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Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

334 points by doppp 5y ago

ipnon 5y ago
I was a Duolingo launch user, when revenue was driven by crowdsourced translations. I used Duolingo to learn basic phrases in some languages over many years, but I had to stop using the app. There were too many basic mistakes in grammar and vocabulary. Duolingo innovated by bringing a structured language course with spaced repetition to mobile early in the previous decade. It seems they will need another burst of innovation, this time in novel language apprehension techniques, in order to stay relevant beyond this initial public offering. Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker brought language learning to the global, mobile masses. I hope they will succeed again in the next phase of language technology.
- estaseuropano 5y ago
  I'm not sure they innovated much. Other apps like Babbel are older and had the same features, if not more and better. Duolingo rode the 'free' and 'hip startup' publicity wave and had an interesting idea that they'd use the users to crowdsource translations. But that didn't pan out - everything afterwards seems to have been just scaling with no innovation whatsoever.
  - patentatt 5y ago
    The innovation is the publicity and public image. I’ll get downvotes for it, but it’s the same innovation that Uber, Tesla, GoPro, Facebook, and countless others have rode to billions. Our economy is post-materialism and values public image and publicity greater than innovation and value. If you want to get rich, don’t do something innovative, focus on how you will make a good story to grab free publicity and cement an image as being ‘cool’ and ‘hip.’ Then you don’t ever have to make money or innovate anything. Investors will pour money on you because you’re cool and hip. I’m a little salty about it, but there’s something important there. One more I just thought of, even if it’s not the same scale: Rap Genius. They took what’s pretty much a weekend project and turned it into a business and careers for themselves. The fawning press at their launch was overwhelming and impressive. One small counter example: weebly. They made something actually innovative that provided real value to people. Grew quietly and made (by all outward appearances) a fantastic business. But since you didn’t/don’t see tons of gushing press about them, they (again, just by outward appearances) didn’t launch into the stratosphere like they absolutely could and maybe even should have.
poorjohnmacafee 5y ago
Quick look at financials, they lost $25M in trailing 12 months, lost $14M in the previous year, lost $10M in the year before. How is Duolingo supposed to become profitable? How is a $6.5B valuation justified?
- thiscatis 5y ago
  You can just put a variable where you mention duolingo based on the recent market.
- fny 5y ago
  Discounted cashflows to infinity and beyond plus a massive user base. Add zirp to the mix and I'm surprised they're not worth $65B. I'm sure they'll be profitable in a decade... Also don't forget this is an IPO: ideally you want to overstate your value.
- dazc 5y ago
  'Following the IPO, the company will focus on improving its flagship app and getting more active users to switch to paying subscribers, von Ahn said.' I switched to being a paying subscriber once and the experience was more or less the same as being a free user with the aid of an ad-blocker. Enough said.
- trainsplanes 5y ago
  I think we're closing in on a point where you can't reach a multi-billion dollar valuation if your company is profitable. Just keep burning through investor cash until you're acquired by a bigger corporation. Then a year later they announce that they're killing your company because, surprise, it couldn't turn a profit. Somewhere a rich stock owner makes a huge profit. Everyone's happy.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  Those are pretty small numbers in an absolute sense. Growth is all I would worry about.
- paxys 5y ago
  Why is this always the comment whenever any startup or IPO is discussed on this site? Every company at this stage loses money. It would be stupid to chase profits over user or revenue growth. They have 40 million monthly active users. Registrations grew 67% YoY. Their revenue doubled in a single quarter. Expenses are mostly stock comp. They have nearly $200M cash on hand. The numbers are all solid.
vncecartersknee 5y ago
Honestly from using duolingo pretty heavily for a couple of years, attending language classes and doing my own individual study I've found duolingo pretty useless. It's "fun" and gives one the sense of progress without really accomplishing much.
- BooneJS 5y ago
  I moved on to Babbel.
  - achow 5y ago
    Thanks for the pointer. Quick search gave this review: The main differences between Babbel vs Duolingo are: Babbel is best for learnings looking to completely master a language, whereas Duolingo is better for sporadic learners who want to dabble. Babbel offers lessons with conversational practice and cultural immersion, whereas Duolingo offers adaptive learning lessons.
  - vncecartersknee 5y ago
    yeah babbel seems better although iirc the interface was a bit clunky. I also found busuu and linq to be okay as well.
  - tomduncalf 5y ago
    Yeah I used Babbel to pick up some basic Italian a few years ago and thought that while a bit more “boring” than Duolingo, I felt like I was learning more useful stuff. It’s structured more like a language class at school. Memrise is worth a look as a Duolingo alternative. It’s similar but feels a bit more “serious”, there are some nice features like you get videos of native speakers saying phrases with a variety of accents.
    - rtpg 5y ago
      Memrise also has fun sketches that offer something most language tools miss: entertainment. They’re dumb but can cause a little chuckle (extra satisfying when it’s in an unknown language)
dude4you 5y ago
Please try the clozemaster app I found it much more useful and less playful
- frankzander 5y ago
  yeah and you don't got banned if you have done something wrong in a row. i hate this concept of duolingo and it doesn't help in any way but their income
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deadcoder0904 5y ago
Duolingo story is fascinating. The guy created a software which then became Google Captcha. He is a legend in crowdsourcing 2 startups. The best part about crowdsourced startups are they inherently create MOAT.
dep_b 5y ago
Some of it’s statistics were pretty interesting, like the huge amount of Arabic speaking people that wanted to learn Swedish.
- vr46 5y ago
  Driven by many refugees that sought asylum in Sweden, I believe. https://blog.duolingo.com/our-commitments-to-helping-refugees/ https://blog.duolingo.com/our-commitments-to-helping-refugee...
  - gurkendoktor 5y ago
    Duolingo's loading screen regularly highlights that: "Did you know that most people learning Swedish on Duolingo are in Sweden (refugees)?" (quote from memory)
- uniqueid 5y ago
  I don't know how recent that statistic is, but the statistics Duolingo released a few years back were misleading. I believe Duolingo claimed, for example, that Swedish speakers were most interested in learning Arabic, but they left out the fact that they only offered one course for Swedish-speakers aside from Arabic.
TurkishPoptart 5y ago
I would short this stock.
throwawaysea 5y ago
Reminder that Duolingo’s IPO is very accessible to the public via Robinhood. I am very surprised to see the high valuation for them but it may also be because an uneducated public is trying to get in on something they feel is attractive only because they recognize the name. They may be in for a shock if the stock plummets soon after, especially since there are disincentives for flipping the stock if you bought into the IPO.
- rvz 5y ago
  > but it may also be because an uneducated public is trying to get in on something they feel is attractive only because they recognize the name. That sounds like a form of FOMO and they always think of only one way of trading this stock and that is buying it and holding it. Especially at these prices on the day of IPO. There are larger investors and VCs that have participated in funding rounds that have more than 10x'ed their fundraising round before the IPO. Somebody has got to sell and take profit at some point. I won't be surprised to see a small push higher then followed by some selling from the larger investors to contribute to the selling pressure of this stock. It's the larger early investors and VCs that have the advantage of manipulating this stock on day 1 of IPO day, not a group of retail traders and they will end up holding the bag at a high price.
Uberphallus 5y ago
Duolingo is great to get your feet wet, but its teaching model doesn't scale past A2/B1 levels (and in speaking/listening even less so). This valuation is enormous for a company that's virtually been for 10 years in losses. So far Duolingo has made the experience more painful to free users to push them to pay, and yet hasn't managed to get out of the red. I think the main that most learners are from developing countries learning English, so Duolingo Plus can be a hard sell. I bet the money influx will help push whatever projects they have in mind, but while private, and I say this as a language learning ethusiast, their approaches have been completely misdirected. Personally I'd be wary to throw my money there, but will certainly reevaluate it next quarter.
- mgbmtl 5y ago
