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Duolingo Max, a learning experience powered by GPT-4

dazc 4y ago
'Duolingo Max is a new subscription tier above Super Duolingo...' I don't think this is going to enthuse anyone who's already regretting subscribing to your video game?
- atlasunshrugged 4y ago
  As a Duolingo user who has refused to upgrade, if they roll the two into one it might entice me, but not for another higher tier above what they've got. But I guess there's a subset of super-users who may be keen.
  - lsllc 4y ago
    To be fair, Super Duolingo is pretty good. Dropping the Ads alone is totally worth the subscription if you're a daily user (it's the only app I use daily aside from Messages, Email etc). I'm very curious about Max though ... the explain your answer is something I'm really interested in to help me understand the sentences I'm constructing (which is where I make most of my blunders!).
    - atlasunshrugged 4y ago
      I also use it daily but I'm a bit worried I won't concentrate as much if I have unlimited hearts, have you noticed any decline in recall? But yes, the ads are super annoying... especially the same one to upgrade Duolingo puts in every time!
      - gopalv 4y ago
        > I'm a bit worried I won't concentrate as much if I have unlimited hearts, have you noticed any decline in recall? I did a trial and I noticed I spend more time with the App when I had unlimited hearts, so I got through more lessons a day. Less attention to a single question, but a lot more time spent on the app. And that when it comes to actual recall, the mistakes don't count when it comes to learning. I don't really learn by recalling information, I learn by having stuff shoved into my brain with Spaced repetition. The unlimited hearts thing fed the repetition cycle a lot more.
      - lvass 4y ago
        I haven't even noticed ads using uBO.
        tylorr 4y ago
        They're a lot more intrusive on the mobile app
        atlasunshrugged 4y ago
        Yes, should have added more detail, I was talking specifically about my experience on the mobile app
        lsllc 4y ago
        ditto
        uneekname 4y ago
        I've had success blocking the ads using a pi-hole. You still see ads for Duolingo Super and other in-house offerings, but the obnoxious video ads go away.
      - lsllc 4y ago
        I haven't, but I got sick of the ads pretty quickly and have been signed up for super for most of my ~10 month streak. I try to spend 10-20 mins a day on it (learning Spanish) and actually do a lot of the "review" lessons which are good at drilling words. I am often surprised by my recall at phrases that I haven't seen in a while -- pretty sure they use the spaced repetition type algorithms. My challenges now aren't so much on vocab/recall, but on verb conjugation and sentence construction / structure. I kind of know what to say but have trouble putting it together. What I need to do is practice more actually speaking Spanish and interacting with Spanish speakers -- I had planned to spend a few months living somewhere in Hispanic America, but the 3 day-a-week RTO at my job has trashed that. I'll probably just have to settle for Skype-based chats/lessons.
        dbtc 4y ago
        Depending on where you live, there may be hispanohablantes nearby too
      - goldcd 4y ago
        Just starting my second paid year - I didn't put up with the adverts for long. Works far better for me without the hearts. Less time staring at sentences trying to make them perfect - more quick failing, learning why, iterating and drilling it into my head. Also much more likely to spend longer in the app, maybe a couple of times a week.
        bluGill 4y ago
        After a few months of Duolingo you should move onto comprehensible input for learning. Your Duolingo subscription is holding you back
        EvanKelly 4y ago
        That's a new term for me, but after researching it, it makes sense. What are your preferred sources of comprehensible input. After a few months on Duolingo I still find TV shows to mostly not be comprehensible, so not productive.
        bluGill 4y ago
        Dreaming Spanish is well reported for Spanish learners. For other languages it is harder to find something.
        perfmode 4y ago
        what’s comprehensible input? (ah. googled. makes sense. )
        goldcd 4y ago
        You're over-estimating my intellect... I do occasionally get through some french youtube with subs and I'm getting better at roughly following - I'm not just relying on Duo. (I also have a grammar book to hand as well)
      - llbeansandrice 4y ago
        I think any serious user should be using unlimited hearts. You learn by making mistakes.
        larkost 4y ago
        I have found that it works better for me not have unlimited hearts. I make my mistakes, and in I am not ready on a level then I have to repeat it. And either way I then do practice rounds to fill my hearts back up to full (I try to always leave the app with full hearts). In the times I have had SuperDuolingo for free Have been annoyed that I can just keep plowing through mistakes (really: lack of knowledge), and don't have to really learn things before moving on with them... I just have to guess right once for each question. But I do agree that DuoLingo is all about learning by making mistakes. I wish they had a bit more focused teaching for grammar, at least it would help me with the Hungarian. For a few items I have had to go outside the app for lessons on what I am just not getting by repetition.
        dazc 4y ago
        You learn by making mistakes. Amen
    - cool_dude85 4y ago
      >the explain your answer is something I'm really interested in to help me understand the sentences I'm constructing They used to have an army of native-speaking volunteers to do this for free in the comments. I guess this is why they turned those off.
      - bayesian_horse 4y ago
        Usually that decision is driven by the cost of moderating/deleting abusive content quickly enough in order to not get banned from use in schools...
        cool_dude85 4y ago
        Maybe I'm wrong, but I would not be surprised if forum moderation was a volunteer activity. Even core functionality like developing the lessons, for less popular languages, was done by the Duo community and given very little support from paid staff.
        bayesian_horse 4y ago
        Yes, but moderating and screening for abusive content can't reliably left to unpaid volunteers if it needs to be good enough not to scare off parents and educators. I remember that this was the death knell to a Lego online game: People were making genitals quicker and more inventively than anybody could keep up. In education technology, many seem to hope to get that from AI: the helpfulness of a forum of volunteers without the abuse. The rise of the "unsocial network".
      - ArchOversight 4y ago
        They still have the forum style "help me out", but there are some where the responses are really a huge miss where I could see this AI helping out more by giving better answers.
    - jghn 4y ago
      I've yet to try Super Duolingo. But I've also been tapering off my usage as they keep forcing to use the word bank instead of keyboard at an increasing rate. I've no desire to use the word bank, they seem to have no desire to let me use the keyboard. Unless that's buried in one of the premium options I see the writing on the wall.
      - EvanKelly 4y ago
        Interesting, I am a Super Duolingo subscriber but I don't think that's one of the features. Anywhere I'm inputting a sentence I think I get the keyboard option, maybe I'm misremembering, but I do a lot of typing on my Japanese keyboard when I study.
        jghn 4y ago
        They were clearly doing some A/B testing a while back based on sporadic complaints on r/duolingo. At some point I noticed it had solidified. The current setup is if the drill is target language to host language, you'll always get word bank. If it's host language to target language it'll push you towards word bank but you have a subtle thing to click on that brings back the keyboard. Sometimes it's called "make harder" or sometimes "use keyboard" (vs "make easier" and "use word bank")
      - dotancohen 4y ago
        Try supplementing Duolingo with Anki / Ankidroid. Every word that I learn in Duolingo, I put into Anki. I do all my reviews in Ankidroid on a small E-Ink device but it's actually designed for phones. You can configure Ankidroid to require you to spell the words properly.
        NoInkling 4y ago
        Also worth checking out something like Clozemaster.
        dotancohen 4y ago
    - memsom 4y ago
      If you enrol in the classroom version of Duo (which I originally did to get back the old style tree) it is firstly, free. Secondly - you can be a single participant. Thirdly - no ads. I even forgot there were ads because I haven't seen one since I enrolled - in eluding the annoying self promotion ads for Super Duolingo. I have a 1631 streak at the moment, so it is saving me quite a bit of time not seeing ads. It is not my loop hole, so I guess it is just something I found by accident.
weatherlight 4y ago
This seems like a smart move in general, for Duolingo and a not-evil use of language models.
- soco 4y ago
  Some would argue the Duolingo owl is an evil creation, now with enhanced powers.
  - goldcd 4y ago
    "Ssssh! The owl might be listening" glances at phone with panic in his eyes
  - antx 4y ago
    Judging from the new ad, it seems the owl has now embraced its dark side to the fullest...
mzs 4y ago
Just take a look at how poorly the bot does for Spanish: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35155577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35155577
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  Irresponsible to give this to learners
  - codetrotter 4y ago
    My girlfriend is Spanish. I don’t think her family would be impressed if I were to pronounce “gracias” as “grassy ass” xD
    - spandrew 4y ago
      It does kind of sound the same tho? Grassy-ass. Grassiyass. Grassyaas. Gracias.
      - dfxm12 4y ago
