I got free of duolingo when I realized wasn’t really learning anymore and just trying to keep my streak up
My kids were big into Duolingo, one learning Finnish and the other learning Japanese. So I didn’t mind paying for extra stuff because, hey, it’s educational.
But then I’d ask them to say something in Japanese, or what something says - we watch a lot of anime - and they wouldn’t be able to. So I don’t pay for it anymore because it’s not actually educational.
Interestingly, I’m watching this great video as I type this which compares Duolingo to a casino, and I don’t entirely disagree.
i’ve been doing some 15 minutes of duolingo japanese for almost 10 months now, and i think i know a bit of japanese, and i could vaguely understand lyrics of songs if i stop it and read the text, i think the main issue for some people is that they only do it to “keep the streak”, which is the case for a lot of my irl friends, and they barely learnt anything. One of my friend did do a large number of russian lessons daily, and i think he now knows quite a bit of russian (aka, can speak)
i dont think i’ll be able to speak japanese in a daily convo in quite a while, cuz im too scared to speak, however im starting to understnad what they are speaking, so its not entirely accurate to say duolingo is pointless, cuz it really depend on ur attitude towards it
also, almost none of the anime kids ive met know any amount of japanese, the two topics couldnt be any more different
Duolingo isn’t a way to learn a language, in my opinion. It is really helpful, but I don’t remember new things from duo lessons. It’s only helpful to remember stuff I’ve learnt in actual language lessons. I’ve gotten better at German since I started duolingo but I haven’t learnt anything new.
Duolingo is better than nothing. But watching movies with subs will help u much more. Writing anything using language u want to learn is also a good way to get better at writing and probably reading.
Watching movies is certainly a good way to help your foreign language skills, but it’s practicing comprehension more than anything.
Being forced to formulate sentences on your own is a different skill that requires practice as well if you actually want to be able to speak a language. If Duolingo is too mechanical for you, there are other apps that let you find and chat with people who are interested in language exchange.
You can try any online app (like lemmy) where you can chat with native speakers.
You can join Discord servers for practicing your speaking (I would like to know a good open source alternative, but I don’t) or some chat roulette. But first you need to have good comprehension, if you have it you probably can put few sentences together.
I’ve found that when I watch something in another language with subtitles, I find myself going by what I heard, and using the subtitles to support or reinforce sections or words I didn’t understand. I often end up disagreeing with how things are translated, or there is something said in the foreign language that can’t simply be translated. In other words, I think using subtitles as reinforcement can be useful, whereas just reading every line and not thinking in the other language for yourself might not really be helping you much.
Right, I’m not saying it’s useless, just a different type of learning. As you said, it’s more of a reinforcement activity — repeating the words you may have already learned and putting them into a variety of real life contexts helps you remember them better.
However, at least personally, I do find it rather difficult to learn new words that way unless I constantly pause and rewind, which breaks the flow of the story and ends up not being super enjoyable.
When you learn new words, you need to actively repeat them a bunch of times until they stick, and Duolingo seems better suited for that.
Duo is at best a supplementary tool. If you’re doing nothing except Duo, of course you can’t speak the language. Fucking owl.
I believe there’s a way to get around the paid stuff if you set up the account to be in a classroom or something, if you’d still wanna block the ads.
I used to recommend the owl to everyone back when the discussions were free to access to anyone. Now that they hid it behind the paywall, there’s no explanation at all why a certain word would be the right (or wrong) answer, how you would use the word in other situations or any other interesting fact. Without the discussions (plus the way they re-structured the Spanish course, setting me back and making it even longer), DL is just a dragged out beginner’s vocabulary. I guess it’s still okay for the very basics, but I don’t really feel I have learnt much in two months.
but lol, still upvoted
Spanish or vanish
French or clench
Japanese or broken knees
Russian or crushin
Learn Finnish or else you’re finished
I’ll have to break those niko niko knee caps
I started duolingo a few weeks ago and I’m loving it. I turned off almost all notifications though.
They’re like an ex that I’ve blocked on everything and send emails. Its been 30 days, you obviously never cared!
I like it too, learned hiragana and katanana in two weeks.
Kanji I’m doing with flash cards tho, and supplementally I read Japanese children’s stories since Duolingo alone isn’t enough to actually learn.
Finally I use Meetup and attend language practice sessions so I can use it with native speakers.
Futurama fans:
Native Americans looking stressed.
I don’t know how to do pictures.
Depends on the specific group some tribes see them as wise mystical creatures like a teacher of sorts
Itchy knee
San, she go
Also aliens weirdly enough Owls and aliens
I’ll never use Duolingo or any other product whose company posts “organically” on social media like Duolingo does.
It should be illegal for brands to post comments on personal social media (this includes things like reddit, lemmy, or Tiktok), as doing so forces the user’s page to serve as a billboard for the brand while the user receives no compensation for this implicit endorsement and only even has autonomy in this advertisement in so far as their ability to delete the brand’s comment, assuming they noticed it in the first place. It’s disgusting. Duolingo isn’t allowed to come to my house and put a sign in my yard without my permission, so they shouldn’t be able to effectively do the same thing in our digital yards either.
