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Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

• qxxx 4y ago
  I used duolingo to learn spanish for few months. I know some words and sentences (most important: donde esta una biblioteca?) But one day I got bored and stopped but it was kinda fun.
• gnicholas 4y ago
  I learned Spanish in HS and started using Duolingo to see if it was useful for teaching my young child Spanish. She had exposure to spoken Spanish via her nanny, but had very little exposure to written Spanish. My first reaction was that there was no way for someone to learn Spanish just by using Duolingo, as there wasn't enough 'teaching' happening. But then I realized that there is some scaffolding in the app, but you have to go search it out. This could work for a motivated adult (or older student who has some existing language knowledge). But I wouldn't recommend it for a younger student starting out.
  • cpeterso 4y ago
    What do you mean by "scaffolding in the app"? Are you still using Duolingo?
    • gnicholas 4y ago
      You can get hints and tips when you're doing problems. This helps you understand root words and such. I'm not using the app anymore.
  • medellin 4y ago
    Duolingo is great for building a base but after maybe the first 5 levels it’s a complete waste of time. If your goal is to actually learn Spanish you need to be listening and speaking it as soon as possible. Both the listening and speaking parts of the app are absolutely terrible. I think the worst thing is people get stuck in the trap of thinking they are learning by keeping the streak going but in reality it has diminishing returns. All this coupled with Duolingo gamifying it more and trying to squeeze money out of you by making the timed challenges pay out more points. Overall great for beginners and then you are wasting your time.
  • watwut 4y ago
    It worked well for my kids tho. Basically, they ended up using correct words and sentence structures in correct situations.
• TooSmugToFail 4y ago
  What would be your best app for learning a language?
  • twosdai 4y ago
    I don't remember the name, but I've had some friends do remote teaching for foreign languages through an app, where you'd get scheduled 1 on 1 video time with a person who knows the language. I think that's an interesting approach I would look into over the self directed learning
    • violiner 4y ago
      Is it italki (https://www.italki.com/ https://www.italki.com/)? You can hire tutors there for online lessons.
    • lkbm 4y ago
      I used Livemocha a bit in ~2008, and it does this.
      • david_allison 4y ago
        Livemocha got acquired by Rosetta Stone and was closed in '16.
    • david_allison 4y ago
      iTalki. HelloTalk also works. https://www.italki.com/en https://www.italki.com/en https://www.hellotalk.com/?lang=en https://www.hellotalk.com/?lang=en
  • outside1234 4y ago
    Its not an app - but Dreaming Spanish has really improved my ability to learn Spanish by leaps and bounds.
    • Sakos 4y ago
      I've seen quite the positive impressions. I gave it a brief try and I'm not sure it's for me. I went through a number of superbeginner videos and was just feeling more and more frustrated at how much I didn't understand. I like the idea though and I'm sure it works for other people. Maybe with some adjustments to the concept it might be more palatable to me, I don't know.
• neonate 4y ago
  https://archive.vn/pdNgC https://archive.vn/pdNgC
• digitalsushi 4y ago
  I, like half of us, took a ton of Spanish in high school, enough to generally stick even without continuing to build it afterwards. I tried Duolingo back before the pandemic was trendy, for maybe a year or so, to keep that streak going. While I don't really feel that it was teaching me very well, I can relay this single anecdote. Duolingo has these stories that it figures you can read, based on the level of your scores. While reading a very short story in Spanish, I had the experience of the first time, a second language making me laugh because what I was reading, was funny. Nothing during my five years of 8th-12th grade did that. Just sharing, it's not meant to mean anything.
  • nitrixion 4y ago
    > I, like half of us, took a ton of Spanish in high school, enough to generally stick even without continuing to build it afterwards. Can confirm. My wife and I both took 4+ years of spanish in high school and college, over 15 years ago. We can almost get by on just that knowledge alone in spanish speaking countries, but it is difficult and we always have a translator around. That said, we took a vacation last summer to a spanish speaking country and spent the 2 months leading up to it using Duolingo. We both had streaks for that entire time. Personally, the refresher course of Duolingo made conversing with people in their native language of Spanish MUCH easier compared to other attempts in the past. We didn't need to use our phones to lookup phrases or even ask locals to speak English. I even learned a few new words and phrases. That isn't to say that Duolingo is the best or only option, just an anecdote about our experience.
    • tinyplanet49 4y ago
      Interestingly, I had a very similar situation recently, but had the opposite experience. Took 4+ years of Spanish in high school and undergrad, ~20 years ago. Had a trip to Costa Rica and I spent about 2 to 3 months using Duolingo, and I felt it didn't help much at all, other than as a refresher for very basic vocabulary. I ended using Google translate towards the end of the trip, which was disappointing for me.
  • djitz 4y ago
    The first time you finally get to fire off your first short, stupid joke in a new language that actually makes native speakers laugh is one of the greatest feelings ever.
• knorker 4y ago
  Betteridge's law of headlines be damned, the answer is "yes". I've basically only used Duolingo for learning a particular new language. I started from nothing, and just did a little every day during the pandemic. Then I travelled to the country in question, and was able to tell stories in the language. Not easily, and with bad grammar and my vocabulary sucked, but this is more than being able to order at a restaurant. My stories could be understood, and if they spoke slowly and gave me time to think then I could mostly understand them too. But surprisingly many people will not make any adjustments at all when you say "Please, if you speak more slowly I can understand", and instead will go maybe even faster. Like… do you think this will help us communicate?
  • wccrawford 4y ago
    I would say the answer is "Yes, but..." It won't teach it on its own, but it can help you along with other methods of practice. I think even classes at school aren't enough on their own to teach you a language. You need other things to help you really learn the language.
  • alister 4y ago
    > surprisingly many people will not make any adjustments at all when you say "Please, if you speak more slowly I can understand" I've seen this too, so many times. If I'm speaking to someone who has trouble with English, I can automatically speak slower, enunciate better, and use simpler words and shorter sentences. But some people cannot adapt the way they speak. I don't think it's because they are unaccommodating or impatient. For some puzzling reason, they just can't speaker slower and simpler. Ironically they might instead speak a bit faster as you observed, or louder.
