
500 days of Duolingo: What you can and can’t learn from a language app - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/04/smarter-living/500-days-of-duolingo-what-you-can-and-cant-learn-from-a-language-app.html
======
bit_logic
Learning a language requires immersion. That's why classes with other students
are more effective than flashcards.

VR has potential to really make a difference here. Imagine you load a VR
level. It's a busy outdoor market in Taipei. In your inventory you have some
cash. NPCs with AI and chat logic are around you interacting. Your goal is to
buy some bread and get to the subway. You see a vendor with some bread, but
don't remember the word for bread. You hear a NPC talking to the vendor and
buying some bread. Now you remember. You speak the words, but the vendor
doesn't understand. Your tones are off. You try again, this time the vendor
smiles and says how much it costs. You give cash, take the bread, and walk to
the subway. The next level, buying a subway pass...

This basically already exists in RPG games. It just needs mic support so you
can speak and good "game" design that's designed to help learn the language.
Playing this for an hour a day would be more effective than an hour of
flashcards. And also a lot fun.

~~~
gibba999
I found the article to be BS. My experience:

1) Classes with other students are just about the least effective way to learn
a foreign language. You just reinforce each others' bad accents, grammar
mistakes, etc.

2) Duolingo is okay for some things, but not for others. But discounting all
apps after having tried one or two, though, is a lot like the famous Gates
quote: "640k should be enough for anybody" (which he claims to have never
said), or the nineties articles as to why no one would shop online.

3) Pimsleur is brilliant for developing basic conversational ability. It works
really, really well.

4) The Pimsleur model could take you all the way to fluency, but it stops at a
half-year of lessons for the most developed languages (and 2 weeks for some of
the less developed ones). Developing four years of lessons at this level of
quality is hard and expensive.

5) BUT: Moving on beyond Pimsleur, there is a range of tools which are
passable. Things like Duolingo, Memrise, Supermemo, etc. can help build
vocabulary. There are apps for watching movies for language learning (which
adds subtitles, dictionaries, etc.) which can help build comprehension. Etc.
Picking-and-choosing, you can get something which, while not as good as going
there, is much better than classes.

6) This field is progressing super-quickly on the whole. What we have today is
much better than five years ago, and we'll have much better things five years
from now. I'd be surprised if apps weren't the best way to learn a language in
not too long.

~~~
usaar333
> Classes with other students are just about the least effective way to learn
> a foreign language.

Well, sure a private tutor is better, but that's a lot more expensive.

Without a teacher of some sort that can provide feedback, I have no idea how I
could have learned elementary Mandarin (that is produce and listen to sounds
radically different from my native English).

From what I've seen the ability for computers to give feedback on what you are
doing wrong is far away from a trained human's.

> The Pimsleur model could take you all the way to fluency,

I've been looking over their website - it seems like it is just audio lessons
and no tutor is provided? If that is correct, how would someone learn to
correctly pronounce words in say Mandarin using this?

~~~
thaumasiotes
> Without a teacher of some sort that can provide feedback, I have no idea how
> I could have learned elementary Mandarin

One of the points made in _The Language Instinct_ is that children pick up
their languages without using any explicit feedback. That is, people in the
child's life who can already speak are liable to ignore errors in the child's
speech, and when they do point out errors, the child will essentially always
ignore the feedback.

But I wouldn't say children don't get feedback at all. They get a lot of
important feedback, such as whether the thing they wanted to happen when they
spoke did happen, or whether the person they were talking to appeared to
understand them. However, this kind of feedback is generally not the kind
provided by a "teacher"; everyone automatically provides it.

~~~
usaar333
Agreed. By "people" above, I should have clarified "adults".

The issue is that it is very difficult for adults to learn new phonemes
(individual units of sound that distinguish words from each other) - an adult
hearing a novel phoneme tends to map it to one existing in their native
language.

Children however aren't handicapped by this problem -- they actually learn the
phonemes of their language before they understand the words.

In the Mandarin context, this means it is difficult to learn the ü sound - it
just is perceived as something like "u" (resulting in inability to distinguish
lü from lu). Tones are another category, where it is just plain hard for
adults to distinguish words by tonality. Needless to say, production of the
novel sounds is also incredibly hard.

Point being - it's difficult to bridge this gap - and I'd imagine near
impossible for most without a teacher. I find Pimsleur's claim of learning a
language "effortlessly" with a "near-native accent" \- with only the aid of a
CD - absurd in this context.

A source that goes into this:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2846316/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2846316/)

~~~
yorwba
Wikipedia has
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Mandarin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Mandarin)
and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese_phonology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Chinese_phonology)
Similar pages exist for many other languages. If you study the descriptions of
the individual phones carefully, you should be able to consciously position
your tongue and mouth to produce the correct sound.

E.g. the ü sound is
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_front_rounded_vowel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_front_rounded_vowel)
, which means that it only differs from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_front_unrounded_vowel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_front_unrounded_vowel)
(the English ee sound) by the lips being rounded instead of unrounded. English
also has rounded vowels, for example
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_back_rounded_vowel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close_back_rounded_vowel)
(the oo sound). So you can learn to consciously pronounce ü by pronouncing ee
and then rounding your lips as when pronouncing oo while keeping the tongue in
the ee position.

Most teachers don't know enough about phonology to give that kind of
explanation. My Mandarin teacher certainly didn't. I can only credit Wikipedia
with helping me perfect my pronunciation to the point where I can be mistaken
for a native speaker on the phone.

------
tudorconstantin
My now 12.5 years old daughter started to learn English on Duolingo when she
was around 9. She didn't complete the full course, but has around 100-150 days
of lessons. It definitely helped her starting to understand the language.

She loves Harry Potter so much that after reading the whole series in
Romanian, she started to read the first volume in English. Didn't finish that
either, but managed to read about 100 pages of it and she said that after
30-40 pages, it became substantially easier to understand.

Now she's among top 3 students, if not the first, in her class at English,
outpacing colleagues who take 2-3 hours weekly of extra English lessons,
without having a single paid English lesson.

Duolingo might not teach you how to speak a language fluently, but it
definitely can give you a headstart in learning one.

She's not able to speak English fluently yet, but she's able to watch TV
series without subtitles and she's able to actually communicate with other
English speaking people when visiting other countries.

