📲 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.
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 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.
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.
@@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 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. 🙏🏽
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.
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.
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 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...
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
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 🙏
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 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.
Duolingo was a great tool for me in my way of learning Japanese at the beginning. I was not very motivated and I couldn't understand anything of it, but since it is fun to do and really easy, I could gain some knowledge. I learned hiragana and katakana in Duolingo, and also learned a few words so I could read short sentences. Now, after 1.5 years on Duolingo I started using lingq, since I can read now, I can understand what the lectures in lingq are about and don't be too overwhelmed by lots of new words or the alphabet. So I can confirm what Steve says here. Maybe there are more efficient ways of learning a language, but Duolingo for me is the easiest to do daily, and if you combine it with lingq you'll see your progress skyrocketing since your understanding window will expand a lot! I recommend Duolingo, and after a while, I recommend combining it with lingq❤ Thank you Steve for your advice and review of it!
Great advice Steve. I really appreciate that you gave the app a fair review. Too many language youtubers have jumped on the Duolingo hate bandwagon. It's a great tool. Hopefully one in an arsenal of many. I use it daily for Spanish. It's spaced repetition is great at teaching you words. I combine it with other tools like Dreaming Spanish and listening to native Spanish content (TV, radio, podcasts, books, etc). The real magic seems to happen when I listen to comprehensive input. But my hunch is that Duolingo makes said process faster.
How exactly is this a fair review? He used it for like 40 seconds and didn't even take an actual lesson. He only did the initial "feeling out your skills" test. He then talked about things that he thinks you can't do with duolingo, that you actually can do if you spend more than a minute on it.
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 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.
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!
Hello everyone. My honest opinion of Duolingo is that it depends on the language. I have been using Duolingo for more than four years, and first, one can do hours of Duolingo. Second, it depends on the language for example Latin is a very simple course which in this case in Duolingo you won’t learn how to speak in Latin. On the other hand French, spanish, German, Norwegian, and even Russian and Hebrew are really good courses. Thanks to Duolingo and studying daily for months I finished French, Romanian, and Hebrew; and continue studying German, Norwegian, and Russian. And in this moment after four years of French I can speak really well, also I can have a solid conversation in Hebrew and starting to be able to speak in German and Norwegian. But still some courses are more difficult like Russian. But Duolingo is a really helpful tool to start learning a language so I do recommend to use Duolingo but with courses that are longer and that have more material. 😊
Я рад, что Дуолинго помогает вам учить русский. Я использую Дуо для изучения английского. Но чтобы дополнительно практиковаться в переводе с русского на английский, я включил курс русского языка! Я живу в России, русский язык мой родной. Поэтому, мне кажется, я могу адекватно оценить уровень обучения русскому языку в Дуолинго. К сожалению, мне не нравится, как построено обучение именно русского. Произношение более-менее сносное, но фразы малопригодные для ежедневного употребления. По крайней мере так мне кажется. Однако было интересно узнать, что для кого-то приложение оказалось полезным! Надеюсь, не отбил у вас желание продолжать учебу. И желаю вам успехов в изучении языков.
@@Lafayette2009_Lucas Since I passed the entrance test perfectly, perhaps Duolingo is offering me suggestions at the C1 level. Or even C2. That is, rare phrases. But for a beginner, there will most likely be more commonly used language constructs. But in any case, the grammar and pronunciation there are at a high level. The only thing is that the intonation is not always correct. I think you noticed this yourself. So the app is definitely useful in learning Russian.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
On duolingo there are really good French and Spanish courses - pretty long, step by step, and substantial. But Arabic is rather short, finished it long ago and can't wait for some new stuff.
Agreed! I'm doing Super Duolingo Spanish and it is very involved and detailed. I'm spending anywhere from 1 to 2 hours a day on it (as well as other resources), and at that pace it takes about 2 days to complete a single unit. The entire Spanish tree may have 200 to 300 units, so it would take maybe around a year or so to complete the tree. Also, the Practice Hub on Super Duo is good, and the legendary lesson are pretty tough actually. Lots of listening and writing exercises. Finally, I've just started the B1 section of Super Duo, and I'm noticing the material is getting progressively harder.
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 😁
One of the greatest joys of learning on my own, compared to the yeeeears I spent in class, is that I make decisions, I explore what moves me. Apps like duolingo make me feel as if I'm back in class, only now it's for kids and my teacher is a robot owl🙈 No thanks!
Yeah, I’ve just decided to give duolingo a try for the first time. I would never consider it for German, which is a language I’m more familiar with and that has plenty of resources out there. But I’m trying it for Hungarian, and that’s a language in which I need those very basic lessons
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 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 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.
