📲 The app I use to learn languages: tinyurl.com/4hj8t2mw 🆓 My 10 FREE secrets to language learning: tinyurl.com/2p96abk4 ❓Have you used Duolingo? What are your thoughts on it? Let me know in the comments!
Certain Duolingo courses are way more developed than others. I wouldn't use Duolingo for much other than German, French, Spanish, Dutch and Norwegian. The rest, you REALLY need a good grasp on the language because it does not explain much of anything in regards to grammar or other information about the language. You're just expected to either know it or figure it out on your own.
Estoy totalmente de acuerdo sobre lo de Duolingo. Además no me gusta que se base en traducciones, no me parece la mejor manera de aprender un idioma, aunque para quien le guste, está bien. Tengo una duda: ¿cómo organizas lo de utilizar distintos libros y métodos de iniciación al empezar un idioma? ¿lo haces de forma organizada, haciendo un tema de cada uno o algo así, o de forma más anárquica y espontanea? Justo estoy en ese punto con el suomi, tengo varios métodos de iniciación que me gustan, unos son libros, otros son vídeos... y no sé cómo organizarme. (Te escribo en español porque sé que lo entiendes perfectamente, pero puedes contestar en inglés si quieres, muchas gracias de antemano)
I’ve learned a lot with Duolingo! By the way… I’m studying English too I’ve found an English course and I feel good learning this language. I really admire you Steve, I love you so much.
Just a side note Steve it actually does in fact let you review questions you answered incorrectly when you "practice to earn hearts" incase you didn't know. it's a feature that allows you to review questions you got wrong might've missed by mistake etc. it's a really good app for learners I enjoy it! all depending on your level of learning of course. it does allow the learner to immerse themselves in the language what I like best about the app. is it gives you an alternative which route you want to take with your learning. also tests to see if you remember the proper usage etc. One thing I like to do is play with the screen capture on incase I get one wrong and can reference it when I come across it again. instead of always having to guess and answer incorrectly I can now capture the answer learn what it says, then apply it when I'm quizzed. Real good app for beginners as well as intermediates looking to fill the gaps and follow up on what they already know allowing the user to review words and their usage that sort of thing. but one thing I will say listening to Steve and his videos actually helped substantially when using the app for the first time. his immersion technique is probably the main reason I downloaded the app and put it to the test to be completely honest but getting back to the app. I say this all the time like thawing frozen hamburger meat the words are the sink full of water and your brain does eventually latch onto the phrases and their uses and duolingo helps a great deal with that. So the two went 👍🏽hand in hand! 😎
You can practice to earn hearts. Click on the heart in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Then select "practice to earn hearts." Complete the practice exercise to earn the heart. They likely will offer the option to "earn" a heart by watching an ad. I always say no and do the exercises only to earn my hearts back. You cannot become fluent via Duolingo; however, it has helped me to pick up a lot of vocab in context. I study Spanish on it - among several other resources. I read very well, but need to improve my speaking.
I started learning German on Duolingo a couple of years ago before I went to visit my girlfriend’s family. I just wanted to learn a few phrases but then I became more motivated to learn properly and I brought in other resources. I still do Duolingo because I see it as brain training and a way to at least do SOMETHING every day, even when I don’t have much time. It helps me to keep my momentum.
@@ongopom I like Olly Richards’ Storylearning materials. I bought Short Stories in German for Beginners on Kindle and audiobook and I’m reading/listening at the same time. I also started using the Talkpal app which is great for practising speaking.
@@ongopom Speakly is very good. I wouldn't recommend it as an absolute beginner, or (like Duolingo) as your only source, but with a bit of knowledge behind you I find it's very good early training.
But he clearly mentioned what he thought about Duolingo... that if you seriuosly want to learn a language can still use Duolingo but not as the only source.
@@aprenderlinguasimpararelin5633 totally agree. It's a good tool, helped me a lot to get going especially when starting a new language, but won't work alone. Same thing for flashcards and other apps, you need to combine them with actual content, reading, listening etc.
I completed the Duolingo Spanish tree. I definitely learned from duolingo but it wasn’t my only source. It was nice for keeping me on track when life got busy and I would have lost the habit when I was a new language learner. However, the pace of learning is very slow and I was far from fluent upon finishing the tree. But overall, I enjoyed using duolingo to help me stay motivated when I was a new learner. I’ve moved on to more advanced content like reading books and doing online lessons now. My opinion is duolingo is great for someone getting started, but you will need to eventually graduate from it. Great video Steve, I always enjoy your content
There's quite a lot you don't learn well with Duolingo. There are many isolated sentences without context, and in real world, that's not how things work, like you'd omit large parts (or replace them with pronouns) because of the context shared with the listener. Sure, you get longer bits as you progress, but the individual lessons are still meant to fit in 5 minutes or so. So I fully agree, it should never be your only tool. Fine initially, when you cannot keep that much context anyway because you are still seeing individual words and not units of meaning, but you'll want to explore other sources of text and audio. Whether that's graded readers or song lyrics, whatever seems reasonable at your level and interesting enough. I must admit that the passive aggressive notifications kind of work for me 😅
It is slow (repetitive), but I often I jump to the next level, after halfway through a section. If I fail the test pre-jump, no big deal--just review. But as you said, it should not be the only source of learning a particular language. Having said that, I Duolingo'ed German for about a month before going on a trip to Austria, and it served me well.😀
@@nosotros4shorts Listening to Spanish in it's natural speed. Radio, tv, the news and pair it with Duolingo. Also do reading as well. All work together to create habit, you'll realize overtime small words become clear and contexts too. I am at high A2 going to B1 learning Spanish. I can understand more listening now, I was strong in reading more than listening.
I love that he says it is complimentary!! I hate when people trash one language app to promote the other. I use about 4 apps daily for their various strengths. I also speak and have a tutor. Good job, Steve of giving an honest review of Duo Lingo. FYI.....I just did a language camp in Northern Minnesota and EVERYONE used Duo Lingo. I also went to a Language school in Costa Rica for a month. The one in the USA was far better as it was 100% immersion. I am loving LINGQ!!
@@AussieAnnihilation India is always ignored by these companies south east asia and africa too they only care about europe even Japanese was an afterthought
You might be surprised… I'm focussing more on French and Spanish but I had started Ukrainian as that is my background… It was fun learning the Cyrillic alphabet and applying it… I would think learning Hindi would be the same if you thought you might have a chance of using it or if it's in your background. The writing looks cool.. Just talking about it is making me feel like I wanna learn those kinds of languages too..
Учу английский в Дуолинго. Уже пятьсот четыре дня. Наибольший прогресс совершил в первые два месяца. Начал читать книги, которые до этого не мог перевести даже со словарем. Также стал понимать уроки английских преподавателей. Потом вдрхновение ушло, прогресс замедлился и даже был откат назад. Сейчас вошло в привычку, и я просто поддерживаю достигнутый уровень. Без какого-то заметного прогресса)) Всем полиглотам успехов в языках.
Me too!! Duolingo has helped me so much! I have wanted to learn to read Russian and now I can actually read a little! Plus, learning the Cyrillic alphabet opens me up to learning Ukrainian and a few other languages. I am still at a very low level, but I am learning basic grammar and I keep increasing my vocabulary little by little, so I don't forget.
Привет, мне кажется дуолинго помогает выучить какие-то фразы, фразовые глаголы и тд путем многократных повторений и это действительно полезно. У меня даже 8летняя дочка делает там задания уже второй год, хотя она учится на английском в школе, но и дуолинго не помешает )) хотя вот греческий я там забросила, не очень понятный курс... а английский вроде ок
I have been on duolingo for about a year...on and off....learning German....and while it's great at the beginning to get you acquainted with a completely new language....it can't get you confident in that language...because as you said, it only shows a very narrow slice of the languages...and not much of the rules are taught. You are supposed to guess the rules...but you would never get the complete picture...so, yes, I try various other sources...such as 1. Watching German learning videos at slower speed 2. Reading German texts and questionnaires 3. Check with different grammatical rules time to time every time i have confusion about some rules.
I used Duolingo for about a year for Spanish and although it was really fun at the start the life system became very frustrating being limited to only 5 mistakes at a time. I found myself being angry over mistakes rather than feeling mistakes are a normal process. I think it's great for testing out a language and seeing what you think before you dive in.
For starters, I don’t think it’s good to judge Duolingo based on the languages you tried. Duolingo is much better for languages that use the Roman alphabet. French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese are the strongest courses on there, but the others are slowly improving too. Duolingo’s biggest strength is that it lowers the barrier. By only requiring one short lesson per day, people are more likely to open it and practice. Not everyone will have an hour to study each day, but everyone should have 5 mins. This ensures you have contact with the language each day and keeps you engaged with it. It’s not very efficient for learning new topics imo, but it’s great for review and exposure to the language.
As a brazilian i tried to "learn" brazilian portuguese and in the firts steps i saw many flaws and was like 20% that had words in wrong connotations, places, conjugations e etc. So i guess duolingo has more support for more "famous" languages such like spanish, english, french and others.
I’ve almost completed the Duolingo Hindi course and I’ll say this for it if nothing else: it’s been great in helping me learn the Devanagari script so that I can read Hindi, and I’ve learned a lot about Hindi syntax. Honestly, can’t speak it beyond a handful of phrases, but I have some handy tools to make the rest of my journey easier and it’s been 100% free. I think some folks expect too much from it, you have to be realistic. It’s a convenient way for me to get a few minutes of Hindi exposure/practice out and about. But it’s a supplement or launchpad, not much more. Edit: also, as you mentioned ruined, it was very difficult differentiating the audio for several of the sounds, so I went to a few TH-cam channels to better learn the basics of the script and phonetics, then went back to Duo. I still routinely listen to Hindi podcasts and music too. All of it adds up to: I can understand a decent amount about a few topics after maybe a year of extremely passive learning. I can’t speak it, but that’s due to a complete lack of effort so far.
I am in the same space with Russian and I follow a similar approach. Pimsleur is also awesome to learn the sound of the language and get the feel for it. Duoling really helped me learn a lot of vocabulary, as well as some basic grammar and syntax (word order). I KNOW I would have not learned as much without Duolingo. Like you said, it's not perfect, but it is a great tool to have that I didn't have years ago when I first tried to learn Polish.
I just wrote a whole response to you and lost it! I will try to recreate my message. Anyway, I am on a similar path with Russian, so I know I can learn Hindi if I put the effort in. Like you said, Duolingo is not perfect, but I have learned a lot of vocabulary, as well as some basic grammar and syntax (word order). I KNOW I would not have progressed this far without Duolingo. I actually started off with Pimsleur, which is my go-to app to introduce me to the language, before I even think of reading it. I have learned quite a bit of Russian, as well as a bit of Polish, Italian, and even a bit of Ukranian. It even helped me identify problem areas that I keep running into in Spanish, which I have been learning for over 30 years.
@@ginabee1212 yep, I used Pimsleur for awhile too, I used to listen to it while I walked to work several years ago. Tools are tools, it’s up to us to use them well.
There's some books I believe you can use to speak Hindi and learn to write it. Best way is to note down commonly used English words and sentences in daily life look up their Hindi translation and try to remember and speak them. Videos,movies and music also help in learning a new language. Always learn to speak first then write it and master both.
I use Duolingo to learn English, and I like it because if it weren't for Duolingo I wouldn't be able to learn any other way, I have 1004 days there and that keeps me motivated to not stop.
@@albertwesker2k24 I used a translator because I'm afraid of making mistake, but I can write it without translator. Now, I'm not using a translator and I can understand everything he said. I'm trying not to use a translator anymore. 🙏🏽
@@luishenriquealmeidarocha7007 , you're writing is actually great! From now on, write in English by yourself first, and then checking with a translator just in case. (Chat GPT is good for English too, copy paste your own-written English text on it and ask it if its good and whether there are any mistakes or can you improve it somehow). Good luck!
