which I refer. I'm not sure I can explain it, but I've found in generally, converting a "near enough" version to a "proper" version is something I find difficult. Experience of my own learning tells me that if I start with Brazillian PT then I will forever be labelled as a speaker of Brazillian PT, even if I try hard to leverage it across into European PT. Understanding and being understood is not the entire point here. Having said that, I'm finding virtually no resources for learning Euro-PT, so I'm likely to have to resign myself to always being thought of as a speaker of Br-PT, despite living a few hundred kms from Portugal. (BTW - thanks for the response, it is a useful data point)
- jgrahamc 7y ago
  Yes. But I live in Portugal now and I don't want to speak like a Brazilian. I want to speak like a European Portuguese person. Duolingo should clearly label their "Portuguese" as "Brazilian Portuguese" as the pronunciation differences between the languages are massive and there are grammar and vocabulary differences.

zojirushibottle 7y ago

has anyone used duolingo for an extensive period of time and can confirm it helps with actually speaking a new language? my experience with tools like these is that they help build vocabulary but you can't actually hold a conversation for a long time...

Dobbs 7y ago
One of the hardest parts of learning a language is just that building enough vocabulary so you can start stumbling your way through speaking it. Duolingo, Drops and similar are never going to be "the one tool" that you need. But they are a useful way of building some of that initial knowledge to then start reading (childrens books), having horrifically slow bad conversations, and the other things that allow you to learn the language.
- graeme 7y ago
  Have you learnt a language? Important qualification to comments in this thread. I’ve learnt languages with immersion and Pimsleur. Sadly I haven’t found Duolingo useful at all. The effort to actual useful knowledge ratio is high. Other helpful resources: Assimil, Anki, and Conversation exchange. Mundo Lingo is good for that if they have an event locally.
  - jddj 7y ago
    As someone who followed the same method (DuoLingo for vocab, start reading, start talking) and now speaks a second language fluently, I'm not OP but I'll go ahead and vouch for their comment.
    - graeme 7y ago
      Great! Did you complete the tree, or just do some then switch to reading and talking?
      - jddj 7y ago

3dprintscanner 7y ago

Duolingo works reasonably well when used as a supplementary aid to learning a language. I've found that it has reasonable utility when combined with taking a physical class as a low-effort boredom filler for building familiarity with the vocabulary of a language. What I find pressingly missing is any meaningful way of learning about the grammar of a language. When learning German there was absolutely nothing in the lessons which even hinted at the rules of tenses, cases, conjugations etc and the lack of that content stunts the possibility of building much more than a rote-learning knowledge of a language. The app does seem to have a great gamification mechanic and is good at driving user engagement, so I guess they have that though.

Boltgolt 7y ago
The web version of Duolingo used to have detailed explanations for each lesson that explained a lot of grammar, they seems to have disappeared recently
- nyordanov 7y ago
  They are still there, but they've changed the UI and removed the lesson permalinks, so it's now harder to both find and use these explanations. Click on a lesson's circle and there is now a lightbulb icon which opens the detailed lesson.

matt_the_bass 7y ago

I speak English (native), French and German. I’m currently learning Dutch with Duolingo. I’ve only used the iPhone app for about 2 months at the free tier. I’ve already learned similar languages the traditional way and I go to the netherlands at least 1-2x year for work. Personally, I feel I get enough value from Duolingo to make it worth my time. But I admit I’m a particular use case. IMHO it is not was way to learn language if it is one’s only tool. But then again neither is only classroom instruction or only books or only tv. I think that is where people get hung up on critiquing it. I see it as ONE valuable tool in my toolbox.

matt_the_bass 7y ago
FYI recent discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21702424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21702424

yuchi 7y ago

I’ve been using Duolingo to restore my limited knowledge of Japanese and worked pretty well. I managed to keep a two month every-day habit, but collapsed as soon as I skipped few days — there’s something to learn about too much aggressive gamification here. Nonetheless I suggested my mother and grandmother to start using it to get better at their english and they’ve been using it every single day since 8 months ago — and I’ve seen incredible results. They start to understand basic online content and they are asking me to translate content less and less every week. This is an incredible result IMHO.

kgraves 7y ago

I'm hesitant to use duolingo, after seeing the amount of funding rounds and VC capital they have taken. I would steer clear of using it. Are there any free and open source alternatives to duolingo out there? I wouldn't want to use something that could shutdown after an 'incredible journey'.

