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4 месяца назад
Just out of curiosity, what audiobook app are you using?
Yes I agree, Duolingo holds you back. And it is super annoying. But I *use it* as a help to get comfortable in reading and writing Hebrew, and in remembering vocabulary. The essential part of my Hebrew learning is immersion in videos and series. I found Duolingo helpful as an introduction to a new alphabet. I don't have the energy to study 'old school', and the app is convenient and easy to use. I just wish I could skip through sections however I want and need. But Duolingo forces you to go at their pace, which means very slow.
Great video, and thanks for taking the time to chat with us, we enjoyed meeting you! It’s so weird seeing our faces on your video, haha. We will definitely be doing more language related experiments and content in the future along with the other videos on our channel!
Duolingo doesn't want you to learn a language. Tinder doesn't want you to fall in love and get married. What these apps want is to have and keep users on the app and either charge subscription fees or show advertisements. Beginners content is meant to be left behind. Apps want you to stay. Why anybody would choose to spend their time translating "The dog drinks milk" for weeks is beyond me.
I think the penny dropped for me now. If you feel you are repeating yourself, please know that I needed to hear you say it in this way after watching your videos for a couple of years for it to be this concise. I am pretty sure you made this point a hundred times in videos I already watched. Great content as always.
Drinking soda and eating ice cream every day is a good way to get in shape. You can't get healthy by only eating ice cream. You need to supplement it with other types of food. I didn't become healthy from only eating ice cream. But It's a good foundation for a healthy diet. Also, it has protein, so it's not 100% useless!
It took me around 3 months to get through German "Animal Farm", but by the end of it I was astounded by how my attitude switched from feeling illiterate to loving what I'm reading. Now I'm doing the same for a Swedish children's book, but translating new words with LingQ and repeatedly listening while reading. After just 2 weeks I can already feel how translating chapters becomes slightly easier each time. (Of course reading a book combined with consuming series, RUclips, podcast etc.)
I remember when I wanted to try the Navajo course on Duolingo because the language had few resources, only to find out the course didn't even have audio. When I pointed out that courses shouldn't be able to be released without audio, especially phonetically complex languages like Navajo, I had a bunch of Duolingo fanatics say it was better than nothing and I could supplement it with other sources. My response was that Duolingo was like an engine without a car, and that they were basically telling me to get another car, take the engine out, and putting it into the Duolingo car, instead of just using the other car.
😂 Oh man. I've already got a video in editing that mentions Navajo but I make the disclaimer that I've no idea if the course is good. No audio? That's ridiculous.
the engine analogy is genius yeah, i felt the same way about example sentences, like oh i'd like to see more examples of this word or sentence structure being used, but there's no links here and no more places to ask the question when the machine of dimple example sentences does not have enough or the right sentences, why am i even using it at this point?
Navajo used to have audio recorded I guess by some users of the language but it seems they deleted it and didn't bother to prepare the new version of the audio.. strange.
I remember hearing audio in Navajo too. Boy, that was hard. No cognates or familiar words at all. And tonal to boot. no wonder it was used for war communication. If the audio went away, this would be impossible. Currently I am trying my hand on Haitian Creole. That course has decent audio, but no slowed down ones at all. All these nasal definite articles at the end, and also the penchant for shortening pronouns to just one letter makes it hard to hear at the first time, but you cannot hear it slowly at all. And don't get me started on the guidebooks, they sometimes have no sound. Thanks to the phonetic spelling of Haitian Creole (which is French based) that's not so big of an issue but, nonetheless an issue.
I came back to duolingo after a few years and I couldn’t do it. I was so frustrated because it felt like each unit maybe introduced 5-10 new words if that sometimes and just drilled them for hours on end
14:01 "The Duolingo Paradox" I swear that everything I want to comment is already in this video. As soon as I finished my N5 grammar practice for Japanese, Duolingo stopped being fun. I would sit there for an hour, blood boiling because I feel like I'm not learning anything anymore. I started to phase it out with normal vocab + grammar study (this was after you pointed out, in a different video, that ppl seem addicted to Duolingo...which I was.) Now, I'm alternating between studying grammar and getting lots of reading/listening input
@@lisa_eeyore Something like the listening exercises from Japanese Pod 101 (on RUclips). There's clear audio. The subtitles aren't too difficult in the beginning and there are visuals. The grammar is a little difficult but the vocab is easy to pick up.