@@nuzayerov hey friend. thank you so much for your advice. I'm actually using chat GPT, and it has been helping me a lot. It's really helpful. One day I hope to achieve my goal, speak English.
I totally agree on this fact 7:50...it s not the number of days that matters on duolingo but more the number of hours... because 5mins grants you a day of learning but you dont get anywhere with 5mins/day in this way of learning... and even though duolingo won t allow you to be fluent at the end or at least not as we expected to be...
Duolingo has been pretty good for helping with my french. It hasn't gotten me speaking, but I have had consistent improvement in my understanding. You do need to use other resources on top of it.
@@angel8223 It really depends on how fast you want to progress. I have been using it consistently for three years for as much as an hour a day, and as little as 3 minutes. Right now I am busy and not focused on French, but I work in Canada and get a little exposure to French at work most days. My comprehension is around level B1 but my spoken French is not. I can listen to customer requests and give short directions. There was a period of time when I was also listening to short podcasts and watching children's shows in French, and that has been a huge contributer to my being able to understand when people speak to me.
3 minute French on Spotify I’ve learned Italian, German and now doing the French course. it’s fantastic for helping with the speaking side and formation of the language. Kieran ball does the courses. Look it up on here too. Hope that helps
as a mandarin native speaker, the greatest help i get from duo is that it internalizes the german article changes in dative, akkusativ and norminativ cases in my brain. how ever much classes i attended last time they couldnt do that to me. but it might be also due to that i consciously practising the case changes with previous knowledge i got when doing duo.
I've been on a 61-day streak with German. It is a fun environment and enlightening to start understanding certain words from a different language. I don't like however the league system, even though I have undeniably paid attention to it a lot. The experience should be more free and relaxed towards someone's own time and learning curve and the leagues make the experience far too competitive.
Very good Duolingo review. I use a combination of Duolingo, ChatGPT, Translate, newspapers, and listening to songs in the target language with synced lyrics in both languages.
Just started Hindi 10 days ago (mainly Duolingo but with some phrasebooks and Netflix to help)..alongside french/german/portugese and Japanese for the last 2 years or so daily to varying degrees. Looking forward to your Hindi content down the line Steve as I really enjoy all your videos/interviews and language tips 🙏
I use a few apps (as well as non-gamified resources), and I find Duolingo one of the better ones I've used which *works well for how I learn*. I think that's the key here. All of these apps, at least the better ones, have different structured approaches. Some focus on grammar and sentence structure, while others concentrate on vocabulary or common usage in conversation. One of the ones I like least (and own for a lifetime) is Rosetta Stone. Besides being buggy, it also seems to need a companion book to go with it in order to best learn while using it. Also, unlike Duolingo, RS is a relatively short course, at least in French.
One thing you can do to speed up with Duolingo is skip entire units. It gives you a test to see if you know enough to jump ahead and the thing is, this test doesn't use the same annoying heart system the normal lessons do. You can fail it as many times as you need so you can learn with it instead of the lessons to some extent
@@keif3rr_35i dont have the 3 heart thing on my duolingo . I am able to turn on the unlimited heart and idk why i have it. Maybe you have it too, you should check it out
Duolingo, Michel Thomas and using HelloTalk did wonders for my Spanish. It’s great living in a time where resources for learning another language are abundant.
have been using Duolingo for over a year and a half. On his practice run in the video he ran out of hearts which is like losing lives on a video game. You either have to wait until a certain amount of time has elapsed to be given a new heart or you have to watch an ad to gain new hearts. You can subscribe to Super Duolingo which is ad-free and lets you have unlimited mistakes. I have completed the German course and have nearly completed the Spanish course B2. When I visited Spain I spoke Spanish quite well which I would not have been able to do were it not for the practice which Duo gave me in producing sentences in Spanish, both written and spoken. I used it in conjunction with other material, including Linguaphone. I rate it highly. My criticisms are that the Spanish is Latin-American Spanish and not Castilian, but I made adjustments accordingly ; and that the AI spoken sentences don't always have realistic vocal inflexion. For example, in interrogative sentences which are written in statement form one's voice should rise at the end of the sentence to show that it is questioning. Duo sometimes fails to do that. And it is the same with tag questions such as those which end in "verdad". Sometimes the "verdad" is hurried and sounds like it's stuck to the previous final word of the sentence question as though it were a syllable. In short, the audio is not always up to scratch; but having said that, I still find Duolingo a very useful tool to have in one's language-learning arsenal. Often on language courses the learning is passive, by which I mean we become more skilled in listening comprehension than in being able to create and produce our own sentences with good grammar and syntax. Duo has sufficient exercises which demand that you produce sentences in the target languge through translating sentences given in English. I found this very useful when I went abroad. With the German I had been learning it for years before using the Duolingo but I had the disbalance that I described above of being more skilled in understanding than producing. After using Duo for a while I went to Berlin and I spoke only German 99% of the time and was understood and reponded to in German. It gave me a buzz and great satisfaction to have been able to do that. It makes the effort all worth while. I love getting to understand how languages work differently and learnig the ones which I am interested in and likely to use, either in travel or to read literature in its original language.
I have just started the Duolingo French tree three weeks ago. I love it, it’s fun and I can already have little conversations in French with a Belgian colleague of mine. I learn 1-2 hours a day, but it is not my only source. I also watch movies and shows with subtitles, try to read a little bit French every day and use ChatGPT to train talking without having the fear of making mistakes (and if I make some, it corrects them). It’s a strong additive tool as it also explains grammar rules I don’t understand and gives me the possibility to repeat things - it’s just like a tutor and keeps track of my progress. I started with the Duolingo German/French tree, but there was an error in the app so I switched to English/French tree. The English/French version is much better than the German one. There are way more features and the examples are not as stupid as in the German version.
I used to have a longer than 1600 days streak in Duolingo, but I unistalled it some months ago. I've completed several trees and it didn't help me become fluent. It helps you in the starting phase to gain confidence and some basic vocabulary but you need more resources to be fluent. I'm trying to learn Russian and French and I'm doing it by only watching series and movies.Recently, I wanted to check my level and I've taken some 'test' I found in the web, take them with a grain of salt, and they put me at around B1 on both languages after a year and half (although they didn´t test my best skill which is listening, they just tested me about reading and writing which are ironically the less I´ve 'studied'). That is light years from what I achieved from completing trees in Duolingo, and it is more fun. I've been asked some times if Duolingo is helpful and I only recommend it just to have a taste of the language, but that's all.
have been using Duolingo for over a year and a half. On his practice run in the video he ran out of hearts which is like losing lives on a video game. You either have to wait until a certain amount of time has elapsed to be given a new heart or you have to watch an ad to gain new hearts. You can subscribe to Super Duolingo which is ad-free and lets you have unlimited mistakes. I have completed the German course and have nearly completed the Spanish course B2. When I visited Spain I spoke Spanish quite well which I would not have been able to do were it not for the practice which Duo gave me in producing sentences in Spanish, both written and spoken. I used it in conjunction with other material, including Linguaphone. I rate it highly. My criticisms are that the Spanish is Latin-American Spanish and not Castilian, but I made adjustments accordingly ; and that the AI spoken sentences don't always have realistic vocal inflexion. For example, in interrogative sentences which are written in statement form one's voice should rise at the end of the sentence to show that it is questioning. Duo sometimes fails to do that. And it is the same with tag questions such as those which end in "verdad". Sometimes the "verdad" is hurried and sounds like it's stuck to the previous final word of the sentence question as though it were a syllable. In short, the audio is not always up to scratch; but having said that, I still find Duolingo a very useful tool to have in one's language-learning arsenal. Often on language courses the learning is passive, by which I mean we become more skilled in listening comprehension than in being able to create and produce our own sentences with good grammar and syntax. Duo has sufficient exercises which demand that you produce sentences in the target languge through translating sentences given in English. I found this very useful when I went abroad. With the German I had been learning it for years before using the Duolingo but I had the disbalance that I described above of being more skilled in understanding than producing. After using Duo for a while I went to Berlin and I spoke only German 99% of the time and was understood and reponded to in German. It gave me a buzz and great satisfaction to have been able to do that. It makes the effort all worth while. I love getting to understand how languages work differently and learnig the ones which I am interested in and likely to use, either in travel or to read literature in its original language.
Duolingo used to have a mini list of all the vocabulary words you learn in each lesson. It would be nice if they brought that back within each unit so we can go back and review outside of their lessons. Nice and fair review ! Love seeing your new books!
@@89Dustdevil I pay for Duolingo, you get a big wordlist you can scroll through but it's not broken out by lesson and it's inconvenient. However, searching outside the program, I have found that the duome website has vocabulary lists by lesson, at least for the languages I've looked up.
I'm using duolingo to learn languages. If you wanna do it for free you have to re fill your heart doing practice. I got inspired to learn languages from you and Luca Lampariello and many others polyglot. I'm learning 11 languages 10 on duolingo and I'm fluent in English and brasilian português. I'm Italian by the way. I decided to do an experiment and learn multiple languages at a time. I can say that for Cinese, japanese, Greek, Spanish, Latin, French, I can only be able to translate smal little frases. I add Arabic two weeks ago. Now, what I do after using duolingo is write down every exercise, even for languages with different characters. I created my own flash cards to learn ひらがな,カタカナand some kanji. So for japanese I'm able to read and write other than tiping. For Arabic I'm trying with duolingo but I'm following some TH-cam videos that teaches you some frases too. I'm doing all this because I'm interested to find the best way, or method to teach to my non verbale autistic son Italian and Brazilian português because he likes that language too. So, my motivation to learn languages is love.
What's the point of dabbling into so many different languages? Especially if you want to continue like that: I'd only do that if I want to learn more about a language and maybe decide in the future if i'm going to properly learn it. The moment you want to *properly* learn a language, shitty apps like Duolingo don't help you at all. Classic way of learning is and will always be the most effective and longlasting way to acquire a language. There are soo many better programs and apps to use than that pile of nonsense called Duolingo. Your goal is formidable (trying to find out what the best way is to teach your son) but I fear that there might be way better ways to find that out.
I tried to learn Spanish and Portuguese at the same time, but it was too confusing. So, I parked Portuguese and am focusing on Spanish for now. Good luck on your journey!
It's the same for every language, even English. I could understand music, then TV series and movies, and finally youtubers. Each required lots of input.
I used Tofugu's guide to the kana and got them down in about a week, I feel like Duo was a nice reinforcement for sure. But yeah, for kanji it is abysmal. I've learned way more from other resources and immersion content and in the past year than with Duolingo. That said, the habit tracking aspect is really nice.
I am an avid duolingo user among many other resources (for Spanish), and this is a fair and accurate review. The best part about it is that it's very slow, and the worst part about it is that it's very slow. Hardly any grammar, and it just beats the concepts into your head with a sludgehammer. BUT that extreme repetition does really cement in my mind the grammatical concepts that I read about in textbooks and youtube videos. If duolingo is your only source for learning a language, then that's definitely not good though. I also think it's better if you're an absolute beginner, or else the huge amount of repetition and disjointed structure will cause more problems.
Interesting video. I have used Duolingo in the past. When I first used it I found it helpful. It was for a language where there were not many resources. I found it helpful it getting to grips with pronunciation and listening. I also found it useful to help me notice issues about word order, e.g. the placement of time in a sentence. At that time you were able to go through it as you wanted and make as many mistakes as you wanted. Then they changed it so that you could only go through the course as they wanted. Also they introduced hearts so that if you made more than five mistakes, you could not do anymore work on it. Consequently I gave up on it.