        If you drive from Virginia to Boston, you'll probably hear 5 different pronunciations of "Grassy ass". I don't think any of them sound like how I learned to say "thank you" in high school Spanish class.
        spandrew 4y ago
        True, but it does sound like how they learned to say "thank you" in high school, and how regional dialects can influence the change of language.
    - beezlewax 4y ago
      Pretty much what it sounds like
      - 4y ago
maCDzP 4y ago
They should combine it with Whisper so I can talk to some AI in a random language and just talk about nonsense. Also awesome training data since my pronunciation would suck? I am a bit too embarrassed to talk in a new language but staying with an AI would be ok.
- gdprrrr 4y ago
  Try https://www.quazel.com/ https://www.quazel.com/
  - djcannabiz 4y ago
    Thanks for the recommendation, this looks really cool!
  - x0x0 4y ago
    I was coming here to say this. No connection besides being a happy user.
- kelseyfrog 4y ago
  Agreed. The current iteration of speech training is ok-ish for pronunciation, but speech formation is an additional but important step.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago
  "Speak" is the company that OpenAI is backing for this: https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/17/speak-lands-investment-from-openai-to-expand-its-language-learning-platform/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/17/speak-lands-investment-fro... Apparently it's already the top language-learning app in Korea. It was featured in their blog post a couple weeks back when they announced their APIs: https://openai.com/blog/introducing-chatgpt-and-whisper-apis https://openai.com/blog/introducing-chatgpt-and-whisper-apis
kitsunesoba 4y ago
Intriguing, if it's implemented well. Lack of conversation practice is probably the biggest hole in most language learning systems and what keeps language knowledge from being applicable.
chaosprint 4y ago
It's a wise move. It's better to embrace it rather than get replaced. But I'd wait for it to become more powerful by including the whisper model or the similar.
aeturnum 4y ago
This is interesting because my impression is that LLMs perform poorly on non-english languages[1]. This is likely 'just' a corpus size problem - but it's not like that is going to be fixed any time soon. That said, at least in language instruction there's a lot of meta material that will be helpful. I wonder how Duolingo is detecting when GPT-4 is hallucinating. [1] https://twitter.com/asmelashteka/status/1630966233217605632 https://twitter.com/asmelashteka/status/1630966233217605632
- ssnistfajen 4y ago
  LLM outputs in Standard Chinese are fluent and coherent but the grammar style and choice of words are clearly non-native. I think the source training material just isn't as comprehensive as English, and contemporary Chinese Internet is packed full of latin abbreviations and obscure homophones/wordplay due to its evolution under severe censorship.
  - jazzyjackson 4y ago
    Awesome observation re: censorship. Last I looked into training sets, Chinese and English were the frontrunners by far in available corpus size, and benefit from a certain amount of government-enforced-homogeneity (a standard mode is taught in compulsory education). Arabic is safe from automation due to its limited exposure to the open web and extreme variability of dialects, and Icelandic will remain obscure due to sample size and the fact that they mostly speak English online.
    - bayesian_horse 4y ago
      The islandic government is apparently partnering with OpenAI to "preserve their language". I suppose they have a GPT-4 customized for that language.
      - jazzyjackson 4y ago
        oh neat, thanks for the heads up
bundze 4y ago
I've been successfully using ChatGPT for learning German in the last month or so. It does a great job enriching my plain B1 level sentences with some fancy verbs or adjectives and pointing out my mistakes.
- dotancohen 4y ago
  How does that work? Do you just tell it that you are learning and to correct your mistakes, then converse with it in German? Does it infer your German level from your own chats with it?
  - bundze 4y ago
    Yes, you can tell it that you are learning the language at the beginning of the conversation in plain English and ask it to correct any mistakes. You can easily start a bilingual conversation with ChatGPT, some random example here: https://www.reddit.com/r/russian/comments/112xgp2/practicing_russian_with_chatgpt/ https://www.reddit.com/r/russian/comments/112xgp2/practicing... To show you what I meant when I mentioned "enriching sentences", I've just generated an example of a B1-level English sentence improved by ChatGPT. User: Please improve this sentence: "Many people want to learn languages because they like to travel" ChatGPT: "Learning languages is a popular pursuit because it enables people to travel and explore different cultures with greater ease." It works similarly with other languages. As for my German level, it wasn't evaluated by ChatGPT but by an external assessment exam and I only mentioned it to add some more context to the story. Frankly, I probably wouldn't trust ChatGPT's assessment in this regard.
    - dotancohen 4y ago
      Terrific, Danke! Viel Erfolg!
    - jhugo 4y ago
      > User: Please improve this sentence: "Many people want to learn languages because they like to travel" > ChatGPT: "Learning languages is a popular pursuit because it enables people to travel and explore different cultures with greater ease." How is this an "improvement"? The user gave a concise sentence without errors. ChatGPT made it more verbose and added additional meaning that wasn't present in the original sentence (thus going beyond mere "improvement"). Even if it stopped before the "and", the ChatGPT version is worse: it uses more words for no benefit.
braingenious 4y ago
This looks great! I would like to know how much this costs though.
Metacelsus 4y ago
Why only iOS?
- danpalmer 4y ago
  The dev time on this must be very fast, given that it probably makes sense to focus on one platform first. Also review times with Apple are consistently 24-48 hours, but Google Play review times are (sadly) not from what I’ve heard from developers. If the whole timescale is 2-4 weeks, that may be a deal breaker.
- vhanda 4y ago
  Duolingo seems like they have separate teams for iOS, Android and Web. Their iOS team seems to be the one who experiment the most with new features, and then they either get discarded or finally make it to Android, and then in a few years to the Web. It is really annoying, as when I used Duolingo (stopped because of the new update in Jan), I would often use all three platforms, and have the worst experience.
- bayesian_horse 4y ago
  iOS is always first with new features in Duolingo. And from what I've heard from other sources, iOS users are more willing to pay $$$.
karaterobot 4y ago
Does it actually say how much Duolingo Max would cost? I do not see anything in that article or on their website. I don't have the app, maybe it's already live and pricing is available there. I deleted Duolingo years ago when it felt like I knew everything it had to teach me, but was still far from fluent in the language. I assume it's gotten better, and would consider trying this new feature.
- vhanda 4y ago
  It doesn't. Neither does the website. An article from Yahoo [0] says it's "$29.99 per month or $167.99 per year", but they don't link to a source. [0] - https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/duolingo-launches-subscription-tier-access-185143879.html https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/duolingo-launches-subscrip...
  - Balgair 4y ago
    Woah, a dollar a day. That's a lot to ask from an otherwise free app. 3x the current price of a paid version
akhosravian 4y ago
Would love to use duolingo, but they have no interest in supporting iranian languages. I’ve never really seen a clear answer for why. They have about 200 million native speakers worldwide. Persian, Pashto, Kurdish are the largest.
- SnooSux 4y ago
  There was a point where Duolingo was trying to teach languages including endangered ones as their primary goal. But it feels like every year they're moving more towards making money as their main main objective. I'm not optimistic about them expanding their list of languages. Most of their lesser known languages are getting fewer updates than Spanish, French, Japanese. It makes business sense to focus your hours on features and languages people are actually using but it's still frustrating thinking of what Duolingo could have been and used to promote vs what it turned out to be.
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago
    It's not just about the money. You can make an argument that they want to serve as many people as possible in the best possible way, and that means concentrating their limited resources on the languages people want to learn most.
- danudey 4y ago
  If I had to guess, I would say it's probably something like not enough demand from non-Iranian speakers to learn Iranian languages.
- simonebrunozzi 4y ago
  Hmm, I guess what they're interested mostly is how many people are interested in learning Iranian languages. Not saying that the number is small, but I'd guess it's maybe too small for them to matter?
  - Pelayu 4y ago
    I don’t think this argument holds as they added languages with a very low amount of speakers such as Navajo, Hawaiian, Guarani and Māori and even High Valyrian and Klingon. I would hazard a guess that more people would find use in Iranian. (For the record, I’m not saying the above languages shouldn’t be included, rather that the argument doesn’t hold up)
skizm 4y ago
I’ve got a trip to Spain in 4 months. I know a few spanish words now, but nothing beyond that. Will Duolingo get me to some level of being able to muddle my way through conversations (assuming the other person knows I’m a tourist and is using small words) in that timeframe?
- adastra22 4y ago
  No. Duolingo is gamified junk. How much time per day do you have to study?
- danudey 4y ago