  I was a paid user for some time. It's inexpensive and fun. I mostly paid to encourage them, and to be able to use it offline in the plane (it's a fun game). However, as most people, I haven't flown in a long time, so I cancelled it. I wonder what are the main types of paid users. Otherwise, when not paying, I use the web version, and never noticed any advertising.
  - Uberphallus 5y ago
    Last time I checked, the ads on the web were alright, but the experience on mobile was extremely hostile, with constant ads and deliberately sssssllllooooowwwllllyy aaanniimmmaaaattteeeeddd reminders to push you to pay for Duolingo Plus. When reviewing lessons you're already familiar with, you tend to spend more time watching ads and Plus reminders than actually learning anything.
least 5y ago
I was a cryptologic linguist for the army and went through a 16 month course of 6-7 hours of classroom instruction per day M-F, native speaking instructors, tons of immersion, and a couple hours of homework each night and left still feeling like I hardly knew the language that I was supposed to be interpreting. Unless your major in college is a specific language, you probably won't achieve any sort of fluency in your target language from taking a course in it, either. Language learning is hard and a multifaceted thing that no single application is going to adequately prepare you for. Speaking and listening are related skills yet speaking is much harder than listening, and both are much harder than reading (for the vast majority of languages). Rote memorization is necessary. Immersion is necessary. Comprehensible input is necessary. Language learning apps like Duolingo sell the idea of learning a language which is an extremely attractive idea to a lot of people. They also make it a fun activity and incentivize engagement with humor and gamification. The problem is that you can't possibly become fluent in a language with an app like it and there isn't any single app that will. I suppose in the end Duolingo's valuation is more a reflection of people's desire to learn a language rather than people actually learning a language, though.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
  Can you talk about the resources you used to learn in the classroom? I learned German using the Foreign Service Institute handbook and I thought it was great introduction to the language. I'd love to know what's in use nowadays.
  - csa 5y ago
    I’m pretty sure this person was learning Pashto or Dari. The materials were mostly (all?) developed in-house. If they were learning Dari, they would have been better off just using externally-produced Farsi textbooks since they have a more robust history of development. The specific recommended materials for an introduction to a language depend on what your goals are for learning the language.
    - least 5y ago
      Yeah, the Dari course was notoriously bad quality and rife with controversy with some of the highest failure rates in the entire Presidio at the time. Not sure if anything's changed at this point?
jwmoz 5y ago
I can't believe there is so much money in this app, it's basically flashcards. There are so many mistakes in it when I was using it for Indonesian. Something like HelloChinese is such a better app.
- lbriner 5y ago
  I think it is worse than flashcards because you usually use flashcards after a tutor who can give you some context around what you are learning. I found two big problems with Duo: 1) You are not given any input as to why or how e.g. German words are conjugated, not just verbs but adjectives as well, you are just expected to learn them. If you don't know what gender is, as an English speaker, then trying to learn der, das and die won't make any sense whereas if they said, "German uses different words for 'the' so make sure you learn the article with the word to remember which it is", it would be more useful. 2) The insistence on being text-based makes learning things like Japanese especially hard. Many people only want to speak and understand a language so forcing them to also learn an alphabet just makes it even harder, especially since in Japan, you won't see everything in Hirigana anyway! If you want to help with pronunciation then you could use a pinyin to do so. I also thought it was quite funny that the premium version gave you tutoring, in which case, I might as well attend a college class?
- JCharante 5y ago
  I like HelloChinese (spent $100 on it and then forgot to unsub which cost another $100) but stopped using it after realizing that because they only go to HSK 4, I might as well stick to Anki so I can go HSK 6 & beyond. (I don't want to use 2 apps for my srs reviews everyday). Also if you want to use SRS for any words you learn outside the app, you'll need to use another app anyways.
jfoster 5y ago
What is the big opportunity in Duolingo? Are there lots of people learning languages who haven't heard of it already? Is it so essential & useful to language learning that they have a lot of room for ARPU growth? Do they have some way of inspiring a lot more people to begin learning another language?
- lbriner 5y ago
  The most obvious answer would be that many people who can afford basic internet but cannot afford a college class can learn at least the basics of another language. I guess they only need to upsell a small percentage to the premium version to get a large ROI.
tumblewit 5y ago
Based on their IPO filing I would say their biggest asset is the number of users. Other than that their model still results in a net loss every year so if you are looking at it from a value investing standpoint I think it’s overvalued at least 5x.
meerita 5y ago
Duolingo helped me to understand Kanji and Hiragana.
bleverse 5y ago
I've been using it on a daily basis for 2 years now and when I switched to 'completely type the answer' instead of 'clicking on words', it made a big difference in learning. I think a big factor in its usefulness depends on the user. If you make it hard for yourself, you will get much more out of it.
- engineeringwoke 5y ago
  First set of crowns on the phone, move fast. Second set on desktop, completely type the answer. Weave in stories once you feel like you have a foundation. Add immersion from live streams/Netflix. This takes you to at least B2. There's an unsurprising amount of ignorant responses and strawmen in the thread, kind of sad.
fy20 5y ago
Reading the comments here gives me the impression that Duolingo is more of a game than a language learning ressource. Interestingly Zynga, makers of Farmville, targeted a $7B valuation on the day of their IPO nearly 10 years ago [0], it quickly dropped after though [1]. [0] https://money.cnn.com/2011/12/14/technology/zynga_ipo_price/index.htm https://money.cnn.com/2011/12/14/technology/zynga_ipo_price/... [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2011/12/16/zynga-ipo-goes-splatville-what-happened/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2011/12/16/zynga-ipo-...
nathancahill 5y ago
Because it hasn't been mentioned here, this is another incredible success story from Luis von Ahn. He is the first Guatemalan founder of a unicorn startup.
radres 5y ago
If you want to learn a language you are supposed to feel emotions. I speak OK English now (not my mother tongue obv.) and I still remember the silly mistakes I made while I was playing online games 10-12 years ago and people made fun of me. Never made those mistakes again. Now I am learning a 3rd language in a new country. I started with Duolingo and never believed in "Paid courses". I have used it close to a year with little impact on my skills. But I have made most of my progress when I actually talked to someone. There is a feeling of embarrassment and defenselessness when you put yourself in uncomfortable situations like that and that is what you need to make it stay.
ibudiallo 5y ago
Here is one thing that happened to me after using Duolingo every day, multiple times a day for more than a year. I became extremely good at it. Throw any language at me, I'll complete it in record time. Sometimes I played it without even the sound on. Do I speak any of the languages in the game? Hardly. This realization came to me after I completed the Japanese class and my sister asked me to count to ten. I knew all the numbers, their symbols, and the placement in a sentence. But I could not count to ten. Duolingo is a game before being a learning tool. It is fun to use and I'm almost jealous that they are going to IPO. But it's kinda like farmville. You become good at the game, but you probably won't become a farmer after playing.
locallost 5y ago
The gamification part of the app works well, until you make a break. For me it was when I stopped using it because it basically felt like breaking off an addiction, and I didn't want to go back. So it kept me using it for a while, but ultimately it pushed me away from it. My motivation was a trip to a foreign country, and maybe I would've kept at it after it was over, but as it is, I didn't. From my experience then it seems their goal is less language learning, and more engagement in a typical social network kind of way. I think the app is technically also really good, and in general pleasant to use. And I think it's not a bad way to learn because you can immerse yourself more than by going to a school where a teacher tries to explain things to you. Doing homework is really important, and Duolingo is basically all homework. How much did I learn in about a month and a half of 30mins per day? Can't say after two years of not using the language at all, but at the time it was enough to get a sense of something if the menu was not in english etc. And when I was in the countryside (in Italy), I was looking for somebody and the mother of the person said just "ape", and I knew that they're taking care of the bees. And recently I walked next to a new Italian restaurant in town, and at the entrance it said "la nostra cucina ________ (forgot what)" and I was like, oh, I know what that means. So it's not much, but it's not nothing.
