I'm surprised more people aren't talking about the recent announcement that Duolingo is replacing contractors with AI. https://www.theverge.com/news/657594/duolingo-ai-first-repla...
I'm guessing that's why this hit the front page today.
LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo
301–310 of 376 posts
Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo
#302I used Duolingo for about a year to learn Portuguese but I recently switched to just taking a course I bought on Udemy. First let me say that Duolingo is great for learning vocabulary but unfortunately that's it's only strength. The problem I realized after starting the Udemy course is that Duolingo teaches you the words but they seldom teach sentence structure or the "glue" between all those words you learn. So you…
I never thought to check Udemy to learn my target language
Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo
#303Related ongoing thread:
Duolingo will replace contract workers with AI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43827978 - April 2025 (43 comments)
Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, the AI partner is probably getting paid, so I can see DuoLingo needing to increase their rates if you use that service.
I'm not sure exactly what method they're using, but inference costs for speech to speech models are pretty significant so it does make some sense to charge more. The LLM-based text explanations for translation problems are also in the super premium tier though, and those can't be that expensive, so maybe it's just an attempt at market segmentation.
The LLM based explanations actually explain what is wrong with the user's specific answer, not a generic explanation. They are of the form:
"You entered X, because of Y grammar rule you should instead enter Z".
So they aren't something that can be pre-generated for all possible inputs. Some of these questions are free-form input.
Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo
#305Earlier 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 Duolingo is obsolete.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…
Also every time Duolingo comes up people criticize it based on where the free tier was years ago.
Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo
#306As someone who knows four languages[1] (picked every single one up during childhood) and is currently learning Sanskrit, I have to say that Krashen's input hypothesis and Orberg's Lingva Latina is probably the way to go if you are learning languages as an adult. The direct teaching method works but is time-consuming and generally used for languages that lead to an occupation, viz. English. The grammar translation met…
Orbeg's Lingva Latina is so good, especially if you use the supplemental exercises and stories as well. It's a shame it didn't catch on as much, the material for modern languages is now outdated and it seems no one is working on newer editions. Deutsch Nach der Naturmethode, Français par la Méthode Nature and English by the Nature Method are excelent at teaching the basics, but I hear criticism over the vocabulary of…
Things are much better today, I feel. If the publishers do not feel that there is a market, then the gap must be filled by enthusiasts. Some time for creating the content and $6/m on DO, and hundreds/thousands of people can benefit.
Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo
#307As someone who knows four languages[1] (picked every single one up during childhood) and is currently learning Sanskrit, I have to say that Krashen's input hypothesis and Orberg's Lingva Latina is probably the way to go if you are learning languages as an adult. The direct teaching method works but is time-consuming and generally used for languages that lead to an occupation, viz. English. The grammar translation met…
Ah, is Lingva Latina the one with Caecilius and his family? I had a Latin class in 7th grade and remember having a book of that same name, and I somehow remember the main father character's name. They had a dog too, I want to say his name was Cerberus, haha. "Cave canem"—"beware of dog" Every day, we'd start class by the teacher saying "Salvete, discipuli!" to which we'd reply "Salve, magistra!" The fact that all the…
Caecilius who, spoiler for a decades old Latin textbook, dies when Vesuvius erupts, is from the Cambridge Latin Course. The dog, who survives, is in fact named Cerberus.
Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure exactly what method they're using, but inference costs for speech to speech models are pretty significant so it does make some sense to charge more. The LLM-based text explanations for translation problems are also in the super premium tier though, and those can't be that expensive, so maybe it's just an attempt at market segmentation.
The LLM based explanations actually explain what is wrong with the user's specific answer, not a generic explanation. They are of the form: "You entered X, because of Y grammar rule you should instead enter Z". So they aren't something that can be pre-generated for all possible inputs. Some of these questions are free-form input.
That's fair. I've just been screenshotting the page and asking Gemini what I did wrong for free but I guess Google has deeper pockets than Duolingo so they can eat the cost of that for longer.
Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah, is Lingva Latina the one with Caecilius and his family? I had a Latin class in 7th grade and remember having a book of that same name, and I somehow remember the main father character's name. They had a dog too, I want to say his name was Cerberus, haha. "Cave canem"—"beware of dog" Every day, we'd start class by the teacher saying "Salvete, discipuli!" to which we'd reply "Salve, magistra!" The fact that all the…
Caecilius who, spoiler for a decades old Latin textbook , dies when Vesuvius erupts, is from the Cambridge Latin Course. The dog, who survives, is in fact named Cerberus.
Yikes. How many others grew up with Caecilius? He has lived rent free in my head for 35 years lol. Him and his damned canus.
Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo
#310As someone who knows four languages[1] (picked every single one up during childhood) and is currently learning Sanskrit, I have to say that Krashen's input hypothesis and Orberg's Lingva Latina is probably the way to go if you are learning languages as an adult. The direct teaching method works but is time-consuming and generally used for languages that lead to an occupation, viz. English. The grammar translation met…
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?
Yeah, I've seen my wife's time with the owl not translate into understanding much of the Spanish she sees around town.