~~~
tdumitrescu
When I started learning more languages as an adult, I found that the biggest
accelerator for me personally was likewise to read novels, even if they were
way beyond my nominal skill level. The first 50-100 pages would be slow
grinding, looking up almost everything in the dictionary, but then it would
rapidly get faster and easier as I got used to common turns of phrases, idioms
etc. And it was great for maintaining real motivation, wanting to read and
understand these captivating stories by Eco, Houellebecq, etc.

~~~
benjaminjackman
That's a really interesting approach. I wonder if there are reading apps which
have that dictionary integrated, but which still require a mouseover / tap to
display it for a particular word (they are just using a translation language
dictionary).

~~~
sweeneyrod
Look up LingQ

~~~
copperx
LingQ is great but too expensive for what it is, in my opinion. You could
build a similar (unpolished) app in a month over some weekends.

------
cosarara
The worst part of Duolingo is how boring it is to level up a skill to 5 when
you already understand the topics taught. When learning German or Italian and
testing out of the earlier levels, the exercise you get most of the time is
just "sort these English words to translate the sentence". You can get it
right all the time just by looking for a grammatically correct sentence with
the most superficial of understanding. And if you really understand the
sentence, you feel like you are wasting your time. What's the point? Let me
take the level 4 or level 5 test directly!

I feel that over time, the app has been too optimized for user engagement
instead of efficient learning. A/B test abuse, and looking at the wrong
metrics.

~~~
Andrew_nenakhov
Repetition is the mother of learning, as the old Russian proverb states.

The point is making a phrase really get memorized.

~~~
tcbawo
The Pimsleur method, which relies on a progressly timed learning technique
really helps commit language to long term memory. It's audio only, but I
really recommend then. I believe Ankh is based on this as well.

~~~
wallflower
If you are interested in repetition, Assimil is similar.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assimil](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assimil)

> These are some of my favorite Christmas gifts because they're the only self-
> teachers I know that work. In just 20 minutes a day -- if you do exactly
> what they tell you to with the books and accompanying recordings - \- then
> presto! You will be talking like, roughly, an unusually cosmopolitan 3-year
> old.

[https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=502158...](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5021582)

------
LanceH
I'm using Duolingo to learn my 4th language. My previously recent language was
studied in the early 90's, for perspective.

Currently, I'm taking on Japanese. Becoming fluent with this app (or any other
single app) is going to be just impossible. In isolation it will be a
haphazard collection of phrases picked up at a glacial pace.

The pluses to Duo are huge, though. What some see as repetition to gain master
on a mini-subject are of huge benefit compared just seeing the one or two
sample sentences in a book, or hearing the same. I have to build sentences
with the correct structure and I'm immediately graded and shown the answer.

As a self learner, there was nothing like this thirty years ago. With
Japanese, there are particles which mark the different parts of a sentence.
Sure, these are all in grammar books, but having them drilled into me and
forcing me to construct sentences with them is hugely helpful.

There are lots of complaints that the Japanese course in particular is bad or
leads to stilted speech, but at the structural level it seems to agree with
the grammar guides and textbooks I'm _also_ using.

Learning Arabic, I had a stack of textbooks three feet high and dozens of
cassette tapes. Surely Duolingo replaces a large chunk of these, especially
the starter ones.

It isn't good at bulk/breadth, and there is no speaking component.

Edit: I guess I'm saying I'm a huge fan of Duo (and other apps) as an addition
to the tools available for learning a language.

~~~
akg_67
Duolingo is not good for learning East Asian languages. For Japanese, it is
particularly bad. Try LingoDeer instead.

~~~
Redoubts
Why?

~~~
DrPhish
For one, the accents of the speakers they are using are humorously bad for
Japanese specifically

------
Al-Khwarizmi
For Mandarin Chinese, I found the Chinese-specific apps HelloChinese and
ChineseSkill to be much better than Duolingo. Duolingo seems to follow a one-
size-fits-all approach, and it suffers when faced with a language with tones,
a complex character system, a romanization system commonly used for learning
(pinyin), etc. Those other two apps have been called Duolingo clones, but they
were designed with Chinese specifically in mind and it shows, they're leaps
and bounds better.

I also have found The Chairman's Bao (news, curated and graded by HSK level,
together with pinyin, vocabulary, grammar points and questions associated with
each piece of news) and various Coursera courses helpful.

There is also plenty of crappy apps and resources around, and probably much
better resources than the current ones will be made, but if one chooses well,
it's amazing how easier it is to learn a language now than ten years ago.
Getting to any nontrivial level of Mandarin Chinese was all but impossible
without classes, now it's doable.