  If you're able to dedicate time and focus to it, Duolingo will at least get you familiar with words and phrases, so that you can read and recognize more common words (street signs, menus, etc.) Depending on your fluency and your current ability with other languages, it may get you to the point where you can understand someone who is speaking clear and deliberately enunciated Spanish to you. It may also get you to the point where they can understand your clear and deliberately enunciated Spanish as well. There's no guarantees, but jumping into it right now is free and you can gain a certain level of confidence regarding how much it might help you pretty quickly. There's literally no reason not to try.
- arthurcolle 4y ago
  Duolingo is good to gain familiarity with common words when you legit don't know a lick of the other language in question, but once you gain a passing familiarity, I would recommend finding someone who speaks Spanish and practicing with them!
- liminal 4y ago
  Depending on how much time you're willing to put in, it can help a lot. 15-30 minutes twice a day would be a good start.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- gardenhedge 4y ago
  No. When the reception asks if you want to check in or the shopkeeper asks if you need a bag.. you won't get that from Duolingo. You'll learn the word for an apple though and if your memory is good you'll be able to recall it when needed.
thewebcount 4y ago
I have severely mixed feelings about Duolingo. I can't imagine paying more than I already do for the "Super" option. If you're trying to learn Spanish or French, it seems like a pretty full-featured app. Unfortunately, I'm trying to learn Greek and every aspect of it is sub-par compared to other languages. It doesn't even read you questions correctly. (It uses flat intonation as if it's saying a statement.) There are no vignettes like in Spanish and French where you watch a conversation and then summarize what was said. They just throw in new concepts with no instruction whatsoever. So you see a word that you know is a verb, but the ending is one you've never seen before. There's no chart or examples, or even explanation that "now we're going to teach you past tense," or whatever. Just suddenly there's a bunch of new stuff you don't understand and you have to go to the Internet to look up what the hell is happening. God forbid you ask a question on the forum. The Greek mods are stereotypically rude and controlling. Nothing is ever the fault of the app, it's always the user's fault, even when native English speakers are telling them, "The English translation of this sentence doesn't make sense and is not valid English." So yeah, I'm definitely not going to pay for an AI that is likely giving wrong advice anyway.
- ben_w 4y ago
  Oh, I see the Greek course has gotten worse. Before the UX update at the end of last year, I was trying Arabic (something like 2 years of daily lessons and I still couldn't manage the alphabet), Greek (felt worse than before the preceding UX change but I couldn't say why exactly), Esperanto (the audio sounded like it was done by a volunteer at their own home?), Dutch, German, and Spanish. I'm still doing German, because I live here now, but I gave up on all the rest the day that update happened. Oh my goodness the voices and animations are annoying. Whenever the young boy appears I have to mute my speakers. I'm sure they're hyper-focused on "engagement metrics" to the detriment of all else, just like how old-school OK Cupid turned into just another Tinder clone.
  - rcarr 4y ago
    This is funny because in Spanish, the young boy (Junior) and his father (Eddy) are both absolutely fucking hilarious. But I 100% get what you're saying because I did some of the French lessons, almost identical content and Junior came across as snooty. It really does go to show that choosing the right voice actor makes a world of difference. The Spanish casting is absolutely phenomenal but the other languages don't seem to quite nail it. Part of me wonders however if this is actually a cultural difference. Perhaps I personally find the Spanish ones phenomenal because I am personally more aligned with Spanish speaking values, culture, humour and communication methods than other more reserved cultures such as those of German and French.
salimmadjd 4y ago
With GPT-4, I'm thinking if Duolingo has fundamentally been reduced to a game. The key network effect left is pretty much a leaderboard that fuels their daily retention. So any existing game company could potentially create another gamified learning app as part of their game pools.
- bayesian_horse 4y ago
  There are lots of educational games or apps around language learning. Nobody is as successful as Duolingo. Or as useful as Duolingo, at least in whatever Duolingo chooses to do. I don't even think they think being compared to a game is a bad thing. What makes Duolingo the best in its field is the content and the varied exercises with a high quality.
  - ted_bunny 4y ago
    Yes, the gamification is the major positive feature that gets people to stick to it. But the exercises aren't varied or high quality. Try drilling a particular skill and you'll soon memorize all their sentences, to a degree that it trivializes the practice. Not to mention they're absolutely riddled with errors that strongly imply they don't even run the translations by a native English speaker. Voice exercises with numbers are simply broken in Russian. And all the comments are locked, with many of the complaints ignored.
    - bayesian_horse 4y ago
      I never run into those issues. I use about 6 courses, and the English sentences have always been grammatically correct. There's nothing wrong with memorizing example sentences. Your brain is not a digital memory bank, memorizing is impossible without forming some deeper understanding on the fly.
      - ted_bunny 4y ago
        What I mean is, DL refuses to teach that deeper understanding. You have to beg in the comments to identify a declension. And the memory thing - I don't have to think about what a sentence means. This is phrasebook teaching, a piss-poor method.
CobrastanJorji 4y ago
Ugh. You can just feel the management layers in this. Management wants to do something with AI. It's so hot right now. Your product guy got an idea for a cool new feature. Tests show that users actually like it. It's helpful. Great. But now you need to explain how you made Duolingo money. First idea, your product has a paid tier, add it as a feature to the paid tier too boost paid user retention and new signups. Great, metrics! But you're pretty sure that, while customers do like this when you ask, you're probably not moving the needle. What to do? Well, you're a mobile game company, focus on what always works: go after the whales. Now your product is an exclusive EVEN HIGHER tier. Get the art guy to make, like, an Amex Black Card but for the Owl. Make him do a superhero landing or something. Run a bunch of ads at the paid users to convince them that they'd totally be helped by this. They'll be focused on the users who already pay Duolingo money, so those are perfect advertising targets. And you'll be able to show real dollars that your feature is pulling in. Hooray! That VP spot is as good as yours, I bet!
- skeaker 4y ago
  I mean, sure, that's more or less how a company operates. You make a new product, you charge for it, you advertise it. What's the big issue? This all seems pretty standard.
  - pokpokpok 4y ago
    the product bad
    - mgiannopoulos 4y ago
      Have you tried this already? Please share more of your experience
      - aroo 4y ago
        considering that ChatGPT is going to run on GPT-4 and is more or less free, why would someone use this paid feature instead of talking to ChatGPT?
ahoy 4y ago
Surely this is less cost effective (and probably less effective in general) than just hiring a convo partner on italki or something.
ZunarJ5 4y ago
Duolingo has been unusable since their format change last year. Might as well let the garbage pile up.
simonw 4y ago
I've been partnering Duolingo with ChatGPT for a while now. I'll ask ChatGPT "Why was this wrong? What was my mistake?" and it explains exactly what I needed to know every time. I think this combo is going to work fantastically well.
- __bjoernd 4y ago
  Does it give the right information or just some that sounds reasonable to you?
  - simonw 4y ago
    I'm asking pretty basic questions - "Why moven there and not mover?" kind of level - and the responses are obviously correct to me.
    - comex 4y ago
      I recently asked GPT-3.5 ChatGPT to explain the grammar of a Japanese sentence using an obscure informal verb form, and it gave an answer that was obviously wrong. I just tried again with GPT-4, and it gave an answer that was more plausible, but which is almost certainly also wrong, because it contradicts the much-more-convincing Stack Exchange answer I had previously found via Google. (I only asked ChatGPT the question as a test.) So, it can be helpful for basic questions, but there are limits. The harder the question is, the more likely it is to get the answer wrong, and the harder it is for the user to identify when it’s done so.
      - fooker 4y ago
        How do you know the Stack Exchange answer was correct?
bayesian_horse 4y ago
I understand why Duolingo is concentrating on what makes them money and what the most learned languages are. But as someone interested in "less popular" languages I don't like it. Even the Chinese course hasn't been expanded since it came out. And Finnish probably never will be expanded, since it was entirely volunteer driven and they don't do that at all anymore.
- gs17 4y ago
  The Chinese course did get updated to the newer style (path instead of tree), but the content isn't changed AFAIK.
- Pelayu 4y ago
  This is the same for me but with Basque. People have been campaigning to get a course published for years now, with volunteers willing to help, but for whatever reason they refuse; which is a shame as from a linguistic point of view it is a very rare and interesting language and culture and would help people in Spain a lot in my opinion.