@@lisa_eeyore Honestly, any combination of audio, text and visuals is great, especially if you're going to repeat it. Vlogs on RUclips are a good place to start. A lot of Japanese vlogs come with subtitles and if you start with the beginner stuff the audio won't be too fast. You can switch off CC if you want to focus on listening, or, switch off the volume to focus on reading the subtitles only. It's a solid way to pick up vocab and kanji without actually studying them. (You can add podcasts and books if you feel up for the challenge. They give the best results, but, are difficult to start. One easy book and one that you really like is a great combo to study with.) Hope this helps 😅 I know it's a bit much
I absolutely felt this as well. I noticed the second I started trying other ways and sources to learn Japanese, my Duolingo performance actually dipped. I was answering the "create a sentence" questions differently (albeit still correctly) than Duolingo expected and it just can't handle that.
Input really is the way to go. I’m Canadian and did French immersion for 8 years in school and still couldn’t understand anything when listening to a French person talk though I knew a lot of grammar, vocabulary and how to formulate sentences. I started listening to podcasts in French and it was actually shocking how quickly my comprehension improved, I noticed an improvement in only a few days
@@GFAprodite Podcasts are often better than real people because they don't stop, don't switch to English and they're much more accessible. The limitation of real people is that they want you to respond, which sounds like a good thing, but basically it says "OK here I just used the language really well for 12 seconds... Now let's waste 2 minutes getting you to form a response to that". This is why my Swedish is significantly better than a lot of people who have lived in Sweden for a long time.
@@freeeggs3811 The french learned in school is a more traditional french, whereas everyday spoken french has a lot more abbreviated words or a lot of words taken out of sentences which isn't taught in school.
Duolingo, like many things, reminds me of the story of the stone soup. Yeah, you can make a soup of stone, but it’s especially good if you add all the other ingredients haha
I know you didn't say that I attacked anyone, but I actually never attacked Evan either. He just took it as that rather than admit that Duolingo kind of duped him.
That comment from vinylhead was the perfect pull for highlighting the problem with Duolingo. Their plan SHOULD have worked, if duolingo was what people said it was. They had a perfectly realistic idea of how to progress to higher levels of a language, were willing to slog through lower levels of comprehension and weren't expecting for duolingo to make them fluent. They just thought it would work to "get started." That was helpful for thinking about how to frame the advice I give people so it can't be misinterpreted (I can't be blunt with everyone who asks me and I don't want to water the message down either). Hope you're feeling better! Will check out the podcast.
@Days and Words I mostly agree with this with there being just one major point of disagreement at the end. I don't think starting to immerse knowing absolutely nothing is a great idea for most people. For people that are already good at learning languages or have great linguistic intuition, sure. But one must realize that the average person finds it much more difficult. I made the mistake of trying to learn Japanese (a very difficult language for English speakers) through mostly immersion very early, and after many months and even years, my progress has been abysmal. I later learned that I was missing the *comprehensible* part of Comprehensible Input. When I would immerse, I was immersing with things that I understood almost not at all. So for slower learners, like myself, I would suggest either immersing only a little and doing conscious study and vocab learning. Or, make sure you immerse *a lot* in *very easy* content (for young children ideally or comprehensible input videos) and then slowly build up to more difficult content. Do not make my mistake of listening to tough content from the beginning.
I think there's definitely a sliding scale and it's different for every person. I also like doing a mix of concious study, vocab and listening reps. Having said that I still don't ever use Duolingo as I think even for basic vocab study there are just so many better options out there.
"I don't think starting to immerse knowing absolutely nothing is a great idea for most people." I'm saying that you've got to immerse in order to increase comprehension. I'm saying that waiting until you understand something means you'll be waiting forever. So I'm not saying that if you immerse for 5 hours and understand literally nothing, you should keep going. That's NOT what I'm saying. I'm saying that if you don't start immersing, then no matter what else you do, you'll never understand anything.
Great video as always! I have to thank you again for your idea that you gave me I want to say a year or two ago probably 2 years ago where you watch the movie that you've seen so many times but watch it 50 times in your target language and break it up. That has gained me so much vocabulary and I really really appreciate that so much! I've taken that message and I love anime so much. So what I will do is find an anime that only has one season and anywhere from 6:00 to 13 episodes and they could be 20 minutes or 1 hour episodes. I will watch the entire series in my target language with no subtitles at all just trying to see if I can get cues from facial expressions, surroundings, body language or things that happened in the episodes. Then I will watch it in the target language all over again with the subtitles in the target language and watch it all the way through and see so I can match what I'm hearing with what I'm seeing and vice versa. Then I will watch it a third time in my target language but with the subtitles in English or vice versa to see how much I actually understood and picked up. sometimes I'm extremely proud of how much I actually picked up and learned and sometimes I'm like oh ouch I need more practice, lol. I've been doing dreaming Spanish for a few months now I want to say maybe 3 months now and absolutely love it. That has also helped me quite a bit.
