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LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

804 points by hyperific 1y ago

ReflectedImage 1y ago
Sadly the authors of LibreLingo were last seen being lead into the back of a white van by an enormous green owl
- deleted 1y ago
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- _fat_santa 1y ago
  I have to say Duolingo has some of the best corporate humor I've seen.
  - krick 1y ago
    Some of the most annoying, that's for sure. I uninstalled it when it started to uglify the icon on my desktop when I neglect daily exercise. I mean, it's totally fine if it's just me, but since it was an impulsive action on my part, I would be curious to see if I wasn't one of the many. I wouldn't be fond of my company's PR department if they lose customers over stupid jokes. That said, after spending too much time on DuoLingo, I should have dropped it anyway. First off, one should be honest to himself and admit that it is a game, not a language study material. Which is ok, but still, I would really like to have an app that is a bit less of a game and a little more of a interactive textbook (I don't know one). Second, honestly, most of the course materials are surprisingly low quality. They kept adding all these gimmicks, animations, icon uglifying, etc., yet the core content was barely worked on. After a couple of years you start really wondering what are they spending money on. I mean, literally, do they even have paid staff working on some less popular languages, or it's just community?
    - mbs159 1y ago
      > I uninstalled it when it started to uglify the icon on my desktop when I neglect daily exercise That's actually hilarious
daniel_iversen 1y ago
For the curious, here's an article from the developer on why they built LibreLingo https://dev.to/kantord/why-i-built-librelingo-280o https://dev.to/kantord/why-i-built-librelingo-280o
- darkstar_16 1y ago
  who are these people who have 30 minutes in the morning to make a smoothie and learn a foreign language ... :D
  - cyborgx7 1y ago
    The people who prioritize learning a foreign language over some of the things that you prioritize.
    - apwell23 1y ago
      > some of the things that you prioritize watching reels first thing in the morning in bed
      - aquariusDue 1y ago
        In bed?! You gotta multitask if you want to get things done, try on the toilet next time.
        cookie_monsta 1y ago
        If you are spending 30 minutes on the toilet, language fluency is not your biggest problem
        reddalo 1y ago
        But your nearest proctologist is going to have a new client soon.
        1y ago
sschueller 1y ago
Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43827978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43827978
Tor3 1y ago
There wasn't much to read there, but why aspire to be an alternative to Duolingo of all things? Duolingo focuses on learning by translation, basically. It's even in the name: "Duolingo". It's an utterly broken approach to learning languages, except for the very initial phase where you're getting just enough to move on to modern methods (i.e. avoid translation like the plague, to start with). Which is exactly why a comment I read somewhere said "Duolingo is for the perpetual beginner".
- devrandoom 1y ago
  What are the modern methods and what's to back up they're better?
  - damnitbuilds 1y ago
    I have lived in a foreign country for 25 years and have started picking up the local language. There might be faster methods.
    - bluGill 1y ago
      My wife lived in a foreign country for 3 months (as an exchange student) before the family told her that was enough and refused to use English. Your experience is common. However it is mostly a reflection on you and your situation. You could have picked the language up much faster if you tried. Note that I'm not intending to judge you. It is likely you have a life and other things to do with your time. Only you can figure out what is the right time balance for you (though once in a while something happens that would make you regret your decision)
      - damnitbuilds 1y ago
        No worries - I was exaggerating for comic effect. I don't speak the local language like a local, but I do do it all day at work. I often wish the locals here would refuse to use English, but I enjoy speaking other foreign languages when I get the chance, so I understand when they want to do the same.
simonbarker87 1y ago
Going to plug Language Transfer again, an excellent free app that is a much better way to learn a language than the DuoLingo approach.
- bornfreddy 1y ago
  Thank you! Is there any advantage to using the app instead of just playing the audio files directly?
  - AnonC 1y ago
    I found this in the app’s description: > This app provides the same audio available for free on languagetransfer.org, but allows you to download tracks in advance, save your progress, and listen with your phone locked. > We collect some anonymous usage data so we can improve the app and learn about how users are engaging with the lessons. You can learn more in the About section of the app, or turn off this data collection in the Settings
  - jcul 1y ago
    The app is really basic, in a good way. There are no ads or unnecessary permissions. It's just a basic media player that lets you download the audio files for offline playback and tracks whan you have already listened to. I find I pretty convenient.
- detectivestory 1y ago
  I find LT great for "learning the language", but I find something like Spanish After Hours on Youtube to be far better for "learning to speak and understand the spoken language". I would recommend that everyone at least dips into something like LT every now and then, but I think something like SAH is better for daily exercises.
  - jcul 1y ago
    Spanish after hours looks great, thanks. Do you just watch / listen to random videos or is it more structured? I am planning a trip to Mexico soon, so I have been listening to how to Spanish, and mextalki podcasts. The latter is pretty difficult to follow, though I feel you need to listen to real native speakers speaking at a normal pace to have any chance of understanding locals. SAH seems great because she does seem to speak normally and not too slowed down (or it just sounds quick to me :))
est 1y ago
been using Duolingo in the 10s and last year, I gave up because the course seems very repetitive. Even if I got the answer right 10 out of 10 times, the same question kept coming. It almost looks like the app is trying very hard to make me stay as long as possible, instead of study as effecient as possible. So for a good alternative app, is there a dynamic course pace I can adapt to?
- freetonik 1y ago
  Which course? The quality of different language courses on Duolingo differs a lot. For example, the Finnish language course is very bad, full of useless words and nonsensical phrases like "The cat is a viking". In contrast, the Swedish course (which happens to be the 2nd official language of Finland) is amazing and full of phrases immediately useful in daily life. A few modules in, Finnish Duolingo is all e.g. "My mom is a shaman" and "The cat is a viking", while Swedish is e.g. "I'd like a glass of cold water" and "Emma wants a pizza". In addition, the multi-modality also differs a lot. Finnish and some other languages simply don't have speech exercises (where you have to read something into the microphone).
  - est 1y ago
    German and Arabic course. So in other words, the course is programmed by a human? Well I hope with today's AI tech the course should be highly customizable. I don't want to learn "The cat is a viking" 100 times.
  - vladvasiliu 1y ago
    > In addition, the multi-modality also differs a lot. Finnish and some other languages simply don't have speech exercises (where you have to read something into the microphone). They have the speech exercises in Spanish, but they are ridiculously bad. It often says I'm correct before I get to say half the sentence. Other times, I'll need to repeat a word 10 times until it gives up and says it's fine.
- gary17the 1y ago
  > the same question kept coming I was under the same impression, but later the problem disappeared. You have to give Duolingo a couple of months of learning effort first, so that Duolingo has a larger base of sentences that you should already understand.
i_am_a_squirrel 1y ago
The signup button just spins indefinitely :(
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neofight78 1y ago
The problem is that Duolingo optimises for time spent on the app, not for progress in the language. The majority of experienced language learners do not recommend it.
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monkeyelite 1y ago
If I’m going to spend a thousand hours learning a new language, I’m willing to pay for professional study material.
- oguz-ismail 1y ago
  >professional study material What would that be for Spanish? I couldn't even find a decent dictionary app
  - shawabawa3 1y ago
    something like https://michelthomas.com/landing-page/mt-spanish/#start-spanish https://michelthomas.com/landing-page/mt-spanish/#start-span... or https://www.pimsleur.com/learn-spanish-latin-american/ https://www.pimsleur.com/learn-spanish-latin-american/
  - yeyeyeyeyeyeyee 1y ago
    I am personally quite happy with the Teach Yourself study materials as first step when picking up a new language.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    App? I'm not aware of any app that anyone serious about language learning would consider great. If you are going to pay for an app start with netflix or similar which isn't about language learning, but it has native content in your language. Newspapers would be another place to spend your money. There are a lot of dead tree books that are still perfectly good. There are a lot of language courses that are great, but most don't really have an app. Even if there is an app, you should be getting the app as part of your purchase (or subscription) to a larger language learning system not the app itself.
  - monkeyelite 1y ago
    I would probably include duo lingo when I started - but I wouldn’t say “hmm I wish there was something worse but free”.
charcircuit 1y ago
All language apps are destined to become essentially an SRS app, which at that point you might as well just use an anki.
- GardenLetter27 1y ago
  I disagree, the old HelloChinese course was great for covering Chinese character writing, as well as exercises with Pinyin and only Chinese characters, etc. Unfortunately they've ramped up the monetisation and also become more like Duolingo with the streak-based stuff and fewer grammar notes.
  - Zmajche 1y ago
    old HelloChinese course is still there in the app... New one in making so far looks more like DuoLingo, however, LingoDeer app is alternative that right now is better for Asian languages if you want a little bit grammar stuff while learning.
  - charcircuit 1y ago
    How is it different from SRS? If you need to learn the strokes for thousands of characters you will need something like SRS.
    - Zmajche 1y ago
