Duolingo ist sehr gut, sehr gut!
Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
81–90 of 189 posts
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#82Only 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.
Might be wrong with this and it might not fit Duolingo's app but it would not be too bad to at least have spoken Japanese with romaji.
I think most people will admit that learning to write Japanese well is something not many foreigners will ever do, while speaking isn't that terribly difficult. I spent a little bit learning Japanese and I found that learning speaking + romaji only at first was not only easier, but helped when looking at symbols later (since I already knew how the words were said).
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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…
This, to me, is very telling 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.
There is no way to permanently learn a language if you're not using it. I have known coworkers who grew up in the US for the first 20-something years of their life and then moved to other countries and have begun the process of forgetting English. Their first language. The one they were taught as babies.
Remember this: everyone is taught their perfect grammar and spelling and quizzed on it for years in school. How many people can say what a past participle is, or even what an adverb is? How many people who passed geometry can still do that level of math from the top of their heads?
Of course you can't permanently learn something. You have to keep it in practice.
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#84Since there are so many Duoling fans here, I have to ask: am I the only one who finds the app almost unusable because there's no theory?
For German I used to try the exercises on my commute, but suddenly the app expected me to use "dem" instead of "der" without any explanation. I can't be the only one with this problem, right? Or is there a "new concepts" tab that I've never seen?
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#85Duolingo is pretty nice, but often the voices are odd and I'm not so sure the pronunciation detection is accurate. Hard to complain for a free product, of course.
Lingvist is fairly new and French-only for now, yet I feel like I'm making more progress with that than I did with Duolingo. Not sure why that's the case.
I'm pairing both with French vocabulary decks on Brainscape, which is an Anki-like SRS app. Lingvist claims it will switch to a paid model soon, and Brainscape decks are in-app purchases. Lingvist is both mobile and web, though I always prefer the web interfaces when I have access to them. Wish it also had a speaking component.
I've started using Verbling for having conversations but so far they seem pretty unstructured and not worth the money. This will, of course, depend on who you choose. There don't seem to be a lot of French to English options there.
If anyone has suggestions for alternatives, I'd love to hear them. I'd like to rapidly improve my French before a trip at the end of August.
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#86Since there are so many Duoling fans here, I have to ask: am I the only one who finds the app almost unusable because there's no theory? For German I used to try the exercises on my commute, but suddenly the app expected me to use "dem" instead of "der" without any explanation. I can't be the only one with this problem, right? Or is there a "new concepts" tab that I've never seen?
I have a similar problem getting the hang of Spanish conjugation. The app is still very useful, but it shouldn't be the only thing you use to learn the language.
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#87Only 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.
[deleted]
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#88Since there are so many Duoling fans here, I have to ask: am I the only one who finds the app almost unusable because there's no theory? For German I used to try the exercises on my commute, but suddenly the app expected me to use "dem" instead of "der" without any explanation. I can't be the only one with this problem, right? Or is there a "new concepts" tab that I've never seen?
No, you're not the only one. Duolingo does throw you into the cold water and expects you to pick up new concepts within a new lesson. The only support Duolingo offers for new concepts is through the comment section where other learners and native speakers explain or link to explanations of those concepts. It's not ideal, but it was good enough for me to complete the spanish course.
Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#89Re: Duolingo Raises $45M, Now Valued at $470M
#90Since there are so many Duoling fans here, I have to ask: am I the only one who finds the app almost unusable because there's no theory? For German I used to try the exercises on my commute, but suddenly the app expected me to use "dem" instead of "der" without any explanation. I can't be the only one with this problem, right? Or is there a "new concepts" tab that I've never seen?
I have a similar problem getting the hang of Spanish conjugation. The app is still very useful, but it shouldn't be the only thing you use to learn the language.
The best site I've found for translations and conjugations (through the duolingo comments) is spanishdict.com [1]. They have verb conjugations for every tense and offer a wide variety of example usages.