Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO • Hacker News Board

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#121

Post by tinco » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 9:05 AM UTC

bsder wrote: post #114

tasogare wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Japanese phonology and therefore pronunciation (what the grand parent post is complaining about) is one of the easiest out there. There are very few consonants, only 5 vowels, not tone and accent is irrelevant. I don't understand how pronunciation could be remotely a problem with Japanese. There are also some other easy things like grammar (very few rules, that are quite consistent and composable) and some basic…

> There are very few consonants, only 5 vowels, not tone and accent is irrelevant. Except that l/r is pronounced differently than most English speakers, the vowels aren't always pronounced yet take up time ("Nan desu ka" is almost always pronounced like "Nan dess ka", for example), and syllable accent is tone rather than volume for emphasis. Other than that, it's completely easy.

You say that sarcastically, but those are all easy things you can master in a week, and they are the sort of thing you might find in the English language or even a dialect. It doesn't compare to learning Chinese or Arabic it seems to me.

Just the fact that you can write out romanji and get reasonably understandable Japanese makes it easier than a significant amount of languages out there.

In my opinion the only thing that makes Japanese truly hard is that they decided for some insane reason to borrow the Chinese writing system, which is the most insane writing system in the world, for half (why half!?) of their writing.

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#122

Post by least » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 9:07 AM UTC

zarzavat wrote: post #117

least wrote: post #46

I was a cryptologic linguist for the army and went through a 16 month course of 6-7 hours of classroom instruction per day M-F, native speaking instructors, tons of immersion, and a couple hours of homework each night and left still feeling like I hardly knew the language that I was supposed to be interpreting. Unless your major in college is a specific language, you probably won't achieve any sort of fluency in your…

> Speaking and listening are related skills yet speaking is much harder than listening, and both are much harder than reading (for the vast majority of languages). In my opinion it's the other way around. Reading is easiest in any alphabetic language. Both intrinsically and to teach. Reading has no time limit so you can make your way through text at whatever pace you want. Reading instruction is strongly amenable to…

I in fact did indicate that reading is the easiest in my post.

Speaking is harder than listening because it requires you to produce language and convey ideas from your own mind, with proficiency in pronouncing it in such a way that a native speaker might understand you. Things like idioms you may be able to infer meaning from interpretation when you are listening or reading but you will never use them in speaking unless you really truly know them. You’re correct that the variables of listening are out of your control (which is what makes it so difficult as compared to reading), but that does not make it harder than speaking.

In the military where the DLPT actually tests all three categories for proficiency, speaking is consistently and universally, regardless of target language, the one language learners are least proficient at.

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#123

Post by studentrob » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 9:07 AM UTC

And still no traditional chinese characters which means you need a desktop extension and can't learn it on mobile.

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#124

Post by hnhamdani2 » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 9:10 AM UTC

zarzavat wrote: post #117

least wrote: post #46

I was a cryptologic linguist for the army and went through a 16 month course of 6-7 hours of classroom instruction per day M-F, native speaking instructors, tons of immersion, and a couple hours of homework each night and left still feeling like I hardly knew the language that I was supposed to be interpreting. Unless your major in college is a specific language, you probably won't achieve any sort of fluency in your…

> Speaking and listening are related skills yet speaking is much harder than listening, and both are much harder than reading (for the vast majority of languages). In my opinion it's the other way around. Reading is easiest in any alphabetic language. Both intrinsically and to teach. Reading has no time limit so you can make your way through text at whatever pace you want. Reading instruction is strongly amenable to…

In this case I agree with OP. Yeah, you have much more control in the output when you speak. However, most of the case, it'll take forever to brute force your brain to compose the right words/sentences and even found no result most of the times when you're not fluent. On the other hand, in listening, you've built the pattern recognition during your study and easier to spot the speech pattern.

In my country, lots of people are bilingual due to the nature of the ethnic composition. I know way more people whose much better at listening than speaking with the language that they're not fluent with.

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#125

Post by globular-toast » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 9:15 AM UTC

least wrote: post #46

I was a cryptologic linguist for the army and went through a 16 month course of 6-7 hours of classroom instruction per day M-F, native speaking instructors, tons of immersion, and a couple hours of homework each night and left still feeling like I hardly knew the language that I was supposed to be interpreting. Unless your major in college is a specific language, you probably won't achieve any sort of fluency in your…

Yep. I studied French on the side while I was at uni. It was incredibly valuable as I learnt a lot about English and language in general, and a little French. I got to the stage I could actually read books in French, and write a little (I had a pen pal). But when I went to France, I could barely ask for a baguette in a shop and, once the reality set in, I prayed they didn't ask me any follow up questions because I just couldn't understand.

