
How to Almost Learn Italian - ohaikbai
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/language-apps-duolingo/573919/
======
russellbeattie
I could write a book about my experience learning Spanish after I moved to
Spain years ago. I'll summarize:

1\. Immersion is overrated, even if you're trying your best to study
vocabulary in your off hours. You won't just start "dreaming in a foreign
language" because you've been around it all day. I wasted 6 months thinking it
would someday just happen magically. It won't.

2\. No one will put up with your shitty language skills for more than 5
minutes... Except your significant other. They'll have the patience because
they love you. Everyone else will just cringe after a few minutes and change
to English, or just smile and wave you off.

3\. Hire a private tutor. I went to see a wonderful older woman named Nieves
every day after work for 18 months. It was the only real way to chisel a
language into my thick skull. She was part therapist, part cultural liaison
and part drill master.

Y mas que diez años despues, no he olvidado mucho. Bueno, nunca podria
escribir muy bien, pero puedo charlar con otros hispanohablantes sin mucho
esfuerzo. Excepto los Argentinos. No tengo ni idea que estan diciendo por
nada.

~~~
Rainymood
>2\. No one will put up with your shitty language skills for more than 5
minutes... Except your significant other. They'll have the patience because
they love you. Everyone else will just cringe after a few minutes and change
to English, or just smile and wave you off.

This is actually not true. As a Dutch person I have huge respect and
admiration for people that are learning dutch and willing to practice with me
no matter how cringy it is. Exactly the cringe is how you learn! I have a
friend with whom I can hold a full-blown conversation in Dutch and I'm
honestly in awe, he's a PhD student and took on the liberty of learning Dutch
whilst many PhD students that are here from foreign countries (i.e. will be
here for 5 years) never even make the effort. The effort alone should be
highly commended.

~~~
mercer
You're a rare exception, then. Every single person I know who has tried to
learn Dutch has expressed frustration that the Dutch, more even than many
(most?) other European countries, will immediately switch to English if they
notice you're not fluent.

EDIT: That said, I do agree that if you get past a certain level of fluency it
might be easier. And I suppose it depends on where you live. Cities are
probably harder.

~~~
fenomas
There are a lot of variables, but one thing to keep in mind is that when
people switch from $language to English, a subset of them may simply see the
conversation as their chance to practice English (rather than as your chance
to practice $language).

~~~
mercer
The problem with Dutch people is that their English is, all else being equal,
unusually good compared to at least most of mainland Europe.

So whatever the variable (city/rural, expat/local, etc.), you're very likely
to run into a Dutch person who is fluent in English, and usually fluent enough
where it's not even a matter of 'a chance of practice' for them, just a matter
of avoiding mutual frustration.

At least when you're talking to someone who wants to practice, there's a
chance they'd still prefer or revert to their own language. With lots of Dutch
people that's not an issue.

------
0x38B
This mirrors my experiences with Duolingo. I tried it out, and realized that
it went against my ideas about learning languages: translation, no person
involved, no real communication. Maybe they'll remedy some of these, as the
article notes, but I feel very strongly that translation like this is nearly
useless busy-work, and further, harmful. When I learn a language, I use
translation to look words up, but strive to expose myself to rich language. By
this I mean large amounts of language, some of it near my level (textbook
dialogues), some of it way above (an audiobook of favorite book), as interest
dictates. In addition I write people in the language and make friends on sites
like italki, or in apps like HelloTalk and Tandem. I don't worry about
learning words, nearly ever. I just expose myself to them and look them up
when I 'notice' them (my brain: oh, this word is interesting, we've heard it
before... What does it mean?). I hate translation when learning with a
passion, and listen a lot to get away from it.

Results (N=1, YMMV) have been fantastic with Russian. It's strong enough now
that it messes with my English and I can make the same mistakes a
Russian/Ukrainian would in English if I've been using Russian a lot.

