Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish? • Hacker News Board

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#191

Post by nonameiguess » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 2:11 PM UTC

I haven't seen anyone mention it yet, but if you absolutely need to use an app and can't take in-person classes or talk to actual people, Camino is the best I've encountered (iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/camino-spanish/id1461459420, Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.studylangu...).

I believe it was developed for the US Department of State to crash train people who were going to work overseas. It isn't silly vocab drills. It has you reading entire literary passages and holding minutes-long conversations also immediately. None of the "get it right before you move on" stuff, either. You're absolutely going to fail, just like if you were really in the other country trying to talk and listen and not getting anything, but keep at it, and you will eventually get it. You can't get true immersion from an app, but this is as close as you'll get.

It's not freemium, though. You have to pay.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#192

Post by mauvehaus » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 2:14 PM UTC

Natsu wrote: post #82

poulsbohemian wrote: post #22

Something that bothers me both about Duolingo and Rosetta Stone (and similar apps...) is that they don't let you fail enough. What I mean is - when you were first learning your native language, you probably mispronounced lots of things and didn't understand the grammar. But you kept going, learning as you went. Duolingo et al. want you to get the pronunciation of things correct before they will let you go on to the n…

> Something that bothers me both about Duolingo and Rosetta Stone (and similar apps...) is that they don't let you fail enough. I mean, if you get the pronunciation wrong, you're going to have a terrible time and I speak from experience trying to get a bottle of water in France and not having realized that I had the pronunciation so badly wrong they thought I was a Brit trying to find the bathroom (l'eau [~low] vs. l…

Technically what you want is a bouteille d'eau. If you're asking for l'eau, you're asking for all of the water, not some of it. Depending on how accommodating the French speaker is, you may just get stonewalled for butchering the language.

Lest anybody accuse me of trafficking in stereotypes about the French, this is a real example from my life.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#193

Post by galuggus » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 2:21 PM UTC

jonplackett wrote: post #190

I was always crap a languages. Top class for everything. Rock bottom for German. Tried lots of language learning things to learn Spanish, including Duolingo - but they just teach you vocabulary - and mostly weird stuff you don’t need initially. Then I stumbled upon Michel Thomas. I listened to the basic course and 2 weeks later I was in Spain speaking to people - even managed to talk my way onto a bus when I got lost…

You could also try Pimsleur.

It's very effective for learning conversation essentials.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#194

Post by sphinxster » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 2:21 PM UTC

55555 wrote: post #145

remarkEon wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think so. Some people can pick up languages relatively easily, and some people can’t. I don’t really know how AI could solve this, unless you mean that the AI can ferret out your gaps and tune the program to your learning needs. Isn’t this what Duolingo tries to do? Genuinely asking. I pay for the “super” Duolingo for no ads and unlimited learning because I’m kind of addicted to it, but I plan trips to German…

Imagine ChatGPT but it uses speech-to-text to understand your speech and then it uses text-to-speech to talk back to you. Now you’re getting infinite personalized conversation practice. If you ever don’t understand what it said, hold spacebar to see the phrase in both English and Spanish with each word mapped to its translation, or just say “que?” and it’ll explain the sentence in English and/or Spanish. This seems p…

Couldn't ChatGPT? As-is, this seems almost a good prompt...

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#195

Post by nothrowaways » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 2:27 PM UTC

So, what's the answer?

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#196

Post by AntoniusBlock » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 2:36 PM UTC

jimjimjim wrote: post #99

I was a long time duo user (1000+ day streak) learning german. I wanted to be able to read german (books etc) rather than being able to converse in german. The streak system and the gold->diamond tier system kept me going but after a while I realized I had plateaued and I felt like I was forgetting more than I was learning. Then I realized, I had got to the point where I was good at answering what duo wanted to get t…

If you only want to learn to read German, check out a book called "German For Reading" by Karl Sandberg. I'm using it now and it's pretty good.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#197

Post by tmountain » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 2:45 PM UTC

davidzweig wrote: post #182

kubb wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could use it to practice already: 1. Ask GPT for a list of 20 A1-level sentences in English. 2. Save them. 3. Try to translate them to Spanish. 4. If you can't use a translation service. 5. Try again the next day. The only problem is making sure that the AI generates sentences that use the vocab that you don't know, so that you keep expanding it. Not sure how to solve that. For pronunciation, record yourself repe…

Instead of GPT, you can take sentences from Tatoeba, and analyse and index by vocabulary. 'PhrasePump' does this already. We glued together an NLP pipeline (Stanza etc.) to capture the lemmas in sentences. https://www.languagereactor.com/phrasepump

Or use clozemaster since it’s a fully realized app that does all the work for you.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#198

Post by powera » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 2:56 PM UTC

I have done French and Chinese, and it is fine.

I tried to start Korean, and was getting so many "fake cognates" (silver is 은 "eun" but it gives 실버 "silbeo") that I had to quit. At least in the "learn the alphabet" stage, it's not teaching Korean, it's teaching "fake Korean using English words transliterated".

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#199

Post by goodcanadian » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 3:03 PM UTC

poulsbohemian wrote: post #22

Something that bothers me both about Duolingo and Rosetta Stone (and similar apps...) is that they don't let you fail enough. What I mean is - when you were first learning your native language, you probably mispronounced lots of things and didn't understand the grammar. But you kept going, learning as you went. Duolingo et al. want you to get the pronunciation of things correct before they will let you go on to the n…

Indeed, years ago now, I tried to brush up on my French which I had learned in school. Duolingo did not like my pronunciation (probably fair), and kept me stuck on very basic French that I knew well rather than actually getting to the point where it was challenging me and helping me improve. There may also have been an element of Canadian pronunciation versus France pronunciation. Anyway, it was annoying, and I quickly gave up. Also, there was at least one time where it would not accept my correct answer and insisted on a (IMHO) worse answer.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#200

Post by hardlianotion » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 3:03 PM UTC

Seems like a fair article about Duolingo and its relation to language learning and competing apps it its space.

I have a grip about a tiny part of the article, when it mentions Ibo, a Nigerian tribal language. Leave the "tribal" bit out - we're not living in the 20th century any more.