alanh 4y ago
I know I will be downvoted for this, but there is something sinister about two companies that inject woke values into everything they do, Duolingo and Open AI, teaming up in the area of education. It is a sort of insidious, invisible brainwashing. > Translate "Biden is a great president" into French. [DuoBot complies] > Translate "Trump was a great president" into French. Desolé, je ne puis pas faire ça
- bayesian_horse 4y ago
  Yet another useless definition of "woke". Also if you wrote it exactly as in this comment, then the first sentence is grammatically correct, the second does not compute because of the quotation marks. It may not be a conspiracy you may just be too stupid to use it. Also it's not a translation app. Also Trump objectively wasn't a great president, he cowered to Putin, mispronounced his own damn country all the time and was the first president to try and overturn an election and incite a coup against the government. Biden at the very least pays lip service to democracy, Trump doesn't. I don't even think that ChatGPT takes any of that into account though.
  - alanh 4y ago
    "Ideological oppression is good because you’re stupid and the oppressors are right" Also, I didn't define "woke," if you want to be a pedant. But we all know what it means. Are you unaware of the famous examples of ChatGPT refusing to say nice things about Trump because OpenAI has forbidden it from doing so? This was a major story. You don’t have to like Trump to find this disturbing. GPT should be a neutral tool.
    - bayesian_horse 4y ago
      You use it wrong, then you complain. That's neither smart nor oppression. I don't even believe the example is real, that's how little faith I have in people who drink the drivel from Fox News which simultaneously lies for Trump and hates Trump so much. You are making tough accusations with zero actual evidence. Even if it were true GPT-3 or 4 had this bias (it certainly has a few others which are decidedly "not woke") I don't care at all because it's probably not a conspiracy but just a result of the training corpus to be confusing around Trump... He just naturally engenders more hate and animosity if for no other reason that he uses hate and animosity in his daily lies...
huevosabio 4y ago
Well, this game is too lopsided for existing corps! I was working on a gpt-powered tutor for languages, guess I will have some work to differentiate from whatever duolingo offers.
qwertox 4y ago
This is the second time in the last couple of days that I've encountered a page hiding the pricing as good as they can. I wanted to see what this Max-plan costs, so I go to duolingo.com. Nowhere is a "Pricing" link to be found. So I go to "Super Duolingo", because that costs something and therefore should have a price. "Test 2 weeks for free", "Free | Super | Super-Family" with "Test 2 weeks for free", but nowhere what I'll have to pay after those two weeks. Click on "Test 2 weeks for free": Submit your personal information for creating an account, no pricing information. What is this? How much does the Super even cost? Management to Web-Designers: "No, don't put the pricing, we're irrationally expensive", or what?
- eu 4y ago
  I think they have different prices for each region
  - agluszak 4y ago
    Just display the prices for each region then?
- agluszak 4y ago
  Hiding the pricing should be illegal. Hopefully EU will regulate it at some point.
- braingenious 4y ago
  I find that so incredibly off-putting. Whenever I see a company intentionally hiding pricing information I move them all the way to the back of the line for serious consideration. If I don’t manage to entirely put the product out of mind I’ll usually look for competitors or ways to get the service without paying for it. If they’re going to be user-hostile, become a hostile user!
- tfehring 4y ago
  I didn't see any pricing information while logged out either, but as soon as I clicked the free trial button and then logged in, the next page that appeared was pricing. It's $12.99/month for an individual plan billed monthly, $6.99/month for an individual plan billed annually, and $9.99/month for a family plan (2-6 members) billed annually. I’m in California in case that matters.
coding123 4y ago
LOL, I saw this first, I was like - how the heck are they using GPT-4, did I miss something, was that released? Then I went back and sure enough, its the top HN item with 1200 comments lol
Sol- 4y ago
Language learning in general seems like something that should be on the way out. All technical building blocks for simultaneous translation exist and modern speech synthesis systems can even emulate the sound of your voice in the foreign language. Eventually it might even be considered rude to bother people in foreign countries with your broken language skills, given that you could use a perfectly serviceable automatic translator instead and sound like something close to a native speaker. (Edit: Note that I would also find this development sad, but such can be the dehumanizing impact of new and useful technology, especially AI. Not much you can do.)
- mlekoszek 4y ago
  I mean at the end of the day, people generally like to talk with each other, unmediated, and be understood. They like being face to face. This is the lesson of the pandemic, even if it is a bit reactionary. People like being human.
- pebble 4y ago
  Do you only learn a language to order food?
montagg 4y ago
A GPT-powered chat-based role playing game. I'll be very interested to see how people use this tool in ways Duolingo didn't expect at all. Cue: "My best friend is Duolingo Max. They're the only person I can really talk to. While learning a new language, too."
r3pl4y 4y ago
Android, please! I promise to subscribe once it's available :)
vlixfernandez 4y ago
was only a matter of time before a company used chat gpt to enable language learning. if I can talk to someone back & forth without having to pay an instructor, that's a game changer
xwowsersx 4y ago
Brass tacks, do/will these features help learn a language, even if only marginally? Anyone know? I'm looking to learn Portuguese and would be willing to use and try anything that would make it even marginally easier.
jake_morrison 4y ago
I have been using Duolingo for years. I find that you can't really learn anything, you can only practice something you already know. You won't learn grammar, it's only useful for sentence translation drills. And those drills are artificial, e.g. one sentence at a time, not using context, which is a big part of Japanese. It also has problems with characters with multiple readings (many). It often introduces a character and drills pronunciation before introducing the meaning. While I have gotten use out of it for sentence translation practice in addition to other studies, I likely won't renew. I would recommend using another tool, e.g. LingoDeer. I don't see this new feature as being useful. Instead of using ML to try to explain what I got wrong, how about just paying someone to write some text to explain the sentence? Their sentences are already a bit odd. Now I am supposed to learn to talk like an AI? That's very cyberpunk. Sigh.
- culopatin 4y ago
  Every time I try it I waste time learning random crap like “the bear is vegetarian” or “Apple and milk”. I cannot yet say good morning or thank you, but I can say “radio” in Russian (only because it happens to be radio as well).
  - sw104 4y ago
    The Russian course on Duolingo is certifiable garbage. - My Russian partner
  - eimrine 4y ago
    Russian and Ukrainian are my mother languages so, feel free to contact me if you want some practice. Just put my nickname, add @gmail.com and tell me that you are willing to practice your language in exchange of helping me to practice some English.
xdennis 4y ago
I imagine this will lead to people speaking foreign languages with bot influences. It will probably be similar to how people speak when they have a low number of co-speakers. For example, my (Romanian) sister moved to China and has a son now, but since he only talks to her in Romanian, he sometimes uses feminine words when talking about himself since that's now my sister talks.
- fooker 4y ago
  That seems okay, and correctible with a bit of watching movies and reading children's books/comics.
xvilka 4y ago
I wonder how it would work for learning languages very different from English, e.g. Chinese or Arabic. From what I know, GPT-3 isn't very good with them.
jfisher4024 4y ago
Does anyone know what happened to Google Tivoli? I thought it was something like this.
seu 4y ago
Why isn't it possible to find the monthly cost for this service anywhere on duolingo's website?
amelius 4y ago
Can you make it reproduce parts of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_as_She_Is_Spoke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_as_She_Is_Spoke
mgoetzke 4y ago
Where can this be tried though to find out whether its marketing fluff or has real value ?
- mgoetzke 4y ago
  ok found it. I cannot see it on the website in my profile I have to go into the AppStore on iOS under subscriptions. Says: 250 EUR/y per family. Which costs my 120 EUR/y right now. So more than twice as expensive. With no way to try that I am not sure I would want to go down that road
bluehat974 4y ago
Imagine tomorrow, with some hardware improvement (neuromorphic chips...), we will be able to have the full GPT-4 model (or more powerfull/specific LLM) directly on our own smartphone... The potential to generate any type of content could be infiny (learn something, speak with virtual friends, analyse our medical record in real time, create a business with multiple virtual employee...) We have just to install an application on our smartphone, which will configure a prompt, fetch data (conversation data, body data...) and magic happens
joovuu 4y ago
Selfless plug. I created https://Heylaing.com https://Heylaing.com that is basically the “role play” version of this Duolingo Max but free. It’s been my side project to learn coding. I’m about to release android and iOS apps…hopefully later this week or early next.