    • jltsiren 4y ago
      Communicating with people who don't know the language well is a skill you have to learn and practice. It's not something people can do by default. Especially in their native language. When you speak in your native language, the words may just come out automatically, without any effort. If you need to speak slowly, you have to be more deliberate and maybe even consider each word separately. If you don't remember that and just start speaking, you may end up speaking normally without even realizing that until it's too late.
• whacked_new 4y ago
  Recently I encountered a tourist who didn't understand anything I said, but said he's from Korea. Recalling that I have been studying Korean on Duolingo for over a year, I excitedly probed my memory for a few seconds, then finally exclaimed, "annyeonghaseyo!" (hello), then blurted in English, "sorry, I don't speak Korean" Later I encountered a fellow who spoke English. He told me he's from Germany. Recalling that I have been studying German on Duolingo for over a year, I excitedly probed my memory for a few seconds, and finally came up with "sehr gut!" (very good), then "sorry, that's all the German I know" Then I was at a pizza shop and realized the person at the counter only spoke Spanish. Recalling that I have been studying... finally she lost her patience and thrusted her phone at me, with Google Translate. True story. I still use Duolingo everyday. But surely, it isn't enough to "know"
  • zamadatix 4y ago
    That seems like a lot of languages to try to learn via any method. Why not focus on making one usable?
  • pigtailgirl 4y ago
    -- don't worry - 한국어는 어려운 언어입니다 (Korean is hard) --
    • softgrow 4y ago
      Thankfully for me, you can literally learn how to read and write on a long haul plane there. Had a great time despite being functionally illiterate. Just learned numbers, please/thankyou and was fine. This only fell over with the peculiar decision in Taejon to issue tourists with maps with English on one side and Hanja (Chinese character for Koreans) on the other. Completely useless to both me and the taxi driver.
  • harrisonjackson 4y ago
    I did Duo Korean for a while with my SO. We got stuck on a section that started introducing a lot of proper names for people - the grammar around it was really confusing. After a few weeks of struggling, we discovered the website had PAGES of grammar notes for the section we were on. It was impossible without them and the way it was introduced even on the website made progress feel very slow compared to the pacing up to that point. There was zero indication of the extra notes in the app and eventually googling the for tips on the duo section led us to a bunch of people complaining about it and linking to the notes. When the pacing is good though duo is fun and easy to do consistently. I'm sure it is not super effective after a certain point but I could definitely see myself navigating Seoul with just the lessons there. The hangul character lessons seemed well done.
• castrodd 4y ago
  No.
• outside1234 4y ago
  No - something like Dreaming Spanish where you are immersed in the language in a natural form is far better.
• tejohnso 4y ago
  I found Michel Thomas very effective for Spanish.
  • antiterra 4y ago
    Michel Thomas gave me a very solid understanding of basic spoken French in approximately two hours, and it has stuck for decades. However, my pronunciation is atrocious (as is his.)
    • Koshkin 4y ago
      The French and the English, the neighbors who cannot pronounce a word of another’s language…
      • aix1 4y ago
        Wait, about 30% of English vocabulary is of French origin (not to mention other Romance influences). :-)
        • Koshkin 4y ago
          This probably only has served to exacerbate the issue on the English side.
• to1y 4y ago
  As a bilingual I tend to believe unless you're living in the country trying to learn a language(using any method) is probably a waste of time.
  • bnralt 4y ago
    I'm not even sure living in the country helps that much on its own. The issue is that the vast majority of your language intake comes from your immediate surroundings - the media you consume, the friends you have, the books you read, the place you work, etc. I've seen a lot of language learners move to a country, take classes, but get stuck in an expat bubble. The worst part is, when you take classes, you're surrounding yourself with other non-natives. For most major languages, a heavy immersion is possible in your home country, especially with the amount of media that's now easily available. Heavy immersion is very effective, but it's also extremely difficult to pull off. The AJATT guy[1] was a big advocate for it and was extremely successful with it when it came to Japanese, but even he couldn't replicate it for Chinese from what I recall. If you're not going the heavy immersion route, I guess the best thing would be to just have fun with the language, pick up what you can, and accept that you'll never be great at it. [1] http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/ http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/
  • poulsbohemian 4y ago
    I've come to a very similar conclusion. The absolute only way to learn a language is to have an incentive to learn it, IE: to be exposed to it constantly by work, daily life, romance, friendship, IE: whatever it is that is providing the regular need for the use of the language. People who say they are bad at languages might be surprised how fast they would learn if they were suddenly forced to learn by necessity.
  • antiterra 4y ago
    I think learning a language at a young age likely sets up some brain development for language learning in the future. Brains remain plastic even through adulthood, but I definitely feel like whatever language I am studying tends to fill “Language Slot 2,” if you will, which exists because of an atrocious 12 year long present-tense-only public school Spanish program. Results from learning a language in an immersive environment are going to be greater and more justify the time spent. However, it can definitely be rewarding otherwise if cramming before a vacation or even just to remember how to clumsily pronounce “l'esprit d'escalier.”
• poulsbohemian 4y ago
  Something that bothers me both about Duolingo and Rosetta Stone (and similar apps...) is that they don't let you fail enough. What I mean is - when you were first learning your native language, you probably mispronounced lots of things and didn't understand the grammar. But you kept going, learning as you went. Duolingo et al. want you to get the pronunciation of things correct before they will let you go on to the next step or lesson. They want you to absolutely get it right or else you find yourself in a cycle of trying again, to the point of frustration. My German was probably pretty bad for a long time. It took a decade+ to get any kind of accent and comfort with the language (especially since I wasn't living there for most of that time). But I was up and running with the language, having conversations, reading the news, listening to podcasts, etc even if I wasn't "perfect." That, to my thinking, is at the core of what I need a language learning app to do - get me to the point where I'm making progress with it and forming my own thoughts and statements, don't hold me back because I mispronounced an accent or missed the gender on a word, etc. My own experience with Duolingo is that it is ok as a way to memorize some grammar, but the lack of context is a problem. Random sentences just designed to mix in vocabulary don't seem to be as useful as contextualized learning, IE: at the train station, at the bank, etc.
