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LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

librelingo.app

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Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#231

Post by angry_moose »

psychoslave wrote: post #200

Anyone as experience with feedback on https://www.rocketlanguages.com/ and https://babbel.com/ ? I’m mostly interested in speaking out loud skills, and those two have voice recognition it seems.

I like Babbel a lot for reading/writing/listening but their speaking is a little weak. It's there but I find it pretty flaky - either so permissive it'll accept just about any sound you make, or so buggy it won't accept a single thing.

I haven't done a lot with it, but Pimsleur (https://www.pimsleur.com/) seems quite good for conversational. I've done a couple trials of it and plan to dive in when I finish my Babbel courses.

For conversational though you might be better off just finding an online tutor. 1 hour a week with a native speaker is probably more effective than any of the apps.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#232

Post by shemtay »

If I could change one thing about Duolingo, it would be to allow the user to turn off all the gamification completely. I don't care about fake internet gems, knowing how to speak Chinese (or whatever) is it's own reward, so stop wasting my time with bs!

Nevertheless, Duolingo is an amazing and convenient starting point for unlocking the learning of new languages.

Make your way through the entire course as fast as you can, while also listening to music, talking to people, talking to chatGPT, reading books, etc in the target language as soon as you can manage.

Protip: learn your 3rd language using your second as the language of instruction.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#233

Post by jeltz »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #177
pergadad wrote: post #174

Very nice initiative, the language space is overcrowded with commercial offers that have an incentive to keep you locked in. Apart from LanguageTransfer there seem to be few other good offers. That said, looking at the current offer it seems to lack the one thing Duolingo offers: Duolingo (for all its many faults and pedagogical uselessness) takes the burden of decision making away - I don't need to really think what…

Do any alternatives take a more "fully immersive" approach? I tried this LibreLingo, but the first question I got was "Which of these is The Sun?". Once you learn/memorize a few basic Spanish phrases such as "¿Qué significa?" you can stay immersed in the language. When you see a photo of the sun, you need to jump straight to El Sol, not Photo->"The Sun"->"El Sol".

I feel that Duolingo has the same issue. Not enough immersion.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#234

Post by vitro »

jghn wrote: post #217
vitro wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try Spanish in Latudio [0]. It is not quite for beginners, you need to have at least basic vocabulary, but regarding immersion, it should fit what you are looking for. It uses a listening-first approach and contextual translations with vocabulary and lets you explore words you didn't get in other contexts. [0] https://www.latudio.com/

Do they have a version that's not a mobile app? Or will it at least work on the desktop/web browser? I'm not going to use something like that on my phone.

Not at the moment.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#235

Post by watwut »

0xf00ff00f wrote: post #224
watwut wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pre-internet ways failed to teach language super often. Very frequent issue when learning from book was that you could not not understand anything people say, because you imagined the language to sound much differently then it does for months and months while learning. That was the most common result of language learning attempts - not much. Language learning is one of the things that were genuinely made much more ef…

Many language learning books used to come with audio media. I'm old enough to own a few that came with cassette tapes. Books are still worthwhile IMO, if only because they provide a bit of structure to one's learning. With free resources it's way too easy to become paralyzed by choice.

I am old enough to remember them. Comparably, you got maybe 4 hours of media - meaning sentences from the book being read and short boring dialogs. You cant compare it to what is currently available. It is like comparing a puddle of mud to Atlantic Ocean. And I mean it in a positive way - those audio tapes were almost nothing comparably.

Beyond projects like Dreaming Spanish, you have around infinite amount of French, Italian, Spanish or German Youtube about whatever topic you want to. There are even dedicated playlists for total beginners you can start to consume with zero knowledge. You have thousands of shows on Netflix in foreign language with various difficulty - some actually suitable for beginners. Some you have already seen in own language, so you can understand them more easily.

For major languages, there are dozens if not hundreds of podcasts with simplified news, "for beginner" discussions. Some of them are useable with literally miniscule amount of knowledge.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#237

Post by jghn »

vitro wrote: post #234
jghn wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they have a version that's not a mobile app? Or will it at least work on the desktop/web browser? I'm not going to use something like that on my phone.

Not at the moment.

Too bad. I'll see if the mobile app works on my desktop but otherwise that's a nonstarter.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#238

Post by Zmajche »

charcircuit wrote: post #222
GardenLetter27 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is it different from SRS? If you need to learn the strokes for thousands of characters you will need something like SRS.

Spaced repetition is a highly effective method for learning languages, particularly for vocabulary/character acquisition, but it is not the only method and particular implementation of it in the software, really matters.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#239

Post by jeltz »

Tor3 wrote: post #119
tossandthrow wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... target language ... > your native language already have them It seems like there is a strong underlying understanding that learning a new language is done from a source language towards a target language. The book I am referring to argues that learning a language is about embodying that language - ie. it is not an intellectual task. The most natural embodiment og a language is speech. This is fundamentally anot…

I did not at all in any way mean to say that learning a language should be from a source language towards a target language. Quite the opposite really. I completely agree with the statement ".. embodying that language - ie. it is not an intellectual task". That matches my own anecdotal experiences, at least. What I wanted to say was that even though babies can hear and differentiate between all the sounds of every la…

But you have to start speaking at some point. Very few non-natives can differentiate between some sounds in my language and if they waited with speaking until they could they would never get there.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#240

Post by anothereng »

wisty wrote: post #229
anothereng wrote: post #179

The problem with duolingo is that translating a language is not the best way to learn a language. The best way is to make a connection between the concept and the word. Like rosetta stone does. An open source rosetta stone would be better, at least for learning vocabulary

I think you're mistaken? The grammar translation method is seem as obsolete, but Duo isn't that. You don't learn rules formally (e.g. memorise explicit and formal rules on how to conjugate a verb in the past continuous tense, and what all these rerms mean) then apply them. If anything, people constantly complain about how Duolingo just gives them sentences and doesn't give long explanations about the grammar, you jus…

duolingo doesnt do grammar but it does translation. Unless you want to become a translator then theres no point in learning how to translate from language A to B. What most people want is to understand and speak which is a different skill than translation
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