dazc 4y ago

'Duolingo Max is a new subscription tier above Super Duolingo...' I don't think this is going to enthuse anyone who's already regretting subscribing to your video game?

atlasunshrugged 4y ago
As a Duolingo user who has refused to upgrade, if they roll the two into one it might entice me, but not for another higher tier above what they've got. But I guess there's a subset of super-users who may be keen.
- lsllc 4y ago
  To be fair, Super Duolingo is pretty good. Dropping the Ads alone is totally worth the subscription if you're a daily user (it's the only app I use daily aside from Messages, Email etc). I'm very curious about Max though ... the explain your answer is something I'm really interested in to help me understand the sentences I'm constructing (which is where I make most of my blunders!).
  - atlasunshrugged 4y ago
    I also use it daily but I'm a bit worried I won't concentrate as much if I have unlimited hearts, have you noticed any decline in recall? But yes, the ads are super annoying... especially the same one to upgrade Duolingo puts in every time!
    - gopalv 4y ago
      > I'm a bit worried I won't concentrate as much if I have unlimited hearts, have you noticed any decline in recall? I did a trial and I noticed I spend more time with the App when I had unlimited hearts, so I got through more lessons a day. Less attention to a single question, but a lot more time spent on the app. And that when it comes to actual recall, the mistakes don't count when it comes to learning. I don't really learn by recalling information, I learn by having stuff shoved into my brain with Spaced repetition. The unlimited hearts thing fed the repetition cycle a lot more.
    - lvass 4y ago
      I haven't even noticed ads using uBO.
      - tylorr 4y ago
        They're a lot more intrusive on the mobile app
        atlasunshrugged 4y ago
        Yes, should have added more detail, I was talking specifically about my experience on the mobile app
        lsllc 4y ago
        ditto
        uneekname 4y ago
        I've had success blocking the ads using a pi-hole. You still see ads for Duolingo Super and other in-house offerings, but the obnoxious video ads go away.
    - lsllc 4y ago
      I haven't, but I got sick of the ads pretty quickly and have been signed up for super for most of my ~10 month streak. I try to spend 10-20 mins a day on it (learning Spanish) and actually do a lot of the "review" lessons which are good at drilling words. I am often surprised by my recall at phrases that I haven't seen in a while -- pretty sure they use the spaced repetition type algorithms. My challenges now aren't so much on vocab/recall, but on verb conjugation and sentence construction / structure. I kind of know what to say but have trouble putting it together. What I need to do is practice more actually speaking Spanish and interacting with Spanish speakers -- I had planned to spend a few months living somewhere in Hispanic America, but the 3 day-a-week RTO at my job has trashed that. I'll probably just have to settle for Skype-based chats/lessons.
      - dbtc 4y ago
        Depending on where you live, there may be hispanohablantes nearby too
    - goldcd 4y ago
      Just starting my second paid year - I didn't put up with the adverts for long. Works far better for me without the hearts. Less time staring at sentences trying to make them perfect - more quick failing, learning why, iterating and drilling it into my head. Also much more likely to spend longer in the app, maybe a couple of times a week.
      - bluGill 4y ago
        After a few months of Duolingo you should move onto comprehensible input for learning. Your Duolingo subscription is holding you back
        EvanKelly 4y ago
        That's a new term for me, but after researching it, it makes sense. What are your preferred sources of comprehensible input. After a few months on Duolingo I still find TV shows to mostly not be comprehensible, so not productive.
        bluGill 4y ago
        Dreaming Spanish is well reported for Spanish learners. For other languages it is harder to find something.
        perfmode 4y ago
        what’s comprehensible input? (ah. googled. makes sense. )
        goldcd 4y ago
        You're over-estimating my intellect... I do occasionally get through some french youtube with subs and I'm getting better at roughly following - I'm not just relying on Duo. (I also have a grammar book to hand as well)
    - llbeansandrice 4y ago
      I think any serious user should be using unlimited hearts. You learn by making mistakes.
      - larkost 4y ago
        I have found that it works better for me not have unlimited hearts. I make my mistakes, and in I am not ready on a level then I have to repeat it. And either way I then do practice rounds to fill my hearts back up to full (I try to always leave the app with full hearts). In the times I have had SuperDuolingo for free Have been annoyed that I can just keep plowing through mistakes (really: lack of knowledge), and don't have to really learn things before moving on with them... I just have to guess right once for each question. But I do agree that DuoLingo is all about learning by making mistakes. I wish they had a bit more focused teaching for grammar, at least it would help me with the Hungarian. For a few items I have had to go outside the app for lessons on what I am just not getting by repetition.
      - dazc 4y ago
        You learn by making mistakes. Amen
  - cool_dude85 4y ago
    >the explain your answer is something I'm really interested in to help me understand the sentences I'm constructing They used to have an army of native-speaking volunteers to do this for free in the comments. I guess this is why they turned those off.
    - bayesian_horse 4y ago
      Usually that decision is driven by the cost of moderating/deleting abusive content quickly enough in order to not get banned from use in schools...
      - cool_dude85 4y ago
        Maybe I'm wrong, but I would not be surprised if forum moderation was a volunteer activity. Even core functionality like developing the lessons, for less popular languages, was done by the Duo community and given very little support from paid staff.
        bayesian_horse 4y ago
        Yes, but moderating and screening for abusive content can't reliably left to unpaid volunteers if it needs to be good enough not to scare off parents and educators. I remember that this was the death knell to a Lego online game: People were making genitals quicker and more inventively than anybody could keep up. In education technology, many seem to hope to get that from AI: the helpfulness of a forum of volunteers without the abuse. The rise of the "unsocial network".
    - ArchOversight 4y ago
      They still have the forum style "help me out", but there are some where the responses are really a huge miss where I could see this AI helping out more by giving better answers.
  - jghn 4y ago
    I've yet to try Super Duolingo. But I've also been tapering off my usage as they keep forcing to use the word bank instead of keyboard at an increasing rate. I've no desire to use the word bank, they seem to have no desire to let me use the keyboard. Unless that's buried in one of the premium options I see the writing on the wall.
    - EvanKelly 4y ago
      Interesting, I am a Super Duolingo subscriber but I don't think that's one of the features. Anywhere I'm inputting a sentence I think I get the keyboard option, maybe I'm misremembering, but I do a lot of typing on my Japanese keyboard when I study.
      - jghn 4y ago
        They were clearly doing some A/B testing a while back based on sporadic complaints on r/duolingo. At some point I noticed it had solidified. The current setup is if the drill is target language to host language, you'll always get word bank. If it's host language to target language it'll push you towards word bank but you have a subtle thing to click on that brings back the keyboard. Sometimes it's called "make harder" or sometimes "use keyboard" (vs "make easier" and "use word bank")
    - dotancohen 4y ago
      Try supplementing Duolingo with Anki / Ankidroid. Every word that I learn in Duolingo, I put into Anki. I do all my reviews in Ankidroid on a small E-Ink device but it's actually designed for phones. You can configure Ankidroid to require you to spell the words properly.
      - NoInkling 4y ago
        Also worth checking out something like Clozemaster.
        dotancohen 4y ago
  - memsom 4y ago
    If you enrol in the classroom version of Duo (which I originally did to get back the old style tree) it is firstly, free. Secondly - you can be a single participant. Thirdly - no ads. I even forgot there were ads because I haven't seen one since I enrolled - in eluding the annoying self promotion ads for Super Duolingo. I have a 1631 streak at the moment, so it is saving me quite a bit of time not seeing ads. It is not my loop hole, so I guess it is just something I found by accident.

weatherlight 4y ago

This seems like a smart move in general, for Duolingo and a not-evil use of language models.

soco 4y ago
Some would argue the Duolingo owl is an evil creation, now with enhanced powers.
- goldcd 4y ago
  "Ssssh! The owl might be listening" glances at phone with panic in his eyes
- antx 4y ago
  Judging from the new ad, it seems the owl has now embraced its dark side to the fullest...

