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LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

librelingo.app

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Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#311

Post by mvieira38 »

sieve wrote: post #306
mvieira38 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 It's a shame it didn't catch on as much, the material for modern languages is now outdated and it seems no one is working on newer editions.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.

It's pretty hard to do it with as much quality as Orberg did. He deliberately wrote each chapter to use the most universal vocabulary and grammar possible, and built upon that foundation, so much so that pretty much any speaker familiar with the latin alphabet can just pick it up and read start to finish. It's not a coincidence that all of these books start with a chapter on family: "father" is notoriously consistent among all languages descended from Proto Indo European

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#312

Post by LorenPechtel »

_fat_santa wrote: post #198

I 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…

Words without structure are generally comprehensible, especially if you are in an interactive situation where you can generally catch cases where there is a coherent but wrong meaning. (No, you do not want the microwave, you want what's in the microwave!)

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#313

Post by Tycho »

primitivesuave wrote: post #284
sieve wrote: post #241

As 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…

I learned Sanskrit by translating the Bhagavad Gita ( https://gita.pub ), and I experienced a similar jump in comprehension to what you described. At first I needed to look up every word, even the ones I'd seen many times, but eventually (after many many repetitions) I finally started having an intuitive idea of what the words and sounds meant. It certainly makes you appreciate the unbroken oral tradition by which th…

I read a story by Roberto Bolaño recently where the Spanish-speaking protagonist reads novels in French, a language he cannot speak. He said that even though he couldn’t understand most of the words, he usually understood the plot. For some reason your comment made me think of this.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#315

Post by degamad »

apwell23 wrote: post #46
makingstuffs wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I really don’t get all the hate towards DuoLingo on this site. Granted, it isn’t going to make you fluent alone but it is very good at keeping you sharp and getting your feet wet. Name one sole app/course which will teach you absolutely everything there is to know about a given subject. There are none. All learning needs multiple avenues in order to be effective. Even if you take part in a course with tutors th…

I agree i can speak passable spanish with my wife's family. i learnt exclusively on duolingo. I don't know if its the best way but it kept me motivated to come back and put in some work in a fun environment. which i belive is the biggest problem to solve for any sort of learning.

The suggestion is that it's likely that you did much of your learning from speaking to your wife's family, with duolingo giving you a kickstart and the confidence to do so.

Having conversation partner(s) to practice with generally trumps any other learning method for languages.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#316

Post by boriselec »

Alex-Programs wrote: post #259
sieve wrote: post #241

As 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…

I built a tool[0] that gives you constant input at your level as you browse the web, so you don't need to take time out of your day. You can just learn a little as you browse, and let it compound over time. It works by estimating the difficulty of English sentences, then translating ones at your level into your target language. [0] https://nuenki.app

Good tool, I like it so far.

My biggest progress in English was when I started to read the English internet (HN, Reddit, etc.). I used an browser extension to translate words that I didn't know.

I'm learning Spanish now, but there is no content that interests me. Maybe the Spanish Wikipedia sometimes.

So this extension gives me that language exposure.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#317

Post by arghwhat »

isaacremuant wrote: post #212
arghwhat wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, private tutors are definitely better but they are no silver bullet. Having a great private tutors often and long enough to exercise sporadic conversation and gain confidence in language use - a class a few times a week at least - is also a prohibitively expensive solution suggestion for most people, making it a non-solution. You also end in a false dichotomy.

This site is full of web developers telling people they get what they pay for but then call tutors "prohibitively expensive". You want that education, invest in it. With time and money. Of course, the "a few minutes per day in the commute for 9.99" feels attractive and it even gets you to a basic stage but then it's what we already discussed.

Private tutoring for 1 hour, 3 times a week at the current rates offered by local freelancers where I live would be ballpark 1000 USD per month for a long time. If you start nitpicking about quality and put in some more serious hours I wouldn't be surprised if you hit two grand.

Language should not be reserved for people that can throw that kind of money monthly at their random hobbies, and suggesting that this is "the solution" is grotesque at best.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#318

Post by Tadpole9181 »

Aachen wrote: post #270
Tor3 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My learning finally picked up speed again when I started using CCI (Compelling Comprehensive Input). How easy it is to find material differs a lot between languages. Way way back in time I learned English that way, though I didn't think of it as "learning" back then - I was so focused on what is now called "compelling input". However, you'll need some kind of foundation, otherwise it'll be hard to find anything to st…

I'm trying to look up what this CCI thing is, but I don't seem to get further than simply "use the language". Do you have a good resource that explains how to apply the method or, if applicable, an example of a CCI course?

That's basically all it is. Find compelling content that is basically comprehensible at your level and consume it. You'll need to translate it, but you don't need that to be rigorous or to perfectly understand it. As long as you comprehend it in the end, you'll start to learn the patterns of the language subconsciously.

It's essentially a move from memorization and learning language as if its math to how children naturally learn language through exposure.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#319

Post by marc_abonce »

sieve wrote: post #268
luqtas wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't know why people are taking Duolinguo and relatives as the definitive course to learn a language... they even cite at their FAQ about the need of going outside the app if you want 'fluency' some people are quite fine learning a limited number of phrases to lurk in a country. a great part of communication among humans also happens with the body/eyes. no one needs to discuss their phD dissertation in 4 different…

Frankly, people do not have the time to deeply research this topic. You want to learn French or Spanish for fun. Duolingo claims that it can help you. So you join, try for a few days and give up. This happened to me about ten years ago. I too had not bothered to understand pedagogy. It is only when I wanted to learn Sanskrit, and struggled with it, that I got pissed off at the lack of progress and began looking aroun…

> people do not have the time to deeply research this topic. [...] There are some people on YT who talk about this stuff [linguistics/pedagogy]

That's true, but the opposite extreme can be even worse. In YouTube and Reddit I see so many people procrastinating in their quest for the perfect learning method instead of just sticking with any of the good enough methods they already have. I know because I've also kind of fell for that trap myself sometimes.

In fact, I imagine that the average Hacker News user is far more likely to fail at language learning because they procrastinate on linguistics and pedagogical theory and not because they churned 10,000 hours at a slightly suboptimal learning methodology.

Re: LibreLingo – FOSS Alternative to Duolingo

#320

Post by runarberg »

doubleblind wrote: post #130
NetOpWibby wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always wanted to learn Japanese, thanks for the tips!

I have started learning japanese roughly 6 months ago, and I luckily stumbled upon this fantastic Anki deck: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/911122782 It focuses on teaching grammar and vocabulary through listening comprehension. The creator has put an immense amount of effort into it, to a point where I cannot believe its free. I highly recommend it.

If you are interested I created an open source web app for learning kanji with SRS using open dictionary data.

https://shodoku.app/

I am a year into learning Japanese my self, and kind of wanted to learn vocab and kanji at the same time (and also see example sentences for the vocab which I can put into my anki deck). My method is when I start a new kanji I pick a few words that contain that kanji, bookmark them (and maybe add to my anki deck), and then when it is time for a reading review if I can remember how to pronounce those word I rate it as good.

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