~~~
mgbmtl
Much appreciated. I have been learning Mandarin on Duolingo. It was mostly
just for fun, but at some point it starts getting a bit frustrating (lack of
notes, topics, reading longer texts).

------
reitzensteinm
Frustration with Duolingo and Memrise when learning German led me to build a
tool that could generate sentences in German and English simultaneously, while
obeying the grammar rules.

In my opinion, the handful of hand crafted sentences they provide bundles way
too much complexity together at random.

In a traditional text book, you'd get a dozen questions that are very similar,
changing one or two aspects of a sentence.

Ich habe ein Buch. Sie haben ein Buch. Ich habe zwei Bücher.

So, I built a ClojureScript app that did just that. Sitting down and churning
through hundreds of those allowed me to build an intuition for grammar rules
that I knew on paper but would mess up when attempting to use them.

But it took quite a bit of time to write, especially when the sentences became
complicated, so was almost certainly a net negative to my personal learning.

I had thought about building it out further, but I don't speak German so would
need a partner, and ended up getting funding for something else so life took
me in a different direction.

I do wish there were a product like it though, if anyone knows of anything
similar I'd love to know. It's not that exotic, just a digitized textbook!

~~~
wallflower
> So, I built a ClojureScript app that did just that. Sitting down and
> churning through hundreds of those allowed me to build an intuition for
> grammar rules that I knew on paper but would mess up when attempting to use
> them.

If you did not use an existing rules engine, would you please consider open
sourcing what you have done to help others who are considering building
something similar? Or describe more in depth how you did it?

The current tools I see out there like LanguageTool are quite horrid when it
comes to expressing the rules.

[https://github.com/languagetool-
org/languagetool](https://github.com/languagetool-org/languagetool)

~~~
reitzensteinm
I had a bunch of helper functions, but my view was that there's no way to
solve it in general; building exercises would always involve writing
annotations via a DSL.

You wouldn't be able to avoid hand crafting each sentence structure (like you
were writing a textbook), but the advantage comes from being able to
parameterize the generation of tests. You define where the holes are and what
can go in them for a particular exercise, and the combinatorial nature of it
yields thousands of examples, with tunable complexity, allowing you to crunch
on a topic with enough variation that you still have to think and not get
bored.

Ich mag rote Bücher, aber er grüne besser ist denkt.

It's been two years so es ist viellicht nicht richtig!

I don't think if you solve it this way, my solution would really be a helpful
starting point.

I didn't have a plan for moving past the first year or two of learning, I
think you could learn a ton of basics this way, but once language gets more
subtle and varied you'd probably need to do something else entirely.

Also I don't know if this would work with other languages. German is extremely
regular.

~~~
wallflower
Thank you! Yes, German is very regular. I’ve also heard Russian is where you
construct a cathedral of grammar so that you can begin speaking.

------
msvan
The best way to learn a language is to need to learn it. If you come in
contact with a foreign language daily, it becomes much easier to both practice
and motivate yourself to continue to practice. As someone who has spent
thousands of hours learning a foreign language, I've come to the conclusion
that I will never do it again unless I have a proper reason for it. Might seem
obvious, but it's worth pointing out.

~~~
chungleong
The best way to learn a language is spending a good size chunk of money.
People are loss adverse. The need to extract value from the sunk cost is a
powerful motivator. That's why in-person classes tend to be more effective
than books. A book is always going to be there. Missing a class on the other
hand is money down the drain.

~~~
msvan
I don't think this is true. I've spent lots of money on "necessary equipment"
for my hobbies, and that hasn't made me commit more time to them. People buy
expensive running shoes because they see themselves as being runners, and then
they never put them on.

~~~
chungleong
Running shoes don't integrate from lack of use. A membership at a health club,
on the other hand, goes to waste if you don't use it.

~~~
isbvhodnvemrwvn
Your language skills deteriorate without use as well. I used to know German at
a passable level at school, I no longer do. I can see patterns ans know some
words, but it's definitely heavily degraded.

------
SlyShy
As far as language learning apps go I've gotten way more milage out of
Clozemaster than I ever did out of Duolingo. At least for learning vocabulary
Clozemaster's combination of spaced repetition and cloze-completions helps
immensely (especially using it on free text input mode instead of multiple
choice). That said Duolingo does help a lot more with the dead basics.

For context I could already speak Mandarin because I grew up bilingual but
always found that I've have to laboriously re-learn vocabulary for literacy.
Clozemaster seems like the most sustainable way for me to maintain an expanded
vocabulary (in both Traditional and Simplified characters) that I've found.

I just do Clozemaster every time I sit on a toilet, pretty easy habit cue, if
a bit gross.

------
bigred100
Anyone else feel like language learning is overrated? (Yes I’m an uncultured
provincial American and I’m sorry). Unless you frequently travel somewhere
where another language is spoken, have family that speaks another language, or
want to travel places like that, it’s hard for me to see why learning more
about your own language, math or something, socializing, learning about how
your government and society work, or something else wouldn’t be more rewarding
in the long run. And, actually be able to give you some reward over a
reasonable period of time (1 year) versus learning a language where I think
you’ll reasonably at it for at least half a decade to achieve proficiency
unless you’re really dedicated or move there.

~~~
sanderjd
Upvoted because I want to see replies to this question.