amrrs 7y ago
On the contrary, Wouldn't you want to use something so that it could save their day especially theirs being an "incredible journey"?
cptwunderlich 7y ago
I don't think there is anything comparable OSS wise. Creating such an alternative wouldn't only be very difficutl tech-wise, but someone would also have to create the content. Anyway, I've been using Duolingo since ca. 2014 and it didn't shutdown... Plus, it's free - what do you have to lose? Your progress on some language learning app? You won't lose the knowledge gained.
- angry_octet 7y ago
  It isn't free -- you have to watch ads, which detracts severely from the learning and enjoyment.
  - oska 7y ago
    Plus being a betrayal of their user-base which is heavily weighted towards young and impressionable learners. And, by the way, a betrayal of their initial promise, that they would never do advertising (expressly stated in the first promo video they released, which is still on YouTube).
- kddavis 7y ago
  You ever hear of a thing called opportunity cost? Some people interested in learning a foreign language actually have a compelling desire to learn said language.
- 7y ago

walterkrankheit 7y ago

It's true that it's tough to learn a language from scratch with just Duolingo - only language classes truly worked for me. But as a means of review or for giving my friends who would probably never learn the language properly a leg up, it's invaluable. Rosetta Stone used to be a $700 investment and this made it obsolete.

nmfisher 7y ago

I learned Mandarin and German pre-Duolingo, both to reasonable levels of proficiency. I've messed around with Duolingo a few times, just to get a feel for how useful it is. I came away feeling that it was about the same level as flashcard vocabulary learning - useful, but only a small part of the pie. Vocabulary is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition to be able to carry on a conversation. Mandarin in particular is more difficult, since you need to grind through hours and hour writing/rote learning characters to improve your vocabulary. The one thing that noticeably accelerated my proficiency was having an actual conversation with a native speaker (host family/tutor/etc). That's not something that Duolingo really replicates. Self-plug - coincidentally, earlier today I just released a small tool for Mandarin learners to practise their tone recognition! I've been working on a larger app and this seemed like something that would have helped me when I first started out. App is currently live @ https://fluent.academy https://fluent.academy - I'll be introducing more functionality for Mandarin learners in the near future, so would really love to hear from students of any level.

noname120 7y ago
Conversely, there is this to train tone pronunciation. :) https://mandarintonetrainer.com/games https://mandarintonetrainer.com/games
- nmfisher 7y ago
  Yes, I have come across that one too! Acoustically speaking, tones are actually really interesting. Are you associated with that site?
  - noname120 7y ago
    No I'm not. I always disclose it when I'm associated with anything that I promote.
hawkice 7y ago
Some of those recordings are bonkers haha. 得 in particular seemed... Worthy of a double check. And 二（or 儿？) Had a surprising cadence to it. Swell idea though. Mobile support is a bit rough but not unusable.

keiferski 7y ago

Personally, I've found Duolingo to be almost universally worse than any other language product. It seems to have become successful and widely-known purely from marketing. It is the current generation's Rosetta Stone. In general, I recommend Glossika or Pimsleur over Duolingo. Depending on the language you're learning, there are also more niche sites that do a far better job; Turkish Tea Time or RealPolish.pl are some good examples. https://turkishteatime.com https://turkishteatime.com https://realpolish.pl https://realpolish.pl

CGamesPlay 7y ago
Interesting. I strongly dislike Duolingo (because it seems very focused on passive recall, aka multiple choice), but think pretty highly of Rosetta Stone. I haven't looked at either of Glossika or Pimsleur, but Glossika's page title is "AI-based effective language learning" which immediately reeks of marketing blather. Why do you recommend them?
- keiferski 7y ago
  Yeah, their new branding is a little strange. But the original Glossika method (which the new software still essentially does) is to teach a language only via phrases - not grammar trees, isolated vocabulary words, or anything else. I’ve found this approach to be more fruitful than the abstract one most books and programs take.
  - yorwba 7y ago
    > the original Glossika method (which the new software still essentially does) is to teach a language only via phrases Based on the screenshots, it looks like they maintain a "memory level" for each phrase and presumably do spaced repetition to keep that level above a certain target. Am I right in assuming that if you fail a review because you forgot what one specific word means, you'll get the exact same sentence next time, rather than a different sentence using the same word? I have a system for personal use that does the latter, but I haven't yet found a good interface for indicating why I got the sentence wrong. My current implementation is to have a huge list of checkboxes for every aspect of each word (dictionary form, spelling, pronunciation, etc.) that could potentially be forgotten independently.