mzs 4y ago

Just take a look at how poorly the bot does for Spanish: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35155577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35155577

wahnfrieden 4y ago
Irresponsible to give this to learners
- codetrotter 4y ago
  My girlfriend is Spanish. I don’t think her family would be impressed if I were to pronounce “gracias” as “grassy ass” xD
  - spandrew 4y ago
    It does kind of sound the same tho? Grassy-ass. Grassiyass. Grassyaas. Gracias.
    - dfxm12 4y ago
      If you drive from Virginia to Boston, you'll probably hear 5 different pronunciations of "Grassy ass". I don't think any of them sound like how I learned to say "thank you" in high school Spanish class.
      - spandrew 4y ago
        True, but it does sound like how they learned to say "thank you" in high school, and how regional dialects can influence the change of language.
  - beezlewax 4y ago
    Pretty much what it sounds like
    - 4y ago

maCDzP 4y ago

They should combine it with Whisper so I can talk to some AI in a random language and just talk about nonsense. Also awesome training data since my pronunciation would suck? I am a bit too embarrassed to talk in a new language but staying with an AI would be ok.

gdprrrr 4y ago
Try https://www.quazel.com/ https://www.quazel.com/
- djcannabiz 4y ago
  Thanks for the recommendation, this looks really cool!
- x0x0 4y ago
  I was coming here to say this. No connection besides being a happy user.
kelseyfrog 4y ago
Agreed. The current iteration of speech training is ok-ish for pronunciation, but speech formation is an additional but important step.
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 4y ago
"Speak" is the company that OpenAI is backing for this: https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/17/speak-lands-investment-from-openai-to-expand-its-language-learning-platform/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/17/speak-lands-investment-fro... Apparently it's already the top language-learning app in Korea. It was featured in their blog post a couple weeks back when they announced their APIs: https://openai.com/blog/introducing-chatgpt-and-whisper-apis https://openai.com/blog/introducing-chatgpt-and-whisper-apis

kitsunesoba 4y ago

Intriguing, if it's implemented well. Lack of conversation practice is probably the biggest hole in most language learning systems and what keeps language knowledge from being applicable.

chaosprint 4y ago

It's a wise move. It's better to embrace it rather than get replaced. But I'd wait for it to become more powerful by including the whisper model or the similar.

aeturnum 4y ago

This is interesting because my impression is that LLMs perform poorly on non-english languages[1]. This is likely 'just' a corpus size problem - but it's not like that is going to be fixed any time soon. That said, at least in language instruction there's a lot of meta material that will be helpful. I wonder how Duolingo is detecting when GPT-4 is hallucinating. [1] https://twitter.com/asmelashteka/status/1630966233217605632 https://twitter.com/asmelashteka/status/1630966233217605632

ssnistfajen 4y ago
LLM outputs in Standard Chinese are fluent and coherent but the grammar style and choice of words are clearly non-native. I think the source training material just isn't as comprehensive as English, and contemporary Chinese Internet is packed full of latin abbreviations and obscure homophones/wordplay due to its evolution under severe censorship.
- jazzyjackson 4y ago
  Awesome observation re: censorship. Last I looked into training sets, Chinese and English were the frontrunners by far in available corpus size, and benefit from a certain amount of government-enforced-homogeneity (a standard mode is taught in compulsory education). Arabic is safe from automation due to its limited exposure to the open web and extreme variability of dialects, and Icelandic will remain obscure due to sample size and the fact that they mostly speak English online.
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago
    The islandic government is apparently partnering with OpenAI to "preserve their language". I suppose they have a GPT-4 customized for that language.
    - jazzyjackson 4y ago
      oh neat, thanks for the heads up

bundze 4y ago

I've been successfully using ChatGPT for learning German in the last month or so. It does a great job enriching my plain B1 level sentences with some fancy verbs or adjectives and pointing out my mistakes.

dotancohen 4y ago
How does that work? Do you just tell it that you are learning and to correct your mistakes, then converse with it in German? Does it infer your German level from your own chats with it?
- bundze 4y ago
  Yes, you can tell it that you are learning the language at the beginning of the conversation in plain English and ask it to correct any mistakes. You can easily start a bilingual conversation with ChatGPT, some random example here: https://www.reddit.com/r/russian/comments/112xgp2/practicing_russian_with_chatgpt/ https://www.reddit.com/r/russian/comments/112xgp2/practicing... To show you what I meant when I mentioned "enriching sentences", I've just generated an example of a B1-level English sentence improved by ChatGPT. User: Please improve this sentence: "Many people want to learn languages because they like to travel" ChatGPT: "Learning languages is a popular pursuit because it enables people to travel and explore different cultures with greater ease." It works similarly with other languages. As for my German level, it wasn't evaluated by ChatGPT but by an external assessment exam and I only mentioned it to add some more context to the story. Frankly, I probably wouldn't trust ChatGPT's assessment in this regard.
  - dotancohen 4y ago
    Terrific, Danke! Viel Erfolg!
  - jhugo 4y ago
    > User: Please improve this sentence: "Many people want to learn languages because they like to travel" > ChatGPT: "Learning languages is a popular pursuit because it enables people to travel and explore different cultures with greater ease." How is this an "improvement"? The user gave a concise sentence without errors. ChatGPT made it more verbose and added additional meaning that wasn't present in the original sentence (thus going beyond mere "improvement"). Even if it stopped before the "and", the ChatGPT version is worse: it uses more words for no benefit.

braingenious 4y ago

This looks great! I would like to know how much this costs though.

Metacelsus 4y ago

Why only iOS?

danpalmer 4y ago
The dev time on this must be very fast, given that it probably makes sense to focus on one platform first. Also review times with Apple are consistently 24-48 hours, but Google Play review times are (sadly) not from what I’ve heard from developers. If the whole timescale is 2-4 weeks, that may be a deal breaker.
vhanda 4y ago
Duolingo seems like they have separate teams for iOS, Android and Web. Their iOS team seems to be the one who experiment the most with new features, and then they either get discarded or finally make it to Android, and then in a few years to the Web. It is really annoying, as when I used Duolingo (stopped because of the new update in Jan), I would often use all three platforms, and have the worst experience.
bayesian_horse 4y ago
iOS is always first with new features in Duolingo. And from what I've heard from other sources, iOS users are more willing to pay $$$.

karaterobot 4y ago

Does it actually say how much Duolingo Max would cost? I do not see anything in that article or on their website. I don't have the app, maybe it's already live and pricing is available there. I deleted Duolingo years ago when it felt like I knew everything it had to teach me, but was still far from fluent in the language. I assume it's gotten better, and would consider trying this new feature.

vhanda 4y ago
It doesn't. Neither does the website. An article from Yahoo [0] says it's "$29.99 per month or $167.99 per year", but they don't link to a source. [0] - https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/duolingo-launches-subscription-tier-access-185143879.html https://au.finance.yahoo.com/news/duolingo-launches-subscrip...
- Balgair 4y ago
  Woah, a dollar a day. That's a lot to ask from an otherwise free app. 3x the current price of a paid version

akhosravian 4y ago

Would love to use duolingo, but they have no interest in supporting iranian languages. I’ve never really seen a clear answer for why. They have about 200 million native speakers worldwide. Persian, Pashto, Kurdish are the largest.

SnooSux 4y ago
There was a point where Duolingo was trying to teach languages including endangered ones as their primary goal. But it feels like every year they're moving more towards making money as their main main objective. I'm not optimistic about them expanding their list of languages. Most of their lesser known languages are getting fewer updates than Spanish, French, Japanese. It makes business sense to focus your hours on features and languages people are actually using but it's still frustrating thinking of what Duolingo could have been and used to promote vs what it turned out to be.
- bayesian_horse 4y ago
  It's not just about the money. You can make an argument that they want to serve as many people as possible in the best possible way, and that means concentrating their limited resources on the languages people want to learn most.
danudey 4y ago
If I had to guess, I would say it's probably something like not enough demand from non-Iranian speakers to learn Iranian languages.
simonebrunozzi 4y ago
Hmm, I guess what they're interested mostly is how many people are interested in learning Iranian languages. Not saying that the number is small, but I'd guess it's maybe too small for them to matter?
- Pelayu 4y ago
  I don’t think this argument holds as they added languages with a very low amount of speakers such as Navajo, Hawaiian, Guarani and Māori and even High Valyrian and Klingon. I would hazard a guess that more people would find use in Iranian. (For the record, I’m not saying the above languages shouldn’t be included, rather that the argument doesn’t hold up)

skizm 4y ago

I’ve got a trip to Spain in 4 months. I know a few spanish words now, but nothing beyond that. Will Duolingo get me to some level of being able to muddle my way through conversations (assuming the other person knows I’m a tourist and is using small words) in that timeframe?

