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LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

librelingo.app

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Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#101

Post by porridgeraisin »

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…

It's a broken approach only if you are talking about the academic approach to learning language. If all you want is to be able to form basic sentences with some english nouns (which is mostly all most people want from a secondary language) then it is absolutely productive.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#102

Post by GardenLetter27 »

charcircuit wrote: post #69

All language apps are destined to become essentially an SRS app, which at that point you might as well just use an anki.

I disagree, the old HelloChinese course was great for covering Chinese character writing, as well as exercises with Pinyin and only Chinese characters, etc.

Unfortunately they've ramped up the monetisation and also become more like Duolingo with the streak-based stuff and fewer grammar notes.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#103

Post by Tor3 »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #93
gary17the wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Duolingo is obsolete. I have to defend Duolingo a bit here. After only 60 days of short, daily 15-minute lessons, I was able to start forming valid (albeit simple) sentences such as "where is the bathroom in this building?" that were never explicitly presented on Duolingo and thus must have been assembled, not memorized, by my brain. I don't think it's reasonable to ask for anything more. I think the trick is to pu…

Every time Duolingo comes up, people express their weird standard for it: If it can't take you all the way, it's useless. Which applies to literally every method for learning a language. And when you press someone on their alternatives to Duolingo, most of the criticism falls apart. The OP's pitched alternative is a classroom where the teacher points down and says "this is a table"? That doesn't compete with an app I…

That was simply an example of what's actually used in schools teaching adult immigrants of all ages! It was not something I pitched as an alternative to Duolingo. (Though it must be said that this particular school I mentioned has a very good track record in churning out able speakers, though this is not something a casual learner would want to try. It's basically full time. Very, very hard.)

For language learning there are more good options now than ever before. Not all of them are equally good for everyone, we're all different after all. I, for example, have always been utterly unable to learn by memorizing stuff (word lists or whatever), but I know people doing the exact same who can actually transfer that to active use. I never could. On the other hand I'm good at learning by reading and listening to input, as long as I can get the gist of it. I learned Italian to a survival level by first using phrasebooks so that I could book hotels and order food, and at the same time I listened to people for hours every day, for weeks and months at the time (because I was surrounded by people). Then I came across a shelf chock full of Peanut comics, in Italian. Ideal material. You see the story, you read the text, you understand what they're most probably saying, and after a shelf-meter of that I had grasped quite complex Italian grammar (some of which doesn't exist in my native language). Then I continued with Calvin and Hobbes books, with text in addition to the actual comics, and then newspapers and books. And all the time listening, and speaking with people in shops and elsewhere. That's an approach which works for me. This was all before Youtube and net resources.

Now there are so many options.. at least for popular languages. Graded input is what I would recommend. What's more important than anything is that it's interesting. And it's important not to fall in the trap of learning about a language instead of actually learning the language. The former is easy, and interesting.. but won't teach you the language.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#104

Post by lukaslalinsky »

GardenLetter27 wrote: post #100

It sucks how Duolingo has gotten so much worse over the years. It used to be great when it had the grammar notes and discussion forums and comments, and you could actually finish the course and have some recognition. Now it's just all too game-like and all based around maintaining streaks rather than learning. Unfortunately some other apps have started to copy this model too like HelloChinese.

Completely agree, when Duolingo started, I took the Spanish course and actually got something out of it. The lessons, comments were super helpful. I've tried it again last year and I couldn't believe my eyes that most of it is gone. It feels exactly like an addictive game, making you focus on the game part of it, not learning. And the fact that you can buy out of failures is just WTF.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#105

Post by hombre_fatal »

Tor3 wrote: post #103
hombre_fatal wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time Duolingo comes up, people express their weird standard for it: If it can't take you all the way, it's useless. Which applies to literally every method for learning a language. And when you press someone on their alternatives to Duolingo, most of the criticism falls apart. The OP's pitched alternative is a classroom where the teacher points down and says "this is a table"? That doesn't compete with an app I…

That was simply an example of what's actually used in schools teaching adult immigrants of all ages! It was not something I pitched as an alternative to Duolingo. (Though it must be said that this particular school I mentioned has a very good track record in churning out able speakers, though this is not something a casual learner would want to try. It's basically full time. Very, very hard.) For language learning th…

I just wrote this in another comment, but the hardest part of language learning is the daily practice.

Learning how the language works is the easy part. But only through the daily practice part do you develop the skills to read, write, and speak on the fly.

So the question comes down to: what are you willing to do every day to get that practice in? Especially when you're a noob well under the level needed to do (or stay interested in) more interesting things like read the news.

That's what Duolingo helps people with. And it's already compatible with the things you mention, like reading comics.

You might be falling into the trap of looking at people who aren't motivated to do anything but use one app on their phone and then pretending they'd otherwise have the motivation to learn through an ideal you have that requires more motivation.