Learning languages is cool, and it opens so many doors and connects you with
all sorts of people. If Duolingo works for someone, great. From working as a
tutor and getting to know lots of students, you'd be better off doing what I
talk about above, but something is better than nothing, and perfect is the
enemy of good here.

~~~
twotwotwo
Strongly second "expose yourself to a _lot_ of the language" from my own
experience with Spanish. Lot easier to get that exposure now than a decade or
two ago, too.

~~~
virmundi
Watch out for aging. My mom spoke French and Spanish aside from English. As
she aged, she reads both and doesn’t understand why we can’t read too. My wife
has a patient that speaks five languages. Her husband speaks 3 of them. As the
patient’s illness progresses, she starts talking in a random language.
Sometimes she gets lucky and it’s one of 3 her husband speaks.

~~~
jacobush
In Sweden there is very large minority of finns - many of the older ones
forget Swedish and can only speak Finnish. (Or in some areas, actually never
learned Swedish to begin with.) Hence the prevalence of nursing homes with the
requirement to know Finnish to work there.

------
simonebrunozzi
I'm Italian, AMA!

Jokes apart, this is what I think. If you want to learn conversational Italian
to be able to spend some time in Italy, the best way to learn what you need is
actually to go to Italy and practice there. Most Italians would love to
practice some English with you, and to teach you Italian. You will have a
great time. You will have fun. You will remember your holiday when you're
older.

~~~
wyldfire
> AMA

Just how much did you enjoy the scene of "The IT Crowd" [1] where Jen tries to
pull off an act as an Italian/English translator?

[1] S04E04, "Italian for Beginners" \-
[https://youtu.be/csLgX1IHPJs](https://youtu.be/csLgX1IHPJs)

~~~
riffraff
another italian here.

Jen's fake italian is ok, the "real italian" is cringeworthy: it's like
someone who does not know italian reading a google translation, accent is off,
grammar is off, word choice is mostly right but also a bit off.

But the scene is still fun, like most of the IT Crowd :)

This is par for the course btw, it's how italian is done in 99% of english
content, for obvious reasons.

------
WheelsAtLarge
Almost 2 years of using Duolingo, German, here. At this point, I can
understand the very basics and even less when it comes to speaking.

Here's what I learned about duo

\- Good to get you started on the language

\- It's very good at keeping you engaged initially

\- Hard to remember everything so at some point you find it hard to understand
the new lessons. There's a language deficit that eventually catches up with
you.

\- It's not bad to get you started but long term it's not the best way to
learn.

If I had to do it again:

-I'd say use it for a few months while it keeps you engaged(6months?) along with a system where you are forced to speak it. Like the Pimsleur system.

\- Find someone to speak it with on a regular basis as soon as possible.

\- Continue with Pimsleur and dump Duo.

\- Immerse your self with the media in the Language you are trying to learn.

The absolute fact is that you can never be fluent in a language unless you
speak it on a regular basis so move towards it ASAP.

There's no substitute for determination. Eventually, you just have to fight
the feeling of wanting to quit once it gets difficult. By the way, wanting to
quit is a sign that you are about to take a major step forward if you can
fight through it and move forward.

------
_II__II_
_In the end, I did pretty well in Rome, engaging in simple, fractured semi-
conversation in most of my encounters. Was that how the app was supposed to
work?_

Yeah, I'd say that if you were going to solely use Duolingo this is what a
reasonable person would hope to achieve. Italian isn't foreign to you like it
was when you started, but it's not going magically be familiar because you
practiced on Duolingo every day. Honestly that sounds like a really good
outcome for the investment so far, and what a big motivator to explore other
avenues of gaining proficiency.

~~~
lozenge
You skipped the bit where he spent a week cramming with a traditional textbook

------
rwilson4
I spent about a year studying Italian on Duolingo and had a positive
experience. But I also augmented Duolingo with Anki: I made flashcards for
every single word I learned in Duolingo, and went over them every day. That
really helped me memorize the vocabulary. I also got a workbook on verb
conjugations to practice those (I didn't end up finishing that workbook and my
verb conjugations are weak).