  • dwighttk 4y ago
    spelling too... like the 10th thing I care about is how to spell in a new language...
    • poulsbohemian 4y ago
      Exactly. Wasn't sure if I was fully conveying my meaning, but yes - spelling can be learned along the way and is a real barrier in these apps.
    • barrell 4y ago
      And no typos allowed or you start from zero! Because as everyone nows, real native speakers never make typos
      • meatmanek 4y ago
• buildfocus 4y ago
  I have spent a lot of effort in Duolingo in multiple languages, that I now use daily. Imo it's a mediocre but _extremely_ convenient way to build a base of vocabulary, but it is completely different to seriously learning a language (unfortunately). As far as I'm aware this applies to all the apps - real human conversation is very hard to usefully simulate. That doesn't mean Duolingo isn't useful, it's definitely helpful, even if you're living in a full immersion environment, but the map is not the territory. If you really want to learn to talk to people, you have to talk to real people. It is a completely different thing to just learning all the words and grammar, far more than I realised before seriously getting into languages.
  • prmoustache 4y ago
    This. I moved to south of spain 3 years ago without knowing spanish except a few words to order a beer, ask for the bill and where are the toilets. I did a bit of duolingo that helped me just grow enough confidence to learn the basic stuff. Then I met what is now my girlfriend in a language exchange event and my level grew steadily that people in latin america say I am speaking really well. I still struggle a bit sometimes in south of spain but that is just because they speak in an awful way, like they would be drunk 24h a day and it costs the same to native spanish speaker to understand them.
• Aromasin 4y ago
  From my experience, yes. I did about an hour a day total - 20 minutes on waking, 20 minutes at lunch, and 20 minutes before I go to sleep. 3 years ago, I didn't know a lick of Spanish. Now when I go, I can be a translator for my friends. It's not great, and I trip over my pronunciation a lot, but it's functional. As to the context of article, I'm also in the group that thinks the latest Duolingo updates are the worst to come to the platform since it's inception. It's beyond awful and I honestly despise it. I frequently went back to areas I felt myself getting rusty at, and practiced those. The new "pathway" has broke that method completely. It's impossible to see previous course content clearly, essentially forcing you through poor UX design to take the next step on the pathway instead, like you're playing Candy Crush. The update spurned me to give up on my 500+ day streak and cancel my subscription over the Summer. I haven't used the app in the last 5 months. I'm lucky enough to live in Oxford, which is renowned so having some great evening language classes. I've signed up to my first semester starting in January which I'm very much looking forward to. If it wasn't for Duolingo, any interest in furthering my language skills would not exist. I guess it's a silver lining that an awful update to my favorite app by incompetent product management and executive decisions forced me to finally peruse a formal education in Spanish. I just wish it was a amenable break-up.
  • hodanli 4y ago
    my 9 years old son was really enjoying the app that I bought one year subscription. after the update he stopped and when I asked why it was clear he hated the new update and doesn't like to touch the app.
• voisin 4y ago
  I have a roughly 600 day streak in Spanish, having started with no background, and I am quite pleased with the progress given how little time I dedicate to it each day. My only issue with Duolingo is that I wish there was somewhere to get much more formal information on the grammatical rules. Their inclusion currently is really poorly executed, haphazardly located in certain lessons as if random. I’d love if I could get specific lessons on demand for anything I am struggling with. Also, it is really annoying how sometimes it gives you the translation after you are done and other times it just says “Great!” Or something similar, so if you are slightly unsure of something you don’t always get the actual translation to help clarify.
  • Zaskoda 4y ago
    > I wish there was somewhere to get much more formal information on the grammatical rules. I have had this same wish. I often find myself wondering why something is a certain way and I'm not even sure how to go look it up.
  • Tepix 4y ago
    Re: grammar You can find the excellent tips that cover grammar that used to be on the DuoLingo website at https://duome.eu/tips https://duome.eu/tips
• sharker8 4y ago
  Followers of Krashen know that it's sensible input that results in language acquisition. Duolingo gamifies the frequency of sensible input. Therefore Duolingo will work if frequently and consistently used. Fluent is an outdated term. It probably takes about six months to achieve any lasting result. Illusion of progress is impossible to prove or disprove probably.
  • dplgk 4y ago
    Six months of what to achieve what result?
  • veridies 4y ago
    I just want to note (this is what I studied for my MA) that Krashen is very controversial in the field. Many researchers argue that output is critical to learning, and "interactionism," the idea that learning is facilitated through conversation, is probably the dominant theoretical approach at the moment. See, for example, Second Language Learning Theories, by Mitchell, Myles, & Marsden, chapter 6.
• simonswords82 4y ago
  Wouldn't it be good if Duelingo hooked you up with native language speakers so you could try to strike up conversations in text and voice? It's great to learn words, phrases and so on in isolation but actual conversations in a new language are where the real learning happens. You've got to be on the ball
  • david_allison 4y ago
    HelloTalk does this (chat/voice/video, with language corrections as a first-class feature). It's aggressively monetised, but I'd still recommend it. I've heard good things about Tandem, but haven't used it myself https://www.hellotalk.com/?lang=en https://www.hellotalk.com/?lang=en https://www.tandem.net/ https://www.tandem.net/
  • gsumpster 4y ago
    They do offer real classes done through independent teachers, they are typically group lessons, but they are at a pretty reasonable price! http://classes.duolingo.com http://classes.duolingo.com
    • generj 4y ago
      I was super interested, but the link highlights they are unfortunately shutting this down Classes next month.