Duolingo was the new kid on the block at the time, but there were still some people recommending Rosetta Stone at the time. They used to say it was "used by the US military" or some rubbish. All of these language learning things are the same: they claim to be easy and painless. They tell you it will be like acquiring your first language as a child. Nobody seems to remember the years of babbling and years of schooling that were required to become fluent in their native language.

The good news is, learning a language as an adult is easier than learning your first language. The reason is simple: you already have language! You can learn about your second language using your first language. Immersion is still absolutely necessary, but learning grammar and vocabulary using your native language will greatly accelerate the whole process. But, bizarrely, Duolingo etc. actually refuse to use the most powerful tool you'll ever have. It's completely the opposite way you should be learning a language as an adult.

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#126

Post by globular-toast » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 9:16 AM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #52

least wrote: post #46

I was a cryptologic linguist for the army and went through a 16 month course of 6-7 hours of classroom instruction per day M-F, native speaking instructors, tons of immersion, and a couple hours of homework each night and left still feeling like I hardly knew the language that I was supposed to be interpreting. Unless your major in college is a specific language, you probably won't achieve any sort of fluency in your…

People learn languages for a variety of purposes. Some people just want to know enough to be able to ask where the bathroom is and read a menu at a resturant.

For which the best tool is a phrasebook and learning enough pronunciation. Duolingo won't help with that.

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#127

Post by Aerroon » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 9:26 AM UTC

zarzavat wrote: post #117

least wrote: post #46

I was a cryptologic linguist for the army and went through a 16 month course of 6-7 hours of classroom instruction per day M-F, native speaking instructors, tons of immersion, and a couple hours of homework each night and left still feeling like I hardly knew the language that I was supposed to be interpreting. Unless your major in college is a specific language, you probably won't achieve any sort of fluency in your…

> Speaking and listening are related skills yet speaking is much harder than listening, and both are much harder than reading (for the vast majority of languages). In my opinion it's the other way around. Reading is easiest in any alphabetic language. Both intrinsically and to teach. Reading has no time limit so you can make your way through text at whatever pace you want. Reading instruction is strongly amenable to…

>So the only way to pick up these skills is with real native speakers which is expensive and slow.

TV, movies, anime etc can fulfill the listening purpose. But you have to do it in copious amounts and turn off subtitles.

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#128

Post by ad404b8a372f2b9 » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 9:26 AM UTC

least wrote: post #46

I was a cryptologic linguist for the army and went through a 16 month course of 6-7 hours of classroom instruction per day M-F, native speaking instructors, tons of immersion, and a couple hours of homework each night and left still feeling like I hardly knew the language that I was supposed to be interpreting. Unless your major in college is a specific language, you probably won't achieve any sort of fluency in your…

Can you talk about the resources you used to learn in the classroom? I learned German using the Foreign Service Institute handbook and I thought it was great introduction to the language. I'd love to know what's in use nowadays.

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#129

Post by the-smug-one » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 9:43 AM UTC

I use Duolingo to learn Spanish and it's pretty good if you take it seriously and add on research outside of Duo (mostly on grammar). I'm hoping to reach a level where I can read things in the language which are interesting to me (with the aid of a dictionary of course), so I'll probably replace HN with some Spanish variant for example.

Re: Duolingo reaches $6.5B valuation on day of IPO

#130

Post by eythian » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 9:54 AM UTC

zarzavat wrote: post #117

least wrote: post #46

I was a cryptologic linguist for the army and went through a 16 month course of 6-7 hours of classroom instruction per day M-F, native speaking instructors, tons of immersion, and a couple hours of homework each night and left still feeling like I hardly knew the language that I was supposed to be interpreting. Unless your major in college is a specific language, you probably won't achieve any sort of fluency in your…

> Speaking and listening are related skills yet speaking is much harder than listening, and both are much harder than reading (for the vast majority of languages). In my opinion it's the other way around. Reading is easiest in any alphabetic language. Both intrinsically and to teach. Reading has no time limit so you can make your way through text at whatever pace you want. Reading instruction is strongly amenable to…

As someone learning a second language through classes, immersion, and - when I remember - apps, I don't really agree.

Certainly early on speaking is easy because you have a handful of words and know how to put them together, and listening is very hard because you can barely make out the sounds.

However, in my experience and I've noticed this in others too, after a while you get better and better at listening and it quite handily overtakes your ability to speak as now you're wanting to construct sentences more complex than "a table for four please", but you can't necessarily pull out the words and put them in the order you need in any useful timeframe.