So glad you were feeling up to making a video, but I’ll bet you’re exhausted now. Even though you may feel like it’s the same thing you’ve said a million times before, timing is everything and I needed this message today.
Duolingo is a publicly traded company. Their goal is to drive shareholder profits above all else. From that lens, how are they going to make the money? By getting new people that don't know how to acquire a language and keep them engaged as long as possible.
I'm not sure if you're saying this to make a point about politics, or if you genuinely don't fully understand what "Publicly Traded Company" means, so I'll help. 1. Publicly traded companies are not necessarily more shareholder-controlled than privately traded companies. What you are referring to, probably, is that a public company is under more scrutiny due to the diversification of interest combined with the fact that there are certain metrics a public company legally must report (often called "annual/quarterly reports"), which make the company's value fluctuate more as a factor of actual results, whereas private companies tend to be valued heavily on faith in the team. The way in which shareholders believe in the company affects this, however. 2. Shareholder control does not mean shortsightedness (although it usually does). Many companies do jump straight into shortsightedness, but some famous examples which didn't are Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Uber. These companies nearly faced ruin multiple times by refusing to take profit, instead investing all earnings (revenue and investment dollars) into continued growth with the goal of monopoly. Monopoly, contrary to popular belief, requires unmatched excellence to attain. After everyone else is dead, then you can pull a Microsoft and never build a single good thing ever, but to become the only one, you have to make everyone else so irrelevant that no one remembers they ever existed. This is a way of maximizing shareholder value, but it's method is by building a better product. Therefore, no, Luodingo being bad is not because it's public. All that being said, your framing is fundamentally incorrect. You don't understand what products are. If you think Luodingo is trash, its because you dont unserstand it. Its not a tool to teach you a language, its a videogame that makes you work just hard enough so that you and everyone around you believe you have something to brag about to monolingual people. If you think the entire language learning industry is worth what Luodingo is worth, then you need to think about just how large the market for Americans to feel superior to others is. Most people who are clueless about human nature think we get things because they serve a purpose. This is rational. Humans are not rational. We only pay for things that tell us a story about ourselves that we want to believe. Everything from what you spend your money on, spend your attention on, which ideas you parrot, how you speak, everything is based off our need to have an identity which requires constant attention to maintain.
@@GrizikYugno-ku2zs I'm not really sure what you've said that contradicts what I've said. Duolingo is delivering for its shareholders by creating a product that ostensibly is about teaching a language, but in reality is just about capturing attention as long as possible like RUclips, TikTok or a video game.
@@clownonabike exactly this! I think it's totally possible to make a profitable platform that actually does facilitate optimal language acquisition, but doing so is in direct odds with the big tech model. Users are expensive to acquire and when you either need to offer them hundreds and thousands of hours of native content or accept that they will have a short account lifetime before they move onto something that meets their needs, it's much easier to slow down the whole process to keep people engaged as long as possible.
I think Duolingo is actually worse than described here. As someone with a decent amount of Spanish, I tried "testing out" to get to stuff I was uncomfortable with. But modern Duolingo uses some sort of SRS system that is independent of the unit you're in. So, you can frequently do an entire unit and not encounter any of the content it claims it will teach you because it spends every lesson "reviewing" earlier sentences, words, and ideas. In other words, you can't really test out to go faster anymore. There is a maximum speed it allows you to go, and it's really, really slow.
I'm not convinced you can get a 100% off-topic unit, or at least I haven't seen one. There are "SRS" exercises in regular lessons, and there are "personalised practice" lessons completely based on their "magic". The quality of the selection is poor, though, often showing me the same sentences over and over, making me wonder what the process looks like. Not sure what they optimise for in their A/B tests.
@@cmfrtblynmb02 That would explain... Almost a decade ago I used it to learn swedish for about a year of consistent practice. Combined with swedish youtube videos and SRS I actually got somewhere with duolingo. Duolingo gave me a structure and a path. It worked. Ten years later and... yeah it's absolutely not recommended
I had used Duolingo for about 2 and a half months for my Dutch and after that just dropped it, 'cause it was just too slow and would basically not teach me anything except for maybe 2 words a week, so I just quit and started focusing more on watching Dutch RUclipsrs
That's the way to go. I did the same thing with Spanish. Some podcasts that I used to understand less than 30%, today I can understand more than 80% without even thinking too hard. It's a really great feeling.