My intuition is that language learning has other positive effects than just
the practical one of allowing you to converse with other people in that
language. For instance you say that math would be more rewarding in the long
run. But why? Most people really don't have a practical need for math past
arithmetic. But your intuition is that it is nonetheless rewarding. I strongly
agree! But I think the same is true of language learning, for very similar
reasons.

But I don't really know if my intuition is right. Maybe someone else here has
a better answer.

~~~
zahllos
I'll reply. Firstly to the parent poster:

I'm a native English speaker who learned French to a conversational level (~B2
in the European Language Framework) before I left my home country. That
language skill helped me get a job where I am now. The country I am in is
multilingual, so the ability to learn languages and a willingness to make an
effort with other languages is very important.

I can however understand this attitude, especially if you don't travel enough
to warrant it and don't really need to use it. I feel sad typing this, because
I am personally very interested in languages, but language skills in my home
country aren't particularly valuable or desired and English dominates. If you
decide to dedicate that time to learning a different skill, well I can't
really fault that.

However I'd make some observations. Firstly, knowing some words even if you
travel infrequently can be helpful. Secondly, according to wikipedia, 12% of
the US speak Spanish, 29% in California. That's not nothing.

As to the benefits, I personally think there are numerous. People say you
"understand the culture" or something but I'm not sure you get this unless you
immerse in a native-speaking country. What you get on a purely linguistic
level is an understanding of grammar, an understanding of some word roots
(especially if you learn French, which had a significant influence on English
as a result of the Normal invasion, or Latin. Similar benefits probably exist
if you learn other romance languages or maybe German/Dutch), and an
understanding of how that language influences how the speakers approach the
world. Also, if you ever want to help a non-native speaker improve their
English, it very much helps to appreciate the struggles they're going through.

Since this is HN, I don't think my language skills have improved my
programming at all. I don't like duolingo.

------
imartin2k
I’ve used Duolingo for several years almost daily for 2-3 minutes to get
started with learning Spanish (on a very longterm time horizon). It was a
great way to start (because it felt like basically zero effort, other than
establishing the daily habit which is naturally easy for me). Nowadays I read
and watch Spanish-language news and write a daily journal in Spanish. I’m not
at fluency yet but progress is steady.

~~~
mieseratte
It's a great way to start, and a great way to practice certain skills that are
perhaps less oiled. I read foreign papers, listen to foreign music, and watch
foreign films but that only helps so much with the actual speaking part of
language. To those complaining of DuoLingo shortcomings, remember it's a part
of language learning and not a one-stop-shop.

Practicing tricky conjugations and endings for languages is where DuoLingo is
of most use to me, such that I keep up with my "language feel" so on-the-fly
speaking isn't as mentally taxing. The times where I have taken extended
breaks from DuoLingo would always end in my feeling as though I was getting
rusty and not able to properly speak.

Also, thank you to whomever added the "leaderboard" feature to DuoLingo.
Really brings out my competitiveness such that I now do something like 300
lessons per week as opposed to doing maybe 50 per week back in the day. Love
when apps do things like that, helping me help myself.

------
imtringued
Duolingo felt Like a massive waste of time to me. I don't remember it helping
me beyond reinforcing my hiragana a bit. Multiple choice vocab training
doesn't work and the amount you learn per day is way too low considering I did
30 minutes per day. After I switched to Anki my vocabs took off like a rocket.
Duolingo basically cost me 3 months without learning anything. Of course back
then I was lazy so maybe Duolingo helped me get started without losing
interest quickly.

~~~
viraptor
I feel similar way. Duolingo has the best gamification which actually works.
But it didn't actually teach me much. I ended up moving to Rosetta stone
(better in content, worse at keeping me interested). Then after getting some
more experience I switched to lessons over Skype and don't regret it at all.
This was for Japanese, which is not at the same level as the much more popular
Spanish though.

------
Jerry2
This is purely anecdotal but I think it could be how most people will
experience language study.

On my last flight from Japan, I sat next to a 20-something couple who spent a
week in Japan. They told me they had a great time but they had problems trying
to communicate. While most Japanese know a bit of English, they wanted to
converse in Japanese and had incredibly hard time. Both of them spent 5 months
studying Japanese on Duolingo on their phones and thought they had a decent
grasp if language so they were surprised when they couldn't understand
Japanese native speakers and couldn't speak it well enough for natives to
understand them.

I never even heard of Duolingo before this experience and after trying ti
myself for an hour, I can think of a half-a-dozen better ways to spend 5
months studying Japanese than to do work for Duolingo.

------
kabacha
I was an early duolingo adopter but I feel that the app went nowhere if not
down-hill. The main drive force at the beginning was learning a language just
good enough and moving onto translating articles and comparing translations
with other users and discussing these - that was a very intersting way of
learning. Today you just grind simple questions on terribly designed courses.
The writte material is an absolute joke and for the longest time wasn't even
available on mobile.

Also this obsession with streak really killing motivation for learning.
Someone should send duolingo the article that was on HN front-page few days
ago about learning being more effecitve when taking breaks.

------
kostarelo
I've used Duolingo for several months (a year ago) to learn Spanish and when I
visited Barcelona for the first time I was impressed by how I was able to put
some every day phrases in use, things like "How are you? Can I have a coffee?"
etc..

The thing I don't like about Duolingo is its curriculum and the way they
structure their lessons. I found it very difficult to go from the early
beginner stage to the more advanced phrases and vocabulary due to Duolingo
trying to teach me phrases early on that made no sense, like the famous "The
lion eats monkeys"[1].

A month ago I started using busuu[2] and I am loving it. They have a great
structure, they are explaining it very well and I am able to understand fairly
quickly[3]. Even better, they have setup a network where users can send
exercises to other members (native speakers of the language you are trying to
speak) and they will correct and rate them. The network is very active, as
soon as I submit my exercise, a couple of minutes later someone will have
corrected it. (Premium plan though, I made a 3 months plan, hopefully it will
be enough to get me on track).

I would suggest everyone to give busuu a try.

[1]:
[https://em.wattpad.com/e5f4065cb909961cd40e0ff3c277e684f9b28...](https://em.wattpad.com/e5f4065cb909961cd40e0ff3c277e684f9b2866d/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f4a7132704e316d726e554f334e513d3d2d3134302e313531363936363664363739616165393232363438303439303032352e6a7067?s=fit&w=720&h=720)
[2]: [https://busuu.com](https://busuu.com) [3]:
[https://imgur.com/a/3PrxDBH](https://imgur.com/a/3PrxDBH)