      Spaced repetition is a highly effective method for learning languages, particularly for vocabulary/character acquisition, but it is not the only method and particular implementation of it in the software, really matters.
      - charcircuit 1y ago
        It is the only method in that it is a generic term. Without spacing there will be too many words to review at once. Without repetition it will be hard for people to learn things in one try. Spaced reputation is required to scale. But do language learning apps need to scale to handle a lot of information? Technically no, but the incentives around making apps make it so that SRS will added and dominate the product. I will agree with you that the implementation matters, but ultimately anki will cover one's needs for SRS and open source efforts should go towards improving anki.
deleted 1y ago
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hackbloom 1y ago
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GardenLetter27 1y ago
It sucks how Duolingo has gotten so much worse over the years. It used to be great when it had the grammar notes and discussion forums and comments, and you could actually finish the course and have some recognition. Now it's just all too game-like and all based around maintaining streaks rather than learning. Unfortunately some other apps have started to copy this model too like HelloChinese.
- lukaslalinsky 1y ago
  Completely agree, when Duolingo started, I took the Spanish course and actually got something out of it. The lessons, comments were super helpful. I've tried it again last year and I couldn't believe my eyes that most of it is gone. It feels exactly like an addictive game, making you focus on the game part of it, not learning. And the fact that you can buy out of failures is just WTF.
  - GardenLetter27 1y ago
    Same, I now speak fluent Spanish and have lived in Spain but I started with Duolingo (although just watching loads of films was by far the best way to learn once you get that far!).
- OsrsNeedsf2P 1y ago
  The reason is the App Store (and Play Store) value things like DAU (as a proxy for "quality"), IAPs (because they get a cut), no real interaction (too risky), etc. The end result is "real language learning" doesn't align with "launching a top mobile app". This is also the reason none of games are hard (can't let people uninstall) and nothing unique shows up anymore (it's impossible to compete) Source: Did mobile dev for ~5 years + launched failed B2B that gives data on how to game the Play Store
  - PennRobotics 1y ago
    It doesn't help that the Play Store has no effective way to browse recently developed apps or to filter searches in any meaningful way whatsoever. Couple that with the Indiana Jones boulder chase known as the Target API Level Requirement plus needing to log in every six months or risk getting your Google Dev account permanently deactivated and then needing to relaunch all of your apps under a new namespace. A handful of apps I use come from small companies (5 to 40 employees) who should not have a dedicated mobile dev on their payroll. The apps do not pose a security risk (as they don't use internet/network features) and don't need to be updated as they are feature-complete. One such company just pulled all of their free apps and now has a contractor charge users for worse functioning redesigns.
mentalgear 1y ago
I like it! Really fun and fluent, though maybe the keyboard navigation (e.g. radio boxes, etc) could be improved. I like the turtle, but maybe you want to rethink the jetpack flames from it's behind approach. Also, maybe a slight more "shiny" version, a la Duo, would match nicely. But overall, great work !
unbleaveable 1y ago
Having trouble understanding why you thought it was acceptable to steal their business name, and concept, and software application design. Would you call a competing word processor "Libre Word"? Is it acceptable to just copy their everything if you just add the word libre?
- Funes- 1y ago
  >Would you call a competing word processor "Libre Word"? You don't know about LibreOffice, really? Your post is so ridiculously ironic I'm having trouble determining if it's satire.
  - unbleaveable 1y ago
    How about "Google Word", "GoogleWord", or "Rosetta Stones"?
- jeffhuys 1y ago
  They call the package LibreOffice though... So... Yeah?
- thedumbname 1y ago
  A lot of FOSS projects were sued for these things, see GAIM/Pidgin, etc. Newcomers should understand that is a copyright violation.
  - pabs3 1y ago
    Trademark, not copyright.
em1sar 1y ago
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jacobwilson 1y ago
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pergadad 1y ago
Very nice initiative, the language space is overcrowded with commercial offers that have an incentive to keep you locked in. Apart from LanguageTransfer there seem to be few other good offers. That said, looking at the current offer it seems to lack the one thing Duolingo offers: Duolingo (for all its many faults and pedagogical uselessness) takes the burden of decision making away - I don't need to really think what to do next. Here I don't have this guidance - do I start with basics? Or introduction? Or something else? Crucial in my view would be to provide a path or at least a tree to guide the user where to go. This will make it easy to jump in and get carried along.
- TheJoeMan 1y ago
  Do any alternatives take a more "fully immersive" approach? I tried this LibreLingo, but the first question I got was "Which of these is The Sun?". Once you learn/memorize a few basic Spanish phrases such as "¿Qué significa?" you can stay immersed in the language. When you see a photo of the sun, you need to jump straight to El Sol, not Photo->"The Sun"->"El Sol".
  - vitro 1y ago
    Try Spanish in Latudio [0]. It is not quite for beginners, you need to have at least basic vocabulary, but regarding immersion, it should fit what you are looking for. It uses a listening-first approach and contextual translations with vocabulary and lets you explore words you didn't get in other contexts. [0] https://www.latudio.com/ https://www.latudio.com/
    - jghn 1y ago
      Do they have a version that's not a mobile app? Or will it at least work on the desktop/web browser? I'm not going to use something like that on my phone.
      - vitro 1y ago
        Not at the moment.
anothereng 1y ago
The problem with duolingo is that translating a language is not the best way to learn a language. The best way is to make a connection between the concept and the word. Like rosetta stone does. An open source rosetta stone would be better, at least for learning vocabulary
- tempest_ 1y ago
  Duolingo is sorta like flashcards and I think it makes a good easy entry into learning
  - codethief 1y ago
    But flashcards that connect words and concepts are still much better than flashcards where you merely translate.
- HPsquared 1y ago
  I find Duolingo is pretty good for vocabulary in a "slow" context. The trouble is, that slow context is already better served by translation apps. Duolingo is really bad at developing verbal fluency, which is the thing you actually need in today's world of translation apps.
- zdc1 1y ago
  Learning a language is such a large, long term undertaking that I appreciate how Duolingo tries to use a few tricks to keep people on-track. It's also one of those areas where interests and incentives (maximising the time on app; regular usage) are rather aligned. However after getting halfway into their Chinese course I feel quite disillusioned with their approach and actual content. You'd think an app with their market presence would have some amazing teaching strategies... but they don't. You can get through half of the course and still not know how to count past four. There's also lots of cultural context and finer points that are simply missing. Anyway, I'd be curious to see how a more community-driven approach could play out, any whether it would lead to better content.
- wisty 1y ago
  I think you're mistaken? The grammar translation method is seem as obsolete, but Duo isn't that. You don't learn rules formally (e.g. memorise explicit and formal rules on how to conjugate a verb in the past continuous tense, and what all these rerms mean) then apply them. If anything, people constantly complain about how Duolingo just gives them sentences and doesn't give long explanations about the grammar, you just have to pick it up. Very modern. People also complain about how duolingo has "nonsense" sentences, because it deliberately drip feeds vocab in similar categories which is actually the right way. You learn one fruit, one colour, one body part, etc at a time; so yeah occasionally you might get something like "tom has a purple apple on his nose" but there's a reason for this. The only real faults with Duolingo is that it focuses on listening and reading, so you need to practice speaking and writing elsewhere. It does have an AI chat, but it's... kind of bad IMO. And that most courses only cover a year or two of learning. And that there's very few languages. But if you want to learn enough to get started in more immersive learning, IMO it's fine. And there's people who complain that they spend so much time metagaming to try to win the weekly leaderboard that they actually hurt their learning, but if you really need a cartoon owl to give you a cartoon gold medal then maybe you shouldn't blame the app ...
mattkevan 1y ago
I'm sure this is a wonderful project with talented people behind it, and what I'm going to say isn't a criticism of this project in particular. But. I'm always a little disappointed when I see a project that's Libre[something proprietary]. It's always a wonky copy, where the selling point is that it's a free version of something, rather than a better version of something. The only people who are going to use it are those who care more about the fact that it's free and Libre than they do about a good learning experience [0]. Everyone else will just use Duolingo. And that's fine if the goal is for it to be a programming exercise, but it's a limiting one. Instead of making a knockoff of Duolingo, which clearly been eaten by the pressure to drive engagement and MAU, why not use time and energy to explore different or more radical ways of online pedagogy free from commercial pressures? It's harder than copying something, but the results could be much more worthwhile. [1] --- [0] This is why Mastodon will never go mainstream, because it's built by and for people who care more about decentralisation than they do about creating a first-class microblogging experience. The friction points that deter the mainstream are acceptable for the true believers because for them the benefits are worth it. [1] This is also my problem with Linux desktop environments. The desktop war was won by Microsoft 30 years ago and the desktop died as the primary computing paradigm in 2007. Yet Linux desktops are still fighting the last battle - so much time and effort is poured into them, yet they still don't work right (Wayland is how old now?) and are basically just wonkier versions of macOS or Windows. Surely that time and effort could be spent on investigating new ways to interact with computers - why is the desktop metaphor still the best we've got, nearly 60 years after it was first invented?
