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LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

librelingo.app

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Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#61

Post by N_Lens »

codetrotter wrote: post #56
huimang wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only method worse than Duolingo for language learning is possibly the traditional classroom, in my humble opinion. My background is that I've studied Korean for ~8 years now, as a native English speaker. Like most US citizens I took Spanish classes in middle & high school. I did the traditional classroom method with 3 semesters of German in college. And I forgot most of Spanish and German aside from some words an…

> neither should really be looked towards for substantial language learning methods What should one do instead?

Post critical comments on HN obviously.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#62

Post by thaumasiotes »

chrisco255 wrote: post #18
Tor3 wrote: post #4

There wasn't much to read there, but why aspire to be an alternative to Duolingo of all things? Duolingo focuses on learning by translation, basically. It's even in the name: "Duolingo". It's an utterly broken approach to learning languages, except for the very initial phase where you're getting just enough to move on to modern methods (i.e. avoid translation like the plague, to start with). Which is exactly why a co…

Duolingo is a multimodal learning tool. There's some translation but there's also fill in the blank, describe from prompt, oral story interpretation, spoken descriptions, and even AI chat bot interactions in recent version.

> and even AI chat bot interactions in recent version.

If you have that, you don't need the other things.

One task a language model is naturally suited to is... using language.

(You might want to give the bot a voice, or I guess you'll still need the listening exercises, depending on your goals.)

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#63

Post by vladvasiliu »

freetonik wrote: post #23
est wrote: post #14

been using Duolingo in the 10s and last year, I gave up because the course seems very repetitive. Even if I got the answer right 10 out of 10 times, the same question kept coming. It almost looks like the app is trying very hard to make me stay as long as possible, instead of study as effecient as possible. So for a good alternative app, is there a dynamic course pace I can adapt to?

Which course? The quality of different language courses on Duolingo differs a lot. For example, the Finnish language course is very bad, full of useless words and nonsensical phrases like "The cat is a viking". In contrast, the Swedish course (which happens to be the 2nd official language of Finland) is amazing and full of phrases immediately useful in daily life. A few modules in, Finnish Duolingo is all e.g. "My mo…

> In addition, the multi-modality also differs a lot. Finnish and some other languages simply don't have speech exercises (where you have to read something into the microphone).

They have the speech exercises in Spanish, but they are ridiculously bad. It often says I'm correct before I get to say half the sentence. Other times, I'll need to repeat a word 10 times until it gives up and says it's fine.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#64

Post by stevekemp »

frabcus wrote: post #49
gary17the wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a false dichotomy. Focusing on grammar is not the opposite. I don't follow you. I did not claim that focusing on grammar was a literal opposite of anything. I claimed that in my case "repetitive learning by example" turned out to be less boring than "repetitive learning by memorizing grammar". In order to translate a randomly generated (thus never seen before, non-memorized) sentence from one language to an…

You don't have to consciously and rationally understand the grammar - you didn't when first learning to speak your first language! Stephen Krashen is a pretty good researcher on this - the summary is that exposure to the language for time (e.g. 500 hours of content you just about understand) is the critical factor. This is training non-conscious parts of your brain's neural network. Some people like understanding the…

Good luck learning Finnish without understanding the grammar.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#65

Post by palata »

zsoltkacsandi wrote: post #44
Tor3 wrote: post #4

There wasn't much to read there, but why aspire to be an alternative to Duolingo of all things? Duolingo focuses on learning by translation, basically. It's even in the name: "Duolingo". It's an utterly broken approach to learning languages, except for the very initial phase where you're getting just enough to move on to modern methods (i.e. avoid translation like the plague, to start with). Which is exactly why a co…

> Duolingo focuses on learning by translation, basically. ... It's an utterly broken approach to learning languages No it's not. It's not even an approach, it's a method to improve a subset of skills, you need to complement it with other methods to improve your other skills in a given language. While I agree that Duolingo can be counterproductive for language learning, but it's not because of the "translation", but t…

> but that they do not communicate two things clearly: > this alone won't make you a fluent speaker

Pretty sure that they say it, repeatedly, on their blog. I only read a handful of their blog posts and more than one mentioned it.