I mean obviously other tools help take you the next level. With German it helped me a lot. Korean it helped me with Hangul and Japanese with Hiragana. For me so far I can ONLY start a language with Duolingo. Everything else I do its moved too, fast overwhelms me; and I learn nothing. I have to build a foundation with Duo and then branch out to help expand on that base because it definitely only takes you so far. Everyone learns differently though and some things work better for some than others.
I want to say have a good holiday in Türkiye, the warm of summer is still feelable in the autumn. You definitely choose the best time to visit! By the way yağıyorum is 1st, yağıyorsun is 2nd and yağıyor is 3rd person. We don't use the first two one in daily life. Yağmur yağıyor is the correct one. Good luck on improve your Türkçe 😁
I'm learning Spanish, and I use a few different learning tools, including TH-cam videos. One thing I do like about Duolingo, in addition to it's being fun, is that the daily reminders and competitive element help keep me motivated to do at least something every day. I do think that they set the bar awfully low saying that 15 minutes is "serious" learning. I try to treat it as I would any other class, in terms of time: at least an hour a day, although if I start making lots of mistakes, I find that taking a break to let what I've learned sort of percolate for a while helps.
In 2014 I completed the Duolingo English to French tree. I had some French knowledge, and I definiteley learned a lot with Duo. It was not enough to render mi conversational, though. In 2022 I came back and discovered the app had greatly improved! I'm half-in now and I am begining to be fluent. From my own experience, yes, you can get to a point where you can talk confidently with Duolingo only, but if, after building a foundation, you begin using other resources, like reading books, watching videos, and taking conversation sessions with native speakers, your ability will be boosted. I don't know how good Duo is with other languages, but I can tell you from English to French, it's a joy to follow. Now, 15 minutes a day won't take you anywhere. At least 30-60 minutes would be more useful, and even in that case, you'll need to keep up the effort. Just look at how children learn: they spend 2 years almost just hearing, and then it takes them a good 20 years to master the language. Take heart, I think at least for me, 3-4 years of sustained commitment will take you to fluency.
I think that you definitely were not too negative. In fact, I'm downloading it right now. I used to hate it because it is not a good way to learn, but once you convinced me that it is good for testing now I will be using it occasionally.
Duolingo is great as a help with grammar and with the script systems. It's exactly what you said, complementary. It doesn't provide serious input or output.
He is completely accurate. I mastered the Polish tree on Duolingo and it helped me understand and learn a lot but actually being able to speak Polish would take much more. I have tried to learn more through other methods, but Duolingo alone isn’t enough.
I've been using it for Korean just as an additional form of practice and it has been really good for 2 main things. 1) it's a good way to introduce and reinforce some vocab 2) it has drastically improved my reading speed I've been using it less lately though because as I start to get into more complex sentences, it's become extremely frustrating to use
Little Prince must be one of the go-to stories for language learning in many languages. I was well pleased to see it in both Turkish and Hindi just now. I have English and Spanish copies sitting beside me right now, and have also made use of audio version in these same languages. Such a great little book for language practice.
Using Duolingo for 7 years now, learning Spanish and I am now at C1. Of course Duo was not my only source. But it's been very useful to me and I still do a few lessons every day to keep in touch with the language even if I do nothing else with Spanish during that day.
I have used Duolingo for Esperanto, and that makes me speak the language now. It has also helped me understand and converse in French a bit. Learning a language depends on so many factors, including personal ones. The way I see it, the kind of app that one uses may help, but language learning depends more on the person learning, his level of interest and enthusiasm, his memory, and his consistency in practice without the app.
I done duolingo japanese for awhile now and what helps me is act curiosly when i don't really understand something or want to know more. I often talk to google translate to test if the sentence I'm thinking of works and I also watch videos. I recently started using anki too.
I use to love Duolingo, it's what got me to start learning Spanish for real, but I only ever used it casually and never passed level 3 on the old circles which would let me move through the tree faster and learn more entry level words. Now it seems like an absolute chore.
Agreed, as a complementary system duolingo is useful. I find French classes for English speakers particularly good to learn the basics. As a Turkish native speaker, I have tried Turkish classes for English speakers. they are mostly based on French classes, which does not always make much sense. However,I should admit, I met an anglophone who learned Turkish pretty well with duolingo. Not only with it, but it helped a lot. Their pronunciation was impressive.
I’ve used Duolingo since 2015? Have also stopped for years and this year getting back at it. Is not my only source, but I think is too judged by many people. I think it helps build a habit to practice every day, also good to start with very basic level at any language. Some are not so common so it is a good thing there are many languages for free. I will keep using Duolingo , but I will not only rely on it, less for grammar purposes and daily life stuff. I’ve been learning: Dutch, german, Norwegian and Japanese there ( all in English as is my second languages but I don’t have some of them in the Spanish version, so I end up practicing 2 at the same time. Had learned Japanese before but, so many years ago so I find it useful to practice stuff I knew before.
You can do as many hours a day of Duolingo as you want for free. You can jump over sections to speed up the learning process if it is becomming too repetitive for you. When you jump over sections, you can actually return to the sections you skipped over if you want to revise something you are interested in.
Steve Kaufmann must have a real gift for languages if he got to an A2/B1 level in Turkish in three months. I’ve been studying German for 18 months, 30 minutes a day, then a month ago one hour a day, and I’m nowhere near B1 according to LingQ. I suspect he has a very good memory. I have used Duolingo for French and German. In my view there are far better ways to learn. As Steve says, it does not provide enough input, and presents only a very small subsection of the language. I also hate the identity politics that they force down my throat. For German my preferred method is to listen to huge quantities of simple TH-cam learners videos, the constant repitition helps me to learn words, which is what I struggle with. And I get to hear the same words used in many different ways, which helps me gain an appreciation of the word, rather than a simple translation. I use LingQ simply because it provides a quick access dictionary.
Duolingo has helped me so much since I started learning French a month ago. I use it at least for 1 hour daily, or maybe even more. Of course I use other sources too but I must say that Duolingo has done it for me. I can strongly recommend it and my advice is to use your maternal language to learn whatever language you wish to learn. Good luck! 😊
Tip for you Steve: if you run out of "hearts" you can practice on previously completed lessons to refill your hearts, they will also refill over time anyway. This prevents you having to use gems to obtain more hearts and lets you carry on without being cut short, although I normally just quit and let them respawn normally, as it normally takes me about half an hour or more to lose all my hearts anyway. I've been using Duolingo for around 2 years on and off, learning Spanish mostly. I am despite the length of time I have been studying, perhaps at most A2 level at the moment; even that is questionable as I haven't really got into using any tenses other than the present tense at the moment. I have also used other sources beside duolingo, and I do find these quite useful. Duolingo is a very slow way to learn a language, and is not very good at helping you develop your speaking skills. It is however a good way to obtain really solid knowledge of vocabulary, because there is a LOT of repetition and you will come to master the words it teaches. The Spanish course is good and has some interesting stories. It's also completely free.
Duolingo has some great guidebooks for each of the sections as you work your way through, I can't comment on the Hindi ones as I've been doing French, but the French ones are really good and break down what you will be learning in each section. If the Hindi letters are important no doubt they will break them down in the guidebooks.
You're on the point : you can't use duolingo as the only way to learn a language. This can be an "entry point", I'm using it but it's a part of the different tools i'm using. Lingq is another one. I like to use different attack angles to learn, not only one.
Exactly right, using other sources for language is important if you want to speak it and be fluent. It would be hard and maybe confusing to use it alone.
Going up to level 3 of Duolingo alone helped me understand most french. The problem with Duolingo (among some of the things mentioned, such as it being too slow) is that it's a great source for SOME languages and not many. Hindi and Turkey are probably not THE BEST languages to learn on Duolingo. They don't seem to have detailed grammar explanations as a language like French does. The French course has great grammatical concepts and detailed explanations. And yes, you have to use other things besides Duolingo. I can't say i am fluent, but it has helped me understand a lot of what i watch on youtube. I dont practice speaking it much so i cant comment on that.
duolingo isn't perfect but it's a POWERFUL tool. 99% of my mandarin learning was from duo. no, I don't speak mandarin yet... but I do understand more and more when I hear people talk!!
I studied Sanskrit, Nepali, Pali, Hindi, Sinhala and Newari in my twenties, and I can safely say no one will learn good pronunciation of the Devanagari alphabet without the help of a native speaker in the language of choice. You cannot distinguish the sounds properly without someone listening closely to your pronunciation and giving you immediate feedback. That is why you cannot hear the difference between long and short vowels and unaspirated and aspirated consonants. When it comes to palatal and dental consonants, it is even harder for a speaker of European languages to distinguish between them. I have heard so many Westerners attempt to speak these languages and never learn the subtlties of the sound system. The fact that the sounds also shift from one language to another adds another level of complexity. Hindi adds sounds from Urdu, which makes it more challenging than Nepali, for instance. I wonder if you have tried Mango languages. The learning system is completely different from Duolingo and its knockoffs. It is so much like learning from a native speaker how to listen to the sounds in the language. It allows you to record yourself alongside a native speaker and compare the audio visually as well. The feedback mechanism for pronunciation is excellent in my opinion. By the way, I knew Stephen Krashen 30 years ago, and I am happy that you are applying his ideas to language learning.
Well-said. I tell people I know who are using this that it's fine as one source of input, but it won't get you terribly far. The gamification is appreciated by some people, others may find it silly. When I used it for the Arabic alphabet, there was a "letters" tab you could go to and this had unlimited mistakes, there may be one for the Hindi version but I haven't used it for Hindi. I found it good for initial help with learning the Arabic alphabet, though I certainly needed many actual books and videos to supplement this with! I am learning Modern Standard Arabic on my own, for fun, I majored in German/French/anthropology in college, I have no specific travel plans or anything, I enjoy watching the news and documentaries in Arabic. (That is to say, my purpose for learning Arabic may just be to watch the news and read books rather than traveling, if I wanted to travel to Egypt or somewhere I'd focus more on a particular dialect.) Another thing I noticed is that the "guides" in DuoLingo don't have all the material they have in that section, which is weird. I need to write down the vocabulary, maybe some sample sentences, etc. and I was disappointed when the guide didn't even tell me the different gendered forms of the colors DuoLingo Arabic taught. It has its uses, but it will not make anyone proficient in any language without them using other things, certainly. With Arabic specifically, some of things going on with moon letters and sun letters and how those change with pronunciation, and changes in how you pronounce the ta marbuta with a suffix, things like that, are never explained in DuoLingo, it seems, and I would've been lost without other materials like books and TH-camrs. A lot of grammar is left out, which is fine at first in Arabic since you can make sentences without verbs, like describing something with an adjective and no "to be" verb, but eventually, I always like to see some charts and explanations.
That's a reasonable assessment. Reasonable for someone who is just starting and doesn't want to spend time investigating all the possibilities just yet, or someone who is using it alongside other resources.
A very fair review. I do use duolingo to ensure I practise every day, but it is most definitely not enough for me, as I like to understand grammar (e.g. omitting the gender of nouns just maddens me!) Also, I like to read in the target languages, so I do plan to try LingQ fairly soon, as it sounds great.
Я сожалею только об одном, что у вас нет тысячи лет жизни. Ваш интеллект и желание изучать языки требует как минимум лет двести земной жизни. Ваша собственная программа очень хороша. Спасибо вам! 👍🤝
Duolingo is fine. I enjoy the Spanish course. I did study Spanish years ago in school. But I do think one has to add more stuff outside of it. I feel the content there has been a nice "refresher..." But I read and listen to content outside of Duolingo hours a day. I think some of the courses are better than others. The Japanese course is relatively weak in content. I stopped that. But again, I've lived in Japan 19+ years. I don't think I am the target group for that. I've never found any textbook or app in ANY language that achieves all the language milestones and goals. I pick the best parts from a variety of resources.
