Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M • Hacker News Board

Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M

#71

Post by krebby » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 4:54 PM UTC

Balgair wrote: post #54

orthoganol wrote: post #51

Only complaint is they appear to have no priority in supporting languages of the East, where the majority of the world lives. I guess their main demo, at least at one point, was Western students, who aren't typically taught those languages in school. In the least, teaching Mandarin should be a higher priority than half the languages they support.

True, but the issue is the keyboard. Notice they don't have really any Cyrillic languages either. Trying to get people used to using many ALT and key combos is a tough starting point for a lot of gamified learners. Japanese has been on the block since Duolingo began, but again, the keyboard is the main hurdle.

The website currently provides clickable symbols. For mobile it's as easy as switching the language on your keyboard.

Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M

#72

Post by tabrischen » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 4:57 PM UTC

Have been a fan of Duolingo for a long time. I see it as an important enabler of people who're aspiring hypergots or polygots. I can't wait for Esperanto to become available within the app.

Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M

#73

Post by tabrischen » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 4:58 PM UTC

nandemo wrote: post #59

emergentcypher wrote: post #34

Still waiting for their Russian course!

Hey, you can't hardly expect them to provide a course for such a minor, exotic language. Maybe you should try Irish or Ukrainian instead?

Or maybe Klingon ?

Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M

#74

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 5:08 PM UTC

Balgair wrote: post #52

ionforce wrote: post #50

Great to see them doing so well. 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.

Well, they are coming out with Klingon sometime in the next year. Granted, it's a small language, but it seems they are amenable to conlangs. Maybe, they will also have an ability to add your own conlang, so that you and friends can communicate and expand the lang.

[deleted]

Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M

#75

Post by tonydiv » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 5:10 PM UTC

Goes to show that you can still try to figure out a business model after having raised this much money. Even with a superstar CEO.

Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M

#76

Post by coob » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 5:10 PM UTC

ionforce wrote: post #50

Great to see them doing so well. 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.

We[1] take a different approach to language learning by focusing on usable, real language from the get go. It's more of a phrasebook that uses games and activities to get the vocab you need into your memory than a grammar learning engine.

[1] http://utalk.com/app (App Store link)

Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M

#77

Post by schnevets » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 5:11 PM UTC

nandemo wrote: post #59

emergentcypher wrote: post #34

Still waiting for their Russian course!

Hey, you can't hardly expect them to provide a course for such a minor, exotic language. Maybe you should try Irish or Ukrainian instead?

I'm patiently waiting for their Polish course to progress beyond 17% completion...

Their volunteer translation system may seem unreliable, but it's probably the only way smaller languages will ever get attention. At this point, I'm probably better off picking up some Polish books, learning a bit on my own, and contributing to their project.

Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M

#78

Post by ianstallings » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 5:12 PM UTC

smaili wrote: post #3

Anybody else feel a little nervous when a free language tool is valued in the hundreds of millions?

Have you used it? It's much more than that. It's actually quite a good learning tool for more than just languages. The system is smart.

Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M

#79

Post by ximeng » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 5:18 PM UTC

Symbiote wrote: post #57

orthoganol wrote: post #51

Only complaint is they appear to have no priority in supporting languages of the East, where the majority of the world lives. I guess their main demo, at least at one point, was Western students, who aren't typically taught those languages in school. In the least, teaching Mandarin should be a higher priority than half the languages they support.

I've been learning Mandarin, and after searching for something like Duolingo found Chinese Skill [一]. It's not as good as Duolingo, but does include a way to teach characters. It would be great if it could have a drawing interface like Pleco [二] which can reliably recognise most characters I draw, with my terrible handwriting. They do teach English to speakers of Chinese, Mandarin and Hindi. [一] https://play.google.c…

Skritter will fix your Mandarin handwriting and tones if you use it regularly. https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=nwinter who did it is now doing a game to teach coding invested in by ycombinator.

Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M

#80

Post by andrewmb » Wed, Jun 10, 2015, 5:23 PM UTC

Symbiote wrote: post #57

orthoganol wrote: post #51

Only complaint is they appear to have no priority in supporting languages of the East, where the majority of the world lives. I guess their main demo, at least at one point, was Western students, who aren't typically taught those languages in school. In the least, teaching Mandarin should be a higher priority than half the languages they support.

I've been learning Mandarin, and after searching for something like Duolingo found Chinese Skill [一]. It's not as good as Duolingo, but does include a way to teach characters. It would be great if it could have a drawing interface like Pleco [二] which can reliably recognise most characters I draw, with my terrible handwriting. They do teach English to speakers of Chinese, Mandarin and Hindi. [一] https://play.google.c…

Memrise has some decent Chinese decks.

But if you really want to learn the writing, get skritter. Absolutely worth the cost.