SpanishPod101, Dreaming Spanish... after doing enough that literally just google "Podcast espanol de mexico" or something that concerns the dialect you want to learn.
I have a subscription to the dreaming Spanish platform and I absolutely love it! There are thousands of videos and it tracks how much you watch and it kind of helps motivate me to see how many hours of accumulated. They have super beginner videos beginner videos intermediate and advanced and there are multiple topics that get more and more interesting as you progress through intermediate and advanced levels. Also Lamont had mentioned a while ago that he learned from someone else that you take a video or a movie that you've watched that you know the words to and watch it 50 times and break it up in different ways. That has helped me tremendously! I watched it 50 times and the first 50 times I watched it and my target language with no subtitles, the second time I watched it in my target language with the subtitles in the target language as well, then another 20 times in my target language with my native language subtitles and then the remaining 10 I watched in my native language with the target language subtitles to see how much I was able to pick up. I picked up so many words that way.
I really liked that video, and it is so necessary. I use Duolingo because I think it is fun and low effort (low returns too, of course). But I usually do the first couple of lessons in the unit and then skip to the next unit, otherwise, it's insanely slow. I can't believe someone thinks they can learn a language only by doing Duolingo if they already used it for some time. But I think it can be a helpful (gamified) tool; e.g.: I like to do space repetition practice on Japanese characters, for example (which I am a beginner), or being able to speak in Latin (that I've learned in school) to "someone" that it's not my cat :D But like your advice, immersion is key, duolingo is a game that keeps me thinking about the languages I'm learning even when I am tired after a busy day or in my commute.
My boyfriend started using Duolingo to learn Chinese a few months ago. Having lived in China for many years, he can already speak Chinese at a decent level, and he learned the language through pure immersion: never did classes, never "studied", just by talking to people. And that's why he still can't read or write. I think Duolingo might be the only thing that could get him to work on his Chinese. That being said, I personally find it way too slow for me. Despite its gamification features (which can be pretty addictive, I admit), its method is quite old fashioned at its core: you learn through translation and not much else.
I used Duolingo to help me establish the habit of practising some Swedish daily. I found it helpful. That made me wonder what all the fuss was about. And then you remarked about how it had changed since the late 2010s, which is when I last used it. Jaha! Plötsligt förstod jag vad du menade! Jag lyssnar inte än ofta till någon svenska dagligt men jag anar att varje gång jag lyssnar på något svenskt content, även om jag inte förstår så mycket, jag tar ett till steg framåt. Och ibland märker jag någon skillnad med hur enkelt det blivit att uttrycka mig på svenska genom att skriva (även om inte än genom att prata).
I actually re-started using Duolingo (free version) recently to begin to learn Irish in ten minute chunks, although I'm also learning Spanish basically entirely through immersion (reading/watching YT videos full speed) - the same way I mostly learned Japanese. While you're 100% right if it's a big language like French or Spanish, I still feel Duolingo is useful in getting started in some of the smaller languages. Once I decide to seriously pursue Irish I'll delete Duolingo and just use Anki decks and immersion.
My argument for this is that Duolingo has diminishing returns rather than it doesn’t work at all. I made a lot of progress initially but, after 300 days, it seemed like my progress that I made after about 150 days was the same amount. There’s definitely things that I was able to understand, I couldn’t really speak and didn’t have the skills that I thought I should have after 300 days. I’ve made a lot more progress using a combination of Rosetta Stone, RUclips, podcast, and actual physical books. What I ended up doing that has been working. The fastest is I’ve been writing out scripts in Russian and reciting them on TikTok to practice.
It used to be diminishing returns that started at a reasonable level, and so it was worth using until those diminishing returns kicked in. That's what I did. But now, it STARTS at a level about 1/10th as useful as basically anything else. That's not diminishing returns, that's a bloody waste of time.
There seems to be a golden rule. If a language learning app is developed in Estonia, it is good. If it is not developed in Estonia, it is not as good, and often bad. Was Duolingo developed in Estonia? No. I rest my case.
@@Gabe-no5zy I'll not hold that against Pittsburgh though. Any city with a rookie pitcher throwing 101mph and a bible verse embroidered on his glove gets my approval. 😂
I always test out on the Duolingo units, if I don’t know any words, I’ll close out of it, and repeat the units. I honestly feel like I learn faster with Anki/Duo spaced repetition than watching tv or reading. Of course, I also listen to a lot of music, and speak to a lot of Spanish people, so after I learn the words, I generally hear them used or use them almost immediately after.