I do think this video was rather harsh on Duolingo. Most people will never put in the time or effort to reach any real level of language ability. The daily motivation to "...do something..." is important for many people. Really in any sort of journey in a skill-based activity like language, music, art, etc... To feel like, "I am learning something...and I am getting 'better...'" is also key for many people who will simply give up when they hit a learning plateau.
"Muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine" If you can understand this word, it means you have learned Turkish completely.
Interesting. I learn really well and quickly with Duolingo (though it's certainly not my only method). I even agree with the criticism about it being "slow" and constricting. The positive thing about that artificial constriction for a lot of people, including myself, is that it reduces the search-space of ambiguity in the input, which allows you to learn that limited set of inputs extremely well... IF you take care to practice those words and phrases in other contexts (e.g. detecting them when you listen to the radio in that language).
You were very fair to Duolingo, perhaps even went a bit easy on it... my main concern with it is the assumption that the same approach is equally appropriate & efficient for every language. For example, many exercises allow for only a specific word order to be correct; in a language like Russian, as I'm sure you know, word order is extremely flexible, expressing various nuances according to context. Duolingo can't account for that, constantly marking as incorrect answers that are perfectly possible. And as a matter of personal preference, I found the constant nudges to upgrade increasingly annoying. Their gamification works for some, and their marketing has been brilliant, but for solid pedagogy I prefer Mango Languages - I'd be really interested in hearing what you think of that app.
The main people use duolingo is for fun. You can do ad little or as much as you like, so you could do any more amount of time. It is just a suggestion to help you keep refreshed
In my opinion, it’s great as a psychological tool that keeps me going even when I’m busy. I do a few lessons, always reading out aloud and then from memory the sentences that it serves up. Then when I have more time, I do reading, watching TV in the target language, italki lessons etc.
I've only use the free section, but I always do a practice session or two, to make sure I start each session with 5 hearts, and on bad days, I'll do another one or two in the middle of a lesson. I'm finding that the program is very useful in bolster my mediocre Spanish
Duolingo is sometimes outside of paid tuition the only option for some minority languages. I'm English and of Angle descent. I do have however some Welsh in there. I'm learning Welsh. Babel and Rosetta stone don't do Welsh. Cornish, Breton, Navajo, Basque etc. So I use what is available. Duolingo is much better than being on your own. It is a good complement to book, video, TV, and going to Wales etc.
You know, for listening questions, when you tap on an answer, it plays the sound before you lock in the answer you can still change it. It is more about learning than being perfect each time.
I simply don't learn by showing me something once and then asking me (in various ways) "do you know this? do you know this?" But that is the Duolingo method. No explanation, no instruction. just testing.
If you run out of hearts you can do the practice lessons to earn more hearts. And then continue with the regular lessons. Whatever phrase was difficult, you can share it to your feed, then go through those to choose something specific to work on.
Duolingo really helped me to learn how to read Russian. I recognize many familiar words, but I still have to sound out new words, but I can actually read some basic Russian, which I have wanted to do for a long time. Between Pimsleur and Duolingo, plus a few other resources, I can learn any language.
1500 consecutive days is crazy impressive. That's dedication. Not missing even one day.. I bet this person has not discovered LingQ or a different system that's more serious. I find LingQ really pushes you to learn more and quicker. Or perhaps since you're learning more at a time this is why you feel like you're learning quicker. 1500 days on LingQ I can imagine would make someone e fluent. Atleast in reading.. probably listening as well if they practiced that.
All you need to do is practice for about 10 minutes or so to maintain the streak. Many people do that. They aren't really learning with that approach IMO.
have been using Duolingo for over a year and a half. On his practice run in the video he ran out of hearts which is like losing lives on a video game. You either have to wait until a certain amount of time has elapsed to be given a new heart or you have to watch an ad to gain new hearts. You can subscribe to Super Duolingo which is ad-free and lets you have unlimited mistakes. I have completed the German course and have nearly completed the Spanish course B2. When I visited Spain I spoke Spanish quite well which I would not have been able to do were it not for the practice which Duo gave me in producing sentences in Spanish, both written and spoken. I used it in conjunction with other material, including Linguaphone. I rate it highly. My criticisms are that the Spanish is Latin-American Spanish and not Castilian, but I made adjustments accordingly ; and that the AI spoken sentences don't always have realistic vocal inflexion. For example, in interrogative sentences which are written in statement form one's voice should rise at the end of the sentence to show that it is questioning. Duo sometimes fails to do that. And it is the same with tag questions such as those which end in "verdad". Sometimes the "verdad" is hurried and sounds like it's stuck to the previous final word of the sentence question as though it were a syllable. In short, the audio is not always up to scratch; but having said that, I still find Duolingo a very useful tool to have in one's language-learning arsenal. Often on language courses the learning is passive, by which I mean we become more skilled in listening comprehension than in being able to create and produce our own sentences with good grammar and syntax. Duo has sufficient exercises which demand that you produce sentences in the target languge through translating sentences given in English. I found this very useful when I went abroad. With the German I had been learning it for years before using the Duolingo but I had the disbalance that I described above of being more skilled in understanding than producing. After using Duo for a while I went to Berlin and I spoke only German 99% of the time and was understood and reponded to in German. It gave me a buzz and great satisfaction to have been able to do that. It makes the effort all worth while. I love getting to understand how languages work differently and learnig the ones which I am interested in and likely to use, either in travel or to read literature in its original language.
Hello Steve I’m from Turkey. I live in Moda, Kadıköy; arguably the most popular tourist destination in Istanbul. I’d love to meet you, show you around, talk about the history and culture, and help you with your Turkish. I have an English Teacher’s diploma and I’ve been working as a translator for about 20 years. I’m about A2 in Russian and A1 in German. I used Duolingo, too. We have a lot to talk about
That is very kind and hospitable of you. Please email me at steve at lingq dot com and we can connect when it gets closer to the date of my visit. Thank you.
Duolingo is great with putting the info in your head. If you don’t have a chance to speak it, you won’t learn it, but your library gets stocked with Duolingo just fine. And it allows a level of casual learning which angers hardcore polyglots, who want to spend hours a day.
Well, I must confess that I am one of those hardcore "polyglots" (I actually only know one, maybe two foreign languages well) who disdains Duolingo. But I always tell students that if they get a benefit from it, then use it. I can hardly be impartial.
I mean.. you don't *need* to speak a langauge to get good at recognizing it at least, I've barely spoken in my like 6 months of study of japanese and my comprehension has still been improving pretty rapidly
@@dragonicbladex7574 Comprehension always comes way before speaking. I am crap at speaking Chinese, but I stopped by today to examine some characters on the sign of an Asian food shop, and I can understand some of the spoken language as well (something I wasn't able to do well back when I used traditional textbook methods to learn Chinese).
The best part about this is that he's not just dumping on Duolingo because it's a competitor(?) to Lingq. On the contrary, he's plugging Assimil and other books. Steve is a real language learner, and his own program is only PART of his regimen, and he lets us in on how he really learns languages himself. He's not a salesman, he's an educator and a mentor. Much respect.
Hindi has long and short vowels. I think because you were recording, you were distracted. The two “i” you saw were different based on the dot over the I. I started learning Hindi years and years ago. The script is pretty and fun to write. I used to have coworkers that came by my desk and left me messages on my whiteboard because they knew I was learning and wanted to teach and encourage me. I hope you have learning it!! However for me, I’ve put it on the back burner for now, maybe indefinitely.
Love this review! I love books and feel thats the best way for me to learn so having various different resources have been working for me in my language journey. I used duolingo to just jumpstart me to see what language I'm interested in or etc. I don't recommend it for language learning because it doesn't give you the grammar structures or help you understand to be able to build your own sentences. Thank you for this video!
The only thing that worked for me with learning Japanese was to take the "drinking from a fire hose" approach. I dropped all of my hobbies and whatever free time I had all went to studying. SRS flash cards, listening, speaking (even talking to myself), utilizing wanikani, anki, satori reader and watching Japanese TV and news. I msut say that once I got to the JLPT N3 level or intermediate level of language ability, reading the news, short stories and novels took me further than any other study method on my quest to become 日本語ペラペラ
Nice to see a more positive review on Duolingo. I too find it fun. And it doesn't have to be perfect. Fun way to get your feet wet at a new language, I think!
I don't mind Duolingo for what it is, but I agree, I wish there was a way to cater the lessons a bit more. In the paid version you can go thru your mistakes and things for review... I haven't paid though. Just do the occasional free trials
For hindi you can also use the hindi - english course... actually designed for indians to learn hindi but it's way more elaborate. Just no pronunciation exposure
📲 The app I use to learn languages: tinyurl.com/4hj8t2mw
🆓 My 10 FREE secrets to language learning: tinyurl.com/2p96abk4
❓Have you used Duolingo? What are your thoughts on it? Let me know in the comments!
Certain Duolingo courses are way more developed than others. I wouldn't use Duolingo for much other than German, French, Spanish, Dutch and Norwegian. The rest, you REALLY need a good grasp on the language because it does not explain much of anything in regards to grammar or other information about the language. You're just expected to either know it or figure it out on your own.
Estoy totalmente de acuerdo sobre lo de Duolingo. Además no me gusta que se base en traducciones, no me parece la mejor manera de aprender un idioma, aunque para quien le guste, está bien.
Tengo una duda: ¿cómo organizas lo de utilizar distintos libros y métodos de iniciación al empezar un idioma? ¿lo haces de forma organizada, haciendo un tema de cada uno o algo así, o de forma más anárquica y espontanea? Justo estoy en ese punto con el suomi, tengo varios métodos de iniciación que me gustan, unos son libros, otros son vídeos... y no sé cómo organizarme.
(Te escribo en español porque sé que lo entiendes perfectamente, pero puedes contestar en inglés si quieres, muchas gracias de antemano)
I’ve learned a lot with Duolingo! By the way… I’m studying English too I’ve found an English course and I feel good learning this language. I really admire you Steve, I love you so much.
Just a side note Steve it actually does in fact let you review questions you answered incorrectly when you "practice to earn hearts" incase you didn't know. it's a feature that allows you to review questions you got wrong might've missed by mistake etc. it's a really good app for learners I enjoy it! all depending on your level of learning of course.
it does allow the learner to immerse themselves in the language what I like best about the app. is it gives you an alternative which route you want to take with your learning. also tests to see if you remember the proper usage etc.
One thing I like to do is play with the screen capture on incase I get one wrong and can reference it when I come across it again. instead of always having to guess and answer incorrectly I can now capture the answer learn what it says, then apply it when I'm quizzed.
Real good app for beginners as well as intermediates looking to fill the gaps and follow up on what they already know allowing the user to review words and their usage that sort of thing. but one thing I will say listening to Steve and his videos actually helped substantially when using the app for the first time. his immersion technique is probably the main reason I downloaded the app and put it to the test to be completely honest but getting back to the app.
I say this all the time like thawing frozen hamburger meat the words are the sink full of water and your brain does eventually latch onto the phrases and their uses and duolingo helps a great deal with that. So the two went 👍🏽hand in hand! 😎
You can practice to earn hearts. Click on the heart in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. Then select "practice to earn hearts." Complete the practice exercise to earn the heart. They likely will offer the option to "earn" a heart by watching an ad. I always say no and do the exercises only to earn my hearts back. You cannot become fluent via Duolingo; however, it has helped me to pick up a lot of vocab in context. I study Spanish on it - among several other resources. I read very well, but need to improve my speaking.
the 15 minutes a day as a serious learner gets me every time
A serious learner on Duo has got 4 billion points in one day. I've seen such a thing.
