Yup. I completed the Swedish tree a while back.
Can I speak Swedish? Nej.
5 Likes
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.
3 Likes
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.
3 Likes
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.
6 Likes
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
8 Likes
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:
- 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.
- The grammar lesson pages, at least for Japanese, are much better on the mobile app than on desktop.
- 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.
7 Likes
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.
7 Likes
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.
8 Likes
Duolingo is the best resource for realizing that there are better resources out there.
11 Likes
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.
I really like Duolingo for Japanese - things that I learn there really stay in my memory and have helped me build my vocabulary. I recommend getting all skills to level 5 for it to be effective.
5 Likes
Hasn’t really changed, no, at least for the current tree (they’re working on rolling out a new Japanese tree). They’re not giving dialogues with context, so they have to give us sentences with forced pronouns just so that we’ll know how to translate them into the English they want.
Usually when giving the English answer you don’t need to include a 私は though; it’s understood that the speaker is the default subject or topic.
I think those are only on the app versions. Many people who use the web for Duo complain about not having these, especially since the new Japanese tree they’re rolling out doesn’t start with Hiragana 1-4 like the current one does.
2 Likes
I’ve been using LingoDeer for the past month out of curiosity and my conclusion is that LingoDeer and Duolingo are not that different. But there are some differences.
LingoDeer:
- Pros: More human sounding voice, more natural sounding sentences, nice listening exercises (the little videos).
- Cons: Does not teach much vocab. Exercises are very easy (mostly fill in the blank or multiple choice).
Duolingo:
- Pros: Teaches a huge amount of vocab and lots of kanji practice
- Cons: Robot sounding voice, awkward sentences, no cute videos. Also you have to pay for it. Although if you want a non-annoying Duolingo experience you kind of need to pay for it too.
LingoDeer goes faster than Duo (i.e. you will finish everything much more quickly). That’s kind of good (more exposure to more grammar more quickly) and kind of bad (less review and less vocab practice).
I think overall for myself I do prefer lingodeer, except that it’s so much shorter.
Personally I plan on finishing LingoDeer to flesh out my N4 grammar base and for its listening exercises and then I’m going to return to Duolingo since Duo’s course is a lot longer.
6 Likes
Oh man, I had a 200 day streak on Duolingo. I can honestly say that the way it’s set up didn’t allow me to actually learn anything, ig? Like, memorizing phrases without knowing which word means what, etc. I guess that isn’t a terrible way to learn things if you’re learning casually, but… Yeah. Didn’t enjoy it much and because you can click on the words to see what they mean, not a lot of the content stuck with me. Also, I have a friend who speaks Japanese fluently who says some of the later content is worded weirdly. Maybe its a good app to learn basic sentence structure, but eh… I feel like there’s better ways to do this!
2 Likes
Duolingo was not the best experience for me. I was able to learn bits of vocabulary but otherwise not much is explained and sometimes I would get things wrong but not understand why they were wrong. The little “lesson” pages before you start the exercise don’t give enough info. I also feel like it’s a little disorganized overall in terms of what you should be learning first vs. later.
I agree with other people, it’s nice to have just as an extra thing on the side to learn from, but I would never use it as a primary source… or secondary… or tertiary… if I’m being real with you. Also the ads are insane, the notifications are annoying, and the leaderboard stuff is nuts. I was able to explore the settings and remove a lot of that stuff but I still had the ads and it made it really annoying but the full version is just NOT worth buying haha. I don’t care about those extra features enough to pay for them. On other websites, there is more being offered when you pay so it makes it worth spending the money on…but Duo? Come on…
1 Like
What, really? I tried starting their Korean course for fun just yesterday, and the way the voice pronounces ‘eu’ (actually the same sound as the う in Japanese) infuriates me: the sound is there for just a split second, and you have no time to figure out what it sounds like. You’re left with nothing to imitate, and I’m willing to bet that almost no one who uses Duolingo exclusively can hear the difference between ‘u’ (ㅜ) and ‘eu’ (ㅡ) in Korean, and that’s if they hear the sounds at all! Anyone who says they ‘trust’ those voices more has got to be kidding. I also feel like the romanisation system isn’t sufficiently explained, even if approximations are given. (Some of those sound the same in English even though the Korean vowels they approximate are different… hooray!)
Thanks for the comparison! I was curious about how LingoDeer compared since I’d heard a lot of comparisons and knew that it was more focused on Asian languages, but I didn’t feel like I needed LingoDeer for whatever I was studying. Doesn’t LingoDeer require a subscription though? (But yeah, Duolingo now has ads for Duolingo Plus, and it encourages you to pay for dumb things like ‘lives’ on its phone app, so I get what you mean by ‘you kind of need to pay for Duolingo too’.)
I guess Duolingo is probably good for all the vocabulary it provides at the higher levels, but I don’t think you’ll really want to attempt to acquire Japanese grammar through Duolingo. It doesn’t explain much, and some of the sentences are just weird. Plus, they’ve still got this error in their はかる article under the ‘Tips’ for ‘Science 1’:
No, no and no: 測る is the one you use for temperature, not 計る. Sure, there are a few counterexamples online, but if you check Goo辞書 and most disambiguation blog pages, you’ll see that
Duolingo is wrong. The last thing you need, especially when you’re trying to be taken seriously, is a kanji error. Even if a lot of native speakers might not be aware of the right kanji to use, the ones who do – e.g. company bosses whom you’re writing to in a business email – might take that as an indication of the limits of your Japanese ability. Duolingo has a responsibility to teach people correct Japanese, but since most of these courses are made by volunteers and Duolingo is free, so we can’t hold them accountable… well, there we go. (And yes, if you’re on the Duolingo forums and wondering if you’ve seen this complaint somewhere before… I submitted a post pointing this out back when I was still active on the Duolingo Forums.)
2 Likes
I agree about the Vocab, but I think that’s where LingoDeer Plus makes up for it. LingoDeer Plus is 7 different games, each targeting different aspects: Vocab, Grammar, Verbs, Listening & Comprehension etc. Each game goes up to level 100!
I’ve noticed that level 1 will be a set of vocab, and it will be used in nearly all the games at level 1. Level 2 will be another set. And Level 3 is Numbers. So I’m assuming you’re meant to try to level up each game as a batch group, get them all to level 2, and then all to 3, and so on.
It’s A LOT and I haven’t gotten really into it nor do I know how advanced it gets, but I enjoy it and am learning a lot of vocab easily through it.
1 Like
Meanwhile my Duo tree doesn’t even have a Science 1 bubble lol.
One of the reasons for the huge variety in opinions about the Duolingo course is that there are seven (I think?) versions of the Japanese tree out. If you joined a while ago you may still be on an old version of the tree. If you join today you might get “beta” of the most recent tree or the second most recent one.
I want to say that I’m on tree six, and my impression of the grammar notes is that they were really good until about checkpoint 4, at which they disappeared entirely and you’re kind of left to fend for yourself.
The grammar notes are also completely different for me on desktop and mobile, which is odd.
4 Likes