holoduke 5y ago
My biggest issue with apps like Duolingo is that they pretend learning a language is like a game. Effortless and easy. In reality you need to have quite some motivation to learn every day for a few hours. You need to learn words and grammar by writing them down. Lots of times. You need to talk with people at least a few times per week. You need to repeat a lot. It's very hard work. And even then it takes most regular people about 2 to 4 years to get yourself to a level like my English (not fluent, but enough)
- rafaelero 5y ago
  A lot of my English I acquired reading Reddit. Sure, I did have a previous background at school, but I would say that it can be painless.
studentrob 5y ago
And still no traditional chinese characters which means you need a desktop extension and can't learn it on mobile.
the-smug-one 5y ago
I use Duolingo to learn Spanish and it's pretty good if you take it seriously and add on research outside of Duo (mostly on grammar). I'm hoping to reach a level where I can read things in the language which are interesting to me (with the aid of a dictionary of course), so I'll probably replace HN with some Spanish variant for example.
jacquesm 5y ago
It hasn't been mentioned yet, but give Lingvist a try, they take a (much) more serious attitude towards the same material.
jeofken 5y ago
For any language learners out there, my method of learning to communicate quite freely in two foreign languages in adulthood has been going to bars, and asking tipsy strangers in very friendly ways about words, such as on the menu, or something you’re wondering about. Let them be the expert they are. You must enjoy learning and sounding like an idiot for a couple of years. I’ve done courses, Duolingo etc, self study books, spaced repetition cards, and watched a lot of TV. But nothing has beat bars, or having roommates who don’t speak English (or my native language).
- mabub24 5y ago
  This is similar for me, though with language meetups or literally just paying someone to talk with me in the language I want to learn. Nothing beats seeing the language used as a living thing, as a part of human behavior within a form of life. Immersion, in person, is also essential for understanding the ways that people speak in a language, all the different connotations and tricks to words. Also, jokes. Attempting to tell jokes in a 2nd language, and also getting a laugh out of people (perhaps at you, but same feeling) is really rewarding feeling. I often tell people to start trying to tell jokes in a 2nd language right away. It immediately gives you a sense of play in the language and jokes are often direct references to common human experience. In a way, a lot of jokes are universal.
timwaagh 5y ago
I can see duo being worth something but since they don't really sell anything... I'm not knowledgeable about advertising to know whether the 6.5b makes sense or not
mgbmtl 5y ago
Everytine Duolingo is in the news here, I find the anecdotes and suggestions of alternative solutions interesting, but we rarely discuss what is making Duolingo so successful. They have become a household name. Almost all non-tech people around me know what Duolingo is. Kind of like Tinder, they may not use it, but they know it. I also view Duolingo as a game that provides a bit of exposure to a new language, but won't get you very far unless combined to other resources. I wonder where the IPO will lead them. They did encourage a ton of people to be curious about new languages. It worked for me. I hope they can help them get to the next level, and not become, as someone else mentioned here, the next Farmville.
DiogenesKynikos 5y ago
Of all the tools I've tried to begin learning a language, Pimsleur audio lessons have been the most effective. They're entirely auditory. They teach you a relatively small vocabulary using spaced repetition, and if you do the lessons, you really learn that vocab well. They challenge you to speak (under time pressure) from the first lesson onwards, and because you're only learning words by ear, you can avoid pronunciation pitfalls that people who learn from written sources fall into. You can't get to fluency with Pimsleur, but you can build a very good initial base. I don't think Duolingo is really a very effective way to begin learning a language. In my opinion, early on, language learning should be intensely focused on auditory and speaking skills, and only later on branch out into writing, formal grammar, etc.
m0llusk 5y ago
Kind of tangential, but Paul at Langfocus has a potentially interesting video about his observations of Duolingo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbmXSR_QiP8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbmXSR_QiP8
nonameiguess 5y ago
Count me as severely skeptical. I don't exactly feel like digging through the entire prospectus since it's too late to matter, but a quick search seems to indicate their user and revenue growth was fairly flat for years until last year, which just happened to be the year everyone in the world was forced to stay home and find somewhat productive things to do. Investing in this doesn't feel any saner than investing in a startup for people making sourdough at home. I can at least squint at something like Zoom and say sure, single-year growth like this is never going to happen again, but at least remote multimedia collaboration is probably here to stay, even though Zoom specifically isn't necessarily going to monopolize it just because they were first. But that has a clear business use case that isn't going anywhere. Duolingo is relying entirely on the whims of the general public.
bumblebritches5 5y ago
lol
j45 5y ago
I remember hearing an academic rail and rant against Duolingo at a prominent global online learning conference a few year ago. What struck me was the negativity in the face of a simple problem being solved - people want to learn to speak a language before they learn to read and write it for many valid reasons. Conversational fluency is a thing that has existed for a very long time. Duolingos superpower is that it can create beginners in languages new to them, at scale, something which most systems to date can’t do as well. It’s true a phone might not give you a full education, but we do search for plenty of things every day to learn to use knowledge. The esteemed academic did not present any alternatives to this desire among learners to start to learn a new language.. and instead went back to the theory of learning language through reading and writing first.
saladuh 5y ago
If anyone's planning on learning Japanese with Duolingo: don't. Did that for a few weeks, basically learnt nothing. I soon found out from experienced learners that it was terrible [0]. I then discovered the AJATT/MIA[1] methods of learning Japanese, which prioritize immersion/sentence mining of the target language and learning vocab/kanji and sentence structure through Anki decks (you can use any SRS system but Anki is by far the best with a rich ecosystem of Japanese integrations such as the Yomichan dictionary). I used the foss app Kakugo (available on Fdroid, not sure about the play store) to learn the hiragana and katakana writing scripts in 3 or 4 days, and have now moved on to reading Tae Kim's Grammar Guide[2] for learning grammar and using Refold JP1K[3][4] style anki decks to learn my first 1000 kanji. However this method is more of a 'grind', you need to set aside at least 2 hours a day so that you can read Tae's textbook, learn new vocab and do your reviews through Anki. In your free time, once you have a decent amount of grammar understanding and vocab, you need to be immersing in Japanese, so anime, J-dramas, etc. (Jap music isn't very helpful here). [0] Review of Duolingo Japanese course from a 2+ year user of Anki/immersion based learning: https://youtu.be/jf-SbSfiXn4 https://youtu.be/jf-SbSfiXn4 [1] The AJATT method has been around for a long time, it means All Japanese All The Time. It basically promoted SRS and immersion based learning. MIA is basically the same thing, mass immersion, started mainly by MattVsJapan. However I use the guides and tools created by AJATT-Tools, whos contributors focus on tools for Linux, such as MPV scripts for sentence mining (creating Anki cards with unknown vocabulary semi automatically while watching subtitled content, with audio and visual cues). Their guide builds on top of MIA and AJATT style methods: https://github.com/ajatt-tools https://github.com/ajatt-tools [2] The defacto grammar guide for Japanese that isn't afraid to teach you Kanji from the start: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar [3] Explanation of the JP1K style Anki deck: https://youtu.be/53qKsYxVhoM https://youtu.be/53qKsYxVhoM [4] Deck system is created by https://refold.la https://refold.la, however I use AJATT-Tools's version of the deck because it includes example sentences (and Kanji have different meanings in context).
- esrh 5y ago
  I did this for just about a year, and i can confirm this works if you put in the time. I'm at around 3000 recognizable kanji and can watch/read pretty much anything that's not particularly hard.
maliker 5y ago