      • gsumpster 4y ago
        Oh man, I hadn't seen that! Super disappointed :( For what it's worth, I use Duolingo (the app itself) as just another way to practice at the moment but feel that most of my real progress comes with a tutor that I found through Preply and eventually started private lessons with. Group lessons were a cheap way to get some more practice in though with other speakers.
    • jfoster 4y ago
      According to that page, Duolingo classes is "going away" on January 18.
• truth777 4y ago
  Best way to learn a language is to watch tv and movies.
  • mdaniel 4y ago
    > Best way to learn [to understand] a language is to watch tv and movies. There's no replacement for having to dig into the "vocabulary bag" and pull out a word when you need it, or the "fluency" that comes from having someone ask you a question that you have to string together multiple vocabulary words _in the right order_ to answer It's like any homework: it's the challenge that solidifies the pathways, otherwise just sitting in a calculus class would be all one needed to become Laplace
  • doingtheiroming 4y ago
    I do 30 mins to an hour of a language every day. After I’m done in Duolingo I work my way through a news story on a local news aggregator (I.e. dumbed down) website using Google Translate to figure out things I don’t understand by picking out words. I find trying to identify phrases in the articles useful as it’s starting to give me a sense of basic idiom. Feels like a good way to consolidate and push forward. It also gives me a bit of culture since news articles are revealing of the way people think.
• Jcampuzano2 4y ago
  Just before the pandemic I had a trip to Mexico City planned and spent a couple months learning Spanish, and I like many others took 3 years of Spanish in high school, but that was over 10 years ago I went on the trip and while it helped a little, in conversation it was practically useless outside of the very basics. I dropped Duolingo and took an intensive 3 month course of Spanish with a minimum courseload minimum 2-3 hours a day because there was nothing else to do. I changed all media I consume to Spanish (music, news, shows, books, etc) I learned more in those 3 months than all of my high school classes and any amount of Duolingo could have helped me. Now it's 3 years later and I have spent a cumulative 1.5 years of time as a digital nomad in Spanish speaking countries and most consider my Spanish to not necessarily be native fluent, but conversationally fluent in that I can understand jokes, ask for whatever I need, etc. I'd personally only recommend Duolingo for maybe vocabulary, but if you really want to learn you need to immerse and actually talk with people frequently, as in basically daily. You need to make those stupid mistakes that native speakers may giggle at and then correct you.
• leephillips 4y ago
  No, you can’t learn a language that way. It’s good for some supplementary practice, but don’t take it too seriously: https://lee-phillips.org/whyDuoLingoWhy/ https://lee-phillips.org/whyDuoLingoWhy/
• mekoka 4y ago
  Not by itself, no. No methods can. Trully learning anything is an immersive, active, and consistent process. The app is only a scaffold, that can simulate this to some extent and only if you let it. On top of that, you have to start listening to contents in spanish. Try to repeat a few sentences that you've heard in a movie. You have to read books/articles, sometimes outloud to train the muscles involved in your mouth. Eventually, you want to graduate to having conversations. Each step challenges you and forces you to adapt. That's learning. When the app nudges you (through tips) to pronounce the words and sentences that you see, instead of (passively) just filling blank spaces, that's not meaningless. You'll get as much from it as you're willing to take.
• vouaobrasil 4y ago
  The Spanish course is one of the best courses on Duolingo. I took a slightly less-developed course -- the Portuguese course and completed it. At the end of the course, I was able to have basic conversations in Portuguese. I had one half hour conversation where I talked only in Portuguese to an Uber driver and we talked about what he was doing, what he did in his spare time, etc. It was a little rough going at times but basically it brings you to the basic conversation level. That's all you can really expect from it because it's rather short (took me about 6 months to complete). Of course, I practised regularly outside of Duolingo especially with writing and looking stuff up on Wiktionary. No online course can ever teach you to become fluent. But Duolingo will give you the starting point so that you'll know where to go next if you really complete all the lessons. After finishing Duolingo, if you spend another year studying, practising, and consuming material in that language, you should be able to get to a reasonable working level in it. With the length of the Spanish course, I am guessing you can progress even further.
  • adriand 4y ago
    I had a similar experience, although it's going back a few years now. I'd always wanted to learn Spanish and one year my wife and I were going to Spain in the fall, and then three or four months later we were going to a country in Latin America, and I decided that was the year I'd do it. I started with Duolingo and did it for three or four months before my trip to Spain, and after successfully managing a few basic interactions in Spanish and also being able to easily read signage and simple phrases, I was hooked. When we got back I continued with Duolingo but also got an online teacher and did a pile of other stuff and by the time we went south I was somewhat conversational. You can't truly learn a language with Duolingo (you especially need practice speaking with someone) but it gave me a great start.
  • lake-view 4y ago
    > No online course can ever teach you to become fluent. I get your point, but with the pace of AI, there's a good chance this statement is not true in 5 years!
    • remarkEon 4y ago
• lordofgibbons 4y ago
  Has anyone tried "Language Transfer" to learn a foreign language? I've done a few of the lessons and it's so incredibly intuitive. They use concepts and patterns in the listener's native language to learn concepts in the target language. Surprisingly, It's completely free (please donate if you can) https://www.languagetransfer.org/complete-spanish https://www.languagetransfer.org/complete-spanish
  • greenie_beans 4y ago
    i've tried but didn't keep up with it. it seemed promising at least.
  • mynameisash 4y ago
    I did some Language Transfer briefly, but only after I had already learned a significant amount of French with other tools. Then I did it again for a bit when my son wanted me to learn German with him. While I can't really speak to its efficacy, I really liked it, thus would probably stick with it, thereby making it effective.