The real benefit of Duolingo is that I can do it while I'm waiting for my
coffee order, or on the train. My only free time is spontaneous, and in short
increments; e.g., 5 minutes here and there, unexpectedly. It's hard to learn
_anything_ in that context! I'm surprised I learned Italian as well as I did!
Taking a class in Italian with a human teacher would no doubt be superior, but
I unfortunately don't have time for that!

------
qwerty456127
IMHO the best way to learn a language is a Michel Thomas audio course. Also,
whatever way you choose, adding another one or more (whatever) as soon as you
become fluent in the way you have picked up initially is a great idea.

The most annoying problem with Duolingo is it quickly becomes boring by asking
you stupid questions repeatedly, you start daydreaming and clicking-through
the questions-answers too fast, making mistakes purely out of lack of
attention (so you click a wrong one although the right answer is obvious to
you) and it reacts with asking you more stupid questions, the same or on the
same topic. It really should let you progress faster then just ask you to
repeat what you have learnt occasionally (but not too soon and not too much).

Nevertheless I wish more subjects would be available to learn the Duolingo
way. I.e I'd love to study math, history, literature, biology, geography etc
like that. I hope Duolingo authors will eventually come up with such a
universal non-language-centric kind of platform and let users publish courses
on different kinds of subjects.

------
peterwwillis
Same. Spent a lot of time on Duolingo trying to learn French, couldn't
understand anything a French waitress asked me. Surprisingly, I can now
understand a lot of written French, but maybe that's normal for
English+Spanish speakers?

I recently found Anki
([https://apps.ankiweb.net/](https://apps.ankiweb.net/)), a free cross-
platform app for index card-style learning. Their shared decks seem useful,
and I like that you can customize exactly how you practice, though of course
its effectiveness in "conversational" practice is obviously limited.

~~~
macdice
One difficulty with French is that their system of stress makes it very hard
for a beginner to know when one word ends and another begins. I lived in
France for a few years, and I was initially surprised that after a few months
of working hard at it, I could still sometimes understand Spanish and Italian
a little more easily than French (even though I don't speak them at all), just
because they have per-word stress like English, but French is unusual (for
Europe at least) in having per-phrase stress (not sure of the technical term
for that, but I'm sure it's a thing). That was extremely frustrating. But it
passed... I'd say it took about 3-4 months of immersion to learn enough stock
phrases (waiters say "Vous désirez ?" and other stock protocol phrases you
just get used to) and common slang, and train my ear to understand the way
words melt into each other (liaisons in real life, omitted words, strange
sound transformations that no one ever tells you about... I like the
aspiration that appears at the end of some words in the Paris accent, I do it
myself, but I can't tell you the rule for it). You just can't learn that stuff
from a book or whatever. I think I was relatively good at it (at least, much
better than the other English speakers in our circle, but not as good as a
couple of others whose foreignness I couldn't hear at all, so they knew tricks
I didn't), and I put that down to vast amounts of immersive discussion in real
life and also on IRC, where I could see people transcribing what they actually
say.

~~~
dnautics
It also doesn't help that pronunciation rules for French border on the bizarre
(only English is worse) due to language evolution and the spelling being
conservative to it's Latin roots, and there are some sounds that are flat out
strange to English speakers (like the growling r). I joke that probably
English speakers would have an easier time understanding African french due to
the very careful pronunciation of consonants and the regularized rhythm

------
kaiwen1
My approach: be in country, do the Pimsleur audio course, obsessively bang out
vocab flash cards in the native script, study grammar every morning for 2-3
hours, and (the secret sauce) live with a s.o. who speaks the target language
exclusively. Six months is enough to be comfortably conversational. I did it
three times, and the last was so successful that the next would require a
divorce!

~~~
telesilla
What's good about Pimsleur? I'm about to start learning a new language so I'm
looking for the most efficient resources to supplement classes with a teacher.

~~~
shawabawa3
I can't recommend highly enough the michel thomas method:
[https://www.michelthomas.com/](https://www.michelthomas.com/)

I listened to about 20 hours of lessons, which is very easy to do as part of
the method is "don't write anything down, don't try to remember anything", and
my French improved massively.