As an English speaker, DuoLingo didn’t seem that interesting to me. Then I listened to a podcast where the found Luis von Ahn explained why he started the company [1]. He grew up in Guatemala, and he noticed that learning English would essentially triple anyone’s earning potential in his country. Sure, I might never learn Chinese in DuoLingo, but if I could triple my income by doing it I bet I’d be much more motivated. English speakers that think this app is a toy aren’t the target market. Luis also invented the captcha and used it to digitize the full archive of the New York Times. I can’t speak to the quality of the instruction in DuoLingo, but I’m willing to bet that if there’s a computer-assisted approach to language learning that works, Luis is one of the people most likely to invent it. [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/05/22/860884062/recaptcha-and-duolingo-luis-von-ahn https://www.npr.org/2020/05/22/860884062/recaptcha-and-duoli...
- pnt12 5y ago
  The article says the USA is their biggest market, with about 20% of the users and revenue.
arihant 5y ago
I've been learning Russian for a year (currently at around B1-B2). None of these new age language learning apps are actually useful, even to get your feet wet. The old is still gold when it comes to language learning. You think you're learning with these apps, but in my experience you're not. They just don't seem to put anything in long term memory well. There is spaced repetition in some of them, but not enough repetition. Good old audio course Pimsleur is better than all of them combined. Cortina Method is best resource to learn grammar and the book is so old it looks like a smudged typewriter print. All old methods are based on learning and repeating sentences after sentences rather than learning individual words. You really end up learning like a child. Pattern recognition is where it's at. I can't recall anything I studied on Duolingo for Russian. I can't forget anything I learned on Pimsleur. And I finished the last module in January.
- dorchadas 5y ago
  > The old is still gold when it comes to language learning. Absolutely. Maybe I'm just inclined to the grammar-translation model, but I've found the older editions of books like Teach Yourself so much more helpful to me. Couple that with self-created immersion and it goes a lot quicker.
marpayne 5y ago
I have tried Duolingo (Premium user), and I can say that it is not an effective app if you're going to learn a language effectively. Instead, it is better if you're going to have a bite-sized time to have some mini quiz or something like that. It is more of memorization, and there's no immersion or anything that makes you feel you're making significant progress
thanksforfish 5y ago
I'll add my (32/M/USA) perspective as someone who subscribed to duolingo plus last month. I'm learning Arabic ahead of a _potential_ move with my spouse to an Arabic speaking country. First Duolingo is fun to use. I didn't enjoy classroom based learning in high school. Duo gamifies the process really well, it's on my schedule, and I have a concrete reason to want to learn. Duo has been reducing my time on social media as well, always a bonus when picking up a good habit. The $7/month premium subscription was worth it. I'm investing 30 minutes a day in the app, and ad-free means I can get through more lessons. I have unlimited lives so my learning isn't interrupted if I struggle on a hard lesson. I'm not expecting to become fluent on Duo alone. But I think I'll get a great handle on some basics. My wife is already fluent, so that's helped me speak and figure out some things I struggled with. I also tried the Rosetta Stone app. I didn't think that one was fun, it throws you into hard content quickly, so I haven't been using it. If our move happens, I'll enroll in a more traditional environment, and I may take a second look at the Rosetta Stone app. For now I'm happy that I have something that's making me increasingly comfortable with the idea of speaking Arabic.
rainydaybook 5y ago
I've always found Duolingo too boring and it didn't help me at all. I was able to learn 7 languages using different routes. I already knew Russian, I've learned English the usual school + moving to the country route, and I've learned Spanish, French, German, Italian and Latin by mostly reading books and watching online videos and movies. Having bookstores nearby (especially the Strand) with a lot of interesting books in Spanish, French, German and Italian were key for me. I completely switch 100% of all book reading to the language I'm learning. I would not be able to learn anything without a steady supply of interesting books. For Spanish, most movies on netflix and disney will have subtitles and dubs. For French, there's Arte Karambolage and the newer Disney films are available in french. For German, there's also Arte Karambolage and newer Disney films and 'Dark' on netflix. For Italian, there's a great youtube channel by Iliana Zodiaco with interesting book discussions and reviews. Again newer Disney plus films have Italian. And italian is just very easy in itself. Latin is a lot tougher because there's not as many books in it, and they tend to be not as easy. I've only read Caesar's Gallic wars and Winnie the Pooh. And the grammar is hard. I recommend checking out Lingua Latina Per Se, and youtube channels on Latin Grammar (there's one really good one, 'latintutorial'). Still, this is by far my weakest language. I've started Cicero orations against Catiline, but it's tough going! I didn't learn to speak in any of these because I don't have daily contact with native speakers, but once I do, it will be fairly easy.
- zild3d 5y ago
  At what point do you start reading a book in a new language? Do you already know say 500 words? Otherwise I'd imagine you have to look up almost every word on the page
  - TheFreim 5y ago
    I only know English but am in the middle of studying Latin and I've found that the pain of having to look up works makes them stick in my mind pretty well. Once you can understand a decent number of words you can construct the meaning surprisingly quickly just based on context and the endings of words.
Tepix 5y ago
I'm using DuoLingo (unpaid) successfully to learn French. It is only good for building vocabulary. My advice: a) Use the "tips" (not available for all languages) on the DuoLingo website client for every exercise. They are very well written and give you crucial insights. b) Use Tandem every day to chat with/talk to native speakers as soon as you have some basic vocabulary. Spend some time to find people who are eager to learn. You can often spot them because they only want to learn one language and not seven... c) Buy a grammar book with exercises. Learn conjugations. Learn the grammar to ask questions. Learn prepositions. DuoLingo will not teach you grammar. I went from A1.1 to A2.3 in 6 months doing this and I'm super motivated to keep going.
Jabbles 5y ago
Imagine the number and quality of textbooks you could commission from world experts in any and all languages for $300M, a single year at 20:1 price-to-earnings. Is the app obviously better? More engaging, to some, perhaps. More profitable? I guess that remains to be seen.
- anyfactor 5y ago
  They have a name recognition and that's about it. I really wonder what kind of people actually buy IPOs. Except PLTR I can't name one stock that went public in the last 2 years that didn't dip below their IPO.
kaiwen1 5y ago
For me Duolingo is woefully ineffective. A far better method is Pimsleur plus Anki. Ankify the Pimsleur audio, make your own Anki cards with most of your vocabulary in cloze phrases. Ankify the audio on as many of those cloze phrases as you can using native speakers. Work at it daily. Use a textbook to learn the grammar. This is a system that works. It’s the fastest way I know of to begin understanding languages intuitively. No need for mental translation. No difference in how your mind responds to “What do you want to eat?” and “你要吃什么?” Of course, Duolingo’s valuation isn’t connected to success in learning language. It’s connected to success in convincing people that they can and should learn a language.
asoneth 5y ago
It makes sense that fifteen minutes a day of Duolingo isn't as effective as spending two hours a day studying, going to meetups, traveling to a foreign country, etc. I recall similar criticism for the "seven-minute workout" from people who pointed out that joining a gym and hiring a personal trainer is a more effective way of getting in shape. But those are not very helpful. If I have fifteen minutes before the kids wake up my only decision is how to spend that time. Duolingo? Meditate? Pushups? Half an episode of something? Daydream?
rafaelero 5y ago
I don't understand all these comments saying that Duolingo is useless? Maybe your brain is not very fit for acquiring a new language, but the app is nothing more than an easy way to do small exercises. That can be pretty useful by itself, if you really have the motivation to do it a lot.
hirad 5y ago
I need to take exception with many of the comments here. Does Duolingo make you fluent in any language? No. But if that's what you're looking for (from any language learning tool), you need to readjust your expectations. The only thing that teaches you a language is immersion in a society that speaks it, in my experience. All language-learning exercises are just prep work for that. And on that front, Duolingo is exemplary. I've been doing Spanish with it for the whole pandemic. I'm far from fluent but my retention is high and the learning process is easy and fun. Couldn't ask for more.