  • barrell 4y ago
    I have, and it’s fantastic to learn. I think there’s a focus on ambiguity that is incredibly important for language learners (combine some gestures with your hands and ‘it’ ‘this’ ‘that’ ‘there’ ‘he’ ‘she’ can get you really far). However, it’s really not great for review. I’ve tried to go back even after a couple years and listen to the Italian course again, but couldn’t do it. So it’s a great (amazing (fantastic)) ‘boost’ but I wouldn’t rely on it entirely
  • pwpw 4y ago
    Yes, see my comment here[0]. I highly recommend it as someone who loves learning languages. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33933602 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33933602
  • gramie 4y ago
    I have learned, over the course of five decades, French, German, Sesotho, and Japanese, with at least some immersion for all of them. Outside of being immersed in the language, Language Transfer (which I'm currently using to learn Spanish) is easily the best method I have ever used. It relies mainly on recognizing patterns, rather than memorization, which is right up my alley. Maybe others do better with memorization? It's also free, and very convenient (lessons are on YouTube, SoundCloud, downloaded MP3 files, or Android/iOS app). I'm a Patreon supporter, because I believe in it.
• BirAdam 4y ago
  I speak several languages, most living, a few dead. I love languages and have a knack for them. Duo lingo is great at keeping you practicing, which I think is important. However, if you really want to learn a language, you must use it. If you want to learn quickly, use it a lot as often as possible. Speak it, listen to it, read it, and to whatever extent possible think in it. This is easier now than it ever has been. It’s easy to get TV, movies, games, books, music, websites, and so on in whatever language. It would be better to find some actual humans to speak with, but movies and TV are better than nothing.
• aeyes 4y ago
  When I did the full Spanish tree from zero about 5 years ago studying ~1h per day for 3 months it didn't get me very far. I then moved to a Spanish speaking country and started taking 4h of language classes per day immediately. I felt that I could have learned about the same in two weeks there instead of using Duolingo. Some people came in with 0 knowledge and could speak a little after 2 weeks, Duolingo never got me to speak real sentences. Another problem is that you just repeat without understanding why the words are arranged in a certain way. For adults it is probably more effective to study some grammer rules and to then apply these rules. Learning grammar is really a shortcut and Duolingo doesn't teach you anything about grammar rules. Also, at a certain age you just can't learn grammar by reading/listening and repeating. It takes kids years to learn, you don't have years. I have lived here for over 5 years, took well over 1000h of class in school and still make many grammer mistakes. Other mistakes continue to happen because nobody corrects me, usually we correct kids at least a little bit when they say something wrong. Back in the day Duolingo was already a very slow progression repeating stuff you already knew endlessly. I recently tried it again to pick up another language and they put so much monetization on it that it is now basically impossible to learn at your own pace - unless you pay. I see it as a tool to learn vocabulary. This is very important in the beginning, once you learn 500-1000 words you can rapidly progress on your own. But honestly, to pound vocabulary into my brain, Memrise is a much better tool. I also used grammer tools like conjugator. Another good resource is the free Coffee Break podcast series, Spanish is probably their most complete course and it helped me a lot. I have seen some good suggestions I didn't know about in this thread, I'll definitely try them when I try to pick up my next language.
  • simlevesque 4y ago
    > Back in the day Duolingo was already a very slow progression repeating stuff you already knew endlessly. This is the only way to learn. You repeat things you know many times to commit them to your memory.
    • aix1 4y ago
      > This is the only way to learn. You repeat things you know many times to commit them to your memory. Mindless repetition is not the only way to learn. For many types of things, understanding the rules or knowing the patterns is far more efficient and effective. We were just talking about German noun genders and plurals elsewhere on this thread. Of course, one can memorise the gender and the plural of every noun in isolation, by rote. But simply knowing a few common patterns would save an incredible amount of effort.
• abriana_holaday 4y ago
  Lol no
• nikolay 4y ago
  I've been trying to learn Greek, but it's a pain! First, they went overboard with gamification - now, I spend most of my time keeping my place in the Diamond League, not learning new stuff. Sadly, you earn more XP not learning new stuff, so, gamification goes against the learning goals. Another issue is that the scoring is in the app and different versions of the app reward you differently for the same thing - that's why my wife is on a year-old version and earns twice as much XP with less effort, which is unfair. Also, certain languages like Greek are not the same as Spanish and you cannot practice speaking and you learn to recognize the worlds visually well, but not so much to learn a language conversationally.
  • pwpw 4y ago
    See my comment[0] on successfully learning Greek. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33933602 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33933602
• kaesar14 4y ago
  No, it can’t. However, it does have a value as an interest generator. The vast majority of people who start a language on DL, will stop doing DL pretty quickly. Of those who stay, there’ll be a percentage who continue using it for absurd streak lengths while never progressing past the point of basic comprehension or speaking ability. The remaining group will be a group who goes on to use real resources to learn a language the only way possible - through serious, disciplined, and often uncomfortable learning by immersion and real world practice. I do think Duolingo has great value but I do think the second group I described is seriously wasting their time. I get it’s fun as a game but I figure you really might as well go all in with the amount of time a 1000+ day streak entails
  • Markoff 4y ago
    >I do think Duolingo has great value but I do think the second group I described is seriously wasting their time. which is why I stopped using Duolingo after they introduced new Path UI with 1000+ day streak, but by the end it was just daily chore to not break streak instead learning anything new, now I have two different apps in my phone which I use only when I want without trying to fulfill some streak, will probably keep just one to refresh vocabulary
• Daltzn 4y ago
  Over the past few years I have tried every language learning app I could find. The most success I have had is with LingoDeer. The formatting and I instructions really give that feeling of a classroom lesson. Learning Korean as an English speaker has been very challenging. I feel that LingoDeer has gotten me further in a few weeks compared to what I learned with a months of Duolingo or Rosetta. Duolingo if not paying for it becomes absolutely ad filled and frustrating.
  • Markoff 4y ago
    that doesn't even launch on device without gapps, while Duolingo, Drops, Memrise and others have no problem with that, seems like extremely lazy devs
• shaklee3 4y ago
  I've been doing Duolingo religiously for about 150 days now. like anything, it is what you make of it. My Spanish has gotten significantly better during that time, and I think I'm learning at a faster pace than I did in high school. sure, it's not perfect and I wish it would explain some things a little better. but it does get me to come back and do it every day and hopefully in a couple years I'll be at least able to understand things.