It only got me so far, and I switched to private lessons afterwards, but it
was incredibly efficient while it lasted.

~~~
telesilla
Michael Thomas really helped me with my french but he doesn't do the language
I am learning right now. A pity as I love the sound of his voice, so calm yet
authoritative.

------
reuven
I've been learning Chinese for about four years. I use apps, but only to drill
and help me improve my reading + vocabulary outside of the in-person classes.

There's nothing like an in-person tutor. (OK, so mine is online, but it's
almost the same.) My teacher knows my strong and weak points, and when I get
stuck with a certain word or grammar pattern, she makes sure to test it before
we move on.

That said, I only have one hour of class per day, and that's not enough to
really progress. So I use the apps to jog my memory, learn new words (since
everyone will stress different ones), and internalize the grammar.

Besides, a language is a very dynamic and living thing: When you speak it with
natives, you'll sometimes be able to rely on sentences you've learned in
class. But the real test is whether you can take their new-to-you question,
and respond with a new-to-you answer. And that only comes with time and
repetition with real instructors -- and with repeated practice with native
speakers. And there's no better teacher than a puzzled look on a native's
face, telling you that your pronunciation is totally off.

I often say, half jokingly, that my trips to China (where I go 3-5 times a
year to teach Python + data science courses) are my end-of-semester exam, when
we see if my Chinese has really improved. Without fail, interactions with
natives help me to improve.

None of this would happen with just the apps. Yeah, they're great -- but they
are far from sufficient.

~~~
rb666
Seems crazy to me (and a bit depressing) that doing anything for 1 hour per
day would not lead to good progress! We only have so few truly free hours in a
day to spend on things like this.

~~~
reuven
Oh, it has led to great progress -- when I go to China, everything I do before
and after class is in Chinese. I chat with locals, order at restaurants, read
street signs, and the like. That said, there's still a long way to go before
fluency.

It's also known that Chinese takes a _long_ time for non-native speakers to
learn. For someone like me (48 years old, self-employed, married with three
kids), I'm delighted with my progress and feel a great sense of a
accomplishment. Moreover, I often meet up with foreigners who have living in
China for years, and it turns out that my Chinese is better than theirs. So
it's not depressing at all!

------
v4ult
I have been learning Spanish for 3 years and have played around with a number
of different techniques.

I think Duolingo is awful at helping you retain the vocabulary you have
learnt. It doesn't give you a good grounding on context or grammar so you'll
end up in a situation where you may know a lot of words but not how to string
a sentence together. Exactly as detailed in the article. I will normally put
Duolingo in the same category as Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone and not recommend
them at all.

There are three apps that I do recommend: 1\. Italki - You can book lessons
with tutors or teachers in your chosen language and have structured lessons
online. 2\. HelloTalk - A language exchange app that works better than on
Skype. It has a large userbase where you speak to individuals in your chosen
language and practice what you have learnt. 3\. Lingvist - A vocabulary app
that gives you words within the context of a full sentence. This has helped me
remember words a lot easier plus my level of reading comprehension went
through the roof after using it.

Aside from the apps, it is always a good idea to visit the country of your
target language and just try speaking. You will find out what works and what
doesn't much faster than any other method.

Finally it is important to remember not to be afraid to make mistakes. It's
only words and not the full amount of how we communicate. Keep trying.

------
wallflower
Outside of Duolingo, there are two major methods of language learning. One is
to aim for deliberate practice and excellence in everything. For reading, it
means reading a passage over and over until you have basically memorized it
and then going on to the next thing to master. For listening, it means
listening to the sane video or audio over and over until your brain can
process all of it flawlessly.

The other school is to just dive in. Start listening to business radio in the
new language, sing along with songs, make mistakes with native speakers
constantly. Learn by context.

The reality is there is no one method, no magic bullet. It may be a
combination of things that work for you. Just like dieting, it is not one size
fits all. However, as you venture out from Duolingo, you will find what works
for you. What your strengths and weaknesses are with regards to learning
another language as an adult.

The hardest thing for me was dealing with the slow progress. You may even get
frustrated. However, if you don’t give up, what was hard will become easier
and what was easy will become like breathing.

It is a personal journey, we can give you prescriptive advice but the doing is
what matters.

If it takes 3 years instead of 6 months, no one cares. And you should not.

