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Ask HN: Any alternatives to Duolingo without gamification?
I like Duolingo, but the delays between each session, and the number of buttons I have to push between each learning session, are absolutely killing me. I’m already paying for premium, so no ads, but each time a session ends the number of buttons I have to push just to get out of “rewards”, committing to a streak when I don’t want to, or getting some gems or acknowledging some news feature, are killing my desire to learn new languages. Is there any way to turn off the gamification on Duolingo? Or reduce the number of buttons I need to press to get from one session to the next? Or, alternatively, are there any language learning apps that avoid this gamification? I do like Duolingo’s progress tracking, and gradual buildup of vocabulary. I’ve tried making my own flashcards in Anki, but that’s a ton of work and it’s hard to factor in any language roadmap element on my own. Duolingo is not bad, but the percentage of time doing things other than learning, specifically pushing buttons and waiting for or watching animation, is far too high. I’d love if I could just turn all of this stuff off.
- prymitive 3y agoI feel your pain, it was getting worse and worse over the years and now it’s just trying to game as much “engagement” as possible. Feels like screen time is the only metric they have. I switched from Duolingo to Busuu for my Japanese learning and it’s so much better. They did add leagues to it too but you can just ignore it.
- garyfirestorm 3y agoMango is a nice alternative. I have access to Mango via my local community library (I am in US - Michigan)
- satvikpendem 3y agoI used to use Mango too, great alternative.
- __rito__ 3y agoIs this the one- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mango.android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mango.andr...?
- garyfirestorm 3y agoYes that is the one
- satvikpendem 3y agoThere are Anki decks for most languages, what are you having trouble with?
- tetris11 3y agoAnki is pretty good, but you have to find the good decks, and more importantly constantly update them for your purposes
- tayo42 3y agoWhat drove me crazy with anki was how much it sticks to the idea it's not a flashcard system, even though it looks like one in every way. The "cards" are shared between decks and things automatically get overwritten based on the content of front.
- owenpalmer 3y agoAnki is totally a flashcard system... what do you mean? The cards technically can be shared between decks if you so choose, but it's not mandatory.
- tayo42 3y agoYou get forced into the anki system of doing things. If it was just decks and cards it would be alot more flexible. It's been a few months but I had issues importing csvs of words I was learning, trying to create new decks. I think I couldn't have two cards with the same front
- owenpalmer 3y agoThe Anki system of doing things is just decks and cards. It can be more flexible if you want to go beyond that simple concept. You can totally have two cards with the same front.
- tayo42 3y ago
- rgovostes 3y agoFluent Forever is an alternative to Duolingo which is based on flashcards which you customize from app-provided vocabulary and sentences, and are presented to you in spaced-repetition intervals. (The founder based the method off of his own experience learning languages with Anki.) The gamification is less than Duolingo. When I complete a review it praises me for my keeping up my streak, and they also added achievements. However there aren't gems, premium upsell ads (it's a paid app), etc.
- rozenmd 3y agoLanguage Transfer: https://www.languagetransfer.org/ https://www.languagetransfer.org/
- betaby 3y agoDid you personally have a good result with it? What language? (Didn't retain much personally)
- ioshaan 3y agoIMO this is a lifesaver. The approach on this website (I only tried for 2 european languages) is really good. It focuses on remembering, listening and speaking, not playing a game. The teacher also tells words with common roots with english words - spelling differences, meaning differences, etc.
- ckz 3y ago~B1 French here with Duo being an important step on the way. The trick for Duolingo is to use the desktop version and disable all the "helpful" bits you can or at least use the browser version if on mobile. Desktop had far fewer gamified bits than the app as of a year ago (sadly the new UI broke my workflow and I dropped Duo altogether). Gems weren't a meaningful thing, etc. In particular: Use your keyboard for everything. You'll probably want to be able to type in the target language anyway and it helps you avoid the trap of being really good at pattern recognition instead of really learning all the grammar quirks. You can disable both animations and the leaderboard gamification in the settings (the latter by setting your profile to private). CSS/uBlock can help hide other distractions, add dark mode, etc. as needed. It takes some extra work now to unbury the learning tool beneath but Duolingo itself, especially if you go in with a general idea of how to go about learning a language, is still really useful. Super helpful link that I used along the way as well (not mine): https://runwes.com/2020/02/11/howilearnedfrench.html https://runwes.com/2020/02/11/howilearnedfrench.html
- yieldcrv 3y agoChatGPT4 ask it for a 12-week curriculum and have it go through it with you It can do languages and you can get google to pronounce things, and ChatGPT again to explain unexpected nuances when multimodal is rolled out to your profile, you can practice handwriting too
- pling87 3y agoI've enjoyed using Clozemaster - it's an app that uses the sentence-mining concept advocated by Glossika. That is, it uses pre-made cloze deletions that help you learn words in the context of a sentence. It has some advanced material and has been a good language learning tool somewhere "in-between" Duolingo and Anki.
