"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
I had a streak of over 1200 days, and after years of reduction in quality and them constantly making the ad based version harder and harder to use, I finally left. AI was the last straw.
I have my eyes on Lingonaut, an app still in beta, and being created by volunteers for free to recreate the early days of Duolingo.
1200 days of language learning? Different languages or the same one? If it’s the same one you probably don’t need an app anymore. Try talking to natives in your chosen second language. You might be surprised how much you know. I used duo for about a year when i moved to a different language country. After that year i found it was holding me back more than helping.
The same language, but I only did about 15 minutes a day. I am more the "pick away at it a little bit" than an "immerse your entire life in it" kind of learner. I learned a lot, and can have basic conversations at this point, but I still have a long way to go and will continue using some kind of language app going forward. I watch media too which helps. Apps are just one tool of many.
Same, I was a couple weeks shy of 1500, I think. Can't say I really miss it, I wasn't getting anything out of it except big number.
I'm a fan of lingodeer a lot so far. Already learned more in 40 days than I did with 5 months of Duolingo
I paid for Lingodeer Lifetime, which was $120 at the time. I thought that was pretty hefty already, but it was like 8 months of monthly subscription, and I figured I would need that much time to get through the course anyway. "Regular" price for lifetime is apparently $300, but they constantly run sales that take it down to more reasonable amounts.
On the other hand, I have to admit that the quality of the course is worth the $300 and I too learned more from a few months of Lingodeer than 2 years of Duolingo. They're also honest in that they teach you all the grammar fairly quickly with a minimal vocabulary and then just end the course with the advice to start reading books. They're not trapping you in language purgatory like Duolingo does.
I also went for the lifetime license when it was offered to me on sale and I felt like it was worth it given I'm learning two languages and the quality of the program.
In my opinion duolingo type apps should never beeused more than about 90 days. Those first few months when you know nothing they are a good way to get something but as time goes on your time is better spent in native content.
I think it depends on your learning style. Duolingo was fantastic for me and taught me enough that for the first time in my life I was able to dip my toe in native content and actually understand what was going on.
I uninstalled it today. I wrote to their support telling them why I wasn't going to continue using it, and got a AI written response back. Welp.
For refugees, I can't recommend Lingq enough. I tried every app in the past to learn Spanish and it was the only one that really moved the needle.
I'll check this out. I feel I've had some progress, but it really does plateau.
Replace these vulture CEOs with AI and the only use it for recommendations. Profit margins will rise when you aren't wasting them on golden parachutes and some fuckwit's next yacht. This will only continue as long as one socially inept and willfully ignorant is pulling lever at the top, making decision based on their experience being complete detached from 99% of the rest of humanity.
Quietly? Seems like it’s been loudly, and on fire. And smelly.
was duolingo ever actually good for language learning tho...?
I feel like people constantly shit on Duolingo and other things like it, especially compared to other forms of language study like full classes, immersing yourself in that language via cultural exports (movies, TV shows, books, etc.), or interacting with people that speak that language.
But I think that's kinda missing the point — Duo and other programs structured like it offer a way to learn a decent chunk of a language without a lot of effort. If you put in a bit of time every day or so and take things at least a little seriously, my understanding is that you can learn a lot. Maybe you won't be truly fluent, and certainly you won't learn as much as you would with intensive self-structured learning or classes at a university, but it takes way less effort and is far more approachable.
That being said, definitely look somewhere else now that Duolingo is using AI.
Apart from the basic learning at the beginning when I didn’t knew anything it is helpful to grasp some basic things and see if I wanted to invest more time and resources.
Now my current method to learn is with proper classes and use Anki to solidify the material I’ve been taught.
Duolingo’s only purpose right now is to learn some new vocabulary and to not lose practice, the friend streaks, and the friend quest is what even in the days that I’m totally unmotivated forces me to not abandon practicing.
I would love to move elsewhere but I’ll lost the only thing that helps me to keep on focus.
Do you know of any good options similar to Duolingo?
I've been pissed off with that platform for a couple of years now. They keep changing the structure of lessons and learning paths. I think they've been trying to make learning more based on quick rewards at the expensive of context, which I don't like.
I took a look around for similar apps a coding of years ago, and they all seemed to be one of: a) paid, b) rifled with ads; c) have crappy/buggy UIs. I realize the ads can usually be motivated with a DNS server, but the fact they showed do many ads is kind of a red flag in general. But I know FOSS options have really taken off in the last year or so, so I'm hoping a new, good, free platform has stepped up to tackle Duolingo and the like.
Mango languages is nice, and lots of library systems have licenses so you can unlock the premium features with your library card.
My understanding is that you won't get fluent but it would give you up to a middle school level understanding, depending on the language. French and Spanish were more advanced than Mandarin or Welsh.
I’ve been using Duolingo to study Mandarin for a few years now. It’s fun but the lessons are frequently frustrating. They love to teach me a bunch of new characters, then stop using them altogether for a few months, then bring them back and expect me to know them with zero review.
The lessons should be structured to include more review if you’re only doing 1/day (which I think is the normal way people use it).
I learned the basics of spanish with it. Now i’m pretty decent at it. I used duo for about a year and then just started talking to spanish speakers. This was years and years ago though.
I'm still hoping for a FOSS language learning platform to replace these type of services. DuoLingo seems rather limited, to what crowds of volunteers could create by working together.
Early Duolingo was curated and corrected by the community. Clearly people were volunteering to do it, so I don't know why they removed all the community tools and are now using AI to fill the gap.
Lingonaut seems promising, but it isn't open source, or at least not yet. The creator seems open to being convinced though?
the problem is them or some other vc backed thief will use all those resource to give it for free with much better packaging then go back to their parasitic way once that foss project is dead.
I used it for a week, I was harassed by application and I uninstalled it. I don't want to be in a relationship right now.
800+ day streak, all gone. I did actually want to keep learning so it pushed me to start taking lessons. Ai is so bad it got me talking to people. 😔
Congrats on taking a difficult step towards improving your learning. I moved away from Duolingo a while ago, and in hindsight, it was a significant boost to my language skills; it was only after I had left that I realised that Duolingo is better at hooking people with gamification than it is at actually teaching language skills (even before the AI trash became prominent). I hope that you experience similar productivity.
I found duolingo usefull to start when your proficiency in a language is next to nothing, a good place to start. But it doesn't get you that far in my experience. I moved on to reading books in translation apps, so I have the original and the translation side by side. And I must say, Les Trois Mousquetaires is teaching me a lot of French, but it's also actually a really fun read, it has some hilarious dialogues. So at first I wanted to learn French, now I just want to read the novel. You don't need gamification when the actual content you're reading is good in itself. I've now combined it with the audiobook. Each reading session I start by listening to the parts I read last time. If you pick famous books, the audiobook can usually be found on yt or elsewhere.
well I guess the CEO thinking that "it is because of people who are afraid of technological advancements" explains why Duolingo sucks so much.
Everyones sayin duolingos shit cause of ai but i tried hungarian(native) on it once and it was already horrible. Failed a test three times on it lol. Also the whole thing is designed to make you feel like youre learning samething but youre not.
People mention their Duolingo streak the same way people mention how much karma they had on reddit.
Nobody ever learned a language with Duolingo. At best you learn a handful of words. Stop wasting your time pretending to learn.
Thanks for opening my eyes to this.
They did that "prank" where they killed Duo. But they really did kill him