• wildpeaks 4y ago
  I still miss Cat Spanish (by CatAcademy), it was such a niche yet effective way to learn a foreign language.
• hyperpape 4y ago
  One thing about Duolingo is that it’s very easy to spend very little time on it. It will cheerfully tell you how awesome you are, when you’re spending 5-10 minutes a day. When I did 30-60 minutes a day for a few months (I did Spanish, then Portuguese, then switched to Memrise because it had European Portuguese), that seemed to lay a decent foundation. Conversationally, I was hopeless for a few days, but I learned quickly (unlike when I went to Mexico without having done Duo). I don’t think there’s any substitute for being thrown a curveball or two by a real person and having to muddle through. Meanwhile, here are CIA estimates for time to reach professional working proficiency. 600 hours for Spanish or French, up to 2200 for Japanese or Arabic. https://www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/ https://www.state.gov/foreign-language-training/. Just gotta wait for that 3000 day streak!
  • thdespou 4y ago
    Thanks for the Memrise recommendation. I tried it today and found it much better than Duolingo.I think Duolingo makes you more stressed to keep up with the day streak and I find my self just redoing a couple of stories just to keep it running.Not good.
• seedead99 4y ago
  deleto
  • barry-cotter 4y ago
    Sounds great. Anyone who wants something more structured but wants similar swift progress could check out baselang. https://baselang.com/ https://baselang.com/ > Unlimited 1-on-1 Spanish Tutoring All-you-can-eat Spanish classes with native teachers, online via Zoom. > $149 a month
• jimjimjim 4y ago
  I was a long time duo user (1000+ day streak) learning german. I wanted to be able to read german (books etc) rather than being able to converse in german. The streak system and the gold->diamond tier system kept me going but after a while I realized I had plateaued and I felt like I was forgetting more than I was learning. Then I realized, I had got to the point where I was good at answering what duo wanted to get the daily requirements rather than learning. One day I just stopped and let it go
  • AntoniusBlock 4y ago
    If you only want to learn to read German, check out a book called "German For Reading" by Karl Sandberg. I'm using it now and it's pretty good.
  • Markoff 4y ago
    same here, after while it felt like daily chore than something I wanted to do in the beginning btw you could disable leagues by stop sharing your progress, but they hide this in web settings, not possible to switch it off in the app, that makes learning less stressful now after they introduced path UI I uninstalled it after more than 1000+ streak and keeping in phone Drops and FunEasyLearn, second one looks very childish and amateurish, but I actually like it, seems less pushy with dark patterns than Duolingo where whole new Path UI is dark pattern to make you cough up money
  • aix1 4y ago
    > I wanted to be able to read german (books etc) rather than being able to converse in german. German can be quite tricky in this regard, in that the written and the spoken language can be quite different grammatically. One basic example that immediately springs to mind is that the simple past (Präteritum) is used very little in speech but very extensively in writing. This means that, when reading German books, one encounters lots of verb forms they'd never hear in speech (which, I'm guessing, would make it unlikely that Duolingo teaches them?)
• quechimba 4y ago
  Didn't read the article as I'm out on the streets, however, I used Duolingo but it was very basic and it never became difficult. My biggest issues were with conjugations and I found another app called ConjuGato which helped me with that. What taught me to speak and understand was moving to a Spanish speaking country, meet a girl, found friends through her. Learned a lot of slang from listening to reggaeton and asking my friends what the lyrics mean...
• jakear 4y ago
  I’m currently residing in Mexico after years of HS and Rosetta refresher, my main critique: Rosetta didn’t teach big numbers well enough. At 20 pesos to the dollar, learning 100-1000+ is pretty much mandatory but I didn’t see it, especially not in the form of the rapid fire audio you’ll encounter in the wild (with a line of annoyed people behind you perhaps…). Don’t try to get natives to tell you the english either - it’s much more confusing than you probably realize!^ Instead, if you aren’t sure you can repeat back the number you think you heard digit by digit and people will generally get what you’re going for (or “lo siento no entiendo, puedes decir cada digito por favor?”). Writing it out is a decent last resort, helps that there’s dirt everywhere. ^ “three fifty” is 2 numbers, 2 orders of magnitude apart. “thirty five” is one number, in between them. “three hundred fifty” is the same as the second “three fifty”. “thirty five hundred” is a totally different number entirely, but the same as “three thousand five hundred”. etc.
  • jakear 4y ago
    Oh, and the tenses. When the Military stops you to ask what you did in the past and what you’re going to do in the future, Rosetta’s passion por present tense won’t help. That said, having shit tier spanish at the checkpoints can “naïveté” you out of some sticky situations. A cute dog helps too (when they ask, and they will, “ella no muerde”).
• fcatalan 4y ago
  In my experience, Duolingo is as good, in fact better than the average class you can get. It won't get you to fluency by itself, but years of bare lessons won't either. A few years ago I got randomly interested in Danish, so I started Duolingo Danish. In a few weeks I was able to understand tweets from Danish newspapers. In 4 months I could read novels, slowly but well enough to enjoy them. Do I "know" Danish? Not really, I can't speak past a few sentences and have a hard time understanding it spoken (Danish is a particularly hard one at that). But my RoI for 20 minutes a day for a few months was great. Then my daughter had a hard time with her school English. She knew nothing and could not even follow the glacial pace of her lessons. I bribed her into keeping a 200 day streak in Duolingo and she was suddenly acing her tests. Now she has some interests with English only sources, and that alone is enough to help her keep learning, but duo was a huge kickstarter. My wife also had non existent English from years of classes and needed to at least understand emails at work instead of always passing them by me, and a 300 day Duolingo streak fixed that. I don't doubt that there are very good teachers out there, and you need to complement Duolingo if you really want to learn thoroughly, but it really puts you on track for very little actual effort.