- somsak2 3y agoFor a free, Anki-native version of this see https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1713698257 https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1713698257
- quink 3y ago+1000 for Clozemaster. After a lot of research it’s the one I most vibe with. I also do LingQ and WaniKani every day. It’s perfect because it doesn’t demand much, you can do other thing a at the same time even, is extremely straightforward but is also incredibly productive. I will also give recommendations to Language Transfer, Drops, and good old Anki.
- klakierr 3y agoNot exactly Duolingo alternative, but: I'm currently building an an app for language learning by reading books. It takes an (your) ebook and inserts translations: —Arthur —dijo con tono cortante, ["Arthur," he said sharply.] y su voz sonó como el chasquido de una ratonera—, [and his voice sounded like the click of a mousetrap.] There is zero gamification, as it's not needed - you're motivated by the pleasure of reading. It won't help you to learn to speak (there is an option to read aloud a selected phrase though), but it will help you with vocabulary. I went with it from not being able to read even one page, to being able to understand 70% of a book (intermediate Spanish level) in about a month. ATM looking for beta users, completely free of charge. Pls leave a contact in a comment if you're interested
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- davidmonti 3y agoHi! This sounds exactly like Beelinguapp, have you tried that one? You can read books in 2 different languages with audio as well. https://beelinguapp.com/get https://beelinguapp.com/get
- klakierr 3y agoHi, yes I tried, it's great. They do not let you upload your own books though, and for me (as an user) it is important
- klakierr 3y agoAll the other comments: I've sent you an email with access link & info. Thanks for the interest and sorry it took me a whole week to get back to you!
- kej 3y agoThis sounds great and I'd love to help test. Kevin at silent planet dot com. Thanks!
- markgavalda 3y ago
- jsyang00 3y agoYou might have better luck with an app specifically for your language by an indie dev
- kleton 3y agohttps://kosmonautas.com https://kosmonautas.com
- _ahxg 3y agoI recommend Lingq. Support to many languages, you can add your own texts, simple and clean interface and nice for begginers and advanced users. The owner is quite a nice person too.
- blah_why_not 3y agolanguage penpal sites. It's not an app... but rather learning with others. Advanced-level language learners may want to transition into actual real live conversations-- it's so you can spontaneously learn new concepts, expressions, and vocabulary. I used to use a good penpal-language learning website called MyHappyPlanet. It was back around 2007-2010-ish, and the site no longer exists. But looks like there are alternatives here: https://www.fluentu.com/blog/foreign-language-penpal/ https://www.fluentu.com/blog/foreign-language-penpal/
- skydhash 3y agoI moved back to audio courses (michel thomas) and grammar workbooks. Worked very well
- schwartzworld 3y agoPimsleur has rebranded to an internet product, but the old Pimsleur tapes are great if you can find them. I started learning Armenian with these and it put me on the right track.
- eb2 3y agoReally surprised nobody has said babbel, great app with a good mix of grammar, explanation, useful vocabulary and spaced repetition based review.
- ioshaan 3y agoIMO, it IS better than Duolingo.
- romesc 3y agoI really have to plug the method of Comprehensible Input (CI) [0]. Specifically, Pablo Román's effort to make this viable for Spanish [1]. I started before there was a website or anything, just watching free youtube videos. Now I'm definitely B2 or C1. I subscribe partially just to show my support even though I mostly consume native-level media now. Similar and helpful along he lines of CI are [2] and [3]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis [1] https://dreamingspanish.com https://dreamingspanish.com [2] https://refold.la/ https://refold.la/ [3] https://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/ https://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/
- patapong 3y agoI quite like Mosalingua: https://www.mosalingua.com/en/ https://www.mosalingua.com/en/ Much more focused on vocabulary, and learning things that you will use in daily life. And less gamification as well.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jackallis 3y agohttps://www.livelingua.com/fsi/ https://www.livelingua.com/fsi/
- tomwilson 3y agoI like "Hello Chinese" but as the name suggests, it's just for Chinese :D
- jlpg81 3y agoHi, I have an app you might want to check out: https://flreader.com/ https://flreader.com/ It works by reading books and clicking to translate the words you dont understand. The app is new, so I set up a group on reddit to receive feedback on the app, so please pass by and tell me if you enjoy it!
- Achy1les 3y agoIt seems that only me commenting this thread knows LWT. A really cool program for learning every kind of languages... with lots of resources if configured properly. It is a package for setting a Localhost server and feed with whatever texts will want from, e.g. Latin, Greek, German, Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, English, Japanese, Chinese, you name it! It has lots of resources like exporting to anki flashcards, controlling your learning pace, converting to html format, etc... etc... https://sourceforge.net/projects/learning-with-texts/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/learning-with-texts/ Apart from that, there are a few good tutos on the internet about how to use it. But, the official documentation on the website is just enough... I wish the owner would open-source it. But, even though it is an amazing free program... Another program (in reality, a Lisp machine I use to learn Languages is the might Emacs). It has org mode and you can also use bash scripts, GNU/Linux commands for learning and manipulating stuff, including languages, all inside the beast, and so on, and so forth... (neo)vim are also good friends for learning languages and not just programming...
- ezedv 3y agoHave you tried Chomky? https://www.chomky.io/en https://www.chomky.io/en