- shayway 1y ago
  I agree with your overall point - I'd also like to see more novel FOSS projects rather than knockoffs of proprietary software - but at the same time, there's a lot of value in FOSS clones for a few reasons. The main one being: proprietary things tend to get worse over time, while FOSS (with enough momentum) tends to get better. Windows vs Linux desktop is a great example of this; while Linux and its DEs have steadily been improving over the past couple decades, Windows has been in a slow downward spiral since 7, and nowadays I would say KDE/GNOME/Mint are actually less janky overall than Win11. Mastodon, despite its jank, largely has the traction it does because of the X/Twitter enxittification. Godot and Unity are another good example of my point, the former being largely superior to the latter nowadays despite a lot of similarity, and as with Mastodon it gained a lot of popularity through the blunders of the proprietary version, which is significantly less of a risk with FOSS. Also - while there are some Windows/MacOS knockoff DEs, there are also plenty of unique ideas in things like GNOME or Budgie, not to mention tiling window managers. I think clones just tend to get the most popularity. Case in point, there are easily hundreds of FOSS language learning apps out there that do their own thing, but "LibreLingo - FOSS Alternative to Duolingo" is the one that ends up on the front page.
throwaway743 1y ago
Anyone have any suggestions for learning Korean? I have Hangul characters down and know some words/phrases from my partner, but would like to dive in a bit more.
jiffygist 1y ago
I can recommend https://polski.info https://polski.info for Polish. Not FOSS, but at least non-commercial.
Pavilion2095 1y ago
But why? These apps are ineffective. If you want to learn a language, don't waste your time on Duolingo or this...
_fat_santa 1y ago
I used Duolingo for about a year to learn Portuguese but I recently switched to just taking a course I bought on Udemy. First let me say that Duolingo is great for learning vocabulary but unfortunately that's it's only strength. The problem I realized after starting the Udemy course is that Duolingo teaches you the words but they seldom teach sentence structure or the "glue" between all those words you learn. So you get to a place where you know a ton of words but can't hold a conversation because you don't know how to form sentences. With that said I would still recommend Duolingo strictly for their vocabulary. I would suggest a course to supplement learning though, not to mention it's much cheaper, the entire course cost me less than a month of Duolingo Super.
- thenoblesunfish 1y ago
  It's an awesome way to get from nothing to something. I started German with it before doing more traditional classes and live speaking with a partner Annoyances (in particular, ads disguised as "partner offers") aside, I still find it worth paying for as a quick daily refresher.
- nine_k 1y ago
  From my experience, Duolingo teaches you the vocabulary and the set sentences very well. But this is by far not enough. I use regular textbooks that describe the structure of the language, the grammar, the syntax, etc, so as to gain some analytical understanding of it. On top of that, Duolingo helps to get used to recognize these structures and flesh them out with various words. Also, unlike a book, it forces you to listen, and, crucially, to speak. It's a very important step from being able to read written language only to being able to actually talk.
- bdcravens 1y ago
  I think Duolingo does an okay job of teaching structure, but it probably comes around the 2nd year or so (I've been using it about 3 years, but I did have a few years in high school of Spanish a long time ago)
  - jghn 1y ago
jmyeet 1y ago
I'm a little surprised that Duolingo is the model someone wants to emulate because, at least for me, it just doesn't work. Now I'm someone who has always been good at taking tests. It's a skill you can develop. At one point I got 85% in a French test knowing absolutely zero French. There are tricks such as: - Use of punctuation can give the answer away (eg a trailing "!") - Other questions can unintentionally give you the answer to a different question (eg it might conjugate a verb you're being asked about elsewhere); - Questions end up being correlated. So a given question might have 2 plausible answers and that answer will also answer another question. So you can answer if one way in one and another way in the other and you're pretty likely to get one of them right; - Multiple choice tests tend to evenly distribute answers so if you have 29 Cs in a 4-answer 100 question test already, it's less likely that a further C guess is right. Yes, people can intentionally re-weight the answers to avoid this but almost nobody does. - For other topics like math you often get marks for each step. Depending on how that marking key works, you can often get marks writing essentially nonsense that leads to a completely wrong answer; - When in doubt, guess something. This goes for multiple choice and written answers. Don't spend any time on it. Tests that deduct points for wrong answers are rare and you know about it beforehand. - Apply probability. So in a 100 question 4 answer multiple choice test where you have a 50% chance of knowing the answer, you should really get 75-80% on that test just from eliminating obviously wrong answers and simply guessing the rest. My point is that you can't really turn this off once you learn it so I can pretty much guess my way through any Duolingo questions and that means I don't learn anything. Even when you have to assemble words into a sentence, the answer is pretty obvious and it can get even more obvious in other languages (eg nouns in German are capitalized). I think I did Spanish Duolingo almost every day for a year and remember none of it.
psychoslave 1y ago
Anyone as experience with feedback on https://www.rocketlanguages.com/ https://www.rocketlanguages.com/ and https://babbel.com/ https://babbel.com/ ? I’m mostly interested in speaking out loud skills, and those two have voice recognition it seems.
- tarentel 1y ago
  I'm an ok French speaker, technically my second language although I "learned" Spanish in high school. At some point in a conversation people will realize I am not a native speaker but I can get by. I used a variety of things, including Duolingo for a while and Babbel for a bit, both of which I started on. Based on my experience, neither will get you very far for speaking. You'd be better off getting a real teacher or taking a class.
- angry_moose 1y ago
  I like Babbel a lot for reading/writing/listening but their speaking is a little weak. It's there but I find it pretty flaky - either so permissive it'll accept just about any sound you make, or so buggy it won't accept a single thing. I haven't done a lot with it, but Pimsleur (https://www.pimsleur.com/ https://www.pimsleur.com/) seems quite good for conversational. I've done a couple trials of it and plan to dive in when I finish my Babbel courses. For conversational though you might be better off just finding an online tutor. 1 hour a week with a native speaker is probably more effective than any of the apps.
joaohaas 1y ago
Cool... but nothing will ever beat Anki + Immersion. Here's one guide most Japanese learners follow: https://learnjapanese.moe/ https://learnjapanese.moe/
- masijo 1y ago
  Wish there were similar pages for other languages, I want to learn Russian and I can't find anything with this quality.
  - joshdavham 1y ago
    > I want to learn Russian and I can't find anything with this quality. You could give Refold a shot! https://refold.la/how-to-learn-russian/ https://refold.la/how-to-learn-russian/ (disclosure: I also used to work there.)
- Tainnor 1y ago
  I don't think it's accurate to say that this is a guide "most" Japanese learners follow. There are some good (and some arguable) ideas there, but it's just one guide out of several, and most learners probably don't even browse the internet for such things and just learn Japanese in class or something.
- kobebrookskC3 1y ago
  i bet 99% of people will wash out of the 30 day routine, me being one of them. there are better ways to start than drinking from the firehose of "simple anime"
sirnonw 1y ago
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andyxing 1y ago
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thenoblesunfish 1y ago
Hope this takes off! Early Duolingo was very community focused and lots of fun, and proves people are really motivated to participate if you make the UI easy enough.
- 1oooqooq 1y ago
  it's interesting how they had a huge community when they wanted everyone contributing new lessons and fixes.
kamatour 1y ago
Has anyone tried both LibreLingo and Duolingo? I'm curious if the open-source approach makes learning feel more natural?
pkdpic 1y ago
Nice to see this pop up, not that I mind giving Duo money every month for my kids account. Still looking for DuoLingo for actual programming... python etc... Specifically for elementary school kids... I know it's out there... Im getting closer... I know this is a false statement but it would be so easy for DuoLingo to add Python along side their Math and Music betas!! Please Duo hear my prayers...
alkonaut 1y ago
This space seems like one of those areas where it would be really hard to break in because their whole selling point is having had hundreds or thousands of people record and annotate an enormous amount of voice input, which I assume has to be hand polished for every single exercise? I'm sure some part of it could be automated these days, or some parts even use voice synthesis, but I'm sure it would take basically an army of people hand-crafting it for the experience not to be very janky in the end.
salimmadjd 1y ago
Duolingo user here with a 4 year streak. Duolingo is not a language teaching platform at its core. It’s a gaming platform with language as its gaming skill. Duolingo at some point became so focused on gamification that it just became a game (I believe they hired their lead PM from Zynga). If you’re on free version, just look at the ads you’re getting. Vast majority of the ads are for other games. I think you can learn a language if you use Duolingo’s streak gamification as a daily motivator but use supplemental materials to actually learn.
- otherayden 1y ago
  I actually really like this take. Despite the fact that most language learners hate on it, Duolingo has great product market fit, and I think it's for this reason. It's in the toilet time distraction/edutainment market as much as it is in the language market
- zelphirkalt 1y ago
  Have a friend, who is on his 7th or 8th year of every day using DuoLingo (DL) "learning" German. His German is still terrible. Phrase structure goes all overboard, verbs are not adapted to time, person and whatever else. It is a bit painful to see. People also say that some languages just have terrible lessons on DL. Maybe German is one of those. I tried using it for Chinese/Mandarin, but apparently classified myself too modestly in the beginning. I feel like the lessons did not teach me much at all and it became a game of quickly pressing things, while suffering through silly ads. It also never makes you actually write characters. Eventually I stopped using it. I think anything other than the most basic Chinese is better learned elsewhere.