Can't tell for other languages, but my High Valyrian went 📈thanks to Duolingo😎. Seriously though, I think it's a good place to start if you are a complete beginner.
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.
Thanks Steve, this makes sense. Been following you off and on for years, your content is always interesting. I have the same problem with Duolingo as that lady you mentioned. Been doing Spanish for maybe two years. I understand a lot but can not speak it. Greetings from Oslo!
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.
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.
"Muvaffakiyetsizleştiricileştiriveremeyebileceklerimizdenmişsinizcesine" If you can understand this word, it means you have learned Turkish completely.
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 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.
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.
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!
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).
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!!
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.
Having tried a few Duolingo courses, the Turkish course is pretty bad, whereas the Swedish for example, is a good course. Did the Hindi as well, which is useful, I don't like their Alphabet training so much
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.
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.
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.
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'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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The other problem is, not every course takes you to the same level of proficiency. They have dozens of courses but only a handful (English, Spanish, French and maybe German) can help you reach, say, B1.
So I'm screwed. I already speak English and French. I don't like Spanish much (and I do understand 90% of it already because I'm a native Portuguese speaker) and I can't stand German. So I'm left with bad courses ??
@@cristianoo2 They are not "bad", just not as complete as these four. Just compare the trees of, say, French (3 sections with 53 units for A1, 1 section with 46 units for A2 and so on) with Italian (only 3 sections for A1, and that's it).
@@cristianoo2 Not bad, no, just less comprehensive. In any language Duolingo offers a fantastic start but will only get you so far. At some point in any of the courses you have to move onto something more complex and challenging.
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.
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.
Duolingo will only teach you bits of a language that you would eventually get to in time. Tho is duolingo a good start? could be! ... Tho for those who want to learn an other language should learn from other material. Because grammar etc is a bit of. I have tried my own language on duolingo and it does not look to good. So keep that in mind when learning a new language. Just like Steve says, you can use it to have fun. Tho you will not learn that much from it
Duo has decent French, German and Spanish courses. As an Irish speaker though, there Irish content is... How can I put it... Awful. I tried it on my Dad whose first language is Irish and he genuinely did not recognise it as Irish. The pronunciation is so robotic. I thought it was just me... But no. The Irish module is awful.
I've visited more than 40 countries so far and Ireland was one of them. I should say it is in my top 3 without hesitation. I've absolutely loved the time spent there, just because of the people. You are amazing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think you were too nice to duolingo considering the fact that it is offered as a free system, but when you make 5 mistakes you cant even use the app anymore. I do like that you stated that it should be a supplementary form to test your knowledge, something in my personal experience was very true. I would take the placement tests in spanish for example and it told me a decent amount of my level.
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 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.
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).
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.
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 a nice app and now i'm learning Turkish and Scottish Gaelic , and i want to learn Swedish, Icelandic and Faroese .🇸🇪🇮🇸🇫🇴, the last 2 for myself. 🤓
He's being polite, but Duolingo isn't for serious language learners. Time spent on it could be better used in more effective areas. The only exception is for those unsure about committing to a specific language and wanting to explore for a few weeks.
📲 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 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 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’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.
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.
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. 🙏🏽
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.
Duolingo was a great start to learn enough to start jumping in to other stuff
To me, duo is just a habit-forming tool. It exposes me to pronunciation and makes me commit via its heavy notification system.
I would like you to stop their my friend becaz u should take a u turn
@@Eyes02357 how ironic is it to use the wrong form of there in the comments section of a linguist’s account
I 100% agree. DuoLingo is great in the beginning for this reason.
sorry to burst your bubble but duo teaches broken pronunciation
The notification is optional
How nice to see someone learning my native language 🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷
Ne güzel
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.
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 was so scared if Steve was gonna say "Its best *not* to use duolingo" 💀 😭
😂😅😂😅😊😊😊🤭
🤗
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🥳
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
Thanks for all those precious experiences.
Türkiye’ye hoşgeldiniz 🇹🇷🐺
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...
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.
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 🙏
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 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.
Duolingo was a great tool for me in my way of learning Japanese at the beginning. I was not very motivated and I couldn't understand anything of it, but since it is fun to do and really easy, I could gain some knowledge. I learned hiragana and katakana in Duolingo, and also learned a few words so I could read short sentences.
Now, after 1.5 years on Duolingo I started using lingq, since I can read now, I can understand what the lectures in lingq are about and don't be too overwhelmed by lots of new words or the alphabet.
So I can confirm what Steve says here. Maybe there are more efficient ways of learning a language, but Duolingo for me is the easiest to do daily, and if you combine it with lingq you'll see your progress skyrocketing since your understanding window will expand a lot!