When I started Duolingo I didn't even see myself as someone who would or could learn a language, so trying to read comics in Spanish was never on the table (much less a phrasebook, ugh), not an alternative that Duolingo was shutting down. Yet after months I realized I could incidentally read BBC Mundo. I'd wager most people are in this camp since Duolingo is such a "might as well" opportunity very much unlike your proposed alternatives where you assume everyone is super motivated.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#106

Post by OsrsNeedsf2P »

GardenLetter27 wrote: post #100

It sucks how Duolingo has gotten so much worse over the years. It used to be great when it had the grammar notes and discussion forums and comments, and you could actually finish the course and have some recognition. Now it's just all too game-like and all based around maintaining streaks rather than learning. Unfortunately some other apps have started to copy this model too like HelloChinese.

The reason is the App Store (and Play Store) value things like DAU (as a proxy for "quality"), IAPs (because they get a cut), no real interaction (too risky), etc. The end result is "real language learning" doesn't align with "launching a top mobile app". This is also the reason none of games are hard (can't let people uninstall) and nothing unique shows up anymore (it's impossible to compete)

Source: Did mobile dev for ~5 years + launched failed B2B that gives data on how to game the Play Store

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#107

Post by pbmonster »

huimang wrote: post #92
pbmonster wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and most classrooms (I know there are exceptional curriculums and exceptional students) don't prepare you to actually speak to people Is this really how language lessons are taught in US high schools? I've learned English and French in high school, and we were forced to speak all the time. * Read a story together (who's reading aloud is frequently switched), then the teacher asks questions about the story and picks…

We did do those kinds of things. For example, speaking with a partner or having to give a 5 minute talk to the teacher on something. The problem is that it's grossly inefficient time-wise, and the content of "conversations" was always very, very simple. "Hi my name is _, I like the color _, My hometown is in _, how are you today?" Is not a real conversation. It's boring and most students learn the vocab for the upcom…

> "Hi my name is _, I like the color _, My hometown is in _, how are you today?" Is not a real conversation.

That's... "first two weeks"-level of language lessons, right? No reason not to progress to children's stories and newspaper articles in time.

We basically never did speaking with a partner, I think our teachers realized that most students will learn little from that. It was always student teacher interactions, but in a way that required everybody to pay attention/participate. The teacher would ask a question, waited a few seconds so everybody could begin forming a response, and then pick a student to answer.

Not listening and mentally preparing an answer risked getting picked, failing, and getting admonished/ridiculed - and the teachers were (naturally) pretty good at calling on students who had drifted off. If you were paying attention, you also constantly compared your prepared response with what other students were answering, which made you think about correct grammar, ect.

I think if you have the resources to do 5 hours of language lessons a week, this is the best way. If you're learning independently, your way is probably more effective in terms of time and money. I've saved your other comment, I really should get back into Spanish...

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#108

Post by WinstonSmith84 »

simonbarker87 wrote: post #12

Going to plug Language Transfer again, an excellent free app that is a much better way to learn a language than the DuoLingo approach.

up vote here - Language Transfer has allowed me to be able to communicate in Spanish within just a few weeks - understanding is another challenge though. This app is absolutely genius. I wish there would have been more content though

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#109

Post by jamager »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #93
gary17the wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Duolingo is obsolete. I have to defend Duolingo a bit here. After only 60 days of short, daily 15-minute lessons, I was able to start forming valid (albeit simple) sentences such as "where is the bathroom in this building?" that were never explicitly presented on Duolingo and thus must have been assembled, not memorized, by my brain. I don't think it's reasonable to ask for anything more. I think the trick is to pu…

Every time Duolingo comes up, people express their weird standard for it: If it can't take you all the way, it's useless. Which applies to literally every method for learning a language. And when you press someone on their alternatives to Duolingo, most of the criticism falls apart. The OP's pitched alternative is a classroom where the teacher points down and says "this is a table"? That doesn't compete with an app I…

No, it is because Duolingo is an addictive trap optimized for "engagement" (not learning) that requires you an absurd amount of time to progress very little, because it is explicitly designed to be ineffective with the looks of being effective (that's how they make money).

Want alternatives? Among apps, LingQ, for example, or LanguageTransfer. Among not apps, Lonely Planet phrasebooks and StoryLearning graded readers.

There are really many good options if one bothers to search.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#110

Post by GardenLetter27 »

lukaslalinsky wrote: post #104
GardenLetter27 wrote: post #100

It sucks how Duolingo has gotten so much worse over the years. It used to be great when it had the grammar notes and discussion forums and comments, and you could actually finish the course and have some recognition. Now it's just all too game-like and all based around maintaining streaks rather than learning. Unfortunately some other apps have started to copy this model too like HelloChinese.

Completely agree, when Duolingo started, I took the Spanish course and actually got something out of it. The lessons, comments were super helpful. I've tried it again last year and I couldn't believe my eyes that most of it is gone. It feels exactly like an addictive game, making you focus on the game part of it, not learning. And the fact that you can buy out of failures is just WTF.

Same, I now speak fluent Spanish and have lived in Spain but I started with Duolingo (although just watching loads of films was by far the best way to learn once you get that far!).
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