  - bunderbunder 1y ago
    An even basic Chinese is better learned from a Chinese-specific app like Lingodeer or HelloChinese. I tried all three when I was first getting started. I didn't end up going with any of them (I bought a textbook instead - gamification just isn't my jam), but I was at least fairly impressed with Lingodeer and HelloChinese. Both were clearly made with love. And I've met several more advanced learners who got started with them. By contrast, for all its users, I've yet to meet a single person who went with Duolingo and subsequently made it to an intermediate level in Chinese. I'm sure there's someone out there somewhere, but overall it seems that people's success rate with that app is bleak.
shemtay 1y ago
If I could change one thing about Duolingo, it would be to allow the user to turn off all the gamification completely. I don't care about fake internet gems, knowing how to speak Chinese (or whatever) is it's own reward, so stop wasting my time with bs! Nevertheless, Duolingo is an amazing and convenient starting point for unlocking the learning of new languages. Make your way through the entire course as fast as you can, while also listening to music, talking to people, talking to chatGPT, reading books, etc in the target language as soon as you can manage. Protip: learn your 3rd language using your second as the language of instruction.
damjon 1y ago
How about gamification in LibreLingo ? It's number one Duolingo feature.
sieve 1y ago
As someone who knows four languages[1] (picked every single one up during childhood) and is currently learning Sanskrit, I have to say that Krashen's input hypothesis and Orberg's Lingva Latina is probably the way to go if you are learning languages as an adult. The direct teaching method works but is time-consuming and generally used for languages that lead to an occupation, viz. English. The grammar translation method is a waste of time. It might satisfy your intellectual curiosity about the structure of the language but you won't be able to make yourself understood after a lifetime of study. I wonder at the sheer lunacy of dumping thousands of random sentences into your lap and translating it from one language to another. After a year and a half of false starts, I started reading a couple of Sanskrit stories every day. Because the context is maintained across the story, your brain starts recognizing patterns in sentences. You keep reading sentences like sarvē janāḥ kāryaṁ kurvanti sarvē janāḥ gacchanti sarvē janāḥ namanti and you automatically associate sarvē (all) with janāḥ (people) without needing to know the declension of those words. This applies to the cases as well. To be able to converse about or understand a wide variety of topics, you will eventually have to move beyond stories due to restrictions on the tense/aspect/moods you encounter as a result of the nature of the material. But that is doable. [1] Much of India is bilingual. A substantial minority might know four or more languages due to the many mother and father tongues and heavy internal migration across the states (whose boundaries were drawn on linguistic lines post-independence)
- luqtas 1y ago
  i don't know why people are taking Duolinguo and relatives as the definitive course to learn a language... they even cite at their FAQ about the need of going outside the app if you want 'fluency' some people are quite fine learning a limited number of phrases to lurk in a country. a great part of communication among humans also happens with the body/eyes. no one needs to discuss their phD dissertation in 4 different languages [0] https://blog.duolingo.com/can-duolingo-make-me-fluent/ https://blog.duolingo.com/can-duolingo-make-me-fluent/ edit: Duolinguo also is nice (and make a funny non-invasive joke) if you are using something like uBlock!
  - djeastm 1y ago
    >they even cite at their FAQ about the need of going outside the app if you want 'fluency Sure, they've got that fig leaf covering them.
pessimizer 1y ago
It's a bad idea to imitate Duolingo, which has become VC without a purpose. The gimmick behind Duolingo was that there were so many things online and in the world that needed to be translated, so training people to learn languages while translating them was a win-win. We don't really need humans to translate written material anymore (esp with AI advances), and they never seemed to find a business model for that anyway. Since the gimmick is gone, it's just a generic language learning app with unimpressive results. And that still uses primitive spaced repetition algorithms. The bottom fell out. But since Duolingo had attracted a ton of cash on their founders rep from reCaptcha, it zombies on. I've had my account since the beta, and while I think it's good because it exposes people to a ton of words and utterances in their target language which they will hopefully roll around in their mouths, that's like step 1 in learning a language. Anecdotally, I had to abandon Duolingo entirely in order to learn Spanish; and not for a class or tutoring, but for their competitors both online and traditional. Techniques in language learning seem to be advancing quickly (like with spaced repetition, TPRS, and Krashen-inspired stuff), but Duolingo seems to be studiously ignoring them all, and plowing on doing the same thing. I think they should ditch everything but the cartoons, which are cute. But their base gets outraged whenever they change anything because Duolingo's changes were made in order to shift to getting revenue from the users rather than from "translation," so the users do not trust them. So Duolingo really have nothing but cute cartoons and a brand name. LibreLingo looks like they have cartoons, too. Other than those, there's nothing to distinguish Librelingo from any other Spanish-learning website.
hyperific 1y ago
I'm surprised more people aren't talking about the recent announcement that Duolingo is replacing contractors with AI. https://www.theverge.com/news/657594/duolingo-ai-first-replace-contract-workers https://www.theverge.com/news/657594/duolingo-ai-first-repla...
- brewdad 1y ago
  I'm guessing that's why this hit the front page today.
- gnarlouse 1y ago
  If DuoLingo is currently a thriving company, I am convinced it is exclusively because of branding momentum. I think Match.com's trajectory foreshadows the fate of DuoLingo. In the 00's, Match.com used to be the premier "try to meet a not-weird-fuck to date online" system. Then in the early 2010s, Tinder-style dating apps consumed the market. Shortly after, match.com started doing some really fucked up business practices because their niche market got swallowed up in a larger general market by a superior "free" product. Duolingo's users are sticky so long as the brand ideology holds: "if you want to learn a second language, play duolingo". Also, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn also founded ReCAPTCHA. Every idea this man has capitalized on has been made obsolete by the advance of AI.
lakomen 1y ago
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zelphirkalt 1y ago
The app could use some spinners, when actions lead to a delay. I clicked on the landing page on the only available purple action button and nothing seemed to happen. I already checked my uBlock Origin, whether it is blocking something, but it does not. Already wanted to reload the page, when finally something visually changed, and the course was loaded. Simply a little spinner/animation would make this way less confusing. I like, that for keyboard input the special letters are given as buttons, so that I don't need to hunt for those on any US/English keyboard layout. One thing missing is a way to report mistakes in the learning material. For example I found "Buenos dias" to be translated to "Good morning".
- valbaca 1y ago
  > For example I found "Buenos dias" to be translated to "Good morning". buenos dias does mean good morning. it literally means good day and can be used as such but most often used as "good morning"
sh3rl0ck 1y ago
Really hope they can do something about the UX; well built OSS generally lacks good UI/UX.
insane_dreamer 1y ago
Great to see a FOSS app for language learning! Kudos. However, I think apps that focus on one particular language and how to learn that language are better than a one-size-fits-all approach like Duolingo. The structure and grammar of languages like Russian, Japanese, Chinese, and French (I've learned all 4) are all significantly different from each other. Or at least different approaches for language groups (French and Spanish, which I also speak, are similar enough to warrant the same approach).
brewdad 1y ago
Can anyone recommend a solid resource for learning Tagalog? Being a far less popular language than the standard "big boys" that most apps, web sites, books etc tend to offer, it's been a lot of false starts for me or simply feeling a bit lost when a resource throws me directly into a scene to learn dialog without having any of the foundational knowledge first. I plan to spend a year or two (at least) in the Philippines in the not too distant future. While most Filipinos understand English, I feel like learning at least some Tagalog would go a long way in fitting in and feeling less like an outsider.
- barrell 1y ago
  I really don’t want to be doing self promotion in someone else’s thread, but I have Tagalog support on https://phrasing.app https://phrasing.app. I just posted some demo videos this morning in comments if you check out my profile
dang 1y ago
Related ongoing thread: Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43827978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43827978 - April 2025 (43 comments)
alganet 1y ago
This language thing reminds me of Willian James Sidis.
gnarlouse 1y ago
Hot take y'all but what if, just what if, coded applications with injected content are ~GASP~ not the way humans learn language. I know that this LibreLingo project is probably somebody's baby, and if it works for them great. Heck, if it works for you, great! But for anybody who really wants to (durably) learn a new language, aren't the results already in? Immerse yourself in the language, be around people. At the very least, listen to native speakers on YouTube or something. Read articles/books. Struggle at it, like a baby! That's not pejorative either; babies are the world's premier language learners.
gitroom 1y ago
Yeah, I've used Duolingo and always end up doing the same stuff, but it's way too easy to just tap through and not actually learn anything real. Got me thinking - you think anything can really replace just talking to people and living with the language day to day?
martinrue 1y ago
Not FOSS, but for anyone who may find it useful, I launched a language learning project I've been hacking away on for a few months. Any feedback most welcome! https://langsesh.com https://langsesh.com