334 points by doppp 5y ago

I was a Duolingo launch user, when revenue was driven by crowdsourced translations. I used Duolingo to learn basic phrases in some languages over many years, but I had to stop using the app. There were too many basic mistakes in grammar and vocabulary. Duolingo innovated by bringing a structured language course with spaced repetition to mobile early in the previous decade. It seems they will need another burst of innovation, this time in novel language apprehension techniques, in order to stay relevant beyond this initial public offering. Luis von Ahn and Severin Hacker brought language learning to the global, mobile masses. I hope they will succeed again in the next phase of language technology.

estaseuropano 5y ago
I'm not sure they innovated much. Other apps like Babbel are older and had the same features, if not more and better. Duolingo rode the 'free' and 'hip startup' publicity wave and had an interesting idea that they'd use the users to crowdsource translations. But that didn't pan out - everything afterwards seems to have been just scaling with no innovation whatsoever.
- patentatt 5y ago
  The innovation is the publicity and public image. I’ll get downvotes for it, but it’s the same innovation that Uber, Tesla, GoPro, Facebook, and countless others have rode to billions. Our economy is post-materialism and values public image and publicity greater than innovation and value. If you want to get rich, don’t do something innovative, focus on how you will make a good story to grab free publicity and cement an image as being ‘cool’ and ‘hip.’ Then you don’t ever have to make money or innovate anything. Investors will pour money on you because you’re cool and hip. I’m a little salty about it, but there’s something important there. One more I just thought of, even if it’s not the same scale: Rap Genius. They took what’s pretty much a weekend project and turned it into a business and careers for themselves. The fawning press at their launch was overwhelming and impressive. One small counter example: weebly. They made something actually innovative that provided real value to people. Grew quietly and made (by all outward appearances) a fantastic business. But since you didn’t/don’t see tons of gushing press about them, they (again, just by outward appearances) didn’t launch into the stratosphere like they absolutely could and maybe even should have.

poorjohnmacafee 5y ago

Quick look at financials, they lost $25M in trailing 12 months, lost $14M in the previous year, lost $10M in the year before. How is Duolingo supposed to become profitable? How is a $6.5B valuation justified?

thiscatis 5y ago
You can just put a variable where you mention duolingo based on the recent market.
fny 5y ago
Discounted cashflows to infinity and beyond plus a massive user base. Add zirp to the mix and I'm surprised they're not worth $65B. I'm sure they'll be profitable in a decade... Also don't forget this is an IPO: ideally you want to overstate your value.
dazc 5y ago
'Following the IPO, the company will focus on improving its flagship app and getting more active users to switch to paying subscribers, von Ahn said.' I switched to being a paying subscriber once and the experience was more or less the same as being a free user with the aid of an ad-blocker. Enough said.
trainsplanes 5y ago
I think we're closing in on a point where you can't reach a multi-billion dollar valuation if your company is profitable. Just keep burning through investor cash until you're acquired by a bigger corporation. Then a year later they announce that they're killing your company because, surprise, it couldn't turn a profit. Somewhere a rich stock owner makes a huge profit. Everyone's happy.
bpodgursky 5y ago
Those are pretty small numbers in an absolute sense. Growth is all I would worry about.
paxys 5y ago
Why is this always the comment whenever any startup or IPO is discussed on this site? Every company at this stage loses money. It would be stupid to chase profits over user or revenue growth. They have 40 million monthly active users. Registrations grew 67% YoY. Their revenue doubled in a single quarter. Expenses are mostly stock comp. They have nearly $200M cash on hand. The numbers are all solid.

vncecartersknee 5y ago

Honestly from using duolingo pretty heavily for a couple of years, attending language classes and doing my own individual study I've found duolingo pretty useless. It's "fun" and gives one the sense of progress without really accomplishing much.

BooneJS 5y ago
I moved on to Babbel.
- achow 5y ago
  Thanks for the pointer. Quick search gave this review: The main differences between Babbel vs Duolingo are: Babbel is best for learnings looking to completely master a language, whereas Duolingo is better for sporadic learners who want to dabble. Babbel offers lessons with conversational practice and cultural immersion, whereas Duolingo offers adaptive learning lessons.
- vncecartersknee 5y ago
  yeah babbel seems better although iirc the interface was a bit clunky. I also found busuu and linq to be okay as well.
- tomduncalf 5y ago
  Yeah I used Babbel to pick up some basic Italian a few years ago and thought that while a bit more “boring” than Duolingo, I felt like I was learning more useful stuff. It’s structured more like a language class at school. Memrise is worth a look as a Duolingo alternative. It’s similar but feels a bit more “serious”, there are some nice features like you get videos of native speakers saying phrases with a variety of accents.
  - rtpg 5y ago
    Memrise also has fun sketches that offer something most language tools miss: entertainment. They’re dumb but can cause a little chuckle (extra satisfying when it’s in an unknown language)

dude4you 5y ago

Please try the clozemaster app I found it much more useful and less playful

frankzander 5y ago
yeah and you don't got banned if you have done something wrong in a row. i hate this concept of duolingo and it doesn't help in any way but their income

deleted 5y ago

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deadcoder0904 5y ago

Duolingo story is fascinating. The guy created a software which then became Google Captcha. He is a legend in crowdsourcing 2 startups. The best part about crowdsourced startups are they inherently create MOAT.

dep_b 5y ago

Some of it’s statistics were pretty interesting, like the huge amount of Arabic speaking people that wanted to learn Swedish.

vr46 5y ago
Driven by many refugees that sought asylum in Sweden, I believe. https://blog.duolingo.com/our-commitments-to-helping-refugees/ https://blog.duolingo.com/our-commitments-to-helping-refugee...
- gurkendoktor 5y ago
  Duolingo's loading screen regularly highlights that: "Did you know that most people learning Swedish on Duolingo are in Sweden (refugees)?" (quote from memory)
uniqueid 5y ago
I don't know how recent that statistic is, but the statistics Duolingo released a few years back were misleading. I believe Duolingo claimed, for example, that Swedish speakers were most interested in learning Arabic, but they left out the fact that they only offered one course for Swedish-speakers aside from Arabic.

TurkishPoptart 5y ago

I would short this stock.

throwawaysea 5y ago

Reminder that Duolingo’s IPO is very accessible to the public via Robinhood. I am very surprised to see the high valuation for them but it may also be because an uneducated public is trying to get in on something they feel is attractive only because they recognize the name. They may be in for a shock if the stock plummets soon after, especially since there are disincentives for flipping the stock if you bought into the IPO.

rvz 5y ago
> but it may also be because an uneducated public is trying to get in on something they feel is attractive only because they recognize the name. That sounds like a form of FOMO and they always think of only one way of trading this stock and that is buying it and holding it. Especially at these prices on the day of IPO. There are larger investors and VCs that have participated in funding rounds that have more than 10x'ed their fundraising round before the IPO. Somebody has got to sell and take profit at some point. I won't be surprised to see a small push higher then followed by some selling from the larger investors to contribute to the selling pressure of this stock. It's the larger early investors and VCs that have the advantage of manipulating this stock on day 1 of IPO day, not a group of retail traders and they will end up holding the bag at a high price.

