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- cross-posted to:
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R.I.P Doulingo.
I have found Duolingo much, much less useful for language learning than Language Transfer. The latter actually helps you learn to think in another language rather than memorize things (which is still useful, but not nearly as much).
Short if total immersion, I have found nothing better than LT.
Thank you for sharing! I will check it out.
Holy crap that website needs some serious work, on mobile at least
Thanks! I’ll have to check this out
The problem I have with finding an alternative is that most just offer some five to ten largest languages. Want to learn Spanish, French, Russian, or Chinese? There are hundreds of both free and paid services available. Want to learn Hungarian, Irish, or Finnish? It’s Duolingo and a scant handful of sites specific to that language.
Well at least now you know you can skip the middleman and ask some ai to help you practice.
Dreaming Spanish, if you are trying to learn Spanish. I seriously think it is the future of language learning, bar none.
Thanks, I will check it out:)
From the first look: is this just audio or also written practices?
Just audio. But it is presented in a way that helps you to learn, rather than just remember. If you give it a try, I promise that you will be shocked at how you can retain the knowledge.
It isn’t enough on its own, however. You need to reinforce the lessons by speaking to people, reading, and/or TV and movies.
Fuck their greed, I know that the bulk of their users wouldn’t caffè if the CEO started shooting puppies on Main Square, but they can train their AI on Deez
They have been shilling max so hard, the practice tab now is hidden to make room for the Video Call tab (Max only) and a tab to subscribe to Max or upgrade your plan.
Probably won’t renew this year. I have a 1500+ day streak, but a good chunk of that is just doing a single quick practice lesson every day, the gamification got me and I haven’t learned much new stuff in probably a year.
I learned enough Italian to use it when I went on a two week trip in 2023, but the problem with Duo’s lessons is nothing is conversational. I would be able to say/ask something, understand the response, but then not really have the ability to keep the conversation going.
The differences in languages after so many years is also a bit disheartening, I had a friend show me all the tools available in their French course that I didn’t have, it made their Italian lessons look like vocab flash cards in comparison.
I am not a big LLM user, but I did try to use it as a conversation partner, which worked alright. I haven’t looked in a while, but my biggest issue was it would speak too fast and none of the available tools had a way to slow it down outside of telling it to add ellipses after each word.
Duolingo has enshittified so much over the last few years.
Even if I had the ability to become a millionaire tech founder, I don’t think I’d want to because every “I want to make learning new languages free and easy for everyone” becomes a “I have to drive 3% more ad revenue this quarter by charting my users’ every bowel movement”.
I suspect the reality of being a rich tech bro is watching your adult self slowly consume your own childhood dreams, aspirations, and soul.
Enshittification is not driven by the founders (mostly, fuck Zuckerberg). It’s driven by greedy investors who want their billion dollar unicorn payout and who who will risk a hundred company failures to get it.
A lot of tech companies that manage to resist outside investors are doing just fine.
I mean, true, but maybe the founders shouldn’t take investment in the first place?
Well it makes sense if you think about it.
You invest a million dollar in 100 companies, 95 fail, 4 makes 10 million each. If the last one hits at least 60 million you are even, anything above is pure profit. Basically just throwing shit at the wall and see what sticks.
That doesn’t “make sense” at all, it’s insane. If we end the billionaire class and distribute wealth more evenly productivity and efficiency would go waaaay up because the people managing money will actually care about it instead of setting it on fire.
It’s ultimately driven by the lack of constraints in their market segment. Tech companies will screw over investors as well if they can get away with it.
But I was more talking about how the founder of Duolingo professed specific, world-bettering goals when he started the company that – if held sincerely – would make him ashamed of himself because most of what the company does isn’t in the service of them.
The tech world is rife with founders that ultimately met that exact same fate.
Holding on to your goals is hard when you owe loan sharks half a billion dollars and they want their payday
Extreme wealth incubates and breeds narcissism.
I canceled Super and uninstalled when they started telling me to get Max. My friends canceled and uninstalled today because of this news.
We might be a small minority but I do giggle at the thought that Duolingo is gonna have to build AI customers soon because nobody will want to use it.
I’ve been using the free version almost exclusively for over a decade. It continually gets shittier all of the time.
The latest thing is you can’t even practice the language to earn more hearts to continue your lesson, you have to now watch ads. I think it’s rather emblematic of their approach overall… it’s not about learning it’s about more eyeballs for ads, unless you fork over a recurring payment for increasingly mediocre lessons.
Yeah. I’m on a two year streak. Pretty close to letting it go and moving to something else. The free version is getting completely garbage.
Apparently they’ve already been incorporating it and it’s very inaccurate. I’ve decided to stop using them and have switched to LingoDeer and MemRise. Really pleased with how much better they are.
I can also recommend Pimsleur. A bit more expensive, but features more traditional style courses, while offering a lot of what Duolingo has. Plus actual topics with grammar, not just random words!
Why not Anki? Ankidroid works well and there are many great community decks for all kinds of languages (and other topics too BTW).
I’m not great with ONLY flashcards so I personally feed my brain a variety. Anki is great from what I’ve heard
I started out with memrise, as it was very accessible and I wanted to start learning Japanese. It was fun but it’s also very limiting. A mixture of Smouldering Durtles, Human Japanese and Ankidroid really accelerated things. And then the ginormous post-covid upswing in my industry came, with less colleagues than before and my brain got fried. Still trying to recover from that with therapy and whatnot. Yeah, I lost a lot of progress that way.
Any who, that was specific to learning Japanese. Wishing you success with your endeavors! Learning other languages is a huge Eye-opener for understanding other cultures better.
Smouldering Durtles, Human Japanese
I have never heard of these! I’m going to check them out bc I am learning Japanese and French. Thank you!
Smouldering Durtles is great for learning kanji, if that’s part of your goal. In all likelihood you won’t want to do that though.
Human Japanese is great for learning grammar!
I’ve tried AnkiDroid but couldn’t really figure out how to use it. I downloaded the Spanish 5000 one which seems cool tho.
Maybe time to boycott the service (which anyway was not that spectacular)
For those who aren’t leaving Duolingo, you can still get the paid features by creating a class and joining it. Or at least that’s how it worked the last time I used it, which was a few years ago now.
Creating a school no longer provides any benefit for the students.
Let’s also replace the customers by AI, that way the whole system will really be “AI first” and self-sufficient.
it’s a matter of time (or more likely has already happen) where an AI company ends up having only AI users, it makes money be selling adds to show to the users, which are all AI bots, and then selling those bots as user data.
then said company celebrates that it has no humans involved making a shit ton of profit.
So Twitter?
Afraid to find out what an AI Karen would be like.
So they’ve killed themselves before adding Armenian.
Makes sense.
removed by mod
Trying to help Duolingo add Armenian is something I’ve read about in 2018 or something like that, and it’s still there. They are very firmly not interested.
removed by mod
I dunno, but there were plenty of volunteers. Eastern Armenian is far from a dead language after all. Especially when comparing to Icelandic or Welsh. Those are awesome languages too, though, alongside Coptic and Assyrian.
I was also hoping they would add Afrikaans.
i cancelled my subscription and told them why
It’s okay. We can all play that game. I’ve replaced my use of Duolingo with AI.
Pro tip: have as your “system prompt” in your LLM of choice “at the end of every query, include me a short Swedish relates to my prompt”. No need for Duolingo.
At least AI can give you actual grammar lessons
Duolingo uninstalled
Welp, time to quit
uninstalls Duolingo
leaves 1-star app review