~~~
mromanuk
Estás exagerando, no hablamos tan raro y nuestro acento suena bien :)

~~~
saagarjha
I think you might have replied to the wrong comment ;)

------
tragomaskhalos
What this highlights strongly is that multiple choice (which I understand is
still the mainstay of the US examination system) is a terrible way to assess
competence in a subject. Its siren call is very strong however because of the
convenience of automatic marking. Maybe with improvements in technology we
will see moves away from it; eg my kids do all their Maths homework via a
website that requires answers to be typed in, which although not ideal (it
can't see the working-out process) is obviously better than multiple choice,
and it seems to have some sensible leniency in its interpretation of input.

------
nubbins
Where do people get the idea one resource is supposed to teach you a language?
As someone who has learned and uses multiple foreign languages Rosetta stone,
pimsleur, duo linguo are all fantastic tools for their indended use cases but
language requires reading, writing, listening(to natives), speaking and many
other smaller skills. With just whats available on the internet and mail you
could learn a language in a matter of years but so many people complain
because 1 app didn’t teach them in 3 months what it took their entire life to
learn in their native language.

~~~
napban
Marketing hype from the makers of those resources, and people who have bought
into the claims of instant, no effort, guaranteed results.

------
jddj
I was going to write a long comment detailing what I did on the way to Spanish
fluency, but I realized that the main thing I wanted to say was this:

There's a podcast called Language Transfer which focuses on understanding
other languages from scratch using English and its Latin/Germanic roots. I
really can't speak highly enough of this guy. His passion for language is
contagious, it's clear how much thought he has put into the lesson structure,
and his method of teaching left me wishing I could have him teach me something
else, like music theory.

------
wolfmd
It took me some time to understand how to properly use Duolingo, but I feel
like I have found a solution that genuinely fits into my learning strategy. My
first attempt was with German. I studied for months and months during breaks
at work, but I was no match for conversing at the local German meetup or in
Berlin. I could read books and read signs, but in know way could I hold a
conversation. I was very disappointed, but I have absolutely retained my
knowledge of reading German.

The language I'm currently learning is Vietnamese. I'm learning because my
girlfriend's family is Vietnamese and it's a lot of fun to share another
language with her and her relatives. I've disabled all of the score-related
addons and purchased the offline version. I can hold myself to two lessons on
my train home from work without any dopamine rushes. I find it substantially
easier than bringing along a thick workbook (which I do have) or trying to
force my way through an ebook. The sentence structure helps me more than
flashcards. When I go home, I can practice actual conversations with my
girlfriend and we can share the vocabulary we know (her grasp of the language
isn't perfect). It works extraordinarily well for me. We don't have the time
or energy to attend night classes like we thought we would so trading phrases
every now and then works pretty well.

------
simias
I've been using Duolingo and Memrise to learn Portuguese (still far from
perfectly fluent but I can read and understand the language fairly well now)
and I've been working on my Russian as well. I currently have a 430day streak
in Duolingo and I've finished the entire Portuguese tree (all skills to max
level).

I really do thing that Duolingo on its own won't get you really far. I always
see people recommend it, it seems to be the most popular language learning
"app" as far as I can tell, but it's really quite mediocre. The synthetic
voices they use are often very awkward and sometimes plain wrong. The
intonation is all over the place and very unnatural. The translation-based
approach is very simplistic and often limits what you can do. The main problem
being that when you want to speak a language fluently you _shouldn 't_
translate but construct the language directly. I'm a native French speaker but
as I'm writing these words I'm not translating from French, I directly "think
in English" for better or worse. This is even worse for language like Russian
where the syntax is completely different from English and you have to make a
conscious effort to "forget" the English syntax when constructing the Russian
translation, otherwise you'll end up with something awkward.