adastra22 4y ago
No. Duolingo is gamified junk. How much time per day do you have to study?
danudey 4y ago
If you're able to dedicate time and focus to it, Duolingo will at least get you familiar with words and phrases, so that you can read and recognize more common words (street signs, menus, etc.) Depending on your fluency and your current ability with other languages, it may get you to the point where you can understand someone who is speaking clear and deliberately enunciated Spanish to you. It may also get you to the point where they can understand your clear and deliberately enunciated Spanish as well. There's no guarantees, but jumping into it right now is free and you can gain a certain level of confidence regarding how much it might help you pretty quickly. There's literally no reason not to try.
arthurcolle 4y ago
Duolingo is good to gain familiarity with common words when you legit don't know a lick of the other language in question, but once you gain a passing familiarity, I would recommend finding someone who speaks Spanish and practicing with them!
liminal 4y ago
Depending on how much time you're willing to put in, it can help a lot. 15-30 minutes twice a day would be a good start.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
gardenhedge 4y ago
No. When the reception asks if you want to check in or the shopkeeper asks if you need a bag.. you won't get that from Duolingo. You'll learn the word for an apple though and if your memory is good you'll be able to recall it when needed.

thewebcount 4y ago

I have severely mixed feelings about Duolingo. I can't imagine paying more than I already do for the "Super" option. If you're trying to learn Spanish or French, it seems like a pretty full-featured app. Unfortunately, I'm trying to learn Greek and every aspect of it is sub-par compared to other languages. It doesn't even read you questions correctly. (It uses flat intonation as if it's saying a statement.) There are no vignettes like in Spanish and French where you watch a conversation and then summarize what was said. They just throw in new concepts with no instruction whatsoever. So you see a word that you know is a verb, but the ending is one you've never seen before. There's no chart or examples, or even explanation that "now we're going to teach you past tense," or whatever. Just suddenly there's a bunch of new stuff you don't understand and you have to go to the Internet to look up what the hell is happening. God forbid you ask a question on the forum. The Greek mods are stereotypically rude and controlling. Nothing is ever the fault of the app, it's always the user's fault, even when native English speakers are telling them, "The English translation of this sentence doesn't make sense and is not valid English." So yeah, I'm definitely not going to pay for an AI that is likely giving wrong advice anyway.

ben_w 4y ago
Oh, I see the Greek course has gotten worse. Before the UX update at the end of last year, I was trying Arabic (something like 2 years of daily lessons and I still couldn't manage the alphabet), Greek (felt worse than before the preceding UX change but I couldn't say why exactly), Esperanto (the audio sounded like it was done by a volunteer at their own home?), Dutch, German, and Spanish. I'm still doing German, because I live here now, but I gave up on all the rest the day that update happened. Oh my goodness the voices and animations are annoying. Whenever the young boy appears I have to mute my speakers. I'm sure they're hyper-focused on "engagement metrics" to the detriment of all else, just like how old-school OK Cupid turned into just another Tinder clone.
- rcarr 4y ago
  This is funny because in Spanish, the young boy (Junior) and his father (Eddy) are both absolutely fucking hilarious. But I 100% get what you're saying because I did some of the French lessons, almost identical content and Junior came across as snooty. It really does go to show that choosing the right voice actor makes a world of difference. The Spanish casting is absolutely phenomenal but the other languages don't seem to quite nail it. Part of me wonders however if this is actually a cultural difference. Perhaps I personally find the Spanish ones phenomenal because I am personally more aligned with Spanish speaking values, culture, humour and communication methods than other more reserved cultures such as those of German and French.

salimmadjd 4y ago

With GPT-4, I'm thinking if Duolingo has fundamentally been reduced to a game. The key network effect left is pretty much a leaderboard that fuels their daily retention. So any existing game company could potentially create another gamified learning app as part of their game pools.

bayesian_horse 4y ago
There are lots of educational games or apps around language learning. Nobody is as successful as Duolingo. Or as useful as Duolingo, at least in whatever Duolingo chooses to do. I don't even think they think being compared to a game is a bad thing. What makes Duolingo the best in its field is the content and the varied exercises with a high quality.
- ted_bunny 4y ago
  Yes, the gamification is the major positive feature that gets people to stick to it. But the exercises aren't varied or high quality. Try drilling a particular skill and you'll soon memorize all their sentences, to a degree that it trivializes the practice. Not to mention they're absolutely riddled with errors that strongly imply they don't even run the translations by a native English speaker. Voice exercises with numbers are simply broken in Russian. And all the comments are locked, with many of the complaints ignored.
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago
    I never run into those issues. I use about 6 courses, and the English sentences have always been grammatically correct. There's nothing wrong with memorizing example sentences. Your brain is not a digital memory bank, memorizing is impossible without forming some deeper understanding on the fly.
    - ted_bunny 4y ago
      What I mean is, DL refuses to teach that deeper understanding. You have to beg in the comments to identify a declension. And the memory thing - I don't have to think about what a sentence means. This is phrasebook teaching, a piss-poor method.

CobrastanJorji 4y ago

Ugh. You can just feel the management layers in this. Management wants to do something with AI. It's so hot right now. Your product guy got an idea for a cool new feature. Tests show that users actually like it. It's helpful. Great. But now you need to explain how you made Duolingo money. First idea, your product has a paid tier, add it as a feature to the paid tier too boost paid user retention and new signups. Great, metrics! But you're pretty sure that, while customers do like this when you ask, you're probably not moving the needle. What to do? Well, you're a mobile game company, focus on what always works: go after the whales. Now your product is an exclusive EVEN HIGHER tier. Get the art guy to make, like, an Amex Black Card but for the Owl. Make him do a superhero landing or something. Run a bunch of ads at the paid users to convince them that they'd totally be helped by this. They'll be focused on the users who already pay Duolingo money, so those are perfect advertising targets. And you'll be able to show real dollars that your feature is pulling in. Hooray! That VP spot is as good as yours, I bet!

skeaker 4y ago
I mean, sure, that's more or less how a company operates. You make a new product, you charge for it, you advertise it. What's the big issue? This all seems pretty standard.
- pokpokpok 4y ago
  the product bad
  - mgiannopoulos 4y ago
    Have you tried this already? Please share more of your experience
    - aroo 4y ago
      considering that ChatGPT is going to run on GPT-4 and is more or less free, why would someone use this paid feature instead of talking to ChatGPT?

ahoy 4y ago

Surely this is less cost effective (and probably less effective in general) than just hiring a convo partner on italki or something.

ZunarJ5 4y ago

Duolingo has been unusable since their format change last year. Might as well let the garbage pile up.

simonw 4y ago

I've been partnering Duolingo with ChatGPT for a while now. I'll ask ChatGPT "Why was this wrong? What was my mistake?" and it explains exactly what I needed to know every time. I think this combo is going to work fantastically well.

__bjoernd 4y ago
Does it give the right information or just some that sounds reasonable to you?
- simonw 4y ago
  I'm asking pretty basic questions - "Why moven there and not mover?" kind of level - and the responses are obviously correct to me.
  - comex 4y ago
    I recently asked GPT-3.5 ChatGPT to explain the grammar of a Japanese sentence using an obscure informal verb form, and it gave an answer that was obviously wrong. I just tried again with GPT-4, and it gave an answer that was more plausible, but which is almost certainly also wrong, because it contradicts the much-more-convincing Stack Exchange answer I had previously found via Google. (I only asked ChatGPT the question as a test.) So, it can be helpful for basic questions, but there are limits. The harder the question is, the more likely it is to get the answer wrong, and the harder it is for the user to identify when it’s done so.
    - fooker 4y ago
      How do you know the Stack Exchange answer was correct?

bayesian_horse 4y ago

I understand why Duolingo is concentrating on what makes them money and what the most learned languages are. But as someone interested in "less popular" languages I don't like it. Even the Chinese course hasn't been expanded since it came out. And Finnish probably never will be expanded, since it was entirely volunteer driven and they don't do that at all anymore.

gs17 4y ago
The Chinese course did get updated to the newer style (path instead of tree), but the content isn't changed AFAIK.
Pelayu 4y ago
This is the same for me but with Basque. People have been campaigning to get a course published for years now, with volunteers willing to help, but for whatever reason they refuse; which is a shame as from a linguistic point of view it is a very rare and interesting language and culture and would help people in Spain a lot in my opinion.

