Using Duolingo? (the horror!)

Japanese Language
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RE not having hearts by using the web version, the Japanese course is lacking furigana on the website, which is a bit of a hinderance. Since they introduced the ‘awesome’ new voices and broke a bunch of the readings, it’s even harder to without the furigana as a lot of the readings are wrong. The furigana is about 95% correct, so at least you can see what character you are looking for, when none of them make the correct sound. Obviously you want to read the kanji first and actually learn, but you don’t want the lessons to be made unnecessarily difficult by complicated characters and incorrect readings. Skills like Law, Politics, Science and Resources are very complicated-kanji heavy. The website version is very difficult for these lessons (but hey you can keep trying until you get it right).

I use the website to get through the annoying skills that have very few accepted answers, as it’s too hard on the app when you are typing answers that you know are correct but they are not on the list.

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i posted above about liking duolingo for the basics but i cannot second the frustration of typing a technically correct answer that duo doesn’t accept enough.

just now i was typing “これは綺麗花です” because my keyboard automatically put in the kanji and duo wouldn’t accept it until i put “きれい”. OTL pwease silly owl let me pass this lesson i swear i know that word

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if you’re on your computer for the web app, YomiChan is an incredibly useful kanji-interpretation tool for me - it gives furigana and definitions, but you can probably change settings around so it just gives furigana. or i think there are some other options for just adding furigana - extensions and such that you can plug your wanikani progress into as well so it only gives furigana for words you haven’t learned yet

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No don’t do it people, don’t give the owl your personal info. Do you want to be doxxed?

missile

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I agree. I don’t think it’s bad, there are simply much better resources out there. It was helpful for my first month of learning hiragana and katakana, but I’ve never gone back since then.

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well its wrong anyways

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You need a な between きれい and 花, regardless of if there’s kanji or not. If Duolingo accepted the hiragana version without a な, that’s a little worrying.

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On the phone app you can practice to get more hearts, in the Japanese course–does that not work for you? you die on hearts from making errors, you go off and practice (or watch an ad, but seriously), you get more hearts, and you’re back at it.

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welp, that was probably on me then LOL. i’m still very much a beginner so which adjectives need what is still tricky for me. thanks for letting me know lol

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I have been using DL on and off for years now. 2 Years-ish with Japanese and I can safely say that it was one of the best tools (for me personally) to pick up Hiragana and Katakana.

That said, having found about WK earlier this year made me realise the issues with DL. Specifically the wild-ish sentences (that can be useful in a grammatical sense), but kinda pointless if you’re serious about wanting to “learn” the language.
(Unless being able to tell someone about those ‘10 chairs that ARE IN THAT ROOM’ is considered useful)

There is also the problem of finding myself quickly burned out after around Level 3 from the sheer amounts of Kanji’s that you are trying to keep straight in your head.

Let me explain:
Around the beginning of Level 2 you will get sentences like:
“He is a 1st grade student”. 一年生

Cool. So my brain goes "changing the numbers in front of “student”, changes the year, coz i’m clever like that) 二, 三, 四年生 etc.

My Brain has now memorised the word ‘student’ as 年生.
What have I learned?
I’m not sure, i’m rolling with it, ASSUMING it means Student.

Now here lies the problem.
DL does SORT OF teach you a sentence, but doing it as you would memorise Radicalis. It’s a very inefficient way for obvious reasons.

Being able to BUILD UPON basic characters was sort of an AHA moment for me.
一年生
いち, ねん, せい

It’s the equivalent of a 1st Year Student trying to learn Multiplication without understanding how multiplying actually works. The student can memorise the whole table and might know that 8*8 is 64. But why is it 64?

Will I continue using DL or banish it into the shadow realm?
Nah, I’ll go back to for sure. It’s a good tool for learning sentence structure but with all good tools, the user needs to understand how to safely use them.

Make no mistake however. Should I find myself in Japan in the future and I’m in a situation where -I HAVE- to TELL SOMEONE about those darn 10 CHAIRS IN THAT ROOM, I, will be ready.

(also my first post yay)

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I use Duolingo every day (503 day streak here) and I have actually found it very helpful. The main things it does is familiarize me with things before I encounter them elsewhere and reinforce things I’ve encountered elsewhere. It’s just one more tool, and it’s fun, so it’s easy to put in a little bit every day; between that and Wanikani, I can maintain a daily practice even on days when I don’t have time to read or do formal study. There are a whole bunch of kanji, vocab words and grammatical structures that I wouldn’t know as well as I do if I hadn’t practiced them on Duolingo in addition to all the other practice I do.

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My Japanese study actually started with DuoLingo 5 years ago. During that time I have used a couple of different tools including Memrise and Bunpo. Now-a-days I’m using mostly Wanikani as I wanted to focus on my kanji reading this year. I have LingoDeer that I work on maybe once a week just to help with grammar structure. Not really interested right now in speaking rather than vocabulary. For me I felt like learning Kanji first will be more beneficial for me in the long run. My biggest problem with Duolingo and Memrise was the fact that every new Kanji introduced was never explained. This really impacted how well I was picking up on new material. To be honest duolingo and memrise made me feel almost Japanese dylexic as I could never remember the order to place kanji because I never really knew it’s meaning. Now a days if I hop on duolingo it’s as a guest user just to practice my progress on a placement test. :joy:

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I wouldn’t use Duolingo if I had to go through the app; I find it irritating and discouraging. The browser version is clean and straightforward, there are no ads, and it is much less gameified (from what I remember; I’ve only tried the app a couple of times).

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If I have it set so that I have to type my answers and don’t use the word bank, I’ll regularly make more than five mistakes during one lesson simply because I’ll word something differently than how Duolingo would word it, or I’ll misspell something, or make other mistakes. Duolingo is simply a lot more difficult if you type the answers instead of using the word bank. The heart system is way too punishing here.

I also just really don’t like the pressure that comes with having to worry about hearts, because I think making mistakes is inherently part of the learning process, and you shouldn’t be punished for it. I’m way happier using the browser version, and I’m learning a lot more, too, than when I was using the app and was basically forced to use the word bank.

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I think Duolingo is fine as a supplemental resource and a good way for people to be introduced to the Japanese language, just to see if they actually like the language and want to pursue more serious studying. It shouldn’t be anyone’s main resource, of course. It’s improved vastly over the years. It now introduces you to over 1000 kanji, 5000 vocabulary terms, and grammar points up to an N3 level (though not all of them). Not bad.

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i think they finally lost me today. They have changed so much recently and not much of it good…the stupid owl is now more stupid…and when I went to do my lesson today there was furigana everywhere. That is so distracting…I can’t stand reading things with furigana there. It’s too jumbled and my eye can’t help but go straight to it. Does anyone know if this is a feature that can be shut off? If it can’t be I won’t be going back.

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Yes, It’s a ‘feature’ and you can turn it off somewhere in the setting, both mobile and desktop.

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ok i will definitely look later. thank you!! Found it!!

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Yes furigana suddenly appeared on the website yesterday! You just click the cog icon and turn it on or off. That will make the web option a lot easier for people who can’t tell what kanji they need to select when the audio is reading it wrong. Of course it would have been best if they didn’t break so many of the readings with the new voices in the first place… I don’t think they test things, just release it and then fix as complaints roll in.

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I hate how they decided this was the solution over actually using real people… Especially when their excuse for not using real people before was that “people trust the robot voices more”

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