The meanest app: Duolingo subjects its users to "emotional blackmail" • Hacker News Board

Re: The meanest app: Duolingo subjects its users to "emotional blackmail"

#81

Post by djeastm » Tue, Aug 06, 2024, 7:16 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #68

oglop wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That is literally what every physical language school or textbook for beginners have in the materials ... and literally none of them teaches up to fluency. Maybe because I had experience with language learning, but it would not occur to me that "learn language" in a headline should imply that.

>it would not occur to me that "learn language" in a headline should imply that

That's because you've been marketed-to by beginner's courses your whole life, probably. Like I said, this goes back to things like Rosetta Stone, or Berlitz before that, etc. etc.

They all have done the same business model. Suck people in with the ambiguity of "learn a language" (and all the sweet social capital it will give you!) teach you a few touristy words and phrases without any way of telling you if your pronunciation is way off (AI might help in the future, but it isn't there yet), and happily blow sunshine up your you-know-what about how well you're doing.

If you can't tell, I'm a bit cynical about general audience language apps.

Re: The meanest app: Duolingo subjects its users to "emotional blackmail"

#82

Post by Somersal » Tue, Aug 06, 2024, 10:18 PM UTC

My problem with Duolingo, as an English person, is the ‘English’ is actually American English (even uses a US flag!) and sometimes marks my answers as wrong when they are actually correct in English! Some of the required responses aren’t even English (e.g. “the books had gotten lost”). I would really appreciate it if they could allow actual English answers as well as American English ones.

Re: The meanest app: Duolingo subjects its users to "emotional blackmail"

#83

Post by watwut » Wed, Aug 07, 2024, 1:23 PM UTC

djeastm wrote: post #81

watwut wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is literally what every physical language school or textbook for beginners have in the materials ... and literally none of them teaches up to fluency. Maybe because I had experience with language learning, but it would not occur to me that "learn language" in a headline should imply that.

>it would not occur to me that "learn language" in a headline should imply that That's because you've been marketed-to by beginner's courses your whole life, probably. Like I said, this goes back to things like Rosetta Stone, or Berlitz before that, etc. etc. They all have done the same business model. Suck people in with the ambiguity of "learn a language" (and all the sweet social capital it will give you!) teach y…

I think that you have unrealistic expectations. Math books have "learn math" on them. Physics books have "learn physics" on them. Drawing books have "learn drawing" on them. You do not expect to be at PhD level after reading them.

There is no reason to make exception for language learning. And even there, real life courses have "learn English" or "learn Spanish" on them. Literally none of them can make you fluent.

Also, fluency is super far reaching goal. It is absurd as a benchmark. You will reach fluency only after you consumed huge amount of content, wrote a lot of text and spoken with people for hundreds of hours. Which beginner, intermediate or advanced resources you learned on the way does not matter much.

> If you can't tell, I'm a bit cynical about general audience language apps.

I learned two foreign languages up to fluency - enough to be able to use them in work, life, internet, to converse with people, use them to learn new things.

Re: The meanest app: Duolingo subjects its users to "emotional blackmail"

#84

Post by carstenhag » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 4:46 PM UTC

barrell wrote: post #34

carstenhag wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Lingvist for vocabulary building, but it's also not perfect.

If you were in charge of Lingvist, what would you change/build? edit: long time lingvist user, I'm also a huuuuge fan.

Lingvist only tells you how a word/sentence is written and spelt. It only explains what the single word & full sentence you are looking for means.

But sometimes it would be useful to know what a different, already shown, word means.

Re: The meanest app: Duolingo subjects its users to "emotional blackmail"

#85

Post by carstenhag » Thu, Aug 08, 2024, 4:48 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #60

carstenhag wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't you? As someone else already said, it's a combination. I'm learning french and I'm enjoying A1/A2-specific books and newspapers (Zeit Sprachen, idk if something like this exists in other countries)

Because it does not have sounds, simple as that.

But at some point you understand the usual pronunciations. Even if you make mistakes at 5% of the words, learning more vocabulary by reading is probably a positive overall