Never expected to find you here but still a pleasant surprise
i still despise you
@@HighSpeedForLives. What do you mean by points?
@@lock-downtherapy9528 One gets some amount of points after finishing one lesson.
I started learning German on Duolingo a couple of years ago before I went to visit my girlfriend’s family. I just wanted to learn a few phrases but then I became more motivated to learn properly and I brought in other resources. I still do Duolingo because I see it as brain training and a way to at least do SOMETHING every day, even when I don’t have much time. It helps me to keep my momentum.
Same here! I am a Brazilian doctor married to a German. I am always busy. Wow… it’s beautiful but the worst part is the accent.Good luck!
any resources u would recommend for german?
@@ongopom I like Olly Richards’ Storylearning materials. I bought Short Stories in German for Beginners on Kindle and audiobook and I’m reading/listening at the same time. I also started using the Talkpal app which is great for practising speaking.
@@ongopom visit me (Ich bin ein Berliner ^^)
@@ongopom Speakly is very good. I wouldn't recommend it as an absolute beginner, or (like Duolingo) as your only source, but with a bit of knowledge behind you I find it's very good early training.
I was gonna sleep but now I need to know Steve's opinion on Duo
Same here lol
But he clearly mentioned what he thought about Duolingo... that if you seriuosly want to learn a language can still use Duolingo but not as the only source.
Well that comes down to the very Basic truth that it is just Impossible to learn any language from just one source. So no surprise at all here.
Yes.
@@aprenderlinguasimpararelin5633 totally agree. It's a good tool, helped me a lot to get going especially when starting a new language, but won't work alone. Same thing for flashcards and other apps, you need to combine them with actual content, reading, listening etc.
I completed the Duolingo Spanish tree. I definitely learned from duolingo but it wasn’t my only source. It was nice for keeping me on track when life got busy and I would have lost the habit when I was a new language learner. However, the pace of learning is very slow and I was far from fluent upon finishing the tree. But overall, I enjoyed using duolingo to help me stay motivated when I was a new learner. I’ve moved on to more advanced content like reading books and doing online lessons now. My opinion is duolingo is great for someone getting started, but you will need to eventually graduate from it. Great video Steve, I always enjoy your content
Brib dont break your back while doing tedious works hindi doesn't worthless for you if you ask me iam giving you this advice as a dearly friend
There's quite a lot you don't learn well with Duolingo. There are many isolated sentences without context, and in real world, that's not how things work, like you'd omit large parts (or replace them with pronouns) because of the context shared with the listener. Sure, you get longer bits as you progress, but the individual lessons are still meant to fit in 5 minutes or so.
So I fully agree, it should never be your only tool. Fine initially, when you cannot keep that much context anyway because you are still seeing individual words and not units of meaning, but you'll want to explore other sources of text and audio. Whether that's graded readers or song lyrics, whatever seems reasonable at your level and interesting enough.
I must admit that the passive aggressive notifications kind of work for me 😅
It is slow (repetitive), but I often I jump to the next level, after halfway through a section. If I fail the test pre-jump, no big deal--just review. But as you said, it should not be the only source of learning a particular language. Having said that, I Duolingo'ed German for about a month before going on a trip to Austria, and it served me well.😀
what is
da most usefull thing u did while learning Spanish / asking as a new Spanish learner
@@nosotros4shorts Listening to Spanish in it's natural speed. Radio, tv, the news and pair it with Duolingo. Also do reading as well. All work together to create habit, you'll realize overtime small words become clear and contexts too. I am at high A2 going to B1 learning Spanish. I can understand more listening now, I was strong in reading more than listening.
I love that he says it is complimentary!! I hate when people trash one language app to promote the other. I use about 4 apps daily for their various strengths. I also speak and have a tutor. Good job, Steve of giving an honest review of Duo Lingo. FYI.....I just did a language camp in Northern Minnesota and EVERYONE used Duo Lingo. I also went to a Language school in Costa Rica for a month. The one in the USA was far better as it was 100% immersion. I am loving LINGQ!!
Thanks to Duolingo I understood that I didn't want to learn Hindi
Duolingo Hindi sucks. It has no word order flexibility like real Hindi does.
It’s only really decent for script practice.
@@AussieAnnihilation India is always ignored by these companies south east asia and africa too they only care about europe even Japanese was an afterthought
You might be surprised… I'm focussing more on French and Spanish but I had started Ukrainian as that is my background… It was fun learning the Cyrillic alphabet and applying it… I would think learning Hindi would be the same if you thought you might have a chance of using it or if it's in your background. The writing looks cool.. Just talking about it is making me feel like I wanna learn those kinds of languages too..
I learned that there are better ways to learn 😂
i am lesrning german with duo and i wish they explained grammar better.
How nice to see someone learning my native language 🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷
Ne güzel
I'm trying my best
Учу английский в Дуолинго. Уже пятьсот четыре дня. Наибольший прогресс совершил в первые два месяца. Начал читать книги, которые до этого не мог перевести даже со словарем. Также стал понимать уроки английских преподавателей. Потом вдрхновение ушло, прогресс замедлился и даже был откат назад. Сейчас вошло в привычку, и я просто поддерживаю достигнутый уровень. Без какого-то заметного прогресса)) Всем полиглотам успехов в языках.
Учу русский в Дуолинго )
Замечательно! Сколько времени? Вы настоящий герой. Мне кажется, этот язык невозможно выучить. Сложнее только китайский)) Тем не менее, успехов вам!
Me too!! Duolingo has helped me so much! I have wanted to learn to read Russian and now I can actually read a little! Plus, learning the Cyrillic alphabet opens me up to learning Ukrainian and a few other languages. I am still at a very low level, but I am learning basic grammar and I keep increasing my vocabulary little by little, so I don't forget.
Привет, мне кажется дуолинго помогает выучить какие-то фразы, фразовые глаголы и тд путем многократных повторений и это действительно полезно. У меня даже 8летняя дочка делает там задания уже второй год, хотя она учится на английском в школе, но и дуолинго не помешает )) хотя вот греческий я там забросила, не очень понятный курс... а английский вроде ок
@@Bayu63 Являясь носителем языка, вы не можете оценить его сложность. Для меня русский язык - самый легкий в мире.
I have been on duolingo for about a year...on and off....learning German....and while it's great at the beginning to get you acquainted with a completely new language....it can't get you confident in that language...because as you said, it only shows a very narrow slice of the languages...and not much of the rules are taught. You are supposed to guess the rules...but you would never get the complete picture...so, yes, I try various other sources...such as 1. Watching German learning videos at slower speed 2. Reading German texts and questionnaires 3. Check with different grammatical rules time to time every time i have confusion about some rules.
I used Duolingo for about a year for Spanish and although it was really fun at the start the life system became very frustrating being limited to only 5 mistakes at a time. I found myself being angry over mistakes rather than feeling mistakes are a normal process. I think it's great for testing out a language and seeing what you think before you dive in.
For starters, I don’t think it’s good to judge Duolingo based on the languages you tried. Duolingo is much better for languages that use the Roman alphabet. French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese are the strongest courses on there, but the others are slowly improving too. Duolingo’s biggest strength is that it lowers the barrier. By only requiring one short lesson per day, people are more likely to open it and practice. Not everyone will have an hour to study each day, but everyone should have 5 mins. This ensures you have contact with the language each day and keeps you engaged with it. It’s not very efficient for learning new topics imo, but it’s great for review and exposure to the language.
Yeah he said it keeps you in contact with the language you just have to do it along side other things.
As a brazilian i tried to "learn" brazilian portuguese and in the firts steps i saw many flaws and was like 20% that had words in wrong connotations, places, conjugations e etc. So i guess duolingo has more support for more "famous" languages such like spanish, english, french and others.
I’ve almost completed the Duolingo Hindi course and I’ll say this for it if nothing else: it’s been great in helping me learn the Devanagari script so that I can read Hindi, and I’ve learned a lot about Hindi syntax. Honestly, can’t speak it beyond a handful of phrases, but I have some handy tools to make the rest of my journey easier and it’s been 100% free.
I think some folks expect too much from it, you have to be realistic. It’s a convenient way for me to get a few minutes of Hindi exposure/practice out and about. But it’s a supplement or launchpad, not much more.
Edit: also, as you mentioned ruined, it was very difficult differentiating the audio for several of the sounds, so I went to a few TH-cam channels to better learn the basics of the script and phonetics, then went back to Duo. I still routinely listen to Hindi podcasts and music too. All of it adds up to: I can understand a decent amount about a few topics after maybe a year of extremely passive learning. I can’t speak it, but that’s due to a complete lack of effort so far.
Google Bhashafy Hindi course. It's much more useful for spoken Hindi
I am in the same space with Russian and I follow a similar approach. Pimsleur is also awesome to learn the sound of the language and get the feel for it. Duoling really helped me learn a lot of vocabulary, as well as some basic grammar and syntax (word order). I KNOW I would have not learned as much without Duolingo. Like you said, it's not perfect, but it is a great tool to have that I didn't have years ago when I first tried to learn Polish.
I just wrote a whole response to you and lost it! I will try to recreate my message. Anyway, I am on a similar path with Russian, so I know I can learn Hindi if I put the effort in. Like you said, Duolingo is not perfect, but I have learned a lot of vocabulary, as well as some basic grammar and syntax (word order). I KNOW I would not have progressed this far without Duolingo. I actually started off with Pimsleur, which is my go-to app to introduce me to the language, before I even think of reading it. I have learned quite a bit of Russian, as well as a bit of Polish, Italian, and even a bit of Ukranian. It even helped me identify problem areas that I keep running into in Spanish, which I have been learning for over 30 years.
@@ginabee1212 yep, I used Pimsleur for awhile too, I used to listen to it while I walked to work several years ago. Tools are tools, it’s up to us to use them well.
There's some books I believe you can use to speak Hindi and learn to write it. Best way is to note down commonly used English words and sentences in daily life look up their Hindi translation and try to remember and speak them. Videos,movies and music also help in learning a new language. Always learn to speak first then write it and master both.
I use Duolingo to learn English, and I like it because if it weren't for Duolingo I wouldn't be able to learn any other way, I have 1004 days there and that keeps me motivated to not stop.
Based on this one long comment I think your English is pretty good though.
@@albertwesker2k24 I used a translator because I'm afraid of making mistake, but I can write it without translator. Now, I'm not using a translator and I can understand everything he said. I'm trying not to use a translator anymore. 🙏🏽
Perfect, keep going @@luishenriquealmeidarocha7007
@@luishenriquealmeidarocha7007 , you're writing is actually great! From now on, write in English by yourself first, and then checking with a translator just in case. (Chat GPT is good for English too, copy paste your own-written English text on it and ask it if its good and whether there are any mistakes or can you improve it somehow). Good luck!
@@nuzayerov hey friend. thank you so much for your advice. I'm actually using chat GPT, and it has been helping me a lot. It's really helpful. One day I hope to achieve my goal, speak English.
I totally agree on this fact 7:50...it s not the number of days that matters on duolingo but more the number of hours... because 5mins grants you a day of learning but you dont get anywhere with 5mins/day in this way of learning... and even though duolingo won t allow you to be fluent at the end or at least not as we expected to be...
Duolingo has been pretty good for helping with my french. It hasn't gotten me speaking, but I have had consistent improvement in my understanding. You do need to use other resources on top of it.
For how long did you use it?