~~~
Zsolt
Not sure when, but the spanish learning tree has been re-worked and thankfully
there are no more sentences like that.

Those weird sentences make for a good laugh though. I was asked if I speak
spanish, I've answered with a confident "El gato beben leche"

------
melling
I learned Spanish 12 years ago by studying in Antigua, Guatemala then
continuing to backpack through South America. I never felt that I learned
Spanish until after about a month in Colombia where I had to use Spanish
almost daily for the entire day.

I’ve tried DuoLingo for French and I’ve built several language apps myself. I
think we’ll eventually get to the point where we can learn new languages from
our phones but it will require a lot more content and interaction.

i haven’t updated my core apps in 4 years:

[http://appstore.com/h4labs](http://appstore.com/h4labs)

At the moment I’m merely trying to assist the learning process with simple
games:

Word Search:

\- [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4labs-word-
search/id1311744...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/h4labs-word-
search/id1311744075?mt=8)

Matching Games:

\- [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pictures-and-
words/id1459560...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pictures-and-
words/id1459560476?mt=8) \- [https://itunes.apple.com/sk/app/language-
pairs/id1438817614?...](https://itunes.apple.com/sk/app/language-
pairs/id1438817614?mt=8)

I’m looking for other ideas to build. At the moment, I’m working on a Verb
Conjugation Game.

I’m also building Spanish verb rule database on Github:

[https://github.com/melling/Spanish_Verbs/blob/master/Conjuga...](https://github.com/melling/Spanish_Verbs/blob/master/Conjugation_Rules.md)

------
ben_w
I agree with the criticisms in this article. I currently have a 1.012 day
streak on Duolingo, which I’m using to learn German, Esperanto, and Greek.
I’ve “completed” the German course several times as the course was expanded,
and even with the help of Clozemaster and Memrise I’m still only a B1 on an
online CEFR test. It’s fine for the basics, but there’s no way it’ll make you
good enough to, say, start working for a German-language software development
company.

~~~
microcolonel
> _1.012 day streak_

You are even using the German typographic conventions for numbers in the wrong
language, I'm sure you're well on your way!

> _It’s fine for the basics, but there’s no way it’ll make you good enough to,
> say, start working for a German-language software development company._

Sed cxu vi povas lerni suficxe da Esperanto, ke vi povus labori cxe Esperanta
programaro kompanio?

~~~
adminu
According to [1] there are at least 8 more countries with that kind of a
thousend seperator

[1] [http://www.statisticalconsultants.co.nz/blog/how-the-
world-s...](http://www.statisticalconsultants.co.nz/blog/how-the-world-
separates-its-digits.html)

------
moorhosj
I’ve found no better technique than a language exchange partner. If you are
learning Spanish, find a Spanish speaker trying to learn English. Meet up for
an hour speaking English for 30 minutes and Spanish for 30 minutes. For me,
this was the only way to put lessons into practice without the stress.

~~~
Lerner_Adams
But it doesn't apply when it comes to unpopular(frankly speaking I am a
Chinese and several years ago I tried my best to find a partner for English
but failed) languages like Chinese.

~~~
wallflower
Have you considering paying someone?

Since friends will be hesitant to correct you when you make a mistake, I
recommend iTalki ([https://www.italki.com](https://www.italki.com)) as it is
considerably less inexpensive than in-person lessons/practice.

------
sammorrowdrums
Duolingo uses too much translation and not enough real ear training or
customisation to be effective. Translation agruably hampers fluency.

There is a method and book I used called Fluent Forever and I learned more
Dutch before coming to live in NL over a few months than most people I've met
who have lived there for many years. You can create immersion fairly trivially
without being there physically...

Fluent forever (and their forthcoming app) works essentially like this:

\- hearing and pronouncing new phonemes \- 600 words in contextual sentences
(with native speaker audio and self chosen images), using spaced repetition,
helping you to absorb vocab and basic grammar without learning it directly.
-continuing to build your own sentences and learn words while working
occasionally with a tutor that you essentially employ to help you to get more
words for flashcards and to speak in language for hours (italki is good for
it). \- buy grammar books and look for some good examples to apply rules into
sentences about your own life / story so you can absorb more core grammar
without verb tables etc.