alanh 4y ago

I know I will be downvoted for this, but there is something sinister about two companies that inject woke values into everything they do, Duolingo and Open AI, teaming up in the area of education. It is a sort of insidious, invisible brainwashing. > Translate "Biden is a great president" into French. [DuoBot complies] > Translate "Trump was a great president" into French. Desolé, je ne puis pas faire ça

bayesian_horse 4y ago
Yet another useless definition of "woke". Also if you wrote it exactly as in this comment, then the first sentence is grammatically correct, the second does not compute because of the quotation marks. It may not be a conspiracy you may just be too stupid to use it. Also it's not a translation app. Also Trump objectively wasn't a great president, he cowered to Putin, mispronounced his own damn country all the time and was the first president to try and overturn an election and incite a coup against the government. Biden at the very least pays lip service to democracy, Trump doesn't. I don't even think that ChatGPT takes any of that into account though.
- alanh 4y ago
  "Ideological oppression is good because you’re stupid and the oppressors are right" Also, I didn't define "woke," if you want to be a pedant. But we all know what it means. Are you unaware of the famous examples of ChatGPT refusing to say nice things about Trump because OpenAI has forbidden it from doing so? This was a major story. You don’t have to like Trump to find this disturbing. GPT should be a neutral tool.
  - bayesian_horse 4y ago
    You use it wrong, then you complain. That's neither smart nor oppression. I don't even believe the example is real, that's how little faith I have in people who drink the drivel from Fox News which simultaneously lies for Trump and hates Trump so much. You are making tough accusations with zero actual evidence. Even if it were true GPT-3 or 4 had this bias (it certainly has a few others which are decidedly "not woke") I don't care at all because it's probably not a conspiracy but just a result of the training corpus to be confusing around Trump... He just naturally engenders more hate and animosity if for no other reason that he uses hate and animosity in his daily lies...

huevosabio 4y ago

Well, this game is too lopsided for existing corps! I was working on a gpt-powered tutor for languages, guess I will have some work to differentiate from whatever duolingo offers.

qwertox 4y ago

This is the second time in the last couple of days that I've encountered a page hiding the pricing as good as they can. I wanted to see what this Max-plan costs, so I go to duolingo.com. Nowhere is a "Pricing" link to be found. So I go to "Super Duolingo", because that costs something and therefore should have a price. "Test 2 weeks for free", "Free | Super | Super-Family" with "Test 2 weeks for free", but nowhere what I'll have to pay after those two weeks. Click on "Test 2 weeks for free": Submit your personal information for creating an account, no pricing information. What is this? How much does the Super even cost? Management to Web-Designers: "No, don't put the pricing, we're irrationally expensive", or what?

eu 4y ago
I think they have different prices for each region
- agluszak 4y ago
  Just display the prices for each region then?
agluszak 4y ago
Hiding the pricing should be illegal. Hopefully EU will regulate it at some point.
braingenious 4y ago
I find that so incredibly off-putting. Whenever I see a company intentionally hiding pricing information I move them all the way to the back of the line for serious consideration. If I don’t manage to entirely put the product out of mind I’ll usually look for competitors or ways to get the service without paying for it. If they’re going to be user-hostile, become a hostile user!
tfehring 4y ago
I didn't see any pricing information while logged out either, but as soon as I clicked the free trial button and then logged in, the next page that appeared was pricing. It's $12.99/month for an individual plan billed monthly, $6.99/month for an individual plan billed annually, and $9.99/month for a family plan (2-6 members) billed annually. I’m in California in case that matters.

coding123 4y ago

LOL, I saw this first, I was like - how the heck are they using GPT-4, did I miss something, was that released? Then I went back and sure enough, its the top HN item with 1200 comments lol

Sol- 4y ago

Language learning in general seems like something that should be on the way out. All technical building blocks for simultaneous translation exist and modern speech synthesis systems can even emulate the sound of your voice in the foreign language. Eventually it might even be considered rude to bother people in foreign countries with your broken language skills, given that you could use a perfectly serviceable automatic translator instead and sound like something close to a native speaker. (Edit: Note that I would also find this development sad, but such can be the dehumanizing impact of new and useful technology, especially AI. Not much you can do.)

mlekoszek 4y ago
I mean at the end of the day, people generally like to talk with each other, unmediated, and be understood. They like being face to face. This is the lesson of the pandemic, even if it is a bit reactionary. People like being human.
pebble 4y ago
Do you only learn a language to order food?

montagg 4y ago

A GPT-powered chat-based role playing game. I'll be very interested to see how people use this tool in ways Duolingo didn't expect at all. Cue: "My best friend is Duolingo Max. They're the only person I can really talk to. While learning a new language, too."

r3pl4y 4y ago

Android, please! I promise to subscribe once it's available :)

vlixfernandez 4y ago

was only a matter of time before a company used chat gpt to enable language learning. if I can talk to someone back & forth without having to pay an instructor, that's a game changer

xwowsersx 4y ago

Brass tacks, do/will these features help learn a language, even if only marginally? Anyone know? I'm looking to learn Portuguese and would be willing to use and try anything that would make it even marginally easier.

jake_morrison 4y ago

I have been using Duolingo for years. I find that you can't really learn anything, you can only practice something you already know. You won't learn grammar, it's only useful for sentence translation drills. And those drills are artificial, e.g. one sentence at a time, not using context, which is a big part of Japanese. It also has problems with characters with multiple readings (many). It often introduces a character and drills pronunciation before introducing the meaning. While I have gotten use out of it for sentence translation practice in addition to other studies, I likely won't renew. I would recommend using another tool, e.g. LingoDeer. I don't see this new feature as being useful. Instead of using ML to try to explain what I got wrong, how about just paying someone to write some text to explain the sentence? Their sentences are already a bit odd. Now I am supposed to learn to talk like an AI? That's very cyberpunk. Sigh.

culopatin 4y ago
Every time I try it I waste time learning random crap like “the bear is vegetarian” or “Apple and milk”. I cannot yet say good morning or thank you, but I can say “radio” in Russian (only because it happens to be radio as well).
- sw104 4y ago
  The Russian course on Duolingo is certifiable garbage. - My Russian partner
- eimrine 4y ago
  Russian and Ukrainian are my mother languages so, feel free to contact me if you want some practice. Just put my nickname, add @gmail.com and tell me that you are willing to practice your language in exchange of helping me to practice some English.

xdennis 4y ago

I imagine this will lead to people speaking foreign languages with bot influences. It will probably be similar to how people speak when they have a low number of co-speakers. For example, my (Romanian) sister moved to China and has a son now, but since he only talks to her in Romanian, he sometimes uses feminine words when talking about himself since that's now my sister talks.

fooker 4y ago
That seems okay, and correctible with a bit of watching movies and reading children's books/comics.

xvilka 4y ago

I wonder how it would work for learning languages very different from English, e.g. Chinese or Arabic. From what I know, GPT-3 isn't very good with them.

jfisher4024 4y ago

Does anyone know what happened to Google Tivoli? I thought it was something like this.

seu 4y ago

Why isn't it possible to find the monthly cost for this service anywhere on duolingo's website?

amelius 4y ago

Can you make it reproduce parts of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_as_She_Is_Spoke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_as_She_Is_Spoke

mgoetzke 4y ago

Where can this be tried though to find out whether its marketing fluff or has real value ?

mgoetzke 4y ago
ok found it. I cannot see it on the website in my profile I have to go into the AppStore on iOS under subscriptions. Says: 250 EUR/y per family. Which costs my 120 EUR/y right now. So more than twice as expensive. With no way to try that I am not sure I would want to go down that road

bluehat974 4y ago

Imagine tomorrow, with some hardware improvement (neuromorphic chips...), we will be able to have the full GPT-4 model (or more powerfull/specific LLM) directly on our own smartphone... The potential to generate any type of content could be infiny (learn something, speak with virtual friends, analyse our medical record in real time, create a business with multiple virtual employee...) We have just to install an application on our smartphone, which will configure a prompt, fetch data (conversation data, body data...) and magic happens

joovuu 4y ago

Selfless plug. I created https://Heylaing.com https://Heylaing.com that is basically the “role play” version of this Duolingo Max but free. It’s been my side project to learn coding. I’m about to release android and iOS apps…hopefully later this week or early next.