I just started it 3 weeks ago.... how long did it take u for how many minutes
@@angel8223 It really depends on how fast you want to progress. I have been using it consistently for three years for as much as an hour a day, and as little as 3 minutes. Right now I am busy and not focused on French, but I work in Canada and get a little exposure to French at work most days. My comprehension is around level B1 but my spoken French is not. I can listen to customer requests and give short directions. There was a period of time when I was also listening to short podcasts and watching children's shows in French, and that has been a huge contributer to my being able to understand when people speak to me.
3 minute French on Spotify I’ve learned Italian, German and now doing the French course. it’s fantastic for helping with the speaking side and formation of the language. Kieran ball does the courses. Look it up on here too. Hope that helps
as a mandarin native speaker, the greatest help i get from duo is that it internalizes the german article changes in dative, akkusativ and norminativ cases in my brain. how ever much classes i attended last time they couldnt do that to me. but it might be also due to that i consciously practising the case changes with previous knowledge i got when doing duo.
I've been on a 61-day streak with German. It is a fun environment and enlightening to start understanding certain words from a different language. I don't like however the league system, even though I have undeniably paid attention to it a lot. The experience should be more free and relaxed towards someone's own time and learning curve and the leagues make the experience far too competitive.
Very good Duolingo review. I use a combination of Duolingo, ChatGPT, Translate, newspapers, and listening to songs in the target language with synced lyrics in both languages.
Thanks for all those precious experiences.
Türkiye’ye hoşgeldiniz 🇹🇷🐺
Just started Hindi 10 days ago (mainly Duolingo but with some phrasebooks and Netflix to help)..alongside french/german/portugese and Japanese for the last 2 years or so daily to varying degrees. Looking forward to your Hindi content down the line Steve as I really enjoy all your videos/interviews and language tips 🙏
That confirms my own experience with Duolingo. Many thanks for your thoughts
I use a few apps (as well as non-gamified resources), and I find Duolingo one of the better ones I've used which *works well for how I learn*. I think that's the key here. All of these apps, at least the better ones, have different structured approaches. Some focus on grammar and sentence structure, while others concentrate on vocabulary or common usage in conversation. One of the ones I like least (and own for a lifetime) is Rosetta Stone. Besides being buggy, it also seems to need a companion book to go with it in order to best learn while using it. Also, unlike Duolingo, RS is a relatively short course, at least in French.
Duolingo was a great start to learn enough to start jumping in to other stuff
Agreed! Duolingo is a tool that must be used among other tools. I think it's pretty convenient and fun when you are in the train or the bus.
Very good and professional assessment!
One thing you can do to speed up with Duolingo is skip entire units. It gives you a test to see if you know enough to jump ahead and the thing is, this test doesn't use the same annoying heart system the normal lessons do. You can fail it as many times as you need so you can learn with it instead of the lessons to some extent
Thanks I didn't know now this.
it does use the heart system.. 3 hearts boo xx
@@keif3rr_35i dont have the 3 heart thing on my duolingo . I am able to turn on the unlimited heart and idk why i have it. Maybe you have it too, you should check it out
Duolingo, Michel Thomas and using HelloTalk did wonders for my Spanish. It’s great living in a time where resources for learning another language are abundant.
Yes, I totally agree! There are SO MANY different resources out there now!!
have been using Duolingo for over a year and a half. On his practice run in the video he ran out of hearts which is like losing lives on a video game. You either have to wait until a certain amount of time has elapsed to be given a new heart or you have to watch an ad to gain new hearts. You can subscribe to Super Duolingo which is ad-free and lets you have unlimited mistakes. I have completed the German course and have nearly completed the Spanish course B2. When I visited Spain I spoke Spanish quite well which I would not have been able to do were it not for the practice which Duo gave me in producing sentences in Spanish, both written and spoken. I used it in conjunction with other material, including Linguaphone. I rate it highly. My criticisms are that the Spanish is Latin-American Spanish and not Castilian, but I made adjustments accordingly ; and that the AI spoken sentences don't always have realistic vocal inflexion. For example, in interrogative sentences which are written in statement form one's voice should rise at the end of the sentence to show that it is questioning. Duo sometimes fails to do that. And it is the same with tag questions such as those which end in "verdad". Sometimes the "verdad" is hurried and sounds like it's stuck to the previous final word of the sentence question as though it were a syllable. In short, the audio is not always up to scratch; but having said that, I still find Duolingo a very useful tool to have in one's language-learning arsenal. Often on language courses the learning is passive, by which I mean we become more skilled in listening comprehension than in being able to create and produce our own sentences with good grammar and syntax. Duo has sufficient exercises which demand that you produce sentences in the target languge through translating sentences given in English. I found this very useful when I went abroad. With the German I had been learning it for years before using the Duolingo but I had the disbalance that I described above of being more skilled in understanding than producing. After using Duo for a while I went to Berlin and I spoke only German 99% of the time and was understood and reponded to in German. It gave me a buzz and great satisfaction to have been able to do that. It makes the effort all worth while. I love getting to understand how languages work differently and learnig the ones which I am interested in and likely to use, either in travel or to read literature in its original language.
I have just started the Duolingo French tree three weeks ago. I love it, it’s fun and I can already have little conversations in French with a Belgian colleague of mine. I learn 1-2 hours a day, but it is not my only source. I also watch movies and shows with subtitles, try to read a little bit French every day and use ChatGPT to train talking without having the fear of making mistakes (and if I make some, it corrects them). It’s a strong additive tool as it also explains grammar rules I don’t understand and gives me the possibility to repeat things - it’s just like a tutor and keeps track of my progress.
I started with the Duolingo German/French tree, but there was an error in the app so I switched to English/French tree. The English/French version is much better than the German one. There are way more features and the examples are not as stupid as in the German version.
I used to have a longer than 1600 days streak in Duolingo, but I unistalled it some months ago. I've completed several trees and it didn't help me become fluent. It helps you in the starting phase to gain confidence and some basic vocabulary but you need more resources to be fluent.
I'm trying to learn Russian and French and I'm doing it by only watching series and movies.Recently, I wanted to check my level and I've taken some 'test' I found in the web, take them with a grain of salt, and they put me at around B1 on both languages after a year and half (although they didn´t test my best skill which is listening, they just tested me about reading and writing which are ironically the less I´ve 'studied'). That is light years from what I achieved from completing trees in Duolingo, and it is more fun.
I've been asked some times if Duolingo is helpful and I only recommend it just to have a taste of the language, but that's all.
have been using Duolingo for over a year and a half. On his practice run in the video he ran out of hearts which is like losing lives on a video game. You either have to wait until a certain amount of time has elapsed to be given a new heart or you have to watch an ad to gain new hearts. You can subscribe to Super Duolingo which is ad-free and lets you have unlimited mistakes. I have completed the German course and have nearly completed the Spanish course B2. When I visited Spain I spoke Spanish quite well which I would not have been able to do were it not for the practice which Duo gave me in producing sentences in Spanish, both written and spoken. I used it in conjunction with other material, including Linguaphone. I rate it highly. My criticisms are that the Spanish is Latin-American Spanish and not Castilian, but I made adjustments accordingly ; and that the AI spoken sentences don't always have realistic vocal inflexion. For example, in interrogative sentences which are written in statement form one's voice should rise at the end of the sentence to show that it is questioning. Duo sometimes fails to do that. And it is the same with tag questions such as those which end in "verdad". Sometimes the "verdad" is hurried and sounds like it's stuck to the previous final word of the sentence question as though it were a syllable. In short, the audio is not always up to scratch; but having said that, I still find Duolingo a very useful tool to have in one's language-learning arsenal. Often on language courses the learning is passive, by which I mean we become more skilled in listening comprehension than in being able to create and produce our own sentences with good grammar and syntax. Duo has sufficient exercises which demand that you produce sentences in the target languge through translating sentences given in English. I found this very useful when I went abroad. With the German I had been learning it for years before using the Duolingo but I had the disbalance that I described above of being more skilled in understanding than producing. After using Duo for a while I went to Berlin and I spoke only German 99% of the time and was understood and reponded to in German. It gave me a buzz and great satisfaction to have been able to do that. It makes the effort all worth while. I love getting to understand how languages work differently and learnig the ones which I am interested in and likely to use, either in travel or to read literature in its original language.
Merhabaa🇹🇷
have a nice holiday in Turkiye
geliyo mu utf
@@ongopom hcjsbfndb maalesef mezuna kalicam
Duolingo used to have a mini list of all the vocabulary words you learn in each lesson. It would be nice if they brought that back within each unit so we can go back and review outside of their lessons.
Nice and fair review ! Love seeing your new books!
Although it's not broken down by lesson you can see all the words. Each time you do a new lesson you can copy them out to whatever.
I think they still have it, but only in the paid version.
@@89Dustdevil not at the all class,some class have list . i used Duolingguo learn 4
language ,i thank it very useful for me
@@89Dustdevil I pay for Duolingo, you get a big wordlist you can scroll through but it's not broken out by lesson and it's inconvenient. However, searching outside the program, I have found that the duome website has vocabulary lists by lesson, at least for the languages I've looked up.
I can see them
I'm using duolingo to learn languages. If you wanna do it for free you have to re fill your heart doing practice. I got inspired to learn languages from you and Luca Lampariello and many others polyglot. I'm learning 11 languages 10 on duolingo and I'm fluent in English and brasilian português. I'm Italian by the way. I decided to do an experiment and learn multiple languages at a time. I can say that for Cinese, japanese, Greek, Spanish, Latin, French, I can only be able to translate smal little frases. I add Arabic two weeks ago. Now, what I do after using duolingo is write down every exercise, even for languages with different characters. I created my own flash cards to learn ひらがな,カタカナand some kanji. So for japanese I'm able to read and write other than tiping. For Arabic I'm trying with duolingo but I'm following some TH-cam videos that teaches you some frases too. I'm doing all this because I'm interested to find the best way, or method to teach to my non verbale autistic son Italian and Brazilian português because he likes that language too. So, my motivation to learn languages is love.
What's the point of dabbling into so many different languages? Especially if you want to continue like that: I'd only do that if I want to learn more about a language and maybe decide in the future if i'm going to properly learn it.
The moment you want to *properly* learn a language, shitty apps like Duolingo don't help you at all. Classic way of learning is and will always be the most effective and longlasting way to acquire a language. There are soo many better programs and apps to use than that pile of nonsense called Duolingo.
Your goal is formidable (trying to find out what the best way is to teach your son) but I fear that there might be way better ways to find that out.
I tried to learn Spanish and Portuguese at the same time, but it was too confusing. So, I parked Portuguese and am focusing on Spanish for now. Good luck on your journey!
It's good for learning the Japanese Hiragana and Katakana system, but has little to offer after that.
I felt it was okay for learning some vocab as well.
Indeed. It feels like you can understand and say something but when I’m watching TH-cam bloggers they just bring back me to the earth 😂
they only care about Europe
It's the same for every language, even English. I could understand music, then TV series and movies, and finally youtubers. Each required lots of input.
I used Tofugu's guide to the kana and got them down in about a week, I feel like Duo was a nice reinforcement for sure. But yeah, for kanji it is abysmal. I've learned way more from other resources and immersion content and in the past year than with Duolingo. That said, the habit tracking aspect is really nice.
I’m now fluent in Turkish after this video. Thanks Duo and Steve!
Öyle mi knk ,ne ii
@@Meow_met Righty-O 😜
@@RM-jb2bv sohbet edek o zmn xD
@@RM-jb2bv🥳
I am an avid duolingo user among many other resources (for Spanish), and this is a fair and accurate review. The best part about it is that it's very slow, and the worst part about it is that it's very slow. Hardly any grammar, and it just beats the concepts into your head with a sludgehammer. BUT that extreme repetition does really cement in my mind the grammatical concepts that I read about in textbooks and youtube videos. If duolingo is your only source for learning a language, then that's definitely not good though. I also think it's better if you're an absolute beginner, or else the huge amount of repetition and disjointed structure will cause more problems.