I did buy frequency dictionary, target language native dictionary, grammar
books, some literature and access to audio books in target language

It's not free but not super expensive either. Time commitment of ideally an
hour a day 7 days a week was hard part.

------
bluetomcat
As a non-native speaker in a non-English speaking country, spending time
reading and writing comments on HN has, I think, greatly improved my English
skills. I am always intrigued to discover new sentence structures and phrasal
verbs put in real use. I have also found that the particular usage of English,
that is, the writing style, the vocabulary, the bias, are to a large extent a
reflection of the culture in English-speaking countries.

~~~
lostphilosopher
If you wrote more about the relationship between the language and the culture
from a non-native perspective - I'd read it.

~~~
bluetomcat
In my mother tongue (Bulgarian), the style of everyday communication is rather
different. Ad-hominem arguments are not rare and are sometimes considered a
legitimate way of reasoning, people are also expecting to receive and send
"orders" when they communicate in a business environment. All of that doesn't
foster any deep reasoning and leads to shallow conversations which change
their direction quite sporadically.

Coming here to this website, I am able to enjoy a style of coherent
communication where your arguments must be well-grounded and logically sound.
In the relatively rare cases of applying personal bias while questioning the
claims of others, you do so with much softer words and phrases.

For example, something like "I'd like to pretend that the issue is..." is a
construct which can be translated to Bulgarian with a very similar grammatical
construction, but it is virtually unused and would be considered outrageously
snobbish and pretentious when used. We would just say "the issue is...".

~~~
tpoblf
This is fascinating; thanks for sharing.

------
Mirioron
I envy the author's persistence. 500 days of working on a task without
skipping a day is impressive.

~~~
phorese
It is impressive, but you can buy items (with the in-app currency you get from
finishing lections) that allow you to skip single days (or even whole
weekends, IIRC).

~~~
SyneRyder
That's correct - though you still need to log in to buy a Streak Freeze after
it's used up, so you can't skip more than 48 hours. You can't "buy" multiple
Streak Freezes in advance.

The Weekend Amulet is only offered after completing the lesson on Friday, as
far as I can tell - you can't just buy them in the store, and they expire
after the weekend is over whether you used it or not.

(I'm currently on an 872 day streak.)

~~~
rgoulter
I got a bit over a 500 streak but stopped after that. I felt that spaced-
repetition on the words was more effective than whatever DuoLingo was doing,
and DuoLingo's lesson for the language I was learning was not well maintained.

The gamification techniques DuoLingo's used made it much easier to maintain
the streak. Albeit, it was really easy to just do DuoLingo "to get it done"
rather than focusing on it as part of study.

------
jcims
This is where conversational AI will be an incredible asset. Imagine being
able to spend your commute with a personal language coach.

~~~
wallflower
I feel we are only a couple years away from a Google AI blog announcement of a
AI language teacher prototype.

~~~
sideral
They released an AI-powered language learning app two months ago
[https://bolo.withgoogle.com/intl/en/](https://bolo.withgoogle.com/intl/en/)

------
microcolonel
Don't try to learn 100% of what you know about a language from an app; and if
you can manage to install an input method for your target language, toggle
those "rearrange these words" exercises into typing exercises.

If your target language has any media you enjoy watching (this is hard for me
with Mandarin, and to some extent Japanese, since I find most of the TV shows
basically unwatchable), consume that with subtitles, and pay a bit of
attention at first to how things are said. If you hear a new word or phrase
which sounds useful by its translation, repeatedly transcribe the phrase in
the target writing system, and get a feel for why it means what it does.

Duolingo is a tool, but just as you should not attempt to build a house with
only a carpenter's hammer, you should not attempt to learn a language with
only Duolingo.

------
ngngngng
Slightly off topic, but if you are multilingual, teach your kids. My parents
are fluent in Japanese, Spanish, Kekchi, ASL, and English between the two of
them. But they didn't bother to teach me or my siblings, so we only speak
American English.

------
Zarath
Duolingo works for languages that have grammar the same or nearly the same as
English (or possibly whatever language you're learning it in), but when you
try to learn something like Japanese it is almost entirely useless.

~~~
warabe
Hey, that sounds interesting. Could you elaborate? As a native Japanese
speaker, I’d like to hear your theory.

------
galfarragem
I used Memrise until I got bored: being forced to learn and repeat _ad
nauseam_ words that I'm sure I will never use is stupid. Since then I use an
Anki deck with selected words/sentences picked from a Polish newspaper and a
cheatsheet[1], that I should update more often, for patterns and macro
understanding.

[1] [https://github.com/archimodels/learning-
notes/blob/master/no...](https://github.com/archimodels/learning-
notes/blob/master/notes-polish%20language.yaml)

------
WheelsAtLarge
Doulingo seems to be a solution to learning a language but it's only a tool to
help you.

Even after a long time of using Duolingo most users will not have the ability
to have a simple discussion.

The Pimsleur method is infinitely better for learning to speak a new
languuage. With Pimsleur, you can learn the response to given situations. Also
waiting to learn reading, writing and the grammar of a language is probably
better after you have a basic understanding of the language since you start to
equate words with the way you would pronounce them in your language rather
than the one you want to learn.

There is nothing like speaking the language to learn it. Duolingo is good as a
side tool to help you learn but not your primary method.

If you want to learn a language there are better ways to get to fluency.
Duolingo is good at keeping you engaged so use it in conjunction with another
method to help you learn. Unfortunately, there are no easy ways to learn. You
have to put the effort and time.

------
MichailP
I think there is no substitute for old style learning, teacher, classroom and
stress of memorizing about 20 words for the next class. Did anyone use those
small format notebooks with two columns so you can effectively examine
yourself? One column for foreign word and second for mother tongue word?