  • watwut 4y ago
    I had similar experience with a kid. A kid that was slowly falling behind in English got bribed to do duolingo. Grades slowly got better and English slowly became "that easy class" and eventually the kid started to be able to read mangha and watch movies in English.
• AntiRemoteWork 4y ago
• KaiserPro 4y ago
  Ik heb nederlands geleerd van duolingo. is het de allebeste? nee, maar het is goed genoeg voor mij. voor ~£35 per jaar, het is heel goedkoop Where does it not work as well? speaking. I have a terrible accent. Listening comprehension isn't that great either, because the text is almost always there to prompt you. this means that out in the wild, I need people to speak slower than if I had been taught in a traditional lesson. but I would not have a second language if I had not been doing duolingo. The new scheme was a bit shit to start with, but it gives you a much wider vocab lesson than before. For non spanish languages there are much less explanations of grammar and syntax, so you just have to learn by reinforcement, which can be frustrating.
• OJFord 4y ago
  I find it good for vocabulary (the little it has), just awful for grammar and speaking practice/confidence. Also since it's Hindi I'm learning rather than Spanish, it's great for learning the script - no better way than flashcards to memorise/remind each character really. But it's absolutely not the only tool you should use, you at least need a book, and someone to speak to.
• beezlewax 4y ago
  It's more like a game than actual learning.... which would be great if it worked. I found myself recognising patterns and subconsciously "cheating" while using that app. Nothing beats full immersion in a language and actual real life teachers. I moved to Spain a few years ago and Duo Lingo had me thinking I understood loads of things when I really didn't. Not in a real life setting. It is good as a side lesson but not great otherwise at least from my perspective.
  • HenryClerval 4y ago
    What sort of cheats did you find? The only one I could find in the Finnish course was that the correct first word from the word bank would have its first letter capitalized, and that was almost never be the word that was difficult.
• KVFinn 4y ago
  I love the idea of Duolingo, but I wish it was more about making the act of learning itself a game, rather than 'gamification' which is more about adding extrinsic rewards, achievements, and other small nudges.
• willyt 4y ago
  Je suis anglais et j’étudie[0] français avec Duolingo tous les jours depuis 2019. J’écris ces phrases sans dictionnaire ou traduction Google. J’ai étudié français au lycée pendant trois ans il y a vingt quatre ans. Je ne sais pas si j’ai fait beaucoup d’erreurs de grammaire mais peut-être quelqu’un pourrait me dire? [0]Not sure if I’m using the right tense here I’ve got a feeling it’s present where we would use past continuous? Expect there’s lots of other mistakes I don’t know about.
• broof 4y ago
  Whenever Duolingo comes up, I always like to point out that their website is VASTLY superior to their app. It's essentially more difficult, because you can type your answers without being babied by just clicking on words. Additionally, you can export the website as a PWA onto your phone, so it feels like an app but you get the extra features.
  • LorenPechtel 4y ago
    You can turn on/off the word picker. And there's no server-side component to the web app??
• jakub_g 4y ago
  Been living in France for 10y. I took a basic one semester French course paid by the company. It was difficult to then continue because of low availability / timing / difficult commute / price so I turned to Duolingo. The best aspect was that you can learn any time you have 5-10 min spare. At the bus stop, a coffee break etc. But it can only get you so far. After finishing Duolingo French course I took to Memrise to build the vocabulary: 500 verbs, 500 adjectives etc. In parallel, I'd read local newspapers online, and Google Translate any word I didn't understand. This gave me a reading comprehension but talking was still difficult. I only learnt talking proficiency by joining a French company where everyone would talk French at lunch breaks. (First one was more international with many non-speaker fresh grads, talking English). After that, watching a lot of TV with subtitles to improve listening.
• jinpa_zangpo 4y ago
  I found that Duolingo is good for learning vocabulary, not so good for learning grammar. The online course I found most helpful was "Spanish with Paul," but I am sure there are other good courses.
• mattlondon 4y ago
  I have gone from literally zero Spanish to be able to understand basic spoken and written sentences and read basic signs etc. I might venture a basic spoken question or statement (e.g. ordering a coffee, asking where check-in is etc), but not much else. For me that is amazing. I've gone from nothing to basic toddler-level language skills just for messing about in the app a bit (and tantalisingly there was one or two moments where I caught myself thinking in Spanish too). That is valuable I think. I don't want to be fluent enough to be able to "chat with my Spanish friends" or whatever, just know enough to get by when on a vacation (which worked a treat when I spent a month in South America which was the main reason I learnt any at all - I didn't want to be utterly helpless)
• crossroadsguy 4y ago
  Isn't the Duolingo app designed for children? It sure felt so. I mean it's not like adults can't use it, but from the UI/UX of it it did not seem they are targetting adults. Last I tried it was few weeks ago.
• jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
  Just my anecdote, but I used it before traveling in Mexico for some time. I took 3 years of Spanish in high school, but hadn't used any in years. It definitely helped me refresh vocabulary. One of my friends used it to learn initially before doing a bunch of work across the border. Now he's married to a Mexican woman and considering nationalizing. It's no substitute for immersion, but I do think any time you spend on the app is worthwhile imo. The UI is great and it makes it easy to form a daily habit.