804 points by hyperific 1y ago

ReflectedImage 1y ago

Sadly the authors of LibreLingo were last seen being lead into the back of a white van by an enormous green owl

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_fat_santa 1y ago
I have to say Duolingo has some of the best corporate humor I've seen.
- krick 1y ago
  Some of the most annoying, that's for sure. I uninstalled it when it started to uglify the icon on my desktop when I neglect daily exercise. I mean, it's totally fine if it's just me, but since it was an impulsive action on my part, I would be curious to see if I wasn't one of the many. I wouldn't be fond of my company's PR department if they lose customers over stupid jokes. That said, after spending too much time on DuoLingo, I should have dropped it anyway. First off, one should be honest to himself and admit that it is a game, not a language study material. Which is ok, but still, I would really like to have an app that is a bit less of a game and a little more of a interactive textbook (I don't know one). Second, honestly, most of the course materials are surprisingly low quality. They kept adding all these gimmicks, animations, icon uglifying, etc., yet the core content was barely worked on. After a couple of years you start really wondering what are they spending money on. I mean, literally, do they even have paid staff working on some less popular languages, or it's just community?
  - mbs159 1y ago
    > I uninstalled it when it started to uglify the icon on my desktop when I neglect daily exercise That's actually hilarious

daniel_iversen 1y ago

For the curious, here's an article from the developer on why they built LibreLingo https://dev.to/kantord/why-i-built-librelingo-280o https://dev.to/kantord/why-i-built-librelingo-280o

darkstar_16 1y ago
who are these people who have 30 minutes in the morning to make a smoothie and learn a foreign language ... :D
- cyborgx7 1y ago
  The people who prioritize learning a foreign language over some of the things that you prioritize.
  - apwell23 1y ago
    > some of the things that you prioritize watching reels first thing in the morning in bed
    - aquariusDue 1y ago
      In bed?! You gotta multitask if you want to get things done, try on the toilet next time.
      - cookie_monsta 1y ago
        If you are spending 30 minutes on the toilet, language fluency is not your biggest problem
        reddalo 1y ago
        But your nearest proctologist is going to have a new client soon.
        1y ago

sschueller 1y ago

Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43827978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43827978

Tor3 1y ago

There wasn't much to read there, but why aspire to be an alternative to Duolingo of all things? Duolingo focuses on learning by translation, basically. It's even in the name: "Duolingo". It's an utterly broken approach to learning languages, except for the very initial phase where you're getting just enough to move on to modern methods (i.e. avoid translation like the plague, to start with). Which is exactly why a comment I read somewhere said "Duolingo is for the perpetual beginner".

devrandoom 1y ago
What are the modern methods and what's to back up they're better?
- damnitbuilds 1y ago
  I have lived in a foreign country for 25 years and have started picking up the local language. There might be faster methods.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    My wife lived in a foreign country for 3 months (as an exchange student) before the family told her that was enough and refused to use English. Your experience is common. However it is mostly a reflection on you and your situation. You could have picked the language up much faster if you tried. Note that I'm not intending to judge you. It is likely you have a life and other things to do with your time. Only you can figure out what is the right time balance for you (though once in a while something happens that would make you regret your decision)
    - damnitbuilds 1y ago
      No worries - I was exaggerating for comic effect. I don't speak the local language like a local, but I do do it all day at work. I often wish the locals here would refuse to use English, but I enjoy speaking other foreign languages when I get the chance, so I understand when they want to do the same.

simonbarker87 1y ago

Going to plug Language Transfer again, an excellent free app that is a much better way to learn a language than the DuoLingo approach.

bornfreddy 1y ago
Thank you! Is there any advantage to using the app instead of just playing the audio files directly?
- AnonC 1y ago
  I found this in the app’s description: > This app provides the same audio available for free on languagetransfer.org, but allows you to download tracks in advance, save your progress, and listen with your phone locked. > We collect some anonymous usage data so we can improve the app and learn about how users are engaging with the lessons. You can learn more in the About section of the app, or turn off this data collection in the Settings
- jcul 1y ago
  The app is really basic, in a good way. There are no ads or unnecessary permissions. It's just a basic media player that lets you download the audio files for offline playback and tracks whan you have already listened to. I find I pretty convenient.
detectivestory 1y ago
I find LT great for "learning the language", but I find something like Spanish After Hours on Youtube to be far better for "learning to speak and understand the spoken language". I would recommend that everyone at least dips into something like LT every now and then, but I think something like SAH is better for daily exercises.
- jcul 1y ago
  Spanish after hours looks great, thanks. Do you just watch / listen to random videos or is it more structured? I am planning a trip to Mexico soon, so I have been listening to how to Spanish, and mextalki podcasts. The latter is pretty difficult to follow, though I feel you need to listen to real native speakers speaking at a normal pace to have any chance of understanding locals. SAH seems great because she does seem to speak normally and not too slowed down (or it just sounds quick to me :))

est 1y ago

been using Duolingo in the 10s and last year, I gave up because the course seems very repetitive. Even if I got the answer right 10 out of 10 times, the same question kept coming. It almost looks like the app is trying very hard to make me stay as long as possible, instead of study as effecient as possible. So for a good alternative app, is there a dynamic course pace I can adapt to?

freetonik 1y ago
Which course? The quality of different language courses on Duolingo differs a lot. For example, the Finnish language course is very bad, full of useless words and nonsensical phrases like "The cat is a viking". In contrast, the Swedish course (which happens to be the 2nd official language of Finland) is amazing and full of phrases immediately useful in daily life. A few modules in, Finnish Duolingo is all e.g. "My mom is a shaman" and "The cat is a viking", while Swedish is e.g. "I'd like a glass of cold water" and "Emma wants a pizza". In addition, the multi-modality also differs a lot. Finnish and some other languages simply don't have speech exercises (where you have to read something into the microphone).
- est 1y ago
  German and Arabic course. So in other words, the course is programmed by a human? Well I hope with today's AI tech the course should be highly customizable. I don't want to learn "The cat is a viking" 100 times.
- vladvasiliu 1y ago
  > In addition, the multi-modality also differs a lot. Finnish and some other languages simply don't have speech exercises (where you have to read something into the microphone). They have the speech exercises in Spanish, but they are ridiculously bad. It often says I'm correct before I get to say half the sentence. Other times, I'll need to repeat a word 10 times until it gives up and says it's fine.
gary17the 1y ago
> the same question kept coming I was under the same impression, but later the problem disappeared. You have to give Duolingo a couple of months of learning effort first, so that Duolingo has a larger base of sentences that you should already understand.

i_am_a_squirrel 1y ago

The signup button just spins indefinitely :(

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neofight78 1y ago

The problem is that Duolingo optimises for time spent on the app, not for progress in the language. The majority of experienced language learners do not recommend it.

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monkeyelite 1y ago

If I’m going to spend a thousand hours learning a new language, I’m willing to pay for professional study material.

oguz-ismail 1y ago
>professional study material What would that be for Spanish? I couldn't even find a decent dictionary app
- shawabawa3 1y ago
  something like https://michelthomas.com/landing-page/mt-spanish/#start-spanish https://michelthomas.com/landing-page/mt-spanish/#start-span... or https://www.pimsleur.com/learn-spanish-latin-american/ https://www.pimsleur.com/learn-spanish-latin-american/
- yeyeyeyeyeyeyee 1y ago
  I am personally quite happy with the Teach Yourself study materials as first step when picking up a new language.
- bluGill 1y ago
  App? I'm not aware of any app that anyone serious about language learning would consider great. If you are going to pay for an app start with netflix or similar which isn't about language learning, but it has native content in your language. Newspapers would be another place to spend your money. There are a lot of dead tree books that are still perfectly good. There are a lot of language courses that are great, but most don't really have an app. Even if there is an app, you should be getting the app as part of your purchase (or subscription) to a larger language learning system not the app itself.
- monkeyelite 1y ago
  I would probably include duo lingo when I started - but I wouldn’t say “hmm I wish there was something worse but free”.

charcircuit 1y ago

All language apps are destined to become essentially an SRS app, which at that point you might as well just use an anki.

GardenLetter27 1y ago
I disagree, the old HelloChinese course was great for covering Chinese character writing, as well as exercises with Pinyin and only Chinese characters, etc. Unfortunately they've ramped up the monetisation and also become more like Duolingo with the streak-based stuff and fewer grammar notes.
- Zmajche 1y ago
  old HelloChinese course is still there in the app... New one in making so far looks more like DuoLingo, however, LingoDeer app is alternative that right now is better for Asian languages if you want a little bit grammar stuff while learning.
- charcircuit 1y ago
  How is it different from SRS? If you need to learn the strokes for thousands of characters you will need something like SRS.
  - Zmajche 1y ago
    Spaced repetition is a highly effective method for learning languages, particularly for vocabulary/character acquisition, but it is not the only method and particular implementation of it in the software, really matters.
    - charcircuit 1y ago
      It is the only method in that it is a generic term. Without spacing there will be too many words to review at once. Without repetition it will be hard for people to learn things in one try. Spaced reputation is required to scale. But do language learning apps need to scale to handle a lot of information? Technically no, but the incentives around making apps make it so that SRS will added and dominate the product. I will agree with you that the implementation matters, but ultimately anki will cover one's needs for SRS and open source efforts should go towards improving anki.

