Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

librelingo.app

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 376 posts

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#161

Post by spudlyo »

criddell wrote: post #121
gary17the wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [learning by translation] [is] an utterly broken approach to learning languages I speak one foreign language fluently, which I learned in a traditional classroom environment with a teacher, and recently started to learn another language with Duolingo. I actually find their "learning by translation" method possibly easier (and definitely less boring) than the traditional "keep learning all the different grammar comb…

English grammar (my native language) has always been a mystery to me. Any time I hear about participles or present perfect or infinitives or passive voice etc… my eyes glaze over and I have no idea what any of it means. In school I failed those units. Learning a new language from grammar principles wouldn’t be a very effective path for me…

It's funny, but I always found English grammar (also my native language) to be completely pointless, but I find myself really enjoying learning about Latin grammar, and as a result marveling about how weird English is. It's fascinating that one subsystem in our brain can completely understand our native language's grammar, and yet another part finds it unfathomable.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#162

Post by dkarbayev »

skydhash wrote: post #129
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've twice written about what is the wrong way to learn a new language -- what's your right way? Why did you use Duo' instead of 'the right way'? Perhaps that explains why one might create a OSS version of Duo.

The method that worked for me: A 90 day course for learning the basic of the grammar and some thematic vocabulary (better than duolingo as it has whole conversation, both written and spoken). An awful lot of reading book, listening to shows, sporadic speaking and writing. Learned English that way without ever travelling to an English speaking country.

I've learned English by scrolling endless memes on Imgur (back when it used to be an image storage for Reddit), and watching a lot of Youtube videos on the topics that interested me (tech and car reviews - like LTT and Doug DeMuro). But that only developed my passive vocabulary (reading and listening). I only really learned speaking English once I started working remotely for an australian company, and further improved the fluency after moving abroad (to the Netherlands).

I'm currently doing German lessons on Duolingo, and what I dislike the most is that it keeps shoving "useless" words into my face (the words that are irrelevant for me and that I'll most likely never use) - I wish there was an option to choose the topics that I find interesting so that it'd mix the words that more relevant with the everyday use words to better taylor the vocab for me. Another shortcoming is that it never actually explains the grammar rules, you can only try to analyze the examples yourself, trying to notice any patterns. Some are good in that, others are bad - so why don't they spare us that mental gymnastics and provide at least minimal explanation?

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#163

Post by ghaff »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #152
stevekemp wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck learning Finnish without understanding the grammar.

I feel like it's the opposite. Most people who speak languages with complex grammar natively can not clearly explain the grammar to you, because they use the correct grammar intuitively, and they have learned to do so by having a ton of input in that language.

This is a bad example because it's probably more wordy/complex than it needs to be but I couldn't begin to name the various grammar being used in: "I would not have gone to Paris except that a friend decided to give me a free ticket."

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#164

Post by Zmajche »

GardenLetter27 wrote: post #102
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.

old HelloChinese course is still there in the app... New one in making so far looks more like DuoLingo, however, LingoDeer app is alternative that right now is better for Asian languages if you want a little bit grammar stuff while learning.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#165

Post by ryandrake »

pbmonster wrote: post #107
huimang wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

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

After trying for years to learn my wife’s native language, I haven’t really gotten past the “my name is _” and a few other key phrases. I’ve got maybe 10 phrases memorized and I think that’s all my brain can hold at this point. Language learning is not for everyone.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#166

Post by crispyambulance »

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…

People have vastly different needs when learning a second language. Many folks never need to progress beyond "perpetual beginner" and that's perfectly fine.

If you're traveling for work or pleasure, it's nice to learn some key things about the language and freshen up on vocabulary. Basic words/phrases about time, money, food, etiquette, and travel will go surprisingly far when you put yourself somewhere that another language is spoken. That's what duolingo and, I guess, things like it do well. It doesn't matter if it's focused on translation at that most basic level.

To actually learn a language takes a lot of time. Years of regular sustained effort. I don't know what is meant by "modern methods" but I am skeptical that they're vastly better than classroom instruction, and in any case, the outcomes will depend more on the motivation of the student than the exact method used. The only way to shorten the time it takes to learn is total immersion.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#167

Post by dilap »

crispyambulance wrote: post #166
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…

People have vastly different needs when learning a second language. Many folks never need to progress beyond "perpetual beginner" and that's perfectly fine. If you're traveling for work or pleasure, it's nice to learn some key things about the language and freshen up on vocabulary. Basic words/phrases about time, money, food, etiquette, and travel will go surprisingly far when you put yourself somewhere that another…

You're a little too kind to Duolingo. It is useful for the very, very beginning, but people sink a ton of time into it which could've been used to actually learn the language.

Making something as fun to use as Duolingo but that actually teaches you the language is an open problem.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#168

Post by criddell »

spudlyo wrote: post #161
criddell wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

English grammar (my native language) has always been a mystery to me. Any time I hear about participles or present perfect or infinitives or passive voice etc… my eyes glaze over and I have no idea what any of it means. In school I failed those units. Learning a new language from grammar principles wouldn’t be a very effective path for me…

It's funny, but I always found English grammar (also my native language) to be completely pointless, but I find myself really enjoying learning about Latin grammar, and as a result marveling about how weird English is. It's fascinating that one subsystem in our brain can completely understand our native language's grammar, and yet another part finds it unfathomable.

In high school French class, I had the same problems with grammar in that language.

For example, to teach plus-que-parfait my teacher used English language analogies and they were all useless for me. Again, I failed that part of the course but my grades were high enough to pass without it.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#169

Post by dingnuts »

ryandrake wrote: post #159
bluGill wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comprehesible input. find something basic you can understand and immerse your self in it. Often this is childrens books/shows or similar level designed for adults. at the start you use a translation dictionary to look up ever word which is boring - which is why approaches like duolingo where they give you around 2000 common words to memorize quickly are useful. However the goal is to learn just enough of that list th…

Maybe “immersion” works if you already know the language and are going for fluency, but I don’t see how it can get you from zero to one. I’ve tried as an adult and failed to learn my wife’s native language and no amount of “input” at any speed or level helps. It just washes over me and I don’t understand anything.

I'm like three days from my one year Duo streak. I've gone from understanding none of my wife's native language to being able to eavesdrop on phone conversations a bit, and to have short exchanges. I've probably spent half an hour daily on average. Sometimes a lot more.

I had no prior exposure. This website is weird, the comments never reflect reality for me on any topic.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#170

Post by bluGill »

deeThrow94 wrote: post #128
frank20022 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because duolingo is designed for addiction (that's how they make money), not actual learning (learning would mean you'd stop using the thing, no good for stakeholders). There is no sole app that makes you go from 0 to C2, but there are infinitely superior tools that actually make you learn , and not the self-complacent pretend-like-learning pastime that duo is. For a start, almost every other app succeeds at not trea…

Looking to apps to learn language outside of spaced repetition and talking to someone over video seems pretty naïve to begin with.

There are a lot of things an app can do for you. Spaced repetition is the easiest one. However there are a lot of other options if you get creative. Most of them are a lot more work though. (though chatbots should now be easy as well to implement)
Post reply on HN