The only feature of Duolingo that keeps me going is effectively the streak
counter itself. It forces me to do _at least_ a little bit of
Portuguese/Russian every day instead of slowly drifting away from my studies.
You keep the contact with the language, even if it's in a very limited
fashion. However when I have some free time I do some _actual_ language
learning, reading grammar lessons, reading articles online, practicing my
writing skills on lang-8 or similar websites, listening to podcasts etc...
Then I actually make good progress.

On the other hand I strongly recommend Memrise. It's just a flashcard
application so it's really only good at teaching you vocabulary but it does it
very effectively and it's got a bunch of high quality decks available (some
made by Memrise themselves, with an actual human speaker pronouncing the words
and expressions instead of a bad synthetic voice). Again, on its own it's not
enough but for drilling vocab it's really great IMO. There's also the open
source Anki but I prefer Memrise overall.

------
ibudiallo
I got excited and almost learned Spanish, Japanese, German, then I realized I
was simply addicted [1]. The good part is that at least it gave me the
confidence to speak to people in different languages thinking I made sense,
even though I didn't. The confidence to make mistake is how you end up
learning anyway.

[1]:[https://idiallo.com/blog/no-spanish-with-
duo](https://idiallo.com/blog/no-spanish-with-duo)

------
alasano
One of the apps which really stuck with me was "Human Japanese" \- Years later
the stuff that I learnt is still as embedded in my memory as when I first saw
it.

------
opticalflow
I took five years of Spanish -- high school and university (I thought I'd
since forgotten it, this was 30 years ago). A few years ago I found myself in
Barcelona for a week. First day, I was completely lost. By the end of my stay
I found it had come back to me, at least for rudimentary conversation. I even
picked up a little Catalan. This reminds me of a conversation I had with a
former boss. He asked if I spoke Italian. I said no. "But you speak some
Spanish, right?" To wit I sheepishly said, "yeah but it's been a long time".
Then he rattles off something in Italian and asks "What did I just ask?" ..
"Something about wanting 4 glasses of Tignanello wine for the table" And he
says: "See? You have enough to be in the conversation, or at least listen.
Talking is overrated, anyway..."

------
tcbawo
I've found that the Pimsleur method is very good (at least at the
beginning/intermediate levels), but is mostly auditory. I think this leveraged
the creator's research on timed reinforcement learning. I imagine something
like this paired with Duolingo to provide visuals would be pretty effective.

------
rv-de
I remember trying to brush up on my French skills. The training sentences are
absurdly stupid, repetitive and redundant. Duolingo fails by design. Good news
is there are other much better web services available for learning languages
(f.x. babbel.com).

------
melling
I studied Spanish for years but never really learned it until I was immersed
for a few months. Now that I don’t use it often I find it to be a struggle to
retain.

I’ve been toying with language apps myself. I still think there’s a place for
apps. For example, I have an iOS Word Search game for several languages:

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

I’m toying with other ideas. Basically, ways to entertain oneself for short
periods of time.

------
drieddust
When I can to Germany, I jumped the gun and bought yearly subscription of
Duolingo only to realize they will bore you to death with endless Brot(bread)
and Wasser(water) multiple choice questions. Even when you move up and
questions should be focused on that level, they still add a lot of Brot and
Wasser just to keep the scoreboard alive and kicking.

I suspect they want to keep you on the basic level for as long as possible
because they have a subscription model and you feeling confident enough to
leave them is bad for business.

------
rdlecler1
I highly recommend Pimslers (at least Mandarin Chinese was good).

------
olingern
I studied Japanese in college for 1 year. After living in Tokyo, I realized I
knew basically nothing before moving here.

I've found that I can read and write easier than I can speak, mostly because I
have more time to build context in the former. With speaking, synthesizing a
thought in a different language (for me) requires use of the language to be a
reaction rather than something I think about.