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hackbloom 1y ago

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GardenLetter27 1y ago

It sucks how Duolingo has gotten so much worse over the years. It used to be great when it had the grammar notes and discussion forums and comments, and you could actually finish the course and have some recognition. Now it's just all too game-like and all based around maintaining streaks rather than learning. Unfortunately some other apps have started to copy this model too like HelloChinese.

lukaslalinsky 1y ago
Completely agree, when Duolingo started, I took the Spanish course and actually got something out of it. The lessons, comments were super helpful. I've tried it again last year and I couldn't believe my eyes that most of it is gone. It feels exactly like an addictive game, making you focus on the game part of it, not learning. And the fact that you can buy out of failures is just WTF.
- GardenLetter27 1y ago
  Same, I now speak fluent Spanish and have lived in Spain but I started with Duolingo (although just watching loads of films was by far the best way to learn once you get that far!).
OsrsNeedsf2P 1y ago
The reason is the App Store (and Play Store) value things like DAU (as a proxy for "quality"), IAPs (because they get a cut), no real interaction (too risky), etc. The end result is "real language learning" doesn't align with "launching a top mobile app". This is also the reason none of games are hard (can't let people uninstall) and nothing unique shows up anymore (it's impossible to compete) Source: Did mobile dev for ~5 years + launched failed B2B that gives data on how to game the Play Store
- PennRobotics 1y ago
  It doesn't help that the Play Store has no effective way to browse recently developed apps or to filter searches in any meaningful way whatsoever. Couple that with the Indiana Jones boulder chase known as the Target API Level Requirement plus needing to log in every six months or risk getting your Google Dev account permanently deactivated and then needing to relaunch all of your apps under a new namespace. A handful of apps I use come from small companies (5 to 40 employees) who should not have a dedicated mobile dev on their payroll. The apps do not pose a security risk (as they don't use internet/network features) and don't need to be updated as they are feature-complete. One such company just pulled all of their free apps and now has a contractor charge users for worse functioning redesigns.

mentalgear 1y ago

I like it! Really fun and fluent, though maybe the keyboard navigation (e.g. radio boxes, etc) could be improved. I like the turtle, but maybe you want to rethink the jetpack flames from it's behind approach. Also, maybe a slight more "shiny" version, a la Duo, would match nicely. But overall, great work !

unbleaveable 1y ago

Having trouble understanding why you thought it was acceptable to steal their business name, and concept, and software application design. Would you call a competing word processor "Libre Word"? Is it acceptable to just copy their everything if you just add the word libre?

Funes- 1y ago
>Would you call a competing word processor "Libre Word"? You don't know about LibreOffice, really? Your post is so ridiculously ironic I'm having trouble determining if it's satire.
- unbleaveable 1y ago
  How about "Google Word", "GoogleWord", or "Rosetta Stones"?
jeffhuys 1y ago
They call the package LibreOffice though... So... Yeah?
thedumbname 1y ago
A lot of FOSS projects were sued for these things, see GAIM/Pidgin, etc. Newcomers should understand that is a copyright violation.
- pabs3 1y ago
  Trademark, not copyright.

em1sar 1y ago

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jacobwilson 1y ago

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pergadad 1y ago

Very nice initiative, the language space is overcrowded with commercial offers that have an incentive to keep you locked in. Apart from LanguageTransfer there seem to be few other good offers. That said, looking at the current offer it seems to lack the one thing Duolingo offers: Duolingo (for all its many faults and pedagogical uselessness) takes the burden of decision making away - I don't need to really think what to do next. Here I don't have this guidance - do I start with basics? Or introduction? Or something else? Crucial in my view would be to provide a path or at least a tree to guide the user where to go. This will make it easy to jump in and get carried along.

TheJoeMan 1y ago
Do any alternatives take a more "fully immersive" approach? I tried this LibreLingo, but the first question I got was "Which of these is The Sun?". Once you learn/memorize a few basic Spanish phrases such as "¿Qué significa?" you can stay immersed in the language. When you see a photo of the sun, you need to jump straight to El Sol, not Photo->"The Sun"->"El Sol".
- vitro 1y ago
  Try Spanish in Latudio [0]. It is not quite for beginners, you need to have at least basic vocabulary, but regarding immersion, it should fit what you are looking for. It uses a listening-first approach and contextual translations with vocabulary and lets you explore words you didn't get in other contexts. [0] https://www.latudio.com/ https://www.latudio.com/
  - jghn 1y ago
    Do they have a version that's not a mobile app? Or will it at least work on the desktop/web browser? I'm not going to use something like that on my phone.
    - vitro 1y ago
      Not at the moment.

anothereng 1y ago

The problem with duolingo is that translating a language is not the best way to learn a language. The best way is to make a connection between the concept and the word. Like rosetta stone does. An open source rosetta stone would be better, at least for learning vocabulary

tempest_ 1y ago
Duolingo is sorta like flashcards and I think it makes a good easy entry into learning
- codethief 1y ago
  But flashcards that connect words and concepts are still much better than flashcards where you merely translate.
HPsquared 1y ago
I find Duolingo is pretty good for vocabulary in a "slow" context. The trouble is, that slow context is already better served by translation apps. Duolingo is really bad at developing verbal fluency, which is the thing you actually need in today's world of translation apps.
zdc1 1y ago
Learning a language is such a large, long term undertaking that I appreciate how Duolingo tries to use a few tricks to keep people on-track. It's also one of those areas where interests and incentives (maximising the time on app; regular usage) are rather aligned. However after getting halfway into their Chinese course I feel quite disillusioned with their approach and actual content. You'd think an app with their market presence would have some amazing teaching strategies... but they don't. You can get through half of the course and still not know how to count past four. There's also lots of cultural context and finer points that are simply missing. Anyway, I'd be curious to see how a more community-driven approach could play out, any whether it would lead to better content.
wisty 1y ago
I think you're mistaken? The grammar translation method is seem as obsolete, but Duo isn't that. You don't learn rules formally (e.g. memorise explicit and formal rules on how to conjugate a verb in the past continuous tense, and what all these rerms mean) then apply them. If anything, people constantly complain about how Duolingo just gives them sentences and doesn't give long explanations about the grammar, you just have to pick it up. Very modern. People also complain about how duolingo has "nonsense" sentences, because it deliberately drip feeds vocab in similar categories which is actually the right way. You learn one fruit, one colour, one body part, etc at a time; so yeah occasionally you might get something like "tom has a purple apple on his nose" but there's a reason for this. The only real faults with Duolingo is that it focuses on listening and reading, so you need to practice speaking and writing elsewhere. It does have an AI chat, but it's... kind of bad IMO. And that most courses only cover a year or two of learning. And that there's very few languages. But if you want to learn enough to get started in more immersive learning, IMO it's fine. And there's people who complain that they spend so much time metagaming to try to win the weekly leaderboard that they actually hurt their learning, but if you really need a cartoon owl to give you a cartoon gold medal then maybe you shouldn't blame the app ...

mattkevan 1y ago

I'm sure this is a wonderful project with talented people behind it, and what I'm going to say isn't a criticism of this project in particular. But. I'm always a little disappointed when I see a project that's Libre[something proprietary]. It's always a wonky copy, where the selling point is that it's a free version of something, rather than a better version of something. The only people who are going to use it are those who care more about the fact that it's free and Libre than they do about a good learning experience [0]. Everyone else will just use Duolingo. And that's fine if the goal is for it to be a programming exercise, but it's a limiting one. Instead of making a knockoff of Duolingo, which clearly been eaten by the pressure to drive engagement and MAU, why not use time and energy to explore different or more radical ways of online pedagogy free from commercial pressures? It's harder than copying something, but the results could be much more worthwhile. [1] --- [0] This is why Mastodon will never go mainstream, because it's built by and for people who care more about decentralisation than they do about creating a first-class microblogging experience. The friction points that deter the mainstream are acceptable for the true believers because for them the benefits are worth it. [1] This is also my problem with Linux desktop environments. The desktop war was won by Microsoft 30 years ago and the desktop died as the primary computing paradigm in 2007. Yet Linux desktops are still fighting the last battle - so much time and effort is poured into them, yet they still don't work right (Wayland is how old now?) and are basically just wonkier versions of macOS or Windows. Surely that time and effort could be spent on investigating new ways to interact with computers - why is the desktop metaphor still the best we've got, nearly 60 years after it was first invented?