mantap 7y ago

I see duolingo as a kind of modern equivalent to the language textbooks we had in school. You aren't going to seriously learn a language using it, but it gives you enough of a taste that you might be motivated to decide to pick up a language after using it. I do think that using duolingo too long is an inefficient way to learn a language even at beginner level, I wouldn't use it for more than a few weeks before graduating to a SRS like Anki. For intermediate to advanced I really love clozemaster. It's especially good for learning grammar, you probably want to supplement it with some pure vocabulary in an SRS.

sharcerer 7y ago

Does Duolingo have Spaced-repetition? Spaced-repetition tools like Anki are quite customizable too.

angry_octet 7y ago
Yes it does that. A bit too much actually, Duolingo is painful if you already understand so vocab.
rgoulter 7y ago
I used DuoLingo for quite some time before using Anki. My experience with Anki was much better. My experience was that I was much better at recalling vocabulary from using Anki than DL. Possibly because the "yes/no" to DL is at a phrase/sentence level rather than per-word. Without putting effort in, DL makes it easy to recall what the DuoLingo-defined accepted translation of phrases is. It's easy to fall into the habit of 'gaming' it and just remembering the answer in a very shallow sense. With Anki, using flashcards of words, the 'effort' you need to put in is being honest about whether you recalled the word. I felt that when I started using Anki, I was much better at answering DL.

angry_octet 7y ago

Can we pause for a moment to appreciate the manifest destiny of a name like Severin Hacker?

shacker 7y ago
:)

johnkpaul 7y ago

I have a 2201 day streak playing Duolingo. I love Duolingo. I have taken Spanish and French that whole time and German for a few years. I find Duolingo to be an extremely fun game. My wife and I really enjoy trying to speak other languages and even more so now that we have talking children. I can speak passable Spanish and can string together broken sentences in French to be effective (they get what I mean) and hilarious to native speakers. Duolingo has never purely taught me a language. If my wife didn't know Spanish and learning French like me, I would have never been able to practice enough in the real world to know. I enjoy using Duolingo immensely. For me it is a fun way to toy around with a hobby I've had for years without committing myself to dedicated training costs and time.

markhollis 7y ago
That last sentence is exactly what I like about Duolingo. 716 day streak here. Without Duolingo, I would not have commited to at least some minutes spending with a foreign language. Now I can at least give directions in French. I managed to have 8 years of French at school without being able to do that in the end.
- melling 7y ago
  I’ve been working on my own version of “DuoLingo” for iOS for 10 years now; longer than DuoLingo. I’ve never gained much traction. I’m looking for other ideas to help language learners. Recently, I’ve tried writing smaller apps to supplement what Duo provides because they have a great product and I’ll never compete directly as a solo developer. Anyway, any other small app ideas that people would like to see implemented? Game ideas that help with the necessary repetition, for example?
  - SkyBelow 7y ago
    One idea would be to use a wide variety of pictures for learning a particular word. If I am learning what the word for room is, if the picture is always the same picture of a bedroom, my mind will be building an association with bedroom instead of room in general. Also as someone trying to pick back up on my Japanese after letting it slide for a decade (well to be honest I never had more than enough to do greetings and basic restaurant ordering), many kana/kanji matching apps leave a lot to be desired. Katakana is a personal weak point and the apps I've tried all limit the extent of matches to picking one of the matching 3 or 4. Process of elimination makes it so that I can get 100% of these quizzes despite only knowing 80% of the material. Something that would allow customizing 10 or 20 possible answers to pick from would be nice. But I don't know if this would have any bearing on other languages to be worth developing (and there might be an existing app I just haven't found yet).

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cmrdporcupine 7y ago

I would love one of these vocabulary building apps if it came in the form of an Android Auto application that I could use while driving my 45 minute commute. Doesn't seem to exist, though.

michalu 7y ago

I learned couple of languages with the help of Duolingo. They claim t be the fastest way to learn a language. I recently realized is only valid if you don't want to put the work in. People who are not willing to put serious effort into learning a new language will find Duolingo useful. It's also useful if you come from similar language. E.g. you speak Italian and you want to learn Spanish (latin langauge). Or you're Czech and you want to learn Polish (slavic language, same grammar and compsition) But if you are serious about learning a language, Duolingo will only slow you down. You learn conversational stuff and progress often with big holes in the knowledge and understanding the core principles and structures of the language. For serious learners of a new language, keen to progress properly and fast Duolingo should be avoided.

