Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by bayesianhorse » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 8:31 PM UTC

drpgq wrote: post #120

bayesianhorse wrote: post #117

To me this looks a bit like a "charity" investment. I've heard rumours Duolingo was running thin on capital while frantically searching for a business model. However, despite not being profitable yet, Duolingo is doing a tremendous amount of good. I know quite a bit about language learning and learning in general, and I have never seen a better tool for learning the languages they offer. The combination of words, sen…

Yeah I have to wonder how great Duolingo would have been if I had it as a kid as a learning tool for French (I'm Canadian). I generally got good French marks, but I think Duolingo would have boosted my actual ability.

I think Duolingo is great for exactly that kind of situation, where multiple languages exist in one country, and that is actually the norm, rather than the exception.

For example there is also a course in the incubator teaching Catalonian for Spanish speakers, Catalonian being a language spoken in a part of southern Spain.

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

#132

Post by fataliss » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 8:45 PM UTC

If they could add some Asian languages, at least Korean which uses an alphabet and would probably not require as much special dev as something like Chinese (mandarin) would, that would be super sweet!

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

#133

Post by c0wb0yc0d3r » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 8:47 PM UTC

bayesianhorse wrote: post #114

c0wb0yc0d3r wrote: post #109

I wish Duolingo had a Vietnamese course. You can translate the site to Vietnamese but they can't teach it to you, come on.

I think there is a Vietnamese course hatching.

That would be great. Is there a source for this, or is it just whispers on the Internet?

Edit: Found it, http://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/vi/en/status

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

#134

Post by kkhire » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 9:13 PM UTC

manish_gill wrote: post #125

shkkmo wrote: 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…

For vocabulary, http://memrise.com and http://quizlet.com are good. Memrise's flash cards (or "mems" as they call them) are quite good.

agreed. I've tried several language learning products and found memrise helped me retain a lot more than any other

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

#135

Post by ggambetta » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 9:28 PM UTC

GFischer wrote: post #129

Trufa wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to our little country! Where do you come from? What's your mother tongue?

Seconded :) . I wonder whether might have enough HN users to have a meetup here.. (are HN meetups still occurring on other places? Maybe I should Ask HN).

Thirded! If you do a meetup in late December / early January I may be there :)

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

#136

Post by beejiu » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 9:30 PM UTC

probably_wrong wrote: post #84

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?

It is arguably the best way to learn the language; after all, it was the way you learned your first language. I think a great deal of people find 'theory' boring, and would otherwise not be interested in learning a language. Duolingo is fun and practical.

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

#137

Post by chucksmash » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 9:44 PM UTC

ionforce wrote: post #50

Great to see them doing so well. Personally, I'd like to see language learning apps explore the parts of language learning that Duolingo isn't good at. Also a high-quality, open source version of Duo would be awesome for super minority, low infrastructure, and/or conlang languages.

"A planned or constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary have been consciously devised for human or human-like communication, instead of having developed naturally. It is also referred to as an artificial or invented language."

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructed_language

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

#138

Post by NhanH » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 9:46 PM UTC

beejiu wrote: post #136

probably_wrong wrote: post #84

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?

It is arguably the best way to learn the language; after all, it was the way you learned your first language. I think a great deal of people find 'theory' boring, and would otherwise not be interested in learning a language. Duolingo is fun and practical.

> It is arguably the best way to learn the language; after all, it was the way you learned your first language

It took me ten years to be as proficient as a ten years old kid in my first language. So I don't think the way we learn our first language is necessary the best way to learn language in general.

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

#139

Post by GFischer » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 9:47 PM UTC

ggambetta wrote: post #135

GFischer wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded :) . I wonder whether might have enough HN users to have a meetup here.. (are HN meetups still occurring on other places? Maybe I should Ask HN).

Thirded! If you do a meetup in late December / early January I may be there :)

It would be awesome to hear about your experiences with Google :) and now with your new company (and book writing too !! )

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

#140

Post by copsarebastards » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 9:48 PM UTC

This is the kind of startup I believe and hope will survive when the current tech bubble bursts. They have a real technical solution to a real problem and are making their money by charging people for a service that is worthwhile enough to pay for. They're contributing to humanity in a meaningful way that's worthwhile.

All these social media sites that make their money off advertising or selling user data can all go bankrupt as far as I'm concerned. Their users are coming to their websites for the short-term dopamine rush brought by the novelty of social media interaction: these websites are not different in any meaningful way from drug dealers, and they're costing millions of people happiness and productivity. They sell themselves as communications platforms but in reality, they compromise on privacy and as a result some of the most important forms of communication are hampered by their influence. As developers I think we have an ethical imperative to work for organizations like Duolingo who are pushing humanity forward and not social media companies who are holding humanity back.