Uberphallus 5y ago

Duolingo is great to get your feet wet, but its teaching model doesn't scale past A2/B1 levels (and in speaking/listening even less so). This valuation is enormous for a company that's virtually been for 10 years in losses. So far Duolingo has made the experience more painful to free users to push them to pay, and yet hasn't managed to get out of the red. I think the main that most learners are from developing countries learning English, so Duolingo Plus can be a hard sell. I bet the money influx will help push whatever projects they have in mind, but while private, and I say this as a language learning ethusiast, their approaches have been completely misdirected. Personally I'd be wary to throw my money there, but will certainly reevaluate it next quarter.

mgbmtl 5y ago
I was a paid user for some time. It's inexpensive and fun. I mostly paid to encourage them, and to be able to use it offline in the plane (it's a fun game). However, as most people, I haven't flown in a long time, so I cancelled it. I wonder what are the main types of paid users. Otherwise, when not paying, I use the web version, and never noticed any advertising.
- Uberphallus 5y ago
  Last time I checked, the ads on the web were alright, but the experience on mobile was extremely hostile, with constant ads and deliberately sssssllllooooowwwllllyy aaanniimmmaaaattteeeeddd reminders to push you to pay for Duolingo Plus. When reviewing lessons you're already familiar with, you tend to spend more time watching ads and Plus reminders than actually learning anything.

least 5y ago

I was a cryptologic linguist for the army and went through a 16 month course of 6-7 hours of classroom instruction per day M-F, native speaking instructors, tons of immersion, and a couple hours of homework each night and left still feeling like I hardly knew the language that I was supposed to be interpreting. Unless your major in college is a specific language, you probably won't achieve any sort of fluency in your target language from taking a course in it, either. Language learning is hard and a multifaceted thing that no single application is going to adequately prepare you for. Speaking and listening are related skills yet speaking is much harder than listening, and both are much harder than reading (for the vast majority of languages). Rote memorization is necessary. Immersion is necessary. Comprehensible input is necessary. Language learning apps like Duolingo sell the idea of learning a language which is an extremely attractive idea to a lot of people. They also make it a fun activity and incentivize engagement with humor and gamification. The problem is that you can't possibly become fluent in a language with an app like it and there isn't any single app that will. I suppose in the end Duolingo's valuation is more a reflection of people's desire to learn a language rather than people actually learning a language, though.

ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
Can you talk about the resources you used to learn in the classroom? I learned German using the Foreign Service Institute handbook and I thought it was great introduction to the language. I'd love to know what's in use nowadays.
- csa 5y ago
  I’m pretty sure this person was learning Pashto or Dari. The materials were mostly (all?) developed in-house. If they were learning Dari, they would have been better off just using externally-produced Farsi textbooks since they have a more robust history of development. The specific recommended materials for an introduction to a language depend on what your goals are for learning the language.
  - least 5y ago
    Yeah, the Dari course was notoriously bad quality and rife with controversy with some of the highest failure rates in the entire Presidio at the time. Not sure if anything's changed at this point?

jwmoz 5y ago

I can't believe there is so much money in this app, it's basically flashcards. There are so many mistakes in it when I was using it for Indonesian. Something like HelloChinese is such a better app.

lbriner 5y ago
I think it is worse than flashcards because you usually use flashcards after a tutor who can give you some context around what you are learning. I found two big problems with Duo: 1) You are not given any input as to why or how e.g. German words are conjugated, not just verbs but adjectives as well, you are just expected to learn them. If you don't know what gender is, as an English speaker, then trying to learn der, das and die won't make any sense whereas if they said, "German uses different words for 'the' so make sure you learn the article with the word to remember which it is", it would be more useful. 2) The insistence on being text-based makes learning things like Japanese especially hard. Many people only want to speak and understand a language so forcing them to also learn an alphabet just makes it even harder, especially since in Japan, you won't see everything in Hirigana anyway! If you want to help with pronunciation then you could use a pinyin to do so. I also thought it was quite funny that the premium version gave you tutoring, in which case, I might as well attend a college class?
JCharante 5y ago
I like HelloChinese (spent $100 on it and then forgot to unsub which cost another $100) but stopped using it after realizing that because they only go to HSK 4, I might as well stick to Anki so I can go HSK 6 & beyond. (I don't want to use 2 apps for my srs reviews everyday). Also if you want to use SRS for any words you learn outside the app, you'll need to use another app anyways.

jfoster 5y ago

What is the big opportunity in Duolingo? Are there lots of people learning languages who haven't heard of it already? Is it so essential & useful to language learning that they have a lot of room for ARPU growth? Do they have some way of inspiring a lot more people to begin learning another language?

lbriner 5y ago
The most obvious answer would be that many people who can afford basic internet but cannot afford a college class can learn at least the basics of another language. I guess they only need to upsell a small percentage to the premium version to get a large ROI.

tumblewit 5y ago

Based on their IPO filing I would say their biggest asset is the number of users. Other than that their model still results in a net loss every year so if you are looking at it from a value investing standpoint I think it’s overvalued at least 5x.

meerita 5y ago

Duolingo helped me to understand Kanji and Hiragana.

bleverse 5y ago

I've been using it on a daily basis for 2 years now and when I switched to 'completely type the answer' instead of 'clicking on words', it made a big difference in learning. I think a big factor in its usefulness depends on the user. If you make it hard for yourself, you will get much more out of it.

engineeringwoke 5y ago
First set of crowns on the phone, move fast. Second set on desktop, completely type the answer. Weave in stories once you feel like you have a foundation. Add immersion from live streams/Netflix. This takes you to at least B2. There's an unsurprising amount of ignorant responses and strawmen in the thread, kind of sad.

fy20 5y ago

Reading the comments here gives me the impression that Duolingo is more of a game than a language learning ressource. Interestingly Zynga, makers of Farmville, targeted a $7B valuation on the day of their IPO nearly 10 years ago [0], it quickly dropped after though [1]. [0] https://money.cnn.com/2011/12/14/technology/zynga_ipo_price/index.htm https://money.cnn.com/2011/12/14/technology/zynga_ipo_price/... [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2011/12/16/zynga-ipo-goes-splatville-what-happened/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2011/12/16/zynga-ipo-...

nathancahill 5y ago

Because it hasn't been mentioned here, this is another incredible success story from Luis von Ahn. He is the first Guatemalan founder of a unicorn startup.

radres 5y ago

If you want to learn a language you are supposed to feel emotions. I speak OK English now (not my mother tongue obv.) and I still remember the silly mistakes I made while I was playing online games 10-12 years ago and people made fun of me. Never made those mistakes again. Now I am learning a 3rd language in a new country. I started with Duolingo and never believed in "Paid courses". I have used it close to a year with little impact on my skills. But I have made most of my progress when I actually talked to someone. There is a feeling of embarrassment and defenselessness when you put yourself in uncomfortable situations like that and that is what you need to make it stay.

ibudiallo 5y ago

Here is one thing that happened to me after using Duolingo every day, multiple times a day for more than a year. I became extremely good at it. Throw any language at me, I'll complete it in record time. Sometimes I played it without even the sound on. Do I speak any of the languages in the game? Hardly. This realization came to me after I completed the Japanese class and my sister asked me to count to ten. I knew all the numbers, their symbols, and the placement in a sentence. But I could not count to ten. Duolingo is a game before being a learning tool. It is fun to use and I'm almost jealous that they are going to IPO. But it's kinda like farmville. You become good at the game, but you probably won't become a farmer after playing.

locallost 5y ago

The gamification part of the app works well, until you make a break. For me it was when I stopped using it because it basically felt like breaking off an addiction, and I didn't want to go back. So it kept me using it for a while, but ultimately it pushed me away from it. My motivation was a trip to a foreign country, and maybe I would've kept at it after it was over, but as it is, I didn't. From my experience then it seems their goal is less language learning, and more engagement in a typical social network kind of way. I think the app is technically also really good, and in general pleasant to use. And I think it's not a bad way to learn because you can immerse yourself more than by going to a school where a teacher tries to explain things to you. Doing homework is really important, and Duolingo is basically all homework. How much did I learn in about a month and a half of 30mins per day? Can't say after two years of not using the language at all, but at the time it was enough to get a sense of something if the menu was not in english etc. And when I was in the countryside (in Italy), I was looking for somebody and the mother of the person said just "ape", and I knew that they're taking care of the bees. And recently I walked next to a new Italian restaurant in town, and at the entrance it said "la nostra cucina ________ (forgot what)" and I was like, oh, I know what that means. So it's not much, but it's not nothing.