shayway 1y ago
I agree with your overall point - I'd also like to see more novel FOSS projects rather than knockoffs of proprietary software - but at the same time, there's a lot of value in FOSS clones for a few reasons. The main one being: proprietary things tend to get worse over time, while FOSS (with enough momentum) tends to get better. Windows vs Linux desktop is a great example of this; while Linux and its DEs have steadily been improving over the past couple decades, Windows has been in a slow downward spiral since 7, and nowadays I would say KDE/GNOME/Mint are actually less janky overall than Win11. Mastodon, despite its jank, largely has the traction it does because of the X/Twitter enxittification. Godot and Unity are another good example of my point, the former being largely superior to the latter nowadays despite a lot of similarity, and as with Mastodon it gained a lot of popularity through the blunders of the proprietary version, which is significantly less of a risk with FOSS. Also - while there are some Windows/MacOS knockoff DEs, there are also plenty of unique ideas in things like GNOME or Budgie, not to mention tiling window managers. I think clones just tend to get the most popularity. Case in point, there are easily hundreds of FOSS language learning apps out there that do their own thing, but "LibreLingo - FOSS Alternative to Duolingo" is the one that ends up on the front page.

throwaway743 1y ago

Anyone have any suggestions for learning Korean? I have Hangul characters down and know some words/phrases from my partner, but would like to dive in a bit more.

jiffygist 1y ago

I can recommend https://polski.info https://polski.info for Polish. Not FOSS, but at least non-commercial.

Pavilion2095 1y ago

But why? These apps are ineffective. If you want to learn a language, don't waste your time on Duolingo or this...

_fat_santa 1y ago

I used Duolingo for about a year to learn Portuguese but I recently switched to just taking a course I bought on Udemy. First let me say that Duolingo is great for learning vocabulary but unfortunately that's it's only strength. The problem I realized after starting the Udemy course is that Duolingo teaches you the words but they seldom teach sentence structure or the "glue" between all those words you learn. So you get to a place where you know a ton of words but can't hold a conversation because you don't know how to form sentences. With that said I would still recommend Duolingo strictly for their vocabulary. I would suggest a course to supplement learning though, not to mention it's much cheaper, the entire course cost me less than a month of Duolingo Super.

thenoblesunfish 1y ago
It's an awesome way to get from nothing to something. I started German with it before doing more traditional classes and live speaking with a partner Annoyances (in particular, ads disguised as "partner offers") aside, I still find it worth paying for as a quick daily refresher.
nine_k 1y ago
From my experience, Duolingo teaches you the vocabulary and the set sentences very well. But this is by far not enough. I use regular textbooks that describe the structure of the language, the grammar, the syntax, etc, so as to gain some analytical understanding of it. On top of that, Duolingo helps to get used to recognize these structures and flesh them out with various words. Also, unlike a book, it forces you to listen, and, crucially, to speak. It's a very important step from being able to read written language only to being able to actually talk.
bdcravens 1y ago
I think Duolingo does an okay job of teaching structure, but it probably comes around the 2nd year or so (I've been using it about 3 years, but I did have a few years in high school of Spanish a long time ago)
- jghn 1y ago

jmyeet 1y ago

I'm a little surprised that Duolingo is the model someone wants to emulate because, at least for me, it just doesn't work. Now I'm someone who has always been good at taking tests. It's a skill you can develop. At one point I got 85% in a French test knowing absolutely zero French. There are tricks such as: - Use of punctuation can give the answer away (eg a trailing "!") - Other questions can unintentionally give you the answer to a different question (eg it might conjugate a verb you're being asked about elsewhere); - Questions end up being correlated. So a given question might have 2 plausible answers and that answer will also answer another question. So you can answer if one way in one and another way in the other and you're pretty likely to get one of them right; - Multiple choice tests tend to evenly distribute answers so if you have 29 Cs in a 4-answer 100 question test already, it's less likely that a further C guess is right. Yes, people can intentionally re-weight the answers to avoid this but almost nobody does. - For other topics like math you often get marks for each step. Depending on how that marking key works, you can often get marks writing essentially nonsense that leads to a completely wrong answer; - When in doubt, guess something. This goes for multiple choice and written answers. Don't spend any time on it. Tests that deduct points for wrong answers are rare and you know about it beforehand. - Apply probability. So in a 100 question 4 answer multiple choice test where you have a 50% chance of knowing the answer, you should really get 75-80% on that test just from eliminating obviously wrong answers and simply guessing the rest. My point is that you can't really turn this off once you learn it so I can pretty much guess my way through any Duolingo questions and that means I don't learn anything. Even when you have to assemble words into a sentence, the answer is pretty obvious and it can get even more obvious in other languages (eg nouns in German are capitalized). I think I did Spanish Duolingo almost every day for a year and remember none of it.

psychoslave 1y ago

Anyone as experience with feedback on https://www.rocketlanguages.com/ https://www.rocketlanguages.com/ and https://babbel.com/ https://babbel.com/ ? I’m mostly interested in speaking out loud skills, and those two have voice recognition it seems.

tarentel 1y ago
I'm an ok French speaker, technically my second language although I "learned" Spanish in high school. At some point in a conversation people will realize I am not a native speaker but I can get by. I used a variety of things, including Duolingo for a while and Babbel for a bit, both of which I started on. Based on my experience, neither will get you very far for speaking. You'd be better off getting a real teacher or taking a class.
angry_moose 1y ago
I like Babbel a lot for reading/writing/listening but their speaking is a little weak. It's there but I find it pretty flaky - either so permissive it'll accept just about any sound you make, or so buggy it won't accept a single thing. I haven't done a lot with it, but Pimsleur (https://www.pimsleur.com/ https://www.pimsleur.com/) seems quite good for conversational. I've done a couple trials of it and plan to dive in when I finish my Babbel courses. For conversational though you might be better off just finding an online tutor. 1 hour a week with a native speaker is probably more effective than any of the apps.

joaohaas 1y ago

Cool... but nothing will ever beat Anki + Immersion. Here's one guide most Japanese learners follow: https://learnjapanese.moe/ https://learnjapanese.moe/

masijo 1y ago
Wish there were similar pages for other languages, I want to learn Russian and I can't find anything with this quality.
- joshdavham 1y ago
  > I want to learn Russian and I can't find anything with this quality. You could give Refold a shot! https://refold.la/how-to-learn-russian/ https://refold.la/how-to-learn-russian/ (disclosure: I also used to work there.)
Tainnor 1y ago
I don't think it's accurate to say that this is a guide "most" Japanese learners follow. There are some good (and some arguable) ideas there, but it's just one guide out of several, and most learners probably don't even browse the internet for such things and just learn Japanese in class or something.
kobebrookskC3 1y ago
i bet 99% of people will wash out of the 30 day routine, me being one of them. there are better ways to start than drinking from the firehose of "simple anime"

sirnonw 1y ago

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andyxing 1y ago

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thenoblesunfish 1y ago

Hope this takes off! Early Duolingo was very community focused and lots of fun, and proves people are really motivated to participate if you make the UI easy enough.

1oooqooq 1y ago
it's interesting how they had a huge community when they wanted everyone contributing new lessons and fixes.

kamatour 1y ago

Has anyone tried both LibreLingo and Duolingo? I'm curious if the open-source approach makes learning feel more natural?

pkdpic 1y ago

Nice to see this pop up, not that I mind giving Duo money every month for my kids account. Still looking for DuoLingo for actual programming... python etc... Specifically for elementary school kids... I know it's out there... Im getting closer... I know this is a false statement but it would be so easy for DuoLingo to add Python along side their Math and Music betas!! Please Duo hear my prayers...

alkonaut 1y ago

This space seems like one of those areas where it would be really hard to break in because their whole selling point is having had hundreds or thousands of people record and annotate an enormous amount of voice input, which I assume has to be hand polished for every single exercise? I'm sure some part of it could be automated these days, or some parts even use voice synthesis, but I'm sure it would take basically an army of people hand-crafting it for the experience not to be very janky in the end.

salimmadjd 1y ago

Duolingo user here with a 4 year streak. Duolingo is not a language teaching platform at its core. It’s a gaming platform with language as its gaming skill. Duolingo at some point became so focused on gamification that it just became a game (I believe they hired their lead PM from Zynga). If you’re on free version, just look at the ads you’re getting. Vast majority of the ads are for other games. I think you can learn a language if you use Duolingo’s streak gamification as a daily motivator but use supplemental materials to actually learn.

