Is Duolingo A Useless App?

Duolingo should be one of SEVERAL tools you use when learning a language. When I learned German, I use duolingo; German youtube and German literature.

I think I've seen more memes of the owl intimidating users than reports of people actually achieving their learning goal with it. I ended up rage quitting Japanese when I realized the owl wasn't even smart enough to kidnap a relative I actually care for.

When I was taking my French class, this would have been 5-7 years ago, I remember we used Duolingo quite a bit at first, but mostly as a way to build a steady foundation for the vocabulary. Then we slowly switched to other things, like having conversations, watching movies/videos, and reading book passages aloud for the class. For an added challenge, sometimes the book would be in English and we’d have to read it around in French. So for a foundation builder, I think it’s great, but as in all things, moderation and real world practice is key.

I think Duolingo's great for picking up a language. The hardest part in learning is motivation, and the app is clearly designed to urge you on with your practicing. To become conversationally fluent, you're gonna have to practice with other (native) speakers on a daily basis. There's no other way around it. I still recommend the app to any language learner, for it's helped so much with Italian and the other Romance tongues. Thumbs up!

1. Duolingo for basic vocabulary 2. Busuu next for more practicality, speaking, and corrections 3. Watching series: First with subtitles in your language, Second with subtitles in objective language (same as the audio), and Third with no subtitles. 4. Conversational clubs.

Duolingo is not a waste of time but a confidence booster.

I am a native Greek speaker and use duolingo to learn Brazilian Portuguese. I totally agree with your points. I have checked the Greek section and in my opinion it is quite good but it works better for simple sentences than the more complex ones. Of course the pronunciation is robotic as usual.

I remember doing Duolingo Italian lesson once, and my dad, whose native language is Italian, could hear it all. He asks me, “Why is it telling you to go up to people and call them boys and girls.” 🤣

As an English speaker who's put a good bit of time in on Spanish, French, Italian, and German, I find that Duolingo is indeed best at learning vocabulary words by main force. I find that it's weaker for learning grammar; particularly in German where I have had no formal instruction it really is weird learning the grammar piecemeal and it doesn't build confidence. In Italian with some of the verb forms and the black magic Italian does with prepositions and articles, grammar gets a lot more challenging as it goes on. I find French and Spanish the easiest, in part because I know them better outside of Duolingo. It's true that doing exercises on Duolingo is better than playing silly games or scrolling YouTube videos on the phone, so definitely recommended there.

i learned more turkish while bingewatching turkish lessons on YT at 3AM in the night than after a month of duolingo

I agree with everything you've said. Duolingo has improved, especially lately. But yeah, when you're learning Greek and it says something like "green hair" and "pink butter," it's weird. Some languages on the platform are better than other languages, I agree. I'm using it for French (along with classes and talking with Francophone Africans) and I think French is one of its best languages.

While I agree with your assessment of Duo per se, I'd beg to differ on the assumption "Everyone learns another language mostly to speak it". I have no need and virtually no occasions to speak any of languages I've ever studied, even English (last time I've actually spoke it was about ten years ago). On the contrary, it's mostly reading, secondary listening and/or writing, and speaking comes last. Reading as a main reason to learn a foreign language is severely under-appreciated, even with Duolingo -- characteristically, its German course has only one lesson on Präteritum, the tense extensively used in most genres of fiction. However, on Duolingo forums I've found that I'm not that eccentric in my attitude -- many people learn German to read Goethe or listen to Rammstein, many learn Hungarian to read Molnár or Ady, etc. Add to that numerous technicians who learn English, German, Japanese or Korean to read manuals, textbooks and catalogs.

I'm also really glad to see that you've started this channel dedicated to language and learning in general. I've always been a fan of your linguistics content. Maybe we could see a video on the linguistics of the reconstructed proto-indo-european language?

I used it for a time with the Latin on there. Mostly to help with the vocabulary retention which is my weakest aspect when learning languages. But I eventually stopped using it as it just had too many bad qualities for me to continue with it.

I used to really like Duolingo. Using it on a regular basis really helped me with the languages I was studying. Unfortunately, since the path update, it became really demotivating to be stuck on a path that felt infinite and that didn't match my actual abilities. So, I wound up uninstalling it. Years of progress in DL just went down the drain with one update. I still have the language skills, obviously, but I miss Duolingo. The old Duolingo.

Always happy when you upload!

My favorite thing about duolingo is how they used those tricks phone games use to make me constantly come back and keep playing, except that this time it’s good for me

It definitely helped me brush up on my German that I hadn't touched much since College. Recently started using it for Polish because I have a lot of friends and acquaintances who are Polish, and I'm going to pick up some books on it too, so I'll have plenty of resources for that. It is fun, so that helps.

Inspired by your video, I now believe that an immersive environment with tools like Immersive Translate beats traditional apps like Duolingo for language learning.

I had studied Spanish in college, but was getting rusty. Duolingo starts with a proficiency exam, so I began at a good level and was able to re-learn a lot within a short time. In addition to the peeves you mentioned, there was a particular female voice that pronounced words ending in "-as" as though they ended in "-os," so I paired them with adjectives ending in "-os" and got counted wrong.