Duolingo used to be amazing lol it got me into Portuguese back in like 2014. Now I only ever use it as a warm up to my actual studying and just a way to get into the Russian or Chinese or whatever mood lol I also really hate they don’t update the duo store 🤦🏻♀️ it has so much potential, they used to have a pick up line lesson for Portuguese through the store 😂
I liked the part where you mentioned immersion and said it shouldn't take that long to learn the basics. I started Spanish in 2017 but I still have a hard time understanding spoken Spanish since I don't immerse that often. Same story with Portuguese actually. I can read a decent level of Portuguese, but my comprehension is so bad, I don't even claim to understand it.
What you saying make so much sence. The reason that it so much easier for a Swede to learn english than german, even though german is a closer language, is because we have so much english speaking TV with subtitles but almost no german speaking TV.
I unsubscribed and resubscribed just to check if anything happens with the subscribe button when you say "subscribe". Nothing happens, only when I click "subscribe" again. So now I messed up your statistics for nothing.
I think you need to not have been subscribed recently, and also you being a channel member might mess with it. It does work normally. You should see it in other videos (by other people, I mean).
Maybe it requires a specific phrase? Or it only works when said in an American accent (as most of the training data comes from the US)? I've seen it before on other channels, not sure what exactly they said in which way.
@@francegamble1Hmm, no, you don't have to say that. It's supposed to listen out for the word "subscribe". I'll fiddle with the subtitles later, they might have something to do with it.
Honestly I stopped using Duolingo after your previous video a while back, so many better ways to learn another language: dictation, reading, watching TV, speaking to people. But personally for me, not Duolingo
Hey it's me again and i'm back with a couple of questions... oh and somdthing worth mentioning is that my goal is not at all to become fluent, but rather something like low B1 1. I'm, at most, willing to spend about 20 minutes a day learning Hebrew. Say if i were watch an episode a day of a show in that language, would that be enough to make significant progress 2. Should I use subtitles when watching? Currently, when watching a simple kids show such as spong ebob loolll but dubbed, i'm able to understand or at least reckognis about half the words i hear and from context i can make out most sentences? Is this too easy and therefore no subtitles is better as it reflects the realword where this is not gonna be a thing. 3.Will listening comprehension also increase my output and ability to speak it by much? 4. I'm currently facing a barrier with the linguistic side of specifcally hebrew and that is learning how to speak in past and future tesne (it's a complicated system and it's diffrent for every verb and stuff). would u say i PRIORITISE the grammer type stuff before i try getting cmprehensible input, or is it a waste of time?
Absolute hands down to this video: if you like to study grammar as analytical knowledge, go do so. But don't ever say that it's a good way to grasp the complexity of a language, when it can hinder it because you're consciously thinking about the language.
I am not sure if duolingo had an update, or if french is just different, but i can do a whole spanish unit in like 30 minutes. I dont know how it took her an hour and a half to do two circles.
My Duolingo experience is very different depending on the language. As I was already strong to fluent in English, German, Spanish and Italian, I got a good foundation in French very quickly (and am doing the same in Portuguese, where I admittedly can already understand a lot of native content just from Spanish). Polish should theoretically be pretty good, having finished the course, but I paralyze completely when trying to actually converse with somebody. Got to find some videos there to save something from that time sink. Dutch building from German has me actually able to productively converse in the language, and I suspect I'd actually pass a B1 or B2 test. On the other hand, the Hebrew course seems to be in "turbo mode" and I can't possibly keep up with the vocabulary that is introduced too quickly and never reviewed. I had some fun doing Japanese there, but having no realistic application, I dropped it for Portuguese, as I move to Brazil in a couple of months.
I dabbled in Rosetta Stone for Spanish back when I was a teenager in the early 2000s and never really learned anything from it, so in my early 30s when I actually did decide to go all in and learn Spanish I decided to stay away from these types of courses. Honestly, what helped me the most was buying a really good book with tons of exercises on verb conjugation and I worked through conjugation in every tense over the course of like 3 or 4 months and kinda filled in vocabulary along the way. And then I made friends who I could text in spanish so that I could have conversations at a slower pace.. and then I made friends in person who don't speak any English so that I could actually start speaking and after that my spanish capabilities increased exponentially. If I were to ever learn another language, I would take a similar approach again because it worked well for me.
i use duolingo as an additional tool but not as my main way of learning, i think that duolingo is great to learn some keypoints ect getting familiar with the constructions of sentences but beside of that i watch a lot of youtube videos of people teching the language in small quality videos :D and ofcourse using the laanguage :) all combined works very well for me.
ahh and my plan is i do 2 circles in duolingo a day ( usually 5 lessons and 1 story) this way i take 3 days to complete 1 unit and don't rush the stuff that causes me to forget it. after i feel like it sticks pretty well what i've learned :D
Better thing to do for five minutes a day would be reviewing sentences from immersion. Since Duolingo doesn’t even have those little grammar tidbits anymore I find it completely useless.