Fnoord 7y ago
Duolingo works by means of repetition. The user can learn as much as they want. You need to define "serious learning" and "serious effort" if you want to make a well written critique. Which alternatives do you suggest? How much do they cost? How much time per month would you spend on these? Versus Duolingo? What is/are your end goal(s). In how many months would you reach your end goal(s)?
- michalu 7y ago
  Serious effort is when you drill the grammar and memorise tense and forms of words. You'll have a base to build on. Take English for example, difference between past simple vs. past continuous is easier explained once than randomly coming across on Duolingo never fully comprehending the principle. Therefore it's faster. And form someone coming from non-Germanic language this will take time to comprehend, kind of like when you first learned some math concepts as a child, some took a while to click. Now take words and their past forms, give, gave, given. In order to use it in a natural way, you first have to drill and memorise many words ... not possible on Duolingo as one lesson you work with a bunch of "gave" and suddenly several lessons you use "given" ... Yes, you can learn language in way that you go China and you're able to make primitive conversations. I know a lot of people speaking French that they learned conversational way and all of them struggle with grammar and despite being able to talk and communicate fluently their language is not enough for professional level or academic level. E.g. my girlfriend and I speak English, a language native to neither of us ... we can live a complete life together and we can talk but to a native speaker her mixing of tenses and grammar would sound like nonsense. This is the case with many of my foreign friends who learned English in a conversational way. Duolingo does the best what it's designed for. It's a way to learn for the lazy, so it is a game.

dghughes 7y ago

I like Duolingo because it's easy to get going and quick to take lessons during my free time. It's easy enough to get going and hard enough to feel like you're doing something but not so much you give up. The points system, scoreboard, and email prompts are a good way to encourage you without being annoying. The ranked scoreboard really has me wanting to stay there and compete to stay in the top 10 each week. One thing I miss is the speaking option. Not all languages offer it but some did and that option seems to be missing or at least on my device it is. Another problem is some languages are hit and miss with pronunciations if there are few native speakers. I know there are computer generated voices but sometimes there is no sample of the words at all (Irish being one example). Anything that gets people interested in languages is a good thing. Duolingo may not be perfect but it's a popular and easy to use app. We unilingual English speakers need to get to with the times and learn at least one second language, maybe even more.

moojd 7y ago
I've been using the voice-to-text included with the google keyboard on android to practice speech on duo. I'd be interested to hear from a native speaker how accurate the voice-to-text model is but I find it fun getting a computer to understand me in a different language. It can be pretty unforgiving for certain sounds that aren't in my native language so I feel like I really have to nail the pronunciation.
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kddavis 7y ago
This is really Duolingo in a nutshell... the complete gamification of language learning. You don’t actually have to learn anything as long as you “feel” like you’re doing something. > Anything that gets people interested in languages is a good thing. I don’t share this view. If you want to really commit to learning a language for some reason, that is fine and great and there are now countless resources to do so, getting language partners is easier than ever... but it’s not a moral imperative, and if you’re just spending time on activities that have no hope of leading to fluency it really is just a mastubatory exercise (albeit one that is more appropriate to talk about in mixed company), or basically a game... which there is also nothing wrong with!! I masturbate.. but then again I don’t lord it over everyone as some moral imperative. The more serious point: if Duolingo gets your rocks off, great, but as language learning tool it’s pretty poor. Sure you have to work to learn a language, but if you’re going to commit to that effort there are staggeringly better options, which given all the hype is a bit disappointing.

seanwilson 7y ago

I've used Duolingo and like it for learning grammar and vocabulary. Why would someone pay for it though? I would have been prepared to pay but I don't see why I would. The only paid features I see are to remove ads (which you rarely see compared to how long you use the app for), offline use (which isn't an issue if you have good mobile internet) and to skip to harder stages (which seems counterproductive). In terms of making an income, it feels they give far too much away for free. Do they make most of their money from the ads? Or so many people use it for free that it's okay if only a low percent convert?