holoduke 5y ago

My biggest issue with apps like Duolingo is that they pretend learning a language is like a game. Effortless and easy. In reality you need to have quite some motivation to learn every day for a few hours. You need to learn words and grammar by writing them down. Lots of times. You need to talk with people at least a few times per week. You need to repeat a lot. It's very hard work. And even then it takes most regular people about 2 to 4 years to get yourself to a level like my English (not fluent, but enough)

rafaelero 5y ago
A lot of my English I acquired reading Reddit. Sure, I did have a previous background at school, but I would say that it can be painless.

studentrob 5y ago

And still no traditional chinese characters which means you need a desktop extension and can't learn it on mobile.

the-smug-one 5y ago

I use Duolingo to learn Spanish and it's pretty good if you take it seriously and add on research outside of Duo (mostly on grammar). I'm hoping to reach a level where I can read things in the language which are interesting to me (with the aid of a dictionary of course), so I'll probably replace HN with some Spanish variant for example.

jacquesm 5y ago

It hasn't been mentioned yet, but give Lingvist a try, they take a (much) more serious attitude towards the same material.

jeofken 5y ago

For any language learners out there, my method of learning to communicate quite freely in two foreign languages in adulthood has been going to bars, and asking tipsy strangers in very friendly ways about words, such as on the menu, or something you’re wondering about. Let them be the expert they are. You must enjoy learning and sounding like an idiot for a couple of years. I’ve done courses, Duolingo etc, self study books, spaced repetition cards, and watched a lot of TV. But nothing has beat bars, or having roommates who don’t speak English (or my native language).

mabub24 5y ago
This is similar for me, though with language meetups or literally just paying someone to talk with me in the language I want to learn. Nothing beats seeing the language used as a living thing, as a part of human behavior within a form of life. Immersion, in person, is also essential for understanding the ways that people speak in a language, all the different connotations and tricks to words. Also, jokes. Attempting to tell jokes in a 2nd language, and also getting a laugh out of people (perhaps at you, but same feeling) is really rewarding feeling. I often tell people to start trying to tell jokes in a 2nd language right away. It immediately gives you a sense of play in the language and jokes are often direct references to common human experience. In a way, a lot of jokes are universal.

timwaagh 5y ago

I can see duo being worth something but since they don't really sell anything... I'm not knowledgeable about advertising to know whether the 6.5b makes sense or not

mgbmtl 5y ago

Everytine Duolingo is in the news here, I find the anecdotes and suggestions of alternative solutions interesting, but we rarely discuss what is making Duolingo so successful. They have become a household name. Almost all non-tech people around me know what Duolingo is. Kind of like Tinder, they may not use it, but they know it. I also view Duolingo as a game that provides a bit of exposure to a new language, but won't get you very far unless combined to other resources. I wonder where the IPO will lead them. They did encourage a ton of people to be curious about new languages. It worked for me. I hope they can help them get to the next level, and not become, as someone else mentioned here, the next Farmville.

DiogenesKynikos 5y ago

Of all the tools I've tried to begin learning a language, Pimsleur audio lessons have been the most effective. They're entirely auditory. They teach you a relatively small vocabulary using spaced repetition, and if you do the lessons, you really learn that vocab well. They challenge you to speak (under time pressure) from the first lesson onwards, and because you're only learning words by ear, you can avoid pronunciation pitfalls that people who learn from written sources fall into. You can't get to fluency with Pimsleur, but you can build a very good initial base. I don't think Duolingo is really a very effective way to begin learning a language. In my opinion, early on, language learning should be intensely focused on auditory and speaking skills, and only later on branch out into writing, formal grammar, etc.

m0llusk 5y ago

Kind of tangential, but Paul at Langfocus has a potentially interesting video about his observations of Duolingo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbmXSR_QiP8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbmXSR_QiP8

nonameiguess 5y ago

Count me as severely skeptical. I don't exactly feel like digging through the entire prospectus since it's too late to matter, but a quick search seems to indicate their user and revenue growth was fairly flat for years until last year, which just happened to be the year everyone in the world was forced to stay home and find somewhat productive things to do. Investing in this doesn't feel any saner than investing in a startup for people making sourdough at home. I can at least squint at something like Zoom and say sure, single-year growth like this is never going to happen again, but at least remote multimedia collaboration is probably here to stay, even though Zoom specifically isn't necessarily going to monopolize it just because they were first. But that has a clear business use case that isn't going anywhere. Duolingo is relying entirely on the whims of the general public.

bumblebritches5 5y ago

lol

j45 5y ago

I remember hearing an academic rail and rant against Duolingo at a prominent global online learning conference a few year ago. What struck me was the negativity in the face of a simple problem being solved - people want to learn to speak a language before they learn to read and write it for many valid reasons. Conversational fluency is a thing that has existed for a very long time. Duolingos superpower is that it can create beginners in languages new to them, at scale, something which most systems to date can’t do as well. It’s true a phone might not give you a full education, but we do search for plenty of things every day to learn to use knowledge. The esteemed academic did not present any alternatives to this desire among learners to start to learn a new language.. and instead went back to the theory of learning language through reading and writing first.

saladuh 5y ago

If anyone's planning on learning Japanese with Duolingo: don't. Did that for a few weeks, basically learnt nothing. I soon found out from experienced learners that it was terrible [0]. I then discovered the AJATT/MIA[1] methods of learning Japanese, which prioritize immersion/sentence mining of the target language and learning vocab/kanji and sentence structure through Anki decks (you can use any SRS system but Anki is by far the best with a rich ecosystem of Japanese integrations such as the Yomichan dictionary). I used the foss app Kakugo (available on Fdroid, not sure about the play store) to learn the hiragana and katakana writing scripts in 3 or 4 days, and have now moved on to reading Tae Kim's Grammar Guide[2] for learning grammar and using Refold JP1K[3][4] style anki decks to learn my first 1000 kanji. However this method is more of a 'grind', you need to set aside at least 2 hours a day so that you can read Tae's textbook, learn new vocab and do your reviews through Anki. In your free time, once you have a decent amount of grammar understanding and vocab, you need to be immersing in Japanese, so anime, J-dramas, etc. (Jap music isn't very helpful here). [0] Review of Duolingo Japanese course from a 2+ year user of Anki/immersion based learning: https://youtu.be/jf-SbSfiXn4 https://youtu.be/jf-SbSfiXn4 [1] The AJATT method has been around for a long time, it means All Japanese All The Time. It basically promoted SRS and immersion based learning. MIA is basically the same thing, mass immersion, started mainly by MattVsJapan. However I use the guides and tools created by AJATT-Tools, whos contributors focus on tools for Linux, such as MPV scripts for sentence mining (creating Anki cards with unknown vocabulary semi automatically while watching subtitled content, with audio and visual cues). Their guide builds on top of MIA and AJATT style methods: https://github.com/ajatt-tools https://github.com/ajatt-tools [2] The defacto grammar guide for Japanese that isn't afraid to teach you Kanji from the start: http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar [3] Explanation of the JP1K style Anki deck: https://youtu.be/53qKsYxVhoM https://youtu.be/53qKsYxVhoM [4] Deck system is created by https://refold.la https://refold.la, however I use AJATT-Tools's version of the deck because it includes example sentences (and Kanji have different meanings in context).

esrh 5y ago
I did this for just about a year, and i can confirm this works if you put in the time. I'm at around 3000 recognizable kanji and can watch/read pretty much anything that's not particularly hard.