In 2020 I did the entire French course (for German natives) on Duolingo. I must have spent at least an hour per day. At the end I was able to somewhat read French, but my listening comprehension was non-existant. So about what you say: Duolingo doesn't get you far and it takes way to much time. It is ineffective. But: At the moment I am working on the Hindi course of Duolingo. The Hindi course is especially bad.(E.g. the machine voices are terrible. No explanation on the grammar.) Again: Progress is painfully slow. And that is exactly what I need. I am dyslexic. The endless repetitions are the only way for my dysfunctional brain to make the Devanagari characters stick. If all I get out of this course is the ability to read basic Hindi vocabulary in Devanagari, it has done a good job for me. Duolingo is a tool. Know how and when to use it, what it can do for you and its limitations. You may be better off using an other tool.
I feel like you've perfectly described why it's terrible and then said "So, like, it's a tool that you can use..." - Um, yeah, but it's terribly slow and ineffective, which is exactly what I'm saying... Are you sure YOU didn't write this video? Lamont Durdan... Is that you?
@@daysandwords I did't make this clear in my first post: Yes, I currently use the Duolingo Hindi course. But only a few lessons a day, maybe 10 to 15 minutes max. The intent is not to learn Hindi. (Duolingo is not able to really teach you Hindi.) But to learn reading Devanagari. As a neat side effect I also learn some basic vocabulary. Due to my dyslexia something slow and repetitive like Duolingo works good. In my very particular situation. Others may be better off with something else. Once I can read देवनागरी sufficiently good I have to ditch Duolingo and find better ressources to really learn Hindi. As you said: Even if you could learn a language with Duolingo, it is inefficient due to its slowness. I realized all this only while watching your video. I had all this somewhere in vague fragments in the back of my mind. But it never really manifested as an explicit, coherent insight. Your video surfaced it. There is an other good use of Duolingo: Wasting time with some Duolingo lessons is for sure better then "scrolling through social media". But then your intent is not to learn a language, but to waste your time. Learning some aspects of a language becomes a side effect. Learning anything even slightly useful or relevant is better then social media.
I used delingo 4 3 months... it taught me words.. and helped me read.. but i wasnt close to speaking with a person. But i can go to the corner store now and say stuff like Dos Pollo tacos.. and they laugh every time but they know what im saying... and at 1st they would say.. you know we speak English... lol and id tell them im trying to learn street Spanish.. lol. They r cool and talk to me in Spanish and they will point and say the word like im 1.. when they aint busy..
The crazy thing is I used to be a member of the DLDL. Needless to say, I wouldn't touch Duolingo with a ten foot pole now that I have acquired intermediate Mandarin after a year of 20 minutes of input a day.
I started learning German in 2005-2006 in Highschool. In College from 2008-2009 I had to take German 150, 201, 202 for my degree. I worked in Germany from 2016-2020 and met my wife here, who is German. We moved to the states from 2020-2023, but recently moved back to Germany. In April I decided to get serious about learning German. I use Duolingo, but I only do one lesson a day to show the streak. (It takes about 3-4 minutes for a lesson) I do this because I started with Duolingo, but quickly did research and switched to comprehensible input. It's been 93 days of me listening and reading compressible input for 2-4 hours every day and like 5 days ago it just started to click that I can listen and understand 95% of the children's show "Bluey" in German. The point is, I only use Duolingo as a marker for how many days I have been studying and that language learning is really difficult. The Bluey breakthrough was a good feeling, but I still have a long way ahead of me to actually become fluent. It's okay though, I don't stress about it and try to enjoy the journey.
i have a question lamont, I am intermediate speaker of english ( b1-b2 ) i can understand your videos without subtitles and at any rate understanding youtube is easier than netflix, however i want to get to a level where i can understand netflix easily too. do you have any recommendations of the steps i have to go through? something along the lines of " watching the first time with english subtitles and then without or watching the same series for 4/5 times exchanging between subtitles and without? i have no idea in what way i should be approaching this, with all of your experience on language learning, what would be your tips ?
My two cents: Just jump levels with Duolingo. One does the as early as possible immersion and jumps levels as much as one can so... it ends with B1-B2 practice in Duolingo pretty fast, Trying to keep it challenging. No point in learning le chat 1 000 000 times. You already know it.
