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

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

#321

Post by JoeyBananas » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 7:55 PM 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…

Duolingo is such a joke. They don't have even a single textbooks worth of content for the languages that I've tried.

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

#322

Post by csa » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 7:59 PM UTC

redthrow wrote: post #319

csa wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well you admit yourself in your 5th and 6th points that I'm right. We might be talking past each other. I’m speaking specifically of non-native learners of Japanese. I think you overrepresented for non-native learners of Japanese (who don’t get the benefit of 9 years of joyo kanji education), but you were closer to “right” than most. Most learners of Japanese should focus on about 1000 kanji (roughly kyouiku kanji)…

> Once they learn the 2000 joyo, pass N1, and probably do some tertiary education in Japan, then maybe they can choose to move that direction For the vast majority of people (including native speakers), knowing a few extra kanji outside of joyo brings very little benefit. Most natives get by just fine by having a very rough understanding of even joyo [1], thanks to smartphones and computers. Improving pitch accent, o…

> Improving pitch accent, on the other hand, does change how you are perceived by natives

100% agree. Nailing accent helps smooth some wrinkles as a foreigner.

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

#323

Post by st1ck » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 8:02 PM UTC

plainnoodles wrote: post #293

AussieWog93 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The problem is that you can't possibly become fluent in a language with an app like it and there isn't any single app that will. I don't think anyone is seriously under the delusion that Duolingo alone will make you fluent in a language. It is an amazingly powerful tool to bootstrap you from "I cannot understand a single word of this language" to "I can pick up a newspaper and get a vague idea of what they're talkin…

I agree. I feel like there's 3 phases to learning a new language. Background: English first language, French second, and I've been trying to learn Japanese. The three phases are: 1. Learning basic alphabet (if different from your own), basic grammar. Unlocks: being able to access more learning material and more rapid progress. Progress on these first building blocks is slow and can be discouraging. 2. Learning full g…

For 2, how often do you see Future Perfect Continuous or just Future Perfect anywhere outside of literary works?

I'd put grammar at much lower priority than vocabulary & common phrases, since knowing just a bunch of words (at least in most languages) can get you very far.

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

#324

Post by linsomniac » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 8:03 PM UTC

dorchadas wrote: post #236

thesausageking wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Duolingo has worked great for me. I had learned Spanish a decade ago and completely forgotten it. In a few months of consistent practice, I learned enough to get around. And after 6-9 months, I could have basic conversations. I was never good at learning languages and Duolingo has been the best system for me. I like the paced repetition it does. Also, that it has you practice reading, writing, saying, and listening.

> I had learned Spanish a decade ago and completely forgotten it. I would argue this is why it worked well for you. You already knew the language and just needed to revise, which is something I would argue DL does do good at, especially the web version. > Also, that it has you practice reading, writing, saying, and listening. The thing is, in most courses (the home-developed ones with stories might be exceptions), yo…

>You don't learn to read texts and interpret them in the language.

Are you sure? I regularly come across questions that involve a few sentences, a question, and a multi-choice answer. All in language, and some of them are somewhat tricky. Something along the lines of: "Juan's is with his girlfriend. Her name is Antonia. She is buying a green dress. Where is Antonia?" "A: A restaurant. B: A clothes store C: A party."

There are also questions that are a few sentences and you have to fill in the blank, which often require understanding the context, in language: If Juan is speaking to waiter, then the place he is at is a restaurant...

>Not to mention that default on the app has you click words in the proper order instead of actually recalling them.

Not at all true. I've been using DuoLingo for less than a month and I regularly see questions that are an English sentence and a free form text box for you to type the translation into. And one of the questions for the second "Checkpoint" is: Here is a sentence in language, and a free form text box to type the response.

As far as the clicking words, I'll say I really like that as one of the components of learning, because it lets me focus on the structure of sentences without getting frustrated by typos or misremembering words or even in some cases forgetting words. The prompts of the bubbles are good and still make me remember the differences between the conjugations and the like.

I spent a semester in a class in Jr HS, and was much more frustrated and less educated than I feel after 3 weeks of solid DuoLingo. For me, it's a fun tool for establishing some confidence and understanding.

