LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

I’ve been studying Japanese for over a year now with the ultimate goal of being able to have basic conversations, and have been using the immersion method.

My way of dealing with the fact that hardly any input is actually comprehensible is to actually translate, at leas in the beginning. I got a couple of vocabulary books and a grammar book (aimed at passing the N5 and N4 [A1 and A2 equivalent] language exams), and drilled the vocabulary and grammar with a redsheet and an anki deck. The thing is though, that I only need to translate the word/grammar concept the first couple of times I see it, after that it is much quicker (and better for remembering) to judge if how well you intuitively know the word/grammar concept from the anki deck (or if you are able to fill in the blank with a red sheet). Over time you can build up your vocabulary and grammar and the input gets gradually more comprehensible.

While drilling vocab and grammar I also listen to pod-casts, usually while walking my dog, or at the gym. It is helpful even if you don’t understand most of it. Usually—at the beginning—I am able to pick up a couple of words I know, which reinforces them, but also I get used to the pronunciation and the rhythm of the language. After a year I am able to comprehend maybe 60-70% (on a good day) of some pod-cast episodes aimed at beginners. But at the beginning it was maybe 5%.

I think what Duolingo gets wrong is that after you are introduced to the word or a grammar concept, you keep translating it. This is at best a waste of time, and at worst, prevents you from getting an intuitive understanding of the word/grammar. I think another mistake of Duolingo is the fact they spend too much time on learning a single word or grammar, repeating it too many times at the beginning. What I prefer is to dedicate some time with the word/grammar, find connections (also with the kanji spelling of it), and then move on. Most likely I will remember it after a couple of exposures that session, and if not, SRS should do the trick the following weeks.

Some of the most annoying, that's for sure. I uninstalled it when it started to uglify the icon on my desktop when I neglect daily exercise. I mean, it's totally fine if it's just me, but since it was an impulsive action on my part, I would be curious to see if I wasn't one of the many. I wouldn't be fond of my company's PR department if they lose customers over stupid jokes.

That said, after spending too much time on DuoLingo, I should have dropped it anyway. First off, one should be honest to himself and admit that it is a game, not a language study material. Which is ok, but still, I would really like to have an app that is a bit less of a game and a little more of a interactive textbook (I don't know one). Second, honestly, most of the course materials are surprisingly low quality. They kept adding all these gimmicks, animations, icon uglifying, etc., yet the core content was barely worked on. After a couple of years you start really wondering what are they spending money on. I mean, literally, do they even have paid staff working on some less popular languages, or it's just community?

My own experience mirrors yours. My first thought in seeing this was “…why?” Duolingo is a gamified app that feels like learning a language but actually teaches you next to nothing while driving engagement. I get why they got stuck on that path, but why copy it?

“Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime. That’s why I shit on company time.”

I agree with your overall point - I'd also like to see more novel FOSS projects rather than knockoffs of proprietary software - but at the same time, there's a lot of value in FOSS clones for a few reasons.

The main one being: proprietary things tend to get worse over time, while FOSS (with enough momentum) tends to get better. Windows vs Linux desktop is a great example of this; while Linux and its DEs have steadily been improving over the past couple decades, Windows has been in a slow downward spiral since 7, and nowadays I would say KDE/GNOME/Mint are actually less janky overall than Win11.

Mastodon, despite its jank, largely has the traction it does because of the X/Twitter enxittification. Godot and Unity are another good example of my point, the former being largely superior to the latter nowadays despite a lot of similarity, and as with Mastodon it gained a lot of popularity through the blunders of the proprietary version, which is significantly less of a risk with FOSS.

Also - while there are some Windows/MacOS knockoff DEs, there are also plenty of unique ideas in things like GNOME or Budgie, not to mention tiling window managers.

I think clones just tend to get the most popularity. Case in point, there are easily hundreds of FOSS language learning apps out there that do their own thing, but "LibreLingo - FOSS Alternative to Duolingo" is the one that ends up on the front page.