I’m subscribed to Duolingo because I get bored and don’t feel like doing anything. It was simply a matter of passing time. I didn’t want to add more games, so I thought this would be better. I was so disappointed. Although I paid for it simply as a way to pass time, I found it mind-numbing boring. I wish I hadn’t. Fortunately they also had new math and music courses. I started the math, and it appears to be new math. Nothing like the way I learned. No wonder kids these days don’t know their math. If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t. I’m learning even less than I thought I would. I tried it several years ago and it was a much better course. Progress doesn’t always mean improvement.
I had to dreams that some1 was talking to me in Spanish during the time i was trying. But in dream i didnt understand anything...lol but i took those 2 dreams as my brain changing and ready to move 4word.. just guessing. But i gave up.
I, being weird, and having paid for the app decided 200 or so days away to complete one year as a streak and stop Duolingo. My favourite system at present is to watch UK or US TV series with French subtitles. All, I want to do is be able to communicate not challenge Dumas or Hugo! Also the leagues are nonsense as the front runner in the diamond league must spend 30 hours a day! In order to achieve their points totals! Also why would someone with six years learning still be ‘studying’ with Duolingo? The only positive thing is the regular nag to study
Working slowly and not working is the same. A person says they literally didn't understand one word when trying to listen after a year of studying. And that's the anecdotal evidence you're willing to take at face value. The Duolingo paradox you mentioned implies that if you, for example, try to do listening along with Duolingo, well that's dumb because at that point you don't need Duolingo but ONLY listening. Yeah you're very reasonable and your Spanish sounds great 👍
Why would he make that up? It makes him look stupid and he never wanted to be included in any video, he was just telling of his experience. My Spanish isn't great but that's cos I've hardly done any. But I learned it for 6 months and I'll say mine's is better than a certain person who's been using Duolingo Spanish for 3 years. 😬
I recently got into learning Spanish (like 6 days ago) and It’s my 1st attempt at learning another language so idk what I’m doing. I decided to use games to help me learn, I removed any game that didn’t have Spanish audio or Spanish subtitles from my console. My question is would Duolingo combined with gaming be a decent way to learn?
Learning from Duolingo is like driving a car that can move only 1 kilometer per hour. Yeah, technically you could go with that from point A to point B, just as you technically could progress with Duolingo from A0 to A1. But why bother, just admit that the car is broken and move on to a better vehicle (or just walk). But the DL fans would claim it's a normal functioning car, very useful and even pay a monthly fee for using that car. Smh
Wow, Xioamanyc was able to learn German in basically one day, by memorising 100 sentences or whatever, and then was conversational in German, because he had an UNREHEARSED conversation with a GENUINE German in real time LIVE. You should just try that.
Same issue for me... I remember I spend like 300 days in Japanese with Duolingo and, the first conversation I tried to have, I couldn't understand anything, not even one word.
Hey man, can you explain to me what you mean by immersing. E.g. is it merely playing a podcast while driving or running. If its that, how would i be getting comprehensible input if im only listening without looking and seeing subtitles or activity happening in a show or a video. Can you help me answer this? Thanks !
Immersing means spending time with your eyes or ears in the language, so yes, listening to a podcast while running is immersion, although that is PASSIVE immersion which is different to active immersion. What language is this for? It makes a big difference whether we're talking about Japanese or German.
One positive thing though, once you test out of all the lessons, you can use the practice function to give you random sentences while you wait in line at the burger joint
Although I'll accept that as a better use Duolingo than pretty much any other use, I'm also becoming more and more convinced of the need for us to spend time just waiting for stuff, not doing anything and just kind of... soaking in the atmosphere. I think depending where you are (physically), as a language learner, this can actually be hugely beneficial.
I'm confused, why would it take years to go through the French or German duolingo tree? I did the Swedish one in two months without putting in crazy hours (a couple hours a day at most but less than that on average) and it felt like an excellent introduction. Are the trees that bad in some languages? Or are some people just horribly slow. Each lesson takes me from 1 minute to 5 at the very most once it gets much more complex. It also took me years to understand spoken English after learning to read and write it and that was despite watching movies and shows with subtitles. Developing an ear for a language can be very difficult and Duolingo doesn't really help with that because it's not what it does, it gives you mainly just one or two voices, that sometimes sound robotic. It will work better if your target language already sounds like a language you know, for instance my first language is French and I can hear Italian or Spanish words and sometimes guess their meaning without much knowledge of these languages due to how much they sound like French. Swedish is also known for being difficult to hear, and many syllables can be skipped when speaking it. German is much easier, for example. You can also just skip to the next unit once you master one. I am not here to defend Duolingo but clearly a lot of the blame against it is user error and not a specific Duolingo failure. There's always so much exaggeration like that person doing what must be 20 minutes of Swedish a day at most then complaining about understanding nothing. I could understand bits here and there after 2 months, but I did as you say, I started watching videos in Swedish early on (there are many videos meant for beginners).
