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Anybody else feel a little nervous when a free language tool is valued in the hundreds of millions?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7698130
So it's not free in the free beer sense.
Anybody else feel a little nervous when a free language tool is valued in the hundreds of millions?
He can monetize this in a similar way. Crowd sourced translation service where the more advanced language learners translate books or something. It will be higher quality than google translate for sure.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hope they succeed in taking away some market share from TOEFL. The TOEFL test is ridiculously overpriced for what they provide and your results expire (no joke) after 2 years. Since clearly you will have forgotten everything you knew about that language in 2 years time... Go Duolingo!
>Since clearly you will have forgotten everything you knew about that language in 2 years time... They are not wrong. I passed Duolingo Spanish course (it might have been extended since then) and barely remember anything now. I was also studying German in school, and later French by myself to the point where I could even speak with native speakers a little. Hardly remember anything either. English is the only foreign…
You usually take this test because you will have to speak this language, so the case where you take the test and then do nothing with it seems pretty unlikely. Also, I disagree with your assumption that you will completely forget another language in 2 years (even when not used). I cannot confirm this from my own experience.
In order to pull in $50m revenue per year, Duolingo are going to need to sell 2,500,000 certifications. Is that doable?
In order to pull in $50m revenue per year, Duolingo are going to need to sell 2,500,000 certifications. Is that doable?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hope they succeed in taking away some market share from TOEFL. The TOEFL test is ridiculously overpriced for what they provide and your results expire (no joke) after 2 years. Since clearly you will have forgotten everything you knew about that language in 2 years time... Go Duolingo!
>Since clearly you will have forgotten everything you knew about that language in 2 years time... They are not wrong. I passed Duolingo Spanish course (it might have been extended since then) and barely remember anything now. I was also studying German in school, and later French by myself to the point where I could even speak with native speakers a little. Hardly remember anything either. English is the only foreign…
I spent a lot of time barely using certain foreign languages (+ than 2 years). Of course you get 'rusty', but far from forgetting everything.
And it came up back quickly
This tell me Duolingo doesn't make you learn it, but rather memorize their game.
Anybody else feel a little nervous when a free language tool is valued in the hundreds of millions?
Duolingo is started by Luis von Ahn who invented reCAPTCHA. He pioneered the field of human computation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx082gDwGcM . He can monetize this in a similar way. Crowd sourced translation service where the more advanced language learners translate books or something. It will be higher quality than google translate for sure.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
("What sped things up for me" or I suppose you could say "What speeds things up for me;" hope this is received well by commenter HN community in the spirit of helping someone learn/improve their language)
I would have used the form, "What sped things up for me." when describing something that happened in the past. "What speeds things up for me" is a different sense - it's talking about the present.
Personally, I'd like to see language learning apps explore the parts of language learning that Duolingo isn't good at.
Also a high-quality, open source version of Duo would be awesome for super minority, low infrastructure, and/or conlang languages.