I wholeheartedly agree. I wish this was the top comment. I got so frustrated with the HN language-learning gatekeeping on another Duolingo thread that my commen

I wholeheartedly agree. I wish this was the top comment. I got so frustrated with the HN language-learning gatekeeping on another Duolingo thread that my comment got flagged and I received a nice message from dang (luckily no ban because I’m normally not a lunatic). Duolingo is awesome. It’s made language learning possible for me where it used to be impossible. I wanted to pick another language up so casually that I wasn’t willing to put in the effort that other tools require, and Duolingo gives me a way to pick up the basics. I’m confident that in a couple of years I’ll be able to progress to more serious methods for developing conversational skills. And it would never have been possible if I wasn’t able to use Duolingo to slowly but surely learn a new alphabet and basic present tense grammar. I think the issue is the target audience. HN has a lot of educated global folk that have had to learn other languages. Duolingo is not the ticket when you need to learn a new language. It shines specifically when the language learning is not a requirement.