~~~
wan23
That's interesting. I have been under the impression for years that no one has
ever learned a language successfully this way.

~~~
MichailP
I think it is great for vocabulary. But vocabulary is only a part of knowing a
language. Apps mostly aim at vocabulary, and while approach is similar I think
it is much better to stare at a paper notebook then your smartphone screen.

------
Lerner_Adams
I am a Chinese and I am learning German on Duolingo in English and sometimes
learn English in German. I am on my 561 day streak today and I find it is very
useful.

Before practice I can learn the related grammar and the newly added stories
feature and tinycards function is of great help(glean words in context).

------
drag00n
I've been learning French and German throughout the last years, and I tried
different setups. I came to the conclusion that apps like duolingo lack a
consistent (or any) narrative, following a set of characters that interact
with each other and the world. A good example for German is Deutsche Welle:
[https://learngerman.dw.com/en/overview](https://learngerman.dw.com/en/overview)

I've recently written more on the topic in my post on linkedin:
[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-duolingo-bad-way-learn-
la...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-duolingo-bad-way-learn-language-
what-do-instead-roman-prokofyev/)

------
firefoxd
Duolingo is s fun mobile game that happens to have words in different
languages. It uses all modern gamification and addiction technics to keep you
hooked.

However, the very act of using the app means you are willing to learn a new
language. As a consequence, you will learn more about those languages through
other external factors, like people or paid programs.

If Duolingo's only purpose is to keep you interested into learning long enough
to learn languages externally, then I guess that's not too bad either.

I wrote about my own experience of 383 days here:
[https://idiallo.com/blog/no-spanish-with-duo](https://idiallo.com/blog/no-
spanish-with-duo)

------
coldtea
This link is a joke, but it would be a very effective way to learn a language.
I'd guess everyone of you can understand almost everything said, even if they
don't speak Spanish:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgOqJLRpYI8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgOqJLRpYI8)

And I can imagine the lessons/clip getting progressively more advanced. Has a
course based on narrative clips been actually tried to anyone's knowledge?

(If it was made in the soap opera style (and budget), it wouldn't even be that
expensive to make).

------
jonplackett
Michel Thomas is, in my humble opinion, having been crap at languages though
school and having tried many alternatives THE MOST AMAZING THING EVER.

If you have a logical brain (as I suspect many HN readers do) and like to know
how and WHY the language works as it does. And be able to make sentences from
day 0. Try it. It’s amazing. And he’s also an amazing dude. Check him out on
Wikipedia. Ex-french resistance. Tried to bring the world together with
language. Recorded each CD in one take just from memory. A true legend.

------
feetfailmenot
Duolingo and other apps are fine to build passive vocabulary (the words you
can understand) up to some level, but the real issue for me is the lack of a
real "speaking" component.

Frequent speaking practice is key to build your active vocabuary (the words
you can use). It's also key to build your confidence in using a language.

Shameless plug: that's why we are making an app that really makes you speak:
[https://en.globers.co/](https://en.globers.co/)

------
chriselles
Both of our teenagers use Duolingo to “top up” their in person foreign
language classes at school.

They are both categorised as “above expectation/level”.

Hard to ascertain how much additional value Duo Lingo adds, but in aggregate
it seems to be helping.

However, I wonder if there would be a way to effectively match students
learning opposing languages to help each other one in one via Zoom?

We’re certainly grateful for the free language support!

------
criddell
Even though I've only ever lived in Canada and the US, I feel like I could
benefit from learning more English. I realized this when I watched my kids
diagramming sentences and thought back to how I was never able to master
anything beyond basic noun, verb, pronoun, adverb stuff. I'm talking about
things like participles and perfect tenses and articles.

~~~
microcolonel
I'm not really sure what you could gain from that. Language is not the stuffy
study of hard and fast rules, but a constant negotiation between what the
listener is capable of understanding, and what the speaker will compose.

In the same way that unexamined Ebonics is not just crappy English, unexamined
Standard American English is not just crappy English.

Whether you're aware of the underlying rules or not, you're following those
rules when you're understood, and you're breaking them when you're not.

~~~
criddell
> I'm not really sure what you could gain from that.

Are you saying that as someone that has a good understanding of English
grammar?

I was thinking that in the same way have a better knowledge of basic physics
or chemistry can help me cook or fix my car, better knowledge of my language
could help me understand and be understood.

For example, in one of my previous jobs I received a critique saying I should
stop using the passive voice when I write. It's a habit I haven't been able to
break and my first draft of anything I write is still very passive. Frankly, I
don't have a good idea of what makes something passive on paper.

~~~
microcolonel
> _Are you saying that as someone that has a good understanding of English
> grammar?_

I have a very strong working understanding of English grammar, but I couldn't
recall many of the concepts concepts by name. I think I'm roughly at the same
place as you on that matter.