jborden13 7y ago
Ultimately, I primarily opted for the paid version of DuoLingo to support their mission of free language learning for all. The ad removal and offline use (great for planes and while traveling) were secondary reasons.
- yakshemash 7y ago
  I opted for the paid version for exactly the same reason, but I was sorely disappointed to learn that they don't allow the app to be installed in my home country when I went there for a visit and was hoping to introduce my young nephews to the joys of learning a foreign language. It happens that third world countries don't generate enough ad money to be part of the free language learning for all mantra. Needless to say, I didn't renew my subscription. I must admit though that the app contributed toward my goal of attaining reasonable proficiency in Portuguese in one year, though I got much more out of obstinately listening to podcasts and regular radio even though I understood little at the beginning, and also making native speaker friends online. I used https://www.hellotalk.com/ https://www.hellotalk.com/, an app to meet language learning partners to chat with, and where Brazilians happen to be extremely active and eager to exchange with people willing to help them with their English or French.

jonathanjaeger 7y ago

I use Duolingo for Portuguese and I would highly recommend sticking as much to desktop as possible, given that it requires you to work more at the exercises than on mobile. Better for ingraining concepts in your head. Duolingo, along with other resources, gave me a great foundation for when I added Italki and started talking to Brazilians in Portuguese for 30-60 chunks of time. I probably should have started Italki ("out loud" conversations sooner), but Duolingo's Portuguese tree definitely gave me a great start on vocab and all the different grammar types (subjunctive in Portuguese is intense!).

nandkeypull 7y ago

Clozemaster has been my go-to app for language study now. It uses the "sentence mining" concept advocated by Glossika to show you thousands of sentences and learn new vocabulary in context. After I got to a certain level, Duolingo and Rosetta Stone became too easy, and I found myself grinding on things that I already knew to try to get to "the good stuff". The signal-to-noise ratio was just too low. Anki was the next step up for me and improved my vocabulary by leaps and bounds, but it became tedious to look for example sentences and make new flashcards from them. Clozemaster does this automatically, and you can choose whatever difficulty level you like.

throwaway41968 7y ago
That's the approach I've had recently. Duolingo into Clozemaster, with generous helpings of Memrise on the side. Too bad Clozemaster is awfully limited in its free version.

OJFord 7y ago

I'm using Duolingo to learn Hindi, but not alone; I also have a couple of (Snell's) books. I find that a good combination - I favour reading as a means of study anyway, and that gives an understanding of the grammar, tips, gotchas, etc., and then Duolingo puts it into practice, tests me on it, and instills vocabulary and recognition of sounds and characters through repetition.

dang 7y ago

A large thread about Duolingo from a couple months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21702424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21702424

vonnik 7y ago

Since we're recommending other language tools, I've found the Michel Thomas method to be really effective. Better than Pimsleur: https://www.michelthomas.com/ https://www.michelthomas.com/

wwarner 7y ago

A great example of how a creative application of entrepreneurial spirit can make the world a better place.

andrewzah 7y ago

Duolingo functions on the premise that "being conversational" means "cobbling together words shakily into passable sentences". I find that people in general have a low bar for "being fluent" and "being conversational". Have you ever tracked a conversation you've had with your friends? A conversation can broach many different topics, and can go deep into those topics. Are you "conversational" if you can only say a few sentences and are completely out of your depth once the conversation switches to any other topic like politics, etc? No. Conversations can also last hours. Doing things like duolingo will never have you reach fluency or even being fully conversational. It may be a good start, but it should always be complemented by studying with textbooks or online resources like instructors on youtube. Anki (or memrise) is necessary to start memorizing heaps of vocabulary words so you can begin to have simple conversations. Glossika is good for making yourself practice saying sentences and listening to sentences. Native material is by far the most important aspect. That's how you find vocabulary and practice things like listening and shadowing along.

trhway 7y ago

sideways: reading about his sale of reCAPTCHA to Google stumbled on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReCAPTCHA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReCAPTCHA " In 2018, Google started beta testing a completely invisible reCAPTCHA system which does not present any human verification visually. Instead, the new system actively monitors user actions across the entire property and returns a score which represents the probability if it is a human or a bot." Once the bots successfully emulate humans ... what happens once the system concludes you're a bot? How do you prove that you aren't?

theriddlr 7y ago

I've done a beginners' course with a tutor but had forgotten most of it without regular practice. Duolingo is really useful for ingraining the language into my long-term memory. I would probably enrol in an intermediate course in the future when I can pass the test. I live in the UK where there is a big Spanish community and can easily go on holiday to Spain. I can make grammatically correct sentences in the Duolingo domains and can understand the gist of unknown [written] sentences using contextual clues and words similar to English. There is a Flag question icon on the app where you can read the community's comments for an explanation on the grammar.