Türkçe öğrenmenize çok sevindim dünyanın en kolay dillerinden biridir devam edin lütfen
Interesting video. I have used Duolingo in the past. When I first used it I found it helpful. It was for a language where there were not many resources. I found it helpful it getting to grips with pronunciation and listening. I also found it useful to help me notice issues about word order, e.g. the placement of time in a sentence. At that time you were able to go through it as you wanted and make as many mistakes as you wanted. Then they changed it so that you could only go through the course as they wanted. Also they introduced hearts so that if you made more than five mistakes, you could not do anymore work on it. Consequently I gave up on it.
I like how you aren't overwhelmingly negative regarding Duolingo. I think it's a good supplement and addition to usual language.
Whoever is in charge of editing the video, you did a very good job
I mean obviously other tools help take you the next level. With German it helped me a lot. Korean it helped me with Hangul and Japanese with Hiragana. For me so far I can ONLY start a language with Duolingo. Everything else I do its moved too, fast overwhelms me; and I learn nothing. I have to build a foundation with Duo and then branch out to help expand on that base because it definitely only takes you so far. Everyone learns differently though and some things work better for some than others.
I want to say have a good holiday in Türkiye, the warm of summer is still feelable in the autumn. You definitely choose the best time to visit! By the way yağıyorum is 1st, yağıyorsun is 2nd and yağıyor is 3rd person. We don't use the first two one in daily life. Yağmur yağıyor is the correct one. Good luck on improve your Türkçe 😁
I'm learning Spanish, and I use a few different learning tools, including TH-cam videos. One thing I do like about Duolingo, in addition to it's being fun, is that the daily reminders and competitive element help keep me motivated to do at least something every day. I do think that they set the bar awfully low saying that 15 minutes is "serious" learning. I try to treat it as I would any other class, in terms of time: at least an hour a day, although if I start making lots of mistakes, I find that taking a break to let what I've learned sort of percolate for a while helps.
In 2014 I completed the Duolingo English to French tree. I had some French knowledge, and I definiteley learned a lot with Duo. It was not enough to render mi conversational, though. In 2022 I came back and discovered the app had greatly improved! I'm half-in now and I am begining to be fluent. From my own experience, yes, you can get to a point where you can talk confidently with Duolingo only, but if, after building a foundation, you begin using other resources, like reading books, watching videos, and taking conversation sessions with native speakers, your ability will be boosted. I don't know how good Duo is with other languages, but I can tell you from English to French, it's a joy to follow. Now, 15 minutes a day won't take you anywhere. At least 30-60 minutes would be more useful, and even in that case, you'll need to keep up the effort. Just look at how children learn: they spend 2 years almost just hearing, and then it takes them a good 20 years to master the language. Take heart, I think at least for me, 3-4 years of sustained commitment will take you to fluency.
I'm currently learning arabic with Duolingo and I can say is a great app to learn to read or write
I really look forward to seeing/hearing more content about learning Hindi!
I think that you definitely were not too negative. In fact, I'm downloading it right now. I used to hate it because it is not a good way to learn, but once you convinced me that it is good for testing now I will be using it occasionally.
Duolingo is great as a help with grammar and with the script systems. It's exactly what you said, complementary. It doesn't provide serious input or output.
He is completely accurate. I mastered the Polish tree on Duolingo and it helped me understand and learn a lot but actually being able to speak Polish would take much more. I have tried to learn more through other methods, but Duolingo alone isn’t enough.
I've been using it for Korean just as an additional form of practice and it has been really good for 2 main things. 1) it's a good way to introduce and reinforce some vocab 2) it has drastically improved my reading speed
I've been using it less lately though because as I start to get into more complex sentences, it's become extremely frustrating to use
Little Prince must be one of the go-to stories for language learning in many languages. I was well pleased to see it in both Turkish and Hindi just now. I have English and Spanish copies sitting beside me right now, and have also made use of audio version in these same languages. Such a great little book for language practice.
It's likely the most widely translated book in the world.
It's my go to source as a first book to read in any new language.
Duolingo is great for use alongside a class or in conjunction with other study methods. I agree with Lingo Steve!
Using Duolingo for 7 years now, learning Spanish and I am now at C1. Of course Duo was not my only source. But it's been very useful to me and I still do a few lessons every day to keep in touch with the language even if I do nothing else with Spanish during that day.
I have used Duolingo for Esperanto, and that makes me speak the language now. It has also helped me understand and converse in French a bit. Learning a language depends on so many factors, including personal ones. The way I see it, the kind of app that one uses may help, but language learning depends more on the person learning, his level of interest and enthusiasm, his memory, and his consistency in practice without the app.
Mi neniam uzis Duolingon por lerni Esperanton. Neat!
@@argonwheatbelly637 Bone, sed ĉiuokaze, multaj homoj ankoraŭ uzas ĝin (Duolingo) por lerni kaj paroli Esperanton.
Hey, Steeve, thanks for your opinion. I'm studing french now with DL ;)
I done duolingo japanese for awhile now and what helps me is act curiosly when i don't really understand something or want to know more. I often talk to google translate to test if the sentence I'm thinking of works and I also watch videos. I recently started using anki too.
I use to love Duolingo, it's what got me to start learning Spanish for real, but I only ever used it casually and never passed level 3 on the old circles which would let me move through the tree faster and learn more entry level words. Now it seems like an absolute chore.
Agreed, as a complementary system duolingo is useful. I find French classes for English speakers particularly good to learn the basics. As a Turkish native speaker, I have tried Turkish classes for English speakers. they are mostly based on French classes, which does not always make much sense. However,I should admit, I met an anglophone who learned Turkish pretty well with duolingo. Not only with it, but it helped a lot. Their pronunciation was impressive.
I’ve used Duolingo since 2015? Have also stopped for years and this year getting back at it. Is not my only source, but I think is too judged by many people. I think it helps build a habit to practice every day, also good to start with very basic level at any language. Some are not so common so it is a good thing there are many languages for free.
I will keep using Duolingo , but I will not only rely on it, less for grammar purposes and daily life stuff. I’ve been learning: Dutch, german, Norwegian and Japanese there ( all in English as is my second languages but I don’t have some of them in the Spanish version, so I end up practicing 2 at the same time. Had learned Japanese before but, so many years ago so I find it useful to practice stuff I knew before.
You can do as many hours a day of Duolingo as you want for free. You can jump over sections to speed up the learning process if it is becomming too repetitive for you. When you jump over sections, you can actually return to the sections you skipped over if you want to revise something you are interested in.
Steve Kaufmann must have a real gift for languages if he got to an A2/B1 level in Turkish in three months. I’ve been studying German for 18 months, 30 minutes a day, then a month ago one hour a day, and I’m nowhere near B1 according to LingQ. I suspect he has a very good memory. I have used Duolingo for French and German. In my view there are far better ways to learn. As Steve says, it does not provide enough input, and presents only a very small subsection of the language. I also hate the identity politics that they force down my throat. For German my preferred method is to listen to huge quantities of simple TH-cam learners videos, the constant repitition helps me to learn words, which is what I struggle with. And I get to hear the same words used in many different ways, which helps me gain an appreciation of the word, rather than a simple translation. I use LingQ simply because it provides a quick access dictionary.
Can one reach B1 with Duolingo alone?
Duolingo has helped me so much since I started learning French a month ago. I use it at least for 1 hour daily, or maybe even more. Of course I use other sources too but I must say that Duolingo has done it for me. I can strongly recommend it and my advice is to use your maternal language to learn whatever language you wish to learn. Good luck! 😊
Tip for you Steve: if you run out of "hearts" you can practice on previously completed lessons to refill your hearts, they will also refill over time anyway. This prevents you having to use gems to obtain more hearts and lets you carry on without being cut short, although I normally just quit and let them respawn normally, as it normally takes me about half an hour or more to lose all my hearts anyway.
I've been using Duolingo for around 2 years on and off, learning Spanish mostly. I am despite the length of time I have been studying, perhaps at most A2 level at the moment; even that is questionable as I haven't really got into using any tenses other than the present tense at the moment. I have also used other sources beside duolingo, and I do find these quite useful. Duolingo is a very slow way to learn a language, and is not very good at helping you develop your speaking skills. It is however a good way to obtain really solid knowledge of vocabulary, because there is a LOT of repetition and you will come to master the words it teaches. The Spanish course is good and has some interesting stories. It's also completely free.
Duolingo has some great guidebooks for each of the sections as you work your way through, I can't comment on the Hindi ones as I've been doing French, but the French ones are really good and break down what you will be learning in each section. If the Hindi letters are important no doubt they will break them down in the guidebooks.
You're on the point : you can't use duolingo as the only way to learn a language. This can be an "entry point", I'm using it but it's a part of the different tools i'm using.
Lingq is another one. I like to use different attack angles to learn, not only one.
Exactly right, using other sources for language is important if you want to speak it and be fluent. It would be hard and maybe confusing to use it alone.
Going up to level 3 of Duolingo alone helped me understand most french.
The problem with Duolingo (among some of the things mentioned, such as it being too slow) is that it's a great source for SOME languages and not many.
Hindi and Turkey are probably not THE BEST languages to learn on Duolingo.
They don't seem to have detailed grammar explanations as a language like French does.
The French course has great grammatical concepts and detailed explanations.
And yes, you have to use other things besides Duolingo.
I can't say i am fluent, but it has helped me understand a lot of what i watch on youtube.
I dont practice speaking it much so i cant comment on that.
duolingo isn't perfect but it's a POWERFUL tool. 99% of my mandarin learning was from duo. no, I don't speak mandarin yet... but I do understand more and more when I hear people talk!!
I studied Sanskrit, Nepali, Pali, Hindi, Sinhala and Newari in my twenties, and I can safely say no one will learn good pronunciation of the Devanagari alphabet without the help of a native speaker in the language of choice. You cannot distinguish the sounds properly without someone listening closely to your pronunciation and giving you immediate feedback. That is why you cannot hear the difference between long and short vowels and unaspirated and aspirated consonants. When it comes to palatal and dental consonants, it is even harder for a speaker of European languages to distinguish between them. I have heard so many Westerners attempt to speak these languages and never learn the subtlties of the sound system. The fact that the sounds also shift from one language to another adds another level of complexity. Hindi adds sounds from Urdu, which makes it more challenging than Nepali, for instance. I wonder if you have tried Mango languages. The learning system is completely different from Duolingo and its knockoffs. It is so much like learning from a native speaker how to listen to the sounds in the language. It allows you to record yourself alongside a native speaker and compare the audio visually as well. The feedback mechanism for pronunciation is excellent in my opinion. By the way, I knew Stephen Krashen 30 years ago, and I am happy that you are applying his ideas to language learning.
Well-said. I tell people I know who are using this that it's fine as one source of input, but it won't get you terribly far. The gamification is appreciated by some people, others may find it silly.
When I used it for the Arabic alphabet, there was a "letters" tab you could go to and this had unlimited mistakes, there may be one for the Hindi version but I haven't used it for Hindi. I found it good for initial help with learning the Arabic alphabet, though I certainly needed many actual books and videos to supplement this with! I am learning Modern Standard Arabic on my own, for fun, I majored in German/French/anthropology in college, I have no specific travel plans or anything, I enjoy watching the news and documentaries in Arabic. (That is to say, my purpose for learning Arabic may just be to watch the news and read books rather than traveling, if I wanted to travel to Egypt or somewhere I'd focus more on a particular dialect.)