I recommend Duolingo, and after a while, I recommend combining it with lingq❤
Thank you Steve for your advice and review of it!
Great advice Steve. I really appreciate that you gave the app a fair review. Too many language youtubers have jumped on the Duolingo hate bandwagon.
It's a great tool. Hopefully one in an arsenal of many. I use it daily for Spanish. It's spaced repetition is great at teaching you words. I combine it with other tools like Dreaming Spanish and listening to native Spanish content (TV, radio, podcasts, books, etc).
The real magic seems to happen when I listen to comprehensive input. But my hunch is that Duolingo makes said process faster.
How exactly is this a fair review? He used it for like 40 seconds and didn't even take an actual lesson. He only did the initial "feeling out your skills" test. He then talked about things that he thinks you can't do with duolingo, that you actually can do if you spend more than a minute on it.
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 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.
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!
Merhabaa🇹🇷
have a nice holiday in Turkiye
geliyo mu utf
@@ongopom hcjsbfndb maalesef mezuna kalicam
Hello everyone. My honest opinion of Duolingo is that it depends on the language. I have been using Duolingo for more than four years, and first, one can do hours of Duolingo. Second, it depends on the language for example Latin is a very simple course which in this case in Duolingo you won’t learn how to speak in Latin. On the other hand French, spanish, German, Norwegian, and even Russian and Hebrew are really good courses. Thanks to Duolingo and studying daily for months I finished French, Romanian, and Hebrew; and continue studying German, Norwegian, and Russian. And in this moment after four years of French I can speak really well, also I can have a solid conversation in Hebrew and starting to be able to speak in German and Norwegian. But still some courses are more difficult like Russian. But Duolingo is a really helpful tool to start learning a language so I do recommend to use Duolingo but with courses that are longer and that have more material. 😊
Я рад, что Дуолинго помогает вам учить русский. Я использую Дуо для изучения английского. Но чтобы дополнительно практиковаться в переводе с русского на английский, я включил курс русского языка! Я живу в России, русский язык мой родной. Поэтому, мне кажется, я могу адекватно оценить уровень обучения русскому языку в Дуолинго. К сожалению, мне не нравится, как построено обучение именно русского. Произношение более-менее сносное, но фразы малопригодные для ежедневного употребления. По крайней мере так мне кажется. Однако было интересно узнать, что для кого-то приложение оказалось полезным! Надеюсь, не отбил у вас желание продолжать учебу. И желаю вам успехов в изучении языков.
"Helpful" not "healthful."
@@kennethgreifer5123 thanks
@@Bayu63 Thanks for the information.😔🥴
@@Lafayette2009_Lucas Since I passed the entrance test perfectly, perhaps Duolingo is offering me suggestions at the C1 level. Or even C2. That is, rare phrases. But for a beginner, there will most likely be more commonly used language constructs. But in any case, the grammar and pronunciation there are at a high level. The only thing is that the intonation is not always correct. I think you noticed this yourself. So the app is definitely useful in learning Russian.
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 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.
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.
Very good and professional assessment!
That confirms my own experience with Duolingo. Many thanks for your thoughts
Whoever is in charge of editing the video, you did a very good job
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.
I really look forward to seeing/hearing more content about learning Hindi!
I like how you aren't overwhelmingly negative regarding Duolingo. I think it's a good supplement and addition to usual language.
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 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.
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.
On duolingo there are really good French and Spanish courses - pretty long, step by step, and substantial. But Arabic is rather short, finished it long ago and can't wait for some new stuff.
Agreed! I'm doing Super Duolingo Spanish and it is very involved and detailed. I'm spending anywhere from 1 to 2 hours a day on it (as well as other resources), and at that pace it takes about 2 days to complete a single unit. The entire Spanish tree may have 200 to 300 units, so it would take maybe around a year or so to complete the tree. Also, the Practice Hub on Super Duo is good, and the legendary lesson are pretty tough actually. Lots of listening and writing exercises. Finally, I've just started the B1 section of Super Duo, and I'm noticing the material is getting progressively harder.
Polish course is also very short on Duolingo unfortunately
@@GuardKZ yes, I also finished it, as well as Czech, Romanian and Hungarian ones
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 😁
Türkçe öğrenmenize çok sevindim dünyanın en kolay dillerinden biridir devam edin lütfen
One of the greatest joys of learning on my own, compared to the yeeeears I spent in class, is that I make decisions, I explore what moves me. Apps like duolingo make me feel as if I'm back in class, only now it's for kids and my teacher is a robot owl🙈 No thanks!