------
projectileboy
I’be used both Duolingo and Pimsleur. Although neither will make you fluent, I
would say that Duolingo is a toy and Pimsleur is a tool.

~~~
maxxxxx
Same here. I only wish Pimsleur would go deeper. I have done the first three
Spanish programs but I am still pretty much a beginner.

------
xchip
Isn't the title of the article totally misleading?

I learnt Italian, to learn it quickly find out what makes you excited about
Italy, is it music, movies? And then just try to understand what they say. In
my case it was opera.

------
mk89
I think learning is highly personal, in that everyone walks at a different
speed, etc.

For me one of the best ways to learn a language is the Delft method. It
requires discipline, however, I noticed it's really effective.

------
johnwatson11218
I agree with the article and comments as well. Does anyone else get so fed up
with this light and fluffy style of "gamefication"? I see so many apps that
have this same design where there are lots of bright colors and birds but less
actual substance. To me it seems to be something related to this hustler
culture of web entrepreneurs. See I want a language learning app that is as
fast as an action video game and moves too quickly for me. I want it to feel
like I'm playing speed chess. You can keep the cute owls and whatever kind of
points system you have devised.

------
dewiz
Clickbait, Duolingo is mentioned 3 times more than Italian, and there’s
nothing specific to that language in the post.

~~~
raverbashing
And I'd say that Italian is the least problematic

It seems it improved, but almost all Duolingo German students would eventually
ask a question that Duolingo wouldn't answer. (They wouldn't understand
genders and cases)

But the article touches the main core of the issue with Duolingo:

"You’re at the airport outside Rome, she said, and you want to get downtown;
how would you ask? I gaped like a fish. ... “Do you have a table for four?”
“I’d like two glasses of red wine.” I knew I had seen all the pieces in
Duolingo’s sentences. But I was utterly unable to recall them and pull them
together."

------
risos
I think Duolingo is great for forming habits. Ultimately, if you want to learn
something new you need to work on that skill over a decent period of time, and
this becomes hard to do without a regular habit.

Duolingo is also great at exposing yourself to the language gradually, but
unless your goal is to simply be able to hold a conversation or say a few
phrases, I don't think it will get you anywhere in the long run.

As I'm getting more into language learning (specifically Japanese), Krashen's
input hypothesis seems to be an important part of the process.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiTsduRreug](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiTsduRreug)
Essentially he makes the distinction between "learning" that word A in
language X has some meaning Y, and acquiring an unconscious understanding that
word A means Y.

His main point being that this unconscious acquisition (that is, being able to
hear a words/phrase and not having to put conscious effort into to translating
it in your head) only comes from comprehensible input, that is, listening to
the language and understanding messages (I'm not so convinced that it has to
be entirely 100% comprehensible, rather from experience think language can be
acquired even from something like 20% comprehensible material).

Communities have been rising up around Krashen's theory, one being AJATT (All
japanese all the time). alljapaneseallthetime.com

The creator of the site advocated listening to native Japanese material 24/7
(or at least as much as you possibly can during the day) as well as making i+1
sentence (linking back to Krashen) flash cards using Anki (or equivalent SRS
system).

More recent innovations on AJATT have been arising thanks to MattVsJapan
([https://www.youtube.com/MATTvsJapan](https://www.youtube.com/MATTvsJapan)).
He is currently developing a method he's calling MIA (Mass Immersion Approach)
that refines AJATT into a more general approach that is applicable to any
language (for now it's more focused on Japanese since that's what Matt is most
experience in).

One common criticism of these methods is that they advocate NOT speaking until
you are have achieved some form of basic fluency. The reasoning being that
training your unconscious model on listening will prevent you from making
mistakes early on, until you are ready to train your model from your own
speech.

Honestly I'm not doing these methods enough justice, there is a lot of
background and theory behind them, and MIA itself is still evolving (Matt is
actively trying to change the way people learn languages, or if not that, at
least the way people think about how language learning works). If anyone is
serious about learning a language to a highly proficient level, ditch duo
lingo, textbooks and tutors and read up on these methods instead, you won't
regret it.

------
dunkeycuk
Duolingo paid story.

------
jayalpha
"Stronzo!" will get you pretty far in Italy.

~~~
dewiz
Please, don’t