• jonplackett 4y ago
  I was always crap a languages. Top class for everything. Rock bottom for German. Tried lots of language learning things to learn Spanish, including Duolingo - but they just teach you vocabulary - and mostly weird stuff you don’t need initially. Then I stumbled upon Michel Thomas. I listened to the basic course and 2 weeks later I was in Spain speaking to people - even managed to talk my way onto a bus when I got lost and had no ticket. It’s a completely different way of learning. Speaking sentences from the first 5 minutes. You’re learning grammar from the beginning and how to actually express yourself. It’s more like a conversion course from English to Spanish (but also there’s Portuguese, French, German, some others) He’s such an interesting guy - emigrated to the USA after the war and set up his school. Invented a whole new way of teaching languages but wouldn’t let anyone know about it because he was so mistrusting (he was a nazi hunter in the war). Only when he was 70 something did someone convince him to record the language method. The tapes when you listen have a perfect learning curve - there’s always 2 students, one is good the other not so good so you feel better than them. I assumed he must have recorded many versions and then extensively edited - NOPE - they’re all recorded in a one time session. He was just that good. BBC has made a documentary about him where he goes into a school and teaches the 6 worst pupils French in like 2 weeks. He’s a genuine legend and the only reason I speak Spanish. If you want to learn a language please try this out. It is just on a different level to anything else, especially the BS repetition of duolingo type sites - although they are useful later when you want to just learn vocabulary. Anyway, as you may be able to tell, I am always very excited to pass on Michel Thomas. What a dude. RIP.
  • galuggus 4y ago
    You could also try Pimsleur. It's very effective for learning conversation essentials.
    • jonplackett 4y ago
      I tried Pimsleur first and personally didn’t get anywhere with it!
• nonameiguess 4y ago
  I haven't seen anyone mention it yet, but if you absolutely need to use an app and can't take in-person classes or talk to actual people, Camino is the best I've encountered (iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/camino-spanish/id1461459420 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/camino-spanish/id1461459420, Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.studylanguagesllc.camino&gl=US&pli=1 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.studylangu...). I believe it was developed for the US Department of State to crash train people who were going to work overseas. It isn't silly vocab drills. It has you reading entire literary passages and holding minutes-long conversations also immediately. None of the "get it right before you move on" stuff, either. You're absolutely going to fail, just like if you were really in the other country trying to talk and listen and not getting anything, but keep at it, and you will eventually get it. You can't get true immersion from an app, but this is as close as you'll get. It's not freemium, though. You have to pay.
• nothrowaways 4y ago
  So, what's the answer?
• powera 4y ago
  I have done French and Chinese, and it is fine. I tried to start Korean, and was getting so many "fake cognates" (silver is 은 "eun" but it gives 실버 "silbeo") that I had to quit. At least in the "learn the alphabet" stage, it's not teaching Korean, it's teaching "fake Korean using English words transliterated".
• hardlianotion 4y ago
  Seems like a fair article about Duolingo and its relation to language learning and competing apps it its space. I have a grip about a tiny part of the article, when it mentions Ibo, a Nigerian tribal language. Leave the "tribal" bit out - we're not living in the 20th century any more.
• Balgair 4y ago
  Two bits of advice from something of a polyglot here: Languages aren't something you learn, they are something you join. With Duolingo, take a second language along with the primary one. No, not German or French. Scroll all the way down to the bottom and select Latin, or Klingon, or Dothraki, something really short and just for kicks. That way when you are stuck in your primary language, you can switch to the fun language and keep up the habit. Duolingo is all about keeping up that habit. Also, you get to learn another 'language' and checking that off feels good and makes it so that you want to be a polyglot.
  • plusminusplus 4y ago
    > you get to learn another 'language' But "languages aren't something you learn" right?
    • Balgair 4y ago
      haha, yes, thank you.
    • yCombLinks 4y ago
      Sarah Connor's explosion gif
• black3r 4y ago
  The first thing that poked my eyes in this article was the "Czech" sentence in the illustration which is just totally wrong... Even when we ignore the missing diacritics, "isi" is not a word in Czech. It's probably a typo from "Jedl si ten žlutý sníh?", although that translates to "Did you eat the yellow snow?", not "Why are you eating the yellow snow?" like the caption suggests which would be translated to "Proč jíš ten žlutý sníh?"... Looks kinda bad in an article about language learning in a serious newspaper like Bloomberg... unless it's also mistranslated in duolingo in which case I think it should have been explained...
• rdl 4y ago
  I really like Duolingo as a way to practice (Spanish) every day, on top of a foundation of via-zoom language classes for 2h/day over a couple months from Baselang, and living in a Spanish speaking place (Puerto Rico), traveling to Spanish speaking places, etc. I don't really interact with people locally in Spanish all that much at home, and beyond basic transactional interactions at the airport, shooting range, and costco, can easily go a month+ without speaking Spanish, so it's nice to have a consistent motivation to practice.
• pwpw 4y ago
  The best method for learning a new language I have ever come across is a combo of Language Transfer + Anki flash cards and making a serious effort to study them 4-7 times per week. It’s incredible how quickly I started learning doing this every day for 6 straight months despite not having anyone to actually talk with or any media to consume in the new language. Eventually, I started taking in person classes for the language, which has helped too, but after 3 courses, I still haven’t come close to the level I had learned via Language Transfer and regular self study. Language Transfer taught me quite advance concepts much quicker than traditional classes did. I would say I learned more studying Greek in 6 months via that method than I did in 5 years learning Spanish via traditional classes. After an additional 5 years (10 years total) studying Spanish, I’ve become highly proficient. It blows my mind how quickly I’ve been able to learn Greek. The way the language is taught in Language Transfer is so intuitive. I wish it had been around when I learned Spanish. My experience with Duolingo over the years is learning a pretty minimal amount. It’s like a worse version of Anki. It’s mostly fluff. The gamified concept is clever, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. If you enjoy doing it in addition to the methods I listed above, then I’m sure that can’t hurt. However, I’d recommend avoiding it and using your valuable time on the methods above. I can’t emphasize enough how remarkable my learning path for Greek has been. P.S. If you’re really craving a gamified learning supplement, try Clozemaster once you’re at a high enough level of proficiency.
• tomp 4y ago
  Yes. I learned Spanish on Duolingo and used it to travel through Cuba (where very few people speak English). It worked well enough, I was able to communicate. Not knowing Spanish would make things much more difficult. Of course I have by now mostly forgotten it, a language that isn't used frequently (best via immersion, living where it's spoken by plenty of people) will atrophy...
• Metacelsus 4y ago
  Spanish yes, but less popular languages (e.g. Polish) don't have nearly as well-developed Duolingo courses.