Yeah, I’ve just decided to give duolingo a try for the first time. I would never consider it for German, which is a language I’m more familiar with and that has plenty of resources out there. But I’m trying it for Hungarian, and that’s a language in which I need those very basic lessons
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.
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 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.
Duolingo is great for use alongside a class or in conjunction with other study methods. I agree with Lingo Steve!
I'm glad you are also learning our beautiful language, Persian. 🇮🇷
به عنوان یک ایرانی خوشحالم که زبان زیبای ما فارسی را یاد می گیرید. 😊❤
Can't tell for other languages, but my High Valyrian went 📈thanks to Duolingo😎. Seriously though, I think it's a good place to start if you are a complete beginner.
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?
Thanks Steve, this makes sense. Been following you off and on for years, your content is always interesting. I have the same problem with Duolingo as that lady you mentioned. Been doing Spanish for maybe two years. I understand a lot but can not speak it. Greetings from Oslo!
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.
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.
"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?
@@izleyici60 sen zaten Türksün
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
When I do a single lesson in any language on Duolingo, I annunciate every word and every sentence. Finnish words are the most fun to pronounce.
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.
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.
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!
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).
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'm currently learning arabic with Duolingo and I can say is a great app to learn to read or write
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.
Having tried a few Duolingo courses, the Turkish course is pretty bad, whereas the Swedish for example, is a good course. Did the Hindi as well, which is useful, I don't like their Alphabet training so much
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.
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.
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.
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'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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Love u Steve, u r very inspiring ❤
It is important to chose a topic we are familiar with. It makes learning a foreign language mucu easier
Being a native Hindi speaker I can say Duolingo Hindi course is really bad
Pimsleur is still better
As for Duolingo, I combine it with many other sources of Turkish, LingQ the first of them! MANY THANKS FOR LingQ indeed!
Love how you don't rely on just one thing to learn!
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.
The other problem is, not every course takes you to the same level of proficiency. They have dozens of courses but only a handful (English, Spanish, French and maybe German) can help you reach, say, B1.
So I'm screwed. I already speak English and French. I don't like Spanish much (and I do understand 90% of it already because I'm a native Portuguese speaker) and I can't stand German. So I'm left with bad courses ??
I reached B2 in German and finished the course. I'm on B2 in Spanish now
@@aristotle358 And you did it by using Duolingo exclusively?
@@cristianoo2 They are not "bad", just not as complete as these four. Just compare the trees of, say, French (3 sections with 53 units for A1, 1 section with 46 units for A2 and so on) with Italian (only 3 sections for A1, and that's it).
@@cristianoo2 Not bad, no, just less comprehensive. In any language Duolingo offers a fantastic start but will only get you so far. At some point in any of the courses you have to move onto something more complex and challenging.
I’m in Türkiye now. Such a great country.
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.
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.
Duolingo will only teach you bits of a language that you would eventually get to in time. Tho is duolingo a good start? could be! ... Tho for those who want to learn an other language should learn from other material. Because grammar etc is a bit of. I have tried my own language on duolingo and it does not look to good. So keep that in mind when learning a new language. Just like Steve says, you can use it to have fun. Tho you will not learn that much from it
Duo has decent French, German and Spanish courses. As an Irish speaker though, there Irish content is... How can I put it... Awful. I tried it on my Dad whose first language is Irish and he genuinely did not recognise it as Irish. The pronunciation is so robotic. I thought it was just me... But no. The Irish module is awful.
I've visited more than 40 countries so far and Ireland was one of them. I should say it is in my top 3 without hesitation. I've absolutely loved the time spent there, just because of the people. You are amazing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think you were too nice to duolingo considering the fact that it is offered as a free system, but when you make 5 mistakes you cant even use the app anymore. I do like that you stated that it should be a supplementary form to test your knowledge, something in my personal experience was very true. I would take the placement tests in spanish for example and it told me a decent amount of my level.
If you lost your 5 hearts, go back to old lessons and take them again, it will give you new hearts, I use it as a review of the past lessons too.
@@spacem.2344oh I didn’t know that, thanks
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 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.
Duolingo is amazing for vocabulary and grammar. I have tried German and working on french. I'm quite happy with it.
Duolingo helped a lot with my Italian before comming into country. I am still using it.
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
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.
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 a nice app and now i'm learning Turkish and Scottish Gaelic , and i want to learn Swedish, Icelandic and Faroese .🇸🇪🇮🇸🇫🇴, the last 2 for myself. 🤓
He's being polite, but Duolingo isn't for serious language learners. Time spent on it could be better used in more effective areas. The only exception is for those unsure about committing to a specific language and wanting to explore for a few weeks.