> at what point you should move on from Duolingo

I won't blame them for assuming common sense. If you haven't reached a level where you can e.g. read news in the language you are learning, then you probably won't try e.g. while waiting 10 minutes for a train. And there, it's better to do 10 minutes of Duolingo than 10 minutes of TikTok.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#66

Post by luotuoshangdui »

Tor3 wrote: post #4

There wasn't much to read there, but why aspire to be an alternative to Duolingo of all things? Duolingo focuses on learning by translation, basically. It's even in the name: "Duolingo". It's an utterly broken approach to learning languages, except for the very initial phase where you're getting just enough to move on to modern methods (i.e. avoid translation like the plague, to start with). Which is exactly why a co…

Because Duolingo is perhaps the most well-known language learning app right now, people call their apps 'alternatives to Duolingo' regardless of how much they actually have in common.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#67

Post by tossandthrow »

stevekemp wrote: post #64
frabcus wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to consciously and rationally understand the grammar - you didn't when first learning to speak your first language! Stephen Krashen is a pretty good researcher on this - the summary is that exposure to the language for time (e.g. 500 hours of content you just about understand) is the critical factor. This is training non-conscious parts of your brain's neural network. Some people like understanding the…

Good luck learning Finnish without understanding the grammar.

Good luck getting a 3 year old Finnish person lecturing you on Finnish grammar - Even though the kid can easily ask for a ice cream in both past, present, and future.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#68

Post by broodbucket »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #62
chrisco255 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Duolingo is a multimodal learning tool. There's some translation but there's also fill in the blank, describe from prompt, oral story interpretation, spoken descriptions, and even AI chat bot interactions in recent version.

> and even AI chat bot interactions in recent version. If you have that, you don't need the other things. One task a language model is naturally suited to is... using language. (You might want to give the bot a voice, or I guess you'll still need the listening exercises, depending on your goals.)

There's AI slop (or hastily human generated slop, hard to tell) in Duolingo so I won't advocate for its quality, but I've been trying to use several different flagship models for language learning (with a native speaker on speeddial to fact check things) and they get stuff wrong a lot. LLMs are absolutely not ready to be your sole source for language learning. They seem perfectly competent at communicating in whatever language you want, and are fine at translation, but for example, explaining grammatical concepts of one language in another language they have been surprisingly incompetent at in my experience.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#70

Post by zsoltkacsandi »

palata wrote: post #65
zsoltkacsandi wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Duolingo focuses on learning by translation, basically. ... It's an utterly broken approach to learning languages No it's not. It's not even an approach, it's a method to improve a subset of skills, you need to complement it with other methods to improve your other skills in a given language. While I agree that Duolingo can be counterproductive for language learning, but it's not because of the "translation", but t…

> but that they do not communicate two things clearly: > this alone won't make you a fluent speaker Pretty sure that they say it, repeatedly, on their blog. I only read a handful of their blog posts and more than one mentioned it. > at what point you should move on from Duolingo I won't blame them for assuming common sense. If you haven't reached a level where you can e.g. read news in the language you are learning,…

> Pretty sure that they say it, repeatedly, on their blog. I only read a handful of their blog posts and more than one mentioned it.

Most users don't read blog posts - they interact with the app. If critical information about how to use the product effectively is buried outside the main experience, that's poor communication.

Also, it's worth remembering: Duolingo is a language-learning app for people all over the world, many of whom don't speak English well enough to even understand their blog.

> I won't blame them for assuming common sense.

It's not about "common sense" either. Language learning is not intuitive for most people - especially first-timers (who their target audience are by the way). Many users assume that completing a Duolingo "course" means they are "done."

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