Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any word on getting over the hurdle of using another alphabet on english keyboards?
That should be easy on mobile devices. At least one of ä, á, à, â, æ, å is necessary for most of the supported languages.
Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
91–100 of 189 posts
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#92Since there are so many Duoling fans here, I have to ask: am I the only one who finds the app almost unusable because there's no theory? For German I used to try the exercises on my commute, but suddenly the app expected me to use "dem" instead of "der" without any explanation. I can't be the only one with this problem, right? Or is there a "new concepts" tab that I've never seen?
(Also, in case you haven't yet worked it out or looked it up somewhere else: you need to use "dem" with masculine and neuter indirect objects, often translatable into English using "to" or "for", and with certain prepositions. It is the dative masculine/neuter definite article.)
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#93I am currently in Uruguay learning Spanish and Duolingo is one the the 4 tools I use on my phone for it. The other three are: Ankidroid: A flashcard app for adding vocabulary I need and phrases I want to come more fluidly. Spanish Trainer: A spaced repetition verb conjugation app as Duolingo doesn't give me enough practice with this. Google Translate What would speed things up for me is the ability to easily import t…
You might like to try my webapp for reading and learning a language:
It allows you to read shared texts or upload your own (.txt or .epub) or read any web page with a Chrome extension (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/readlang-web-reade...)
You can click or drag across any word or phrase to get an instant translation.
Every translation is converted into a flashcard, along with the context sentence.
You can practice with Readlang's own spaced repetition flashcards or export to Anki if you prefer.
Hope you find it useful!
(I've been bootstrapping this for the past 2.5 years)
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#94Duolingo is pretty nice, but often the voices are odd and I'm not so sure the pronunciation detection is accurate. Hard to complain for a free product, of course. Lingvist is fairly new and French-only for now, yet I feel like I'm making more progress with that than I did with Duolingo. Not sure why that's the case. I'm pairing both with French vocabulary decks on Brainscape, which is an Anki-like SRS app. Lingvist c…
edit: ah sorry, missed the August bit on the last line. Probably not the value of soon you need.
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#95Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#96Only complaint is they appear to have no priority in supporting languages of the East, where the majority of the world lives. I guess their main demo, at least at one point, was Western students, who aren't typically taught those languages in school. In the least, teaching Mandarin should be a higher priority than half the languages they support.
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#97I am currently in Uruguay learning Spanish and Duolingo is one the the 4 tools I use on my phone for it. The other three are: Ankidroid: A flashcard app for adding vocabulary I need and phrases I want to come more fluidly. Spanish Trainer: A spaced repetition verb conjugation app as Duolingo doesn't give me enough practice with this. Google Translate What would speed things up for me is the ability to easily import t…
> What would speed things up for me is the ability to easily import translations from Google Translate into my flashcard app. You might like to try my webapp for reading and learning a language: http://readlang.com It allows you to read shared texts or upload your own (.txt or .epub) or read any web page with a Chrome extension ( https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/readlang-web-reade... ) You can click or drag…
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#98Since there are so many Duoling fans here, I have to ask: am I the only one who finds the app almost unusable because there's no theory? For German I used to try the exercises on my commute, but suddenly the app expected me to use "dem" instead of "der" without any explanation. I can't be the only one with this problem, right? Or is there a "new concepts" tab that I've never seen?
I probably have a different perspective than most, but here's why I enjoy Duolingo's style:
The first foreign language I began learning was Spanish. I took it throughout high school and college. I was taught theory first, so I could understand most of what I'd read or hear following the new lesson. Running the input through the theory I'd established in my brain worked, but it was very slow and took a lot of practice to speed up my speaking and understanding.
When I was visiting my wife in Brazil while we were dating, I learned Portuguese very differently. Although they were aware that I didn't speak Portuguese, many of her friends and relatives did not let that reason hold them back from speaking it to me anyway. So I was bombarded with the language, and slowly began to understand more and more. First, I'd only understand one word in a phrase, then 25% of it, then 50% and so on until I reached a critical point where I understood enough of what was being said that I could use the context of what I did understand to infer the rest and learn that too.
Learning Portuguese was so much quicker for me. I still know more Spanish theory, but I still speak and understand it too slowly to consider myself fluent. On the other hand, Brazilians tell me all the time that they're impressed with how well I speak Portuguese.
I think the jumping right into the deep end style of learning Duolingo offers is fun, but may not be the best for everyone.
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#99Anybody else feel a little nervous when a free language tool is valued in the hundreds of millions?
Rosetta Stone, which seems to be the current leader in language training made $261 million last year. The funny thing is Duolingo is now valued higher than Rosetta Stone: https://www.google.com/finance?q=RST
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#100Since there are so many Duoling fans here, I have to ask: am I the only one who finds the app almost unusable because there's no theory? For German I used to try the exercises on my commute, but suddenly the app expected me to use "dem" instead of "der" without any explanation. I can't be the only one with this problem, right? Or is there a "new concepts" tab that I've never seen?