> _I should stop using the passive voice when I write._

That is a great idea. For people who have trouble sticking to habits, I always
suggest using a tool like [http://hemingwayapp.com/](http://hemingwayapp.com/)

Tools like this give you practice recognizing patterns you don't want to see
in your writing. People I've suggested it to have found it very useful.

~~~
criddell
> hemingwayapp.com

That's pretty neat. Thanks for the link.

I ran my previous comment through it and my comment requires an 8th grade
reading level and was scored as good.

My paragraph that starts _" I was thinking"_ is marked as very hard to read.
My _" For example"_ sentence is hard to read. I used one adverb (frankly), and
used the passive voice once (be understood). I'm not sure I see the problem
with _be understood_.

------
revskill
I still remembered when i first time learn Russian.

I have no idea of Russian, and my dad told me that: /Ro-di-na/ means country.

I feel, OK, i can feel it. It's not too hard to me.

That's why, learning foreign language needs a way to tell user s that: It's
not that hard, here's it is. Country is blah lbah, "what's your name" is blah
blah,...

------
boapnuaput
The Lojban community is regularly asked about Duolingo courses. The sad fact
is that Duolingo makes money off of volunteer-contributed courses, and as a
result, we cannot incentivize any Lojbanists to take the time required to
produce Duolingo courses, since they know that an un-Lojbanic startup will
profit from their work.

------
qwsxyh
I've done duolingo for the last two months - it's much better to think of it
as a fun game with some learning on the side rather than anything serious.

Aside, the leaderboards are unironically a great feature. It gives a great
incentive to practice more rather than reaching your required 50xp.

------
indigo945
I agree with the article insofar as that learning a language solely via an app
is not effective. However, I do not get the impression that the author
actually has much experience learning languages through other means.

    
    
      > The phrase “learning a language” is deceptively reductive. A language isn’t a  
      > singular monolith, but rather a complex interconnected system of components  
      > that build a way to communicate. The lexicon consists of the individual  
      > words, which speakers have to memorize. The syntax and grammar tell speakers  
      > how to properly structure those words in a sentence. Then there’s the writing  
      > system, which is the visual representation of words or sounds that allow  
      > words to be constructed (for example, in English, the writing system is the  
      > alphabet).
    

And, more importantly, there is also the task of learning the meaning of words
in common idioms, as well as learning to recognize implicit meaning.
Understanding syntax and individual words will never help you understand
sentences like, for example, "sorry, I just had to get it out of my system".
It will also not help you recognize the tone of a piece of writing.

    
    
      > Duolingo often just drops a new particle on you without much explanation of
      > what it does or even that it’s a particle at all. Memrise handles this a bit
      > better, with lessons dedicated to how certain particles and grammar work, but
      > it helps to have external lessons, an instructor, or best of all a native
      > speaker to help explain some of the finer points of nuance in a language’s
      > grammar.
    

It is debatable whether external lessons have an advantage over lessons in a
mobile app, but that a native speaker is "best of all" suited to explaining
the grammar of a language is a bold-faced lie. Native speakers do usually not
understand grammar at all, because they have no reason to. (They do, however,
almost universally across cultures often love giving an answer to grammar-
related questions that you ask them, to avoid admitting to their lack of
understanding.)

    
    
      > You can learn as many words or sentences as you want, but until you’re able
      > to have a conversation with another person, you’ll never be fluent. [...] For
      > that reason alone, learning a language with an app should be a starting
      > point, not the end. If you make it through an entire Duolingo skill tree or a
      > Memrise lesson plan, it might be time to upgrade to an in-person class, or
      > you might want to find a native speaker to practice with.
    

I think this more balanced assessment is the most important takeaway from the
article. When learning any language, through any means, you will never
progress beyond a basic level without practice. Practice does not necessarily
have to entail having an in-person conversation, but you absolutely need to
actually make use of the language skills you're acquiring: watch TV, write a
blog, read a book, call someone, and so on.

Personally, I don't really recommend taking an in-person class if you already
use an app and a textbook to learn. Sure, you can ask the instructor questions
about particular grammar points that you encounter in your studies, but
generally, if you're asking questions about grammar, you're doing language
learning wrong. The human brain is much better suited to understanding and
producing human language than it is to parsing text from a Backus-Naur form,
so that's what you should focus on. A Japanese child doesn't understand the
purpose of every particle either, but she easily beats you in fluency.

Related TED talk (good despite the sensationalist title):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0yGdNEWdn0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0yGdNEWdn0)

~~~
viraptor
> Personally, I don't really recommend taking an in-person class if you
> already use an app and a textbook to learn.

I think there are cases where it really pays off to have a real lesson to
improve your experience. There are situations which are not possible to
explain in a concise/picture way, duolingo-style. They may be also hard to
figure out from generic rules from a book. But having someone to ask - "so
what is the reason behind this specific use?" can save you hours of study and
many mistakes.

Even worse, learning without interaction with someone who can correct you may
result in you learning something that's not true. But you kept repeating it
and it only became harder to get rid of the issue. That's my experience from
learning Japanese from Duolingo and Rosetta.

------
lifeisstillgood
I have assumed that something like Alexa would be the next obvious quantum
leap for language learning - is anything like that out there?

------
MobileVet
I used to think Duolingo was awesome, but after using Mango Languages, I
changed my mind.

Duolingo was fun for learning words and ‘playing games’ but that didn’t hold
my attention for very long... despite loving language learnings.

Mango languages on the other hand taught me to speak and kept me rolling for
over 6 months and counting! It focuses on phrases and does a great job
building up from small to larger... and sneaking in grammar lessons. I
absolutely love it and am so impressed

------
booleandilemma
They need to make the sentences more complex/challenging. To me it feels too
much like grinding in WoW.