Another thing I noticed is that the "guides" in DuoLingo don't have all the material they have in that section, which is weird. I need to write down the vocabulary, maybe some sample sentences, etc. and I was disappointed when the guide didn't even tell me the different gendered forms of the colors DuoLingo Arabic taught.
It has its uses, but it will not make anyone proficient in any language without them using other things, certainly.
With Arabic specifically, some of things going on with moon letters and sun letters and how those change with pronunciation, and changes in how you pronounce the ta marbuta with a suffix, things like that, are never explained in DuoLingo, it seems, and I would've been lost without other materials like books and TH-camrs. A lot of grammar is left out, which is fine at first in Arabic since you can make sentences without verbs, like describing something with an adjective and no "to be" verb, but eventually, I always like to see some charts and explanations.
That's a reasonable assessment. Reasonable for someone who is just starting and doesn't want to spend time investigating all the possibilities just yet, or someone who is using it alongside other resources.
A very fair review. I do use duolingo to ensure I practise every day, but it is most definitely not enough for me, as I like to understand grammar (e.g. omitting the gender of nouns just maddens me!) Also, I like to read in the target languages, so I do plan to try LingQ fairly soon, as it sounds great.
Я сожалею только об одном, что у вас нет тысячи лет жизни. Ваш интеллект и желание изучать языки требует как минимум лет двести земной жизни.
Ваша собственная программа очень хороша. Спасибо вам! 👍🤝
Спасибо вам!
Duolingo is fine. I enjoy the Spanish course. I did study Spanish years ago in school. But I do think one has to add more stuff outside of it. I feel the content there has been a nice "refresher..." But I read and listen to content outside of Duolingo hours a day. I think some of the courses are better than others. The Japanese course is relatively weak in content. I stopped that. But again, I've lived in Japan 19+ years. I don't think I am the target group for that.
I've never found any textbook or app in ANY language that achieves all the language milestones and goals. I pick the best parts from a variety of resources.
I do think this video was rather harsh on Duolingo. Most people will never put in the time or effort to reach any real level of language ability. The daily motivation to "...do something..." is important for many people. Really in any sort of journey in a skill-based activity like language, music, art, etc... To feel like, "I am learning something...and I am getting 'better...'" is also key for many people who will simply give up when they hit a learning plateau.
"Muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine" If you can understand this word, it means you have learned Turkish completely.
And I thought Russian and German have long words 😂
As if you were one of those we could not turn into failures?
@@personprpr sen zaten Türksün
@@bubenimismim Don't let it slip
@@personprpr peki:
Oooo you are definitely not turkish
Interesting. I learn really well and quickly with Duolingo (though it's certainly not my only method). I even agree with the criticism about it being "slow" and constricting.
The positive thing about that artificial constriction for a lot of people, including myself, is that it reduces the search-space of ambiguity in the input, which allows you to learn that limited set of inputs extremely well... IF you take care to practice those words and phrases in other contexts (e.g. detecting them when you listen to the radio in that language).
You were very fair to Duolingo, perhaps even went a bit easy on it... my main concern with it is the assumption that the same approach is equally appropriate & efficient for every language. For example, many exercises allow for only a specific word order to be correct; in a language like Russian, as I'm sure you know, word order is extremely flexible, expressing various nuances according to context. Duolingo can't account for that, constantly marking as incorrect answers that are perfectly possible. And as a matter of personal preference, I found the constant nudges to upgrade increasingly annoying. Their gamification works for some, and their marketing has been brilliant, but for solid pedagogy I prefer Mango Languages - I'd be really interested in hearing what you think of that app.
The main people use duolingo is for fun. You can do ad little or as much as you like, so you could do any more amount of time. It is just a suggestion to help you keep refreshed
In my opinion, it’s great as a psychological tool that keeps me going even when I’m busy. I do a few lessons, always reading out aloud and then from memory the sentences that it serves up. Then when I have more time, I do reading, watching TV in the target language, italki lessons etc.
I've only use the free section, but I always do a practice session or two, to make sure I start each session with 5 hearts, and on bad days, I'll do another one or two in the middle of a lesson. I'm finding that the program is very useful in bolster my mediocre Spanish
Duolingo is amazing for vocabulary and grammar. I have tried German and working on french. I'm quite happy with it.
Duolingo is sometimes outside of paid tuition the only option for some minority languages. I'm English and of Angle descent. I do have however some Welsh in there. I'm learning Welsh. Babel and Rosetta stone don't do Welsh. Cornish, Breton, Navajo, Basque etc. So I use what is available. Duolingo is much better than being on your own. It is a good complement to book, video, TV, and going to Wales etc.
You know, for listening questions, when you tap on an answer, it plays the sound before you lock in the answer you can still change it. It is more about learning than being perfect each time.
I simply don't learn by showing me something once and then asking me (in various ways) "do you know this? do you know this?" But that is the Duolingo method. No explanation, no instruction. just testing.
You should be learning if you're paying attention though… Look for patterns… That's where it gets fun..
This is not a description of Duolingo. It does give explanations, it does challenge you to construct real language.
If you run out of hearts you can do the practice lessons to earn more hearts. And then continue with the regular lessons.
Whatever phrase was difficult, you can share it to your feed, then go through those to choose something specific to work on.
As for Duolingo, I combine it with many other sources of Turkish, LingQ the first of them! MANY THANKS FOR LingQ indeed!
Duolingo really helped me to learn how to read Russian. I recognize many familiar words, but I still have to sound out new words, but I can actually read some basic Russian, which I have wanted to do for a long time. Between Pimsleur and Duolingo, plus a few other resources, I can learn any language.
1500 consecutive days is crazy impressive. That's dedication. Not missing even one day.. I bet this person has not discovered LingQ or a different system that's more serious. I find LingQ really pushes you to learn more and quicker. Or perhaps since you're learning more at a time this is why you feel like you're learning quicker. 1500 days on LingQ I can imagine would make someone e fluent. Atleast in reading.. probably listening as well if they practiced that.
All you need to do is practice for about 10 minutes or so to maintain the streak. Many people do that. They aren't really learning with that approach IMO.
@@FranG1214 I had a longer streak and it was just a habit as you mentioned. You can keep the record just by doing less than 2 minutes.
Well, I guess that I can impress you more with my streak because today I accomplished my 2500th day on Duolingo 😎
have been using Duolingo for over a year and a half. On his practice run in the video he ran out of hearts which is like losing lives on a video game. You either have to wait until a certain amount of time has elapsed to be given a new heart or you have to watch an ad to gain new hearts. You can subscribe to Super Duolingo which is ad-free and lets you have unlimited mistakes. I have completed the German course and have nearly completed the Spanish course B2. When I visited Spain I spoke Spanish quite well which I would not have been able to do were it not for the practice which Duo gave me in producing sentences in Spanish, both written and spoken. I used it in conjunction with other material, including Linguaphone. I rate it highly. My criticisms are that the Spanish is Latin-American Spanish and not Castilian, but I made adjustments accordingly ; and that the AI spoken sentences don't always have realistic vocal inflexion. For example, in interrogative sentences which are written in statement form one's voice should rise at the end of the sentence to show that it is questioning. Duo sometimes fails to do that. And it is the same with tag questions such as those which end in "verdad". Sometimes the "verdad" is hurried and sounds like it's stuck to the previous final word of the sentence question as though it were a syllable. In short, the audio is not always up to scratch; but having said that, I still find Duolingo a very useful tool to have in one's language-learning arsenal. Often on language courses the learning is passive, by which I mean we become more skilled in listening comprehension than in being able to create and produce our own sentences with good grammar and syntax. Duo has sufficient exercises which demand that you produce sentences in the target languge through translating sentences given in English. I found this very useful when I went abroad. With the German I had been learning it for years before using the Duolingo but I had the disbalance that I described above of being more skilled in understanding than producing. After using Duo for a while I went to Berlin and I spoke only German 99% of the time and was understood and reponded to in German. It gave me a buzz and great satisfaction to have been able to do that. It makes the effort all worth while. I love getting to understand how languages work differently and learnig the ones which I am interested in and likely to use, either in travel or to read literature in its original language.
It is important to chose a topic we are familiar with. It makes learning a foreign language mucu easier
Thank you for all that you do Steve.
Hello Steve I’m from Turkey. I live in Moda, Kadıköy; arguably the most popular tourist destination in Istanbul. I’d love to meet you, show you around, talk about the history and culture, and help you with your Turkish. I have an English Teacher’s diploma and I’ve been working as a translator for about 20 years. I’m about A2 in Russian and A1 in German. I used Duolingo, too. We have a lot to talk about
That is very kind and hospitable of you. Please email me at steve at lingq dot com and we can connect when it gets closer to the date of my visit. Thank you.
@@Thelinguist Mail sent!
Duolingo is great with putting the info in your head. If you don’t have a chance to speak it, you won’t learn it, but your library gets stocked with Duolingo just fine. And it allows a level of casual learning which angers hardcore polyglots, who want to spend hours a day.
Well, I must confess that I am one of those hardcore "polyglots" (I actually only know one, maybe two foreign languages well) who disdains Duolingo. But I always tell students that if they get a benefit from it, then use it. I can hardly be impartial.
I mean.. you don't *need* to speak a langauge to get good at recognizing it at least, I've barely spoken in my like 6 months of study of japanese and my comprehension has still been improving pretty rapidly
@@dragonicbladex7574 Comprehension always comes way before speaking. I am crap at speaking Chinese, but I stopped by today to examine some characters on the sign of an Asian food shop, and I can understand some of the spoken language as well (something I wasn't able to do well back when I used traditional textbook methods to learn Chinese).
@@Musicienne-DAB1995 good luck with chinese
The best part about this is that he's not just dumping on Duolingo because it's a competitor(?) to Lingq. On the contrary, he's plugging Assimil and other books. Steve is a real language learner, and his own program is only PART of his regimen, and he lets us in on how he really learns languages himself. He's not a salesman, he's an educator and a mentor. Much respect.
Well, I disagree. I think it's a superficial review specifically to knock a competitor in his particular product area of online applications.
Hindi has long and short vowels. I think because you were recording, you were distracted. The two “i” you saw were different based on the dot over the I. I started learning Hindi years and years ago. The script is pretty and fun to write. I used to have coworkers that came by my desk and left me messages on my whiteboard because they knew I was learning and wanted to teach and encourage me. I hope you have learning it!! However for me, I’ve put it on the back burner for now, maybe indefinitely.
Love this review! I love books and feel thats the best way for me to learn so having various different resources have been working for me in my language journey. I used duolingo to just jumpstart me to see what language I'm interested in or etc. I don't recommend it for language learning because it doesn't give you the grammar structures or help you understand to be able to build your own sentences. Thank you for this video!
The only thing that worked for me with learning Japanese was to take the "drinking from a fire hose" approach. I dropped all of my hobbies and whatever free time I had all went to studying. SRS flash cards, listening, speaking (even talking to myself), utilizing wanikani, anki, satori reader and watching Japanese TV and news.
I msut say that once I got to the JLPT N3 level or intermediate level of language ability, reading the news, short stories and novels took me further than any other study method on my quest to become 日本語ペラペラ
Nice to see a more positive review on Duolingo. I too find it fun. And it doesn't have to be perfect. Fun way to get your feet wet at a new language, I think!
I don't mind Duolingo for what it is, but I agree, I wish there was a way to cater the lessons a bit more. In the paid version you can go thru your mistakes and things for review... I haven't paid though. Just do the occasional free trials
I’m in Türkiye now. Such a great country.
For hindi you can also use the hindi - english course... actually designed for indians to learn hindi but it's way more elaborate. Just no pronunciation exposure