Using Duolingo? (the horror!)

I’ll pop on it once rarely. Just to review random stuff.

To be honest I think Duo would be a better introduction to Japanese than the Tofugu hiragana page. Duo does throw you in learning words straight away (and depending on your approach you can get to greetings or very basic sentences fairly quickly) which feels more rewarding than learning a writing system (especially if you now it is only one of three systems!) I am glad I found the Hiragana and Katakana pages, on Tofugu, and I used them to actually learn what I was struggling to pick up naturally, but if I had started with them I don’t think I would have persisted!

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Engineer in NC :slight_smile:

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Also, Duolingo has separate pages to learn hiragana and katakana these days, which also helps a lot. On the other hand, Tofugu really teaches by means of the visuals, whereas Duolingo enforces it by teaching you words.

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While DuoLingo might not be great for Japanese I can’t be mad at it for making people interested in languages.

My nearly 60 year old mother started using it recently to learn Polish. I can get behind it’s appeal for casual language learners.

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Yeah, I noticed they’d added those, it’s a shame they still lack any description about how they work as a writing system, how voiced consonants work, etc. Not to come across as a LingoDeer shill, but…

Duo vs LingoDeer - the basic grid is the same

But… adds the context of stroke order and actual reading material…

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they were still making sentences with a lot of unnecessary pronouns when i stopped using it, but one could always answer without the pronouns. i made a bit of a game out of stripping as many superfluous parts out of my answers as possible.

my dad is in his seventies and has started learning arabic thanks to duo. and while there’s obviously better ressources for learning arabic than duo, there’s very few which are accessible to an elderly gentleman living in a mountain village.

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The advantage of starting someone with Tofugu is that it introduces the same methodology that goes into WK, which would be the immediate follow-up for anyone who comes back.

While Duo is good to help someone get started, it’s something I’d move them away from as soon as I can. With Japanese specifically, I know where to start so I can point someone in an immediate direction, but with other languages that’s not the case.

Like many things in life, language learning is 80% about just showing up. That’s how you tell who’s serious.

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While I do agree, a problem I often see across the internet is a large emphasis, if not sometimes an obsession, with finding the perfect method. It’s not to say there aren’t good and bad ones, but just showing up and doing something still gets you 80% of the way there.

So, no Duo isn’t a great study resource, but if it gets someone started on language learning and it keeps them coming back, then it gets the job done.

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Yup. I completed the Swedish tree a while back.

Can I speak Swedish? Nej.

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I always feel like the thing they are mis selling with that statement is that thirty-four hours of study in a language course would likely be more in-depth by an order of magnitude.

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Duolingo’s main strength is its accessible nature thanks to the gamification. I would argue that especially for languages like French and Spanish (that have years of polish put into them) it’s quite a good tool that can get you to an intermediate level. I’ve been using it for many months to casually learn French and made some decent progress.

I’d definitely agree that there’s better resources for Japanese though. In general it’s pretty lacking for any of the more difficult languages for English speakers since the system is not very well adapted to it. There’s too much trial and error. You will end up outgrowing it before long. Lingodeer would be a better alternative if you’re willing to pay money. However considering that it’s free, it’s still an ok way to get your feet wet and I think it can give some benefit as a practice tool. In the end it’s more about finding something that you can stick to, and if Duolingo enables you to do that then it’s worthwhile in my book.

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So I started using Duolinguo last December (150 days streaks yeah). I actually dont get the problem most people said. The voice is rather natural and sounds like Japanese (my reference is anime voice so take it with a grain of salt). Duolinguo accept some sentence that dont start with pronoun (like 私). Granted I mostly use the word bank because I dont have Japanese keyboard, but at higher level, the owl start to demand you write the translation in English instead of just choosing the words. And as you progress, you also start to learn complex sentences (I am at stage 3 and they begin to introduce sentences with two or more phrases and clauses)

Now I do admit, its a very bad way for learning hiragana, katakana and kanji but that is why I’m using wanikani for that. Another thing I do hate is the obligation to follow English grammar when translating (このズボン = these pants and not this pants ).

Now unfortunately, I am learning Japanese in leisurely pace so I dont really want to use 3 or 4 apps just for learning Japanese. If I want to practice reading Japanese, I can try reading some manga on pixiv. If I want to practice listening Japanese, I can try watching anime or listening to Japanese songs. Are they bad way to learn Japanese? Probably. But at least I’m having fun doing it.

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Question are you trying out those websites to see if there good then dropping the ones that aren’t good? I’m only asking since it may feel like a chore learning japanese using all of those websites. Just a headsup.

I dunno, after a year of doing Spanish on it I can watch stuff on netflix in Spanish with Spanish subtitles and 95% get it, which is enough for me tbh

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I like Duolingo. I think that the exercises are valuable practice. When Duo was young I completed the French tree in about three months and, together with Lingvist for vocab and lots of immersion in native content, I would say that I was conversational in French in about six months and I was reading Dumas in eight.

Admittedly, French is very different from Japanese and much easier for English speakers to learn.

I remember there was a lot of controversy in the Duolingo community when the Japanese course came out because the quality was so poor. This was several years ago and unfortunately it seems the app still has a bad reputation in the language learning community as a result. That said, they have improved the Japanese course quite a bit and I think Duolingo a nice supplement to WaniKani and more structured grammar study.

I have a few tips for using Duolingo:

  1. Turn the multiple choice thing off and force yourself to type in the answers. This increases the difficulty and you’ll get more out of it.
  2. The grammar lesson pages, at least for Japanese, are much better on the mobile app than on desktop.
  3. Don’t bother getting skills all the way to the “gold” crown level unless you really need the practice on a certain grammar point. You’re often better off progressing further down the tree and reinforcing vocab in new contexts than grinding the same content repeatedly.
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I think university language courses (at least in the United States) are actually a fairly low bar lol. I have friends who took university Japanese who learned 20 kanji in a year, spent weeks just to learn all the kana, never went beyond about 50% of N5 grammar etc.

I know way more people who have learned a second language with apps and self study than learned from college classes. Classes tend to slow down to the level of the weakest learner and don’t usually take advantage of educational technology like spaced repetition or gamification.

Of course, your mileage may vary – I’m sure there are good university classes out there and there are certainly poor apps.

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I had a solid foundation in basic grammar from a couple years of classes in college (quite a while ago, but still watching lots of anime).

I started Duolingo last year before I found Wanikani earlier this year. And I learned a ton of new vocabulary and grammar from it. I tested out of the first couple levels and am now half way through level 6 (which until recently was level 5). I get why it would be bad for beginners, just being thrown in without much explanation, but I’ve learned more from it than anything else really. The gamification helps a ton, as I’m pretty useless with coming up with my own study methods. I look up the grammar that doesn’t have explication notes as it comes along (I find the notes on the website more useful than the ones on the app). Also using the keyboard input on the website more often than the multiple choice on the app has been key.

I know a lot of people hate it. And you guys are probably much better at organizing your own study resources than I am. But for something that’s totally free and doesn’t have a ton of adds (hardly any if you use the website), I’ve been impressed. Might be worth a try for people who have at least a basic amount of grammar down already. Just my two cents.

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Duolingo is the best resource for realizing that there are better resources out there.

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You should be able to add a Japanese keyboard to whatever device you’re using. Romani keyboard, like on here, is quite easy to use.