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

#325

Post by least » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 8:49 PM UTC

consilla wrote: post #172

tapland wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the test specifications. You will not speak what you don't know. There is no such limit when others just say things in accents, speeds or using words you have no knowledge of. Starting to speak and be correctly understood felt much easier than accurately understanding others in my two secondary languages, and the same for my fiancée who is a native English speaker with one secondary language.

I'm surpised this is getting downvoted. The OPs assertion that listening is easier than speaking makes sense in the context he describes, a closed testing environment. In a more practical setting, as someone who is living in another country and learning the language, it is far easier for me to convey my meaning with limited vocabulary, than to listen and interpret another speaker, and especially a group conversation.…

When we're speaking of proficiency and comparing them between reading, listening, and speaking, you look at them through a similar lens. How well can you understand or communicate ideas in the language? Can you convey complicated and nuanced thoughts in your target language? Can you understand those? How would your speaking ability compare to a well educated native speaker? How does it compare against a less educated native speaker?

You feel more fluent in speaking because you're only working within your own ability while listening you'll encounter things you don't understand or situations where it's difficult to understand things all the time. That doesn't mean you're more proficient at speaking and in most cases you aren't going to be nearly as proficient at speaking as you think.

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

#326

Post by asoneth » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

JCharante wrote: post #308

asoneth wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has used Duolingo and spaced repetition apps for ~10m/day for the last four or five years, is there something specific you recommend transitioning to? I've started with some Netflix and podcasts, but they're a little more awkward in 10m chunks.

If I only had 10 minutes a day, I would go to an online newspaper and go to the advice column. There are people who write in for advice/discuss and people in the comments will reply. They're going to be using native expressions and idioms, making references to shared knowledge that everyone there knows. It's also going to be about a wide variety of problems (although a lot tend to be relationship based) which means y…

Thank you, I'll look for some newspaper columns.

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

#327

Post by fma » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 9:47 PM UTC

selectodude wrote: post #26

paxys wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this always the comment whenever any startup or IPO is discussed on this site? Every company at this stage loses money. It would be stupid to chase profits over user or revenue growth. They have 40 million monthly active users. Registrations grew 67% YoY. Their revenue doubled in a single quarter. Expenses are mostly stock comp. They have nearly $200M cash on hand. The numbers are all solid.

>Every company at this stage loses money The company is ten years old. I would have to imagine almost zero companies lose money ten years in because they literally do not exist anymore.

I'd guess...this is just a way for the VCs to exit and pass the bag to someone else.

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

#328

Post by daxaxelrod » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 9:58 PM UTC

dorchadas wrote: post #240

daxaxelrod wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal experience leads me to disagree. I've been using Duolingo to learn Chinese for about 400 days now. I recently took another step and started taking private zoom lessons and my tutor said a few of her students have come from the same path. Duo has given me a good understanding of sentence structure and raw vocabulary. Even though my pronunciation needs work, Duo has given me so much for watching a few ads a…

If it took you 400 days to pass the HSK level 1, I would argue that you're absolutely doing something wrong or extremely inefficient.

Hrm maybe you're right. I was doing 50 lessons a day, spent thousands of hours on the app. Quit my job even. Maybe I just suck and am a horrible person. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

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

#329

Post by daxaxelrod » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

caddemon wrote: post #313

dorchadas wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it took you 400 days to pass the HSK level 1, I would argue that you're absolutely doing something wrong or extremely inefficient.

It depends how much time he spends per day, no? I always thought of Duolingo as something you do in 15 minutes of downtime here or there. Nowhere near the level of time commitment that a class would be.

I averaged about 10 minutes a day for ~20xp.

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

#330

Post by yosito » Thu, Jul 29, 2021, 10:14 PM UTC

asoneth wrote: post #288

JCharante wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but you see people still using Duolingo after 6 months or 1 year. If you saw someone still using training wheels after 1 year, you would tell them to stop because it's handicapping them. Duolingo is the same, it's a terrible investment of time after 1 month.

As someone who has used Duolingo and spaced repetition apps for ~10m/day for the last four or five years, is there something specific you recommend transitioning to? I've started with some Netflix and podcasts, but they're a little more awkward in 10m chunks.

Not the commenter you're responding to but I recommend switching to your own custom set of cards using Anki after you've done the basics of Duo Lingo. I use Anki Droid almost every day, and there's also an iOS, desktop and web version that all sync.