I’ve been using duolingo for a while, I started japanese with it. Now, I’ve added wanikani and bunpro to my lessons, and I already bought a workbook and a dictionary to work the traditional writing too.
I’ve heard duolingo isn’t actually the best, and with bunpro teaching me grammar, along with the workbook i’ve bought (i might also buy genki later on), I wonder if its worth to keep going with it? If not, i’ll probably cancel my pro subscription
Short answer: Not worth it. It does everything worse than the other things you mentioned, is very limited in content, and has nothing to offer over the combination youre getting into.
Im biased btw and really dont like duolingo
I really don’t know duoling but I would not recommend Bunpro to learn grammar. I use Bunpro to practice and review grammar that I learn elsewhere.
My favorite grammar resources are 1) Genki (slow but you learn the grammar within a real-life context (great dialogues)); 2) Tae Kim (self-published without academic credentials but gives you a crash course in grammar, also free!).
I use it for vocabulary and overall sentences. I would not recommend it at all for beginners (grammar isn’t explained at all and frequently switches between plain form and keigo), but as you can use it for a 10/15 minutes a day I don’t see it doing any harm to/detracting from your other studies. Plus it’s great when you come across kanji you learnt on wanikani and can read with no effort. I’d say dont let it be your main focus, but it’s a nice add on when you have a few minutes spare.
My personal opinion is drop Duolingo.
I was doing something similar to you as I’d previously used Duolingo for learning European languages so I started with it for Japanese. But once I’d begun using WaniKani in parallel and some reading around on grammar points I came to realise where Duolingo falls short.
The major issue for me is that Duolingo just isn’t designed to handle languages which use logographic characters like kanji. They don’t seem to have full control of the sound clips that play when they teach you new kanji. As I began to understand more from WaniKani I realised several of the lessons in Duolingo were actually giving the wrong readings. I also found from reading in the forums there that they really weren’t getting into the nuance of some of the example sentences and it was actually starting to confuse me.
I eventually got fed up with it and dropped it in favour of other better resources.
If you want something similar to Duo but actually tailored to Japanese try Lingodeer. I do find the interactive elements help me learn a bit more than more dry resources like plain textbooks. But I think you need to try a few different things before you work out what really helps you.
If you are looking for supplementary resources, I do not recommend Duolingo for any Asian languages. I’d recommend trying Memrise but disabling multiple choice options.
Will keep that in mind! Thank you. My textbook should be coming soon with grammar lessons anyways so it should fit nicely
In my personal experience, doulingo has never worked for me. Nothing ever sticks, and for Japanese, I don’t like the way they teach hiragana.
I follow a polyglot on Instagram, and she does Q&A live streams quite often. Many people interested in language learning commonly ask if doulingo is any good, and she says she doesn’t think so but it’s okay at vocabulary, but doesn’t teach grammar effectively. Which is something I’ve found to be true as well.
But in this thread others have already expressed better alternatives! Such as lingodeer or Memrise.
(In fact, the polyglot I just mentioned recommends Memrise over doulingo)
Hope this helps!
(Edit: if doulingo works for anyone reading this: more power to you! It just hasn’t been effective in my experience. I don’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade, more specifically for anyone who have had a positive time with doulingo.)
I agree with everyone who says NO DUOLINGO for Japanese. It’s not great for other languages either to be honest. There are a lot of other resources that are so much better and plenty are free. There is a list of resources here as well “Ultimate Resources List” or something like that.
For reference, I completed the Japanese tree/course (whatever it’s called) on Duolingo when it was released to see what it was like. At that time there were a lot of issues and errors including incorrect pronunciation of numbers with counters while using kanji, etc. Some issues I know have been fixed, but I don’t know about others. I’ve also completed Germanic languages on it and those aren’t great either despite being close to English. Because it’s random you get just really dumb sentences and ultimately, that’s just not helpful. If you already have had a year of Japanese and want to use it to review or something it can be fine, but it should not be what you learn from.
Oh yeah, 100%
I speak fluent Spanish, and I remember downloading doulingo to just brush up a little. The way of teaching is strange, they kind of just throw example sentences and want you to basically just regurgitate it back.
Since I already know Spanish, it was fine. But I seriously sympathize with anyone attempting to learn a language from scratch that way.