maliker 5y ago

As an English speaker, DuoLingo didn’t seem that interesting to me. Then I listened to a podcast where the found Luis von Ahn explained why he started the company [1]. He grew up in Guatemala, and he noticed that learning English would essentially triple anyone’s earning potential in his country. Sure, I might never learn Chinese in DuoLingo, but if I could triple my income by doing it I bet I’d be much more motivated. English speakers that think this app is a toy aren’t the target market. Luis also invented the captcha and used it to digitize the full archive of the New York Times. I can’t speak to the quality of the instruction in DuoLingo, but I’m willing to bet that if there’s a computer-assisted approach to language learning that works, Luis is one of the people most likely to invent it. [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/05/22/860884062/recaptcha-and-duolingo-luis-von-ahn https://www.npr.org/2020/05/22/860884062/recaptcha-and-duoli...

pnt12 5y ago
The article says the USA is their biggest market, with about 20% of the users and revenue.

arihant 5y ago

I've been learning Russian for a year (currently at around B1-B2). None of these new age language learning apps are actually useful, even to get your feet wet. The old is still gold when it comes to language learning. You think you're learning with these apps, but in my experience you're not. They just don't seem to put anything in long term memory well. There is spaced repetition in some of them, but not enough repetition. Good old audio course Pimsleur is better than all of them combined. Cortina Method is best resource to learn grammar and the book is so old it looks like a smudged typewriter print. All old methods are based on learning and repeating sentences after sentences rather than learning individual words. You really end up learning like a child. Pattern recognition is where it's at. I can't recall anything I studied on Duolingo for Russian. I can't forget anything I learned on Pimsleur. And I finished the last module in January.

dorchadas 5y ago
> The old is still gold when it comes to language learning. Absolutely. Maybe I'm just inclined to the grammar-translation model, but I've found the older editions of books like Teach Yourself so much more helpful to me. Couple that with self-created immersion and it goes a lot quicker.

marpayne 5y ago

I have tried Duolingo (Premium user), and I can say that it is not an effective app if you're going to learn a language effectively. Instead, it is better if you're going to have a bite-sized time to have some mini quiz or something like that. It is more of memorization, and there's no immersion or anything that makes you feel you're making significant progress

thanksforfish 5y ago

I'll add my (32/M/USA) perspective as someone who subscribed to duolingo plus last month. I'm learning Arabic ahead of a _potential_ move with my spouse to an Arabic speaking country. First Duolingo is fun to use. I didn't enjoy classroom based learning in high school. Duo gamifies the process really well, it's on my schedule, and I have a concrete reason to want to learn. Duo has been reducing my time on social media as well, always a bonus when picking up a good habit. The $7/month premium subscription was worth it. I'm investing 30 minutes a day in the app, and ad-free means I can get through more lessons. I have unlimited lives so my learning isn't interrupted if I struggle on a hard lesson. I'm not expecting to become fluent on Duo alone. But I think I'll get a great handle on some basics. My wife is already fluent, so that's helped me speak and figure out some things I struggled with. I also tried the Rosetta Stone app. I didn't think that one was fun, it throws you into hard content quickly, so I haven't been using it. If our move happens, I'll enroll in a more traditional environment, and I may take a second look at the Rosetta Stone app. For now I'm happy that I have something that's making me increasingly comfortable with the idea of speaking Arabic.

rainydaybook 5y ago

I've always found Duolingo too boring and it didn't help me at all. I was able to learn 7 languages using different routes. I already knew Russian, I've learned English the usual school + moving to the country route, and I've learned Spanish, French, German, Italian and Latin by mostly reading books and watching online videos and movies. Having bookstores nearby (especially the Strand) with a lot of interesting books in Spanish, French, German and Italian were key for me. I completely switch 100% of all book reading to the language I'm learning. I would not be able to learn anything without a steady supply of interesting books. For Spanish, most movies on netflix and disney will have subtitles and dubs. For French, there's Arte Karambolage and the newer Disney films are available in french. For German, there's also Arte Karambolage and newer Disney films and 'Dark' on netflix. For Italian, there's a great youtube channel by Iliana Zodiaco with interesting book discussions and reviews. Again newer Disney plus films have Italian. And italian is just very easy in itself. Latin is a lot tougher because there's not as many books in it, and they tend to be not as easy. I've only read Caesar's Gallic wars and Winnie the Pooh. And the grammar is hard. I recommend checking out Lingua Latina Per Se, and youtube channels on Latin Grammar (there's one really good one, 'latintutorial'). Still, this is by far my weakest language. I've started Cicero orations against Catiline, but it's tough going! I didn't learn to speak in any of these because I don't have daily contact with native speakers, but once I do, it will be fairly easy.

zild3d 5y ago
At what point do you start reading a book in a new language? Do you already know say 500 words? Otherwise I'd imagine you have to look up almost every word on the page
- TheFreim 5y ago
  I only know English but am in the middle of studying Latin and I've found that the pain of having to look up works makes them stick in my mind pretty well. Once you can understand a decent number of words you can construct the meaning surprisingly quickly just based on context and the endings of words.

Tepix 5y ago

I'm using DuoLingo (unpaid) successfully to learn French. It is only good for building vocabulary. My advice: a) Use the "tips" (not available for all languages) on the DuoLingo website client for every exercise. They are very well written and give you crucial insights. b) Use Tandem every day to chat with/talk to native speakers as soon as you have some basic vocabulary. Spend some time to find people who are eager to learn. You can often spot them because they only want to learn one language and not seven... c) Buy a grammar book with exercises. Learn conjugations. Learn the grammar to ask questions. Learn prepositions. DuoLingo will not teach you grammar. I went from A1.1 to A2.3 in 6 months doing this and I'm super motivated to keep going.

Jabbles 5y ago

Imagine the number and quality of textbooks you could commission from world experts in any and all languages for $300M, a single year at 20:1 price-to-earnings. Is the app obviously better? More engaging, to some, perhaps. More profitable? I guess that remains to be seen.

anyfactor 5y ago
They have a name recognition and that's about it. I really wonder what kind of people actually buy IPOs. Except PLTR I can't name one stock that went public in the last 2 years that didn't dip below their IPO.

kaiwen1 5y ago

For me Duolingo is woefully ineffective. A far better method is Pimsleur plus Anki. Ankify the Pimsleur audio, make your own Anki cards with most of your vocabulary in cloze phrases. Ankify the audio on as many of those cloze phrases as you can using native speakers. Work at it daily. Use a textbook to learn the grammar. This is a system that works. It’s the fastest way I know of to begin understanding languages intuitively. No need for mental translation. No difference in how your mind responds to “What do you want to eat?” and “你要吃什么?” Of course, Duolingo’s valuation isn’t connected to success in learning language. It’s connected to success in convincing people that they can and should learn a language.

asoneth 5y ago

It makes sense that fifteen minutes a day of Duolingo isn't as effective as spending two hours a day studying, going to meetups, traveling to a foreign country, etc. I recall similar criticism for the "seven-minute workout" from people who pointed out that joining a gym and hiring a personal trainer is a more effective way of getting in shape. But those are not very helpful. If I have fifteen minutes before the kids wake up my only decision is how to spend that time. Duolingo? Meditate? Pushups? Half an episode of something? Daydream?

rafaelero 5y ago

I don't understand all these comments saying that Duolingo is useless? Maybe your brain is not very fit for acquiring a new language, but the app is nothing more than an easy way to do small exercises. That can be pretty useful by itself, if you really have the motivation to do it a lot.

hirad 5y ago

I need to take exception with many of the comments here. Does Duolingo make you fluent in any language? No. But if that's what you're looking for (from any language learning tool), you need to readjust your expectations. The only thing that teaches you a language is immersion in a society that speaks it, in my experience. All language-learning exercises are just prep work for that. And on that front, Duolingo is exemplary. I've been doing Spanish with it for the whole pandemic. I'm far from fluent but my retention is high and the learning process is easy and fun. Couldn't ask for more.