otherayden 1y ago
I actually really like this take. Despite the fact that most language learners hate on it, Duolingo has great product market fit, and I think it's for this reason. It's in the toilet time distraction/edutainment market as much as it is in the language market
zelphirkalt 1y ago
Have a friend, who is on his 7th or 8th year of every day using DuoLingo (DL) "learning" German. His German is still terrible. Phrase structure goes all overboard, verbs are not adapted to time, person and whatever else. It is a bit painful to see. People also say that some languages just have terrible lessons on DL. Maybe German is one of those. I tried using it for Chinese/Mandarin, but apparently classified myself too modestly in the beginning. I feel like the lessons did not teach me much at all and it became a game of quickly pressing things, while suffering through silly ads. It also never makes you actually write characters. Eventually I stopped using it. I think anything other than the most basic Chinese is better learned elsewhere.
- bunderbunder 1y ago
  An even basic Chinese is better learned from a Chinese-specific app like Lingodeer or HelloChinese. I tried all three when I was first getting started. I didn't end up going with any of them (I bought a textbook instead - gamification just isn't my jam), but I was at least fairly impressed with Lingodeer and HelloChinese. Both were clearly made with love. And I've met several more advanced learners who got started with them. By contrast, for all its users, I've yet to meet a single person who went with Duolingo and subsequently made it to an intermediate level in Chinese. I'm sure there's someone out there somewhere, but overall it seems that people's success rate with that app is bleak.

shemtay 1y ago

If I could change one thing about Duolingo, it would be to allow the user to turn off all the gamification completely. I don't care about fake internet gems, knowing how to speak Chinese (or whatever) is it's own reward, so stop wasting my time with bs! Nevertheless, Duolingo is an amazing and convenient starting point for unlocking the learning of new languages. Make your way through the entire course as fast as you can, while also listening to music, talking to people, talking to chatGPT, reading books, etc in the target language as soon as you can manage. Protip: learn your 3rd language using your second as the language of instruction.

damjon 1y ago

How about gamification in LibreLingo ? It's number one Duolingo feature.

sieve 1y ago

As someone who knows four languages[1] (picked every single one up during childhood) and is currently learning Sanskrit, I have to say that Krashen's input hypothesis and Orberg's Lingva Latina is probably the way to go if you are learning languages as an adult. The direct teaching method works but is time-consuming and generally used for languages that lead to an occupation, viz. English. The grammar translation method is a waste of time. It might satisfy your intellectual curiosity about the structure of the language but you won't be able to make yourself understood after a lifetime of study. I wonder at the sheer lunacy of dumping thousands of random sentences into your lap and translating it from one language to another. After a year and a half of false starts, I started reading a couple of Sanskrit stories every day. Because the context is maintained across the story, your brain starts recognizing patterns in sentences. You keep reading sentences like sarvē janāḥ kāryaṁ kurvanti sarvē janāḥ gacchanti sarvē janāḥ namanti and you automatically associate sarvē (all) with janāḥ (people) without needing to know the declension of those words. This applies to the cases as well. To be able to converse about or understand a wide variety of topics, you will eventually have to move beyond stories due to restrictions on the tense/aspect/moods you encounter as a result of the nature of the material. But that is doable. [1] Much of India is bilingual. A substantial minority might know four or more languages due to the many mother and father tongues and heavy internal migration across the states (whose boundaries were drawn on linguistic lines post-independence)

luqtas 1y ago
i don't know why people are taking Duolinguo and relatives as the definitive course to learn a language... they even cite at their FAQ about the need of going outside the app if you want 'fluency' some people are quite fine learning a limited number of phrases to lurk in a country. a great part of communication among humans also happens with the body/eyes. no one needs to discuss their phD dissertation in 4 different languages [0] https://blog.duolingo.com/can-duolingo-make-me-fluent/ https://blog.duolingo.com/can-duolingo-make-me-fluent/ edit: Duolinguo also is nice (and make a funny non-invasive joke) if you are using something like uBlock!
- djeastm 1y ago
  >they even cite at their FAQ about the need of going outside the app if you want 'fluency Sure, they've got that fig leaf covering them.

pessimizer 1y ago

It's a bad idea to imitate Duolingo, which has become VC without a purpose. The gimmick behind Duolingo was that there were so many things online and in the world that needed to be translated, so training people to learn languages while translating them was a win-win. We don't really need humans to translate written material anymore (esp with AI advances), and they never seemed to find a business model for that anyway. Since the gimmick is gone, it's just a generic language learning app with unimpressive results. And that still uses primitive spaced repetition algorithms. The bottom fell out. But since Duolingo had attracted a ton of cash on their founders rep from reCaptcha, it zombies on. I've had my account since the beta, and while I think it's good because it exposes people to a ton of words and utterances in their target language which they will hopefully roll around in their mouths, that's like step 1 in learning a language. Anecdotally, I had to abandon Duolingo entirely in order to learn Spanish; and not for a class or tutoring, but for their competitors both online and traditional. Techniques in language learning seem to be advancing quickly (like with spaced repetition, TPRS, and Krashen-inspired stuff), but Duolingo seems to be studiously ignoring them all, and plowing on doing the same thing. I think they should ditch everything but the cartoons, which are cute. But their base gets outraged whenever they change anything because Duolingo's changes were made in order to shift to getting revenue from the users rather than from "translation," so the users do not trust them. So Duolingo really have nothing but cute cartoons and a brand name. LibreLingo looks like they have cartoons, too. Other than those, there's nothing to distinguish Librelingo from any other Spanish-learning website.

hyperific 1y ago

I'm surprised more people aren't talking about the recent announcement that Duolingo is replacing contractors with AI. https://www.theverge.com/news/657594/duolingo-ai-first-replace-contract-workers https://www.theverge.com/news/657594/duolingo-ai-first-repla...

brewdad 1y ago
I'm guessing that's why this hit the front page today.
gnarlouse 1y ago
If DuoLingo is currently a thriving company, I am convinced it is exclusively because of branding momentum. I think Match.com's trajectory foreshadows the fate of DuoLingo. In the 00's, Match.com used to be the premier "try to meet a not-weird-fuck to date online" system. Then in the early 2010s, Tinder-style dating apps consumed the market. Shortly after, match.com started doing some really fucked up business practices because their niche market got swallowed up in a larger general market by a superior "free" product. Duolingo's users are sticky so long as the brand ideology holds: "if you want to learn a second language, play duolingo". Also, Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn also founded ReCAPTCHA. Every idea this man has capitalized on has been made obsolete by the advance of AI.

lakomen 1y ago

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zelphirkalt 1y ago

The app could use some spinners, when actions lead to a delay. I clicked on the landing page on the only available purple action button and nothing seemed to happen. I already checked my uBlock Origin, whether it is blocking something, but it does not. Already wanted to reload the page, when finally something visually changed, and the course was loaded. Simply a little spinner/animation would make this way less confusing. I like, that for keyboard input the special letters are given as buttons, so that I don't need to hunt for those on any US/English keyboard layout. One thing missing is a way to report mistakes in the learning material. For example I found "Buenos dias" to be translated to "Good morning".

valbaca 1y ago
> For example I found "Buenos dias" to be translated to "Good morning". buenos dias does mean good morning. it literally means good day and can be used as such but most often used as "good morning"

sh3rl0ck 1y ago

Really hope they can do something about the UX; well built OSS generally lacks good UI/UX.

insane_dreamer 1y ago

Great to see a FOSS app for language learning! Kudos. However, I think apps that focus on one particular language and how to learn that language are better than a one-size-fits-all approach like Duolingo. The structure and grammar of languages like Russian, Japanese, Chinese, and French (I've learned all 4) are all significantly different from each other. Or at least different approaches for language groups (French and Spanish, which I also speak, are similar enough to warrant the same approach).

brewdad 1y ago

Can anyone recommend a solid resource for learning Tagalog? Being a far less popular language than the standard "big boys" that most apps, web sites, books etc tend to offer, it's been a lot of false starts for me or simply feeling a bit lost when a resource throws me directly into a scene to learn dialog without having any of the foundational knowledge first. I plan to spend a year or two (at least) in the Philippines in the not too distant future. While most Filipinos understand English, I feel like learning at least some Tagalog would go a long way in fitting in and feeling less like an outsider.

barrell 1y ago
I really don’t want to be doing self promotion in someone else’s thread, but I have Tagalog support on https://phrasing.app https://phrasing.app. I just posted some demo videos this morning in comments if you check out my profile

dang 1y ago

Related ongoing thread: Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43827978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43827978 - April 2025 (43 comments)

alganet 1y ago

This language thing reminds me of Willian James Sidis.

gnarlouse 1y ago

Hot take y'all but what if, just what if, coded applications with injected content are ~GASP~ not the way humans learn language. I know that this LibreLingo project is probably somebody's baby, and if it works for them great. Heck, if it works for you, great! But for anybody who really wants to (durably) learn a new language, aren't the results already in? Immerse yourself in the language, be around people. At the very least, listen to native speakers on YouTube or something. Read articles/books. Struggle at it, like a baby! That's not pejorative either; babies are the world's premier language learners.

gitroom 1y ago

Yeah, I've used Duolingo and always end up doing the same stuff, but it's way too easy to just tap through and not actually learn anything real. Got me thinking - you think anything can really replace just talking to people and living with the language day to day?

martinrue 1y ago

Not FOSS, but for anyone who may find it useful, I launched a language learning project I've been hacking away on for a few months. Any feedback most welcome! https://langsesh.com https://langsesh.com