Branching off what you said, maybe going there for review after a while of proper learning is probably fine. But I would vote against that being your only resource from the start.
I dropped it after seeing my progress with Wanikani. I just didn’t find it as helpful. I use WK and Kaniwani right now and am going to add Bunpro for grammar at level 10.
I also want to add this: Duolingo doesn’t take into account the fact that Japanese sentence structure and tenses do not line up to those in English great. Because of this it may say your translation of a sentence is wrong even though it isn’t. I reported a lot of these when I got them and later I would get notifications that my answer was now on the okay list, but I didn’t always do this so I don’t know how many such things still exist in the game-- er app. You could be learning you are wrong when you aren’t and that’s not great.
Keep Duo for light practice here and there but cancel the pro subscription. DuoLingo is decent for getting immediate feedback, and you can even swing it into speaking practice if you’re patient enough. I enjoy the gamification and the variety of sentences. It is more fun than some other programs I have tried that are more thorough or accurate.
However, DuoLingo Plus is so not worth the money. The only thing you get extra is extra lives and no ads. You can earn more lives by using the practice button already, so just use the free version.
Also be forewarned that every time they do an update the pronunciation of some vocab will be completely wrong. So be sure to study them outside of Duo.
For me, the vocab actually sticks pretty well with DL. But everyone learns differently.
If you’re motivated to study elsewhere then don’t do it. Duolingo is only good because it’s addictive and some language learning is always better than none right? Also they rely on other people to submit corrections for them so the higher you go in the levels the less reliable it is and you will even find yourself submitting corrections. When I did it they also just thrust you in the deep end with kanji straight after hiragana so I imagine this to be difficult for true beginners.
For the reasons everyone else is saying, I think the answer is no, but I do think that there’s some value in an app like Duolingo being a part of your rotation. It’d be useful to have an app that isn’t specifically for kanji or grammar, that you can jump on, quickly do some work on, reinforce some concepts, etc. For that, I actually really enjoyed LingoDeer for Japanese.
To be honest, there are more things in your rotation than I could keep up with, but if you aren’t struggling with that aspect, I’d look into LingoDeer.
lol, I just have some free time while working to do this stuff, since when I’m not drawing, I’m not doing anything else other than playing games. I’ll try out lingo deer!
Thank you all for the input! I’ll probably remove duo and instead try out lingodeer/mesmerize or just focus on other things japanese wise. Maybe i’ll try out the tae kim guide
I will occasionally pop back into duolingo for some review. It’s not good as a main teaching tool. I found it lifts my confidence when I don’t want to study or review Japanese in general.
For everyone else who said Duolingo isn’t worth it, I mainly agree.
I started it back up after having had put it down once I completed the entire series about 2 years ago I think. None of it really stuck. It was too easy to just guess to get things correct.
They HAVE updated it quite a bit since I last used it though. I got a new phone and accidentally installed it with all my other apps; decided to give it another shot. The updates are nice but still nothing worth my time.
That said, if you use it with other services where you use it as just dumb practice, something you do while waiting for the bus, while on the toilet, etc, it maybe isn’t worthless. But using it daily believing you are learning anything from it is fallacy.
Sad because Spanish has become pretty nice there, with stories and such being posted for you to read along with the daily lesson stuff.
Duolingo is good for picking up the very basics of a language and for sentence/vocabulary drilling. Nothing else. It doesn’t teach grammar very well, doesn’t customise kanji readings based on the sentence, and actually teaches you something incorrect in its very first (and possibly only?) lesson on the existence of multiple kanji. I started an old thread on the Duolingo Forums discussing how what was taught about the different kanji for はかる is wrong according to various monolingual Japanese dictionaries. It’s basically worthless unless you benefit from a drilling system and don’t have more enjoyable/effective ways to practise.
I know I’m being very harsh, but this is coming from somebody who once fooled Duolingo French into accepting an answer by simply humming a tune that matched the rhythm and tone variation of the required French sentence, and who spotted direct translations from English into French in the sentences that were being taught aka structures that don’t even exist in proper French. Fairly obviously, I wasn’t impressed. Your time is probably better spent elsewhere, especially if you’ve got good books.