So, you might be missing a few things. 1: The "big languages" are HUGE trees compared to the languages like Swedish. Like 5 or 6 times the length. 2. WHEN did you do the Swedish tree? I also did the Swedish tree and I did a fair bit (like 45 minutes a day) and it took about 8 months, but this was years and years ago. As this video points out, Duolingo now ENFORCES a slower pace that is just horrendously slow. Guessing from what you've written, you're talking about old Duolingo when it was the TREE not the path. Basically, language learning is my job, and I check these things routinely, and get feedback from hundreds of comments. It's very unlikely that I'm making an error that you just happened not to make and more likely that you're comparing old Duolingo with new Duolingo.
I taught myself French without Dulingo. Now I am teaching myself Spanish through French without Dulingo. I am an American without any French or Spanish heritage. Immersion is the only way to learn. Dulingo is at least if not more useless than the French and Spanish that I took in school.
I have to argue with you Lamont. As a B1 in American Sign Language. Immersion was not the way for me to learn ASL. I had to take classes where I used the language to learn and remember the language. Now, this is the ONLY language (excluding British Sign language, etc) I say that Immersion won't work at the start. I can't exactly say why, but if you have an idea, I'd be curious to hear about it! Maybe there just isn't enough content in ASL to fully immerse?
Come on now, Sign Languages are by definition, an exception. I'm not trying to be ableist but sign languages are obviously not going to work in the same way as vocal languages. Also, are you mistaking what I'm saying for "You ONLY need to immerse" - because I'm not saying that. I'm saying that immersion MUST happen. And I would still think that should be the case with ASL but it's obviously going to be different.
thing is, you're going to see better results not "studying" with duolingo and just watching native content, instead. after watching hours upon hours of tv shows in my target language without ever touching a textbook I was surprised how quickly I grasped the basics when I actually started to study, because it was just solidifying what I had already processed in my brain through input. this is how we learn our native languages, too--we immerse first and gain our understanding of how the language actually works later. for beginners it is CRUCIAL to get that input first, and a lot of it. meanwhile duolingo doesn't even seem like a good supplement to any kind of learning method.
Love your content Lamont, you're speaking from my heart! I feel guilty about still having Duolingo installed on my phone, but I don't see it as a real learning tool, rather than a distraction. I can confirm that it's absolutely useless, there are many better ways to reach fluency!
I wonder if we had someone watch toddler and preschool shows in the language and another person do duolingo for a month... which person, doing the same amount of time, would have a better grasp of the language?
I think "a better grasp" would be very difficult to measure and that's half the problem here. People don't realise that when you're subconsciously acquiring it, you don't feel like you're learning it but then one day suddenly all this stuff comes bubbling out. So I think the Duolingo person would do better on a test but the toddlers' shows person would be poised to leave them in the dust.
Huh - when I used to use Duolingo (years and years ago) - it wasn't that bad. It took maybe a month for a level? (A1->A2). Of course- the vocabulary was hit and miss - but it still seemed somewhat useful than.
0:32 I want my money back! The colours didn't dance around the button, I even tried unsubscribing in case that affects it, But still nothing! Oh wait I didn't pay any money? Then I want my time back! Wait, It took more time because I kept backing up and tried refreshing the page, So really it's my fault? Darn!!!
Yeah it's like showing up early to the airport... All they do is de-prioritise you, whereas if you show up 30 minutes before take off, you get rushed through like you're a celebrity.
I'm learning to read Japanese with duolingo. It's slow but it's nice for maintaining my Japanese while I do other things. The Japanese course has definitely had a revamp which makes me feel like it's decent compared to the dog poo level it was a few years ago.
11:30 Period. All those people who have gone through 30 textbooks over the course of 5 years and wonder why they can't understand even the simplest podcasts or shows, that's why. Whenever I talk to people about Duolingo, everyone always says I only use it because xy but xy can be accomplished much faster and more effectively with other options. So it's a waste of time either way.
I have a different view on duolingo. It is looked at as an "easy" introduction. But for me it is something else. If you're smart enough, you will intuitively understand the grammar, even if don't know the terminology. I'm halfway into B1 in French