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Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M

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Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M

#91
post #56

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.

Those characters are still based on the Roman alphabet, though. Non-Roman alphabets such as Cyrillic are trickier. For example, I can copy-and-paste Cyrillic, as in русский, but I don't know offhand how to produce those characters on my keyboard, much less on my iPad or mobile device.

Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M

#92

Since 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 think the pendulum's swung too far in the other direction: a proper mix of theory and practice is self-evidently the way to go--especially when immersion is not feasible--and the only part worth debating is exactly what mix to use. I never used Duolingo much because you have to type on a phone which is pure pain, but here's another reason I'd avoid it, and ultimately a more important one.

(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

#93
post #25

I 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 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

#94

Duolingo 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…

FWIW I saw on /r/duolingo that French could be getting a new TTS soon http://i.imgur.com/haowkeG.png - for certain values of soon.

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

#96

Only 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.

Anyone with dual language skills can contribute. http://incubator.duolingo.com/ I assume the problem is finding Mandarin / English speakers who are willing to spend the time on the course.

Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M

#97
post #25

I 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…

That looks helpful I'll give it a try, what source do you use for your translations?

Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M

#98

Since 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?

Some lessons include a "Tips and notes" section below the lesson segments. It's often positioned below the fold, and there aren't many indicators that there is more content if the user scrolls down.

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

#99
post #9
post #3

Anybody 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

Having used both Duolingo and Rosetta Stone, that seems about right. Rosetta Stone will probably survive, but not by selling directly to end-users.

Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M

#100

Since 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?

completely agree. i went from loving the app to absolutely hating it just around the moment when the difficulty ratcheted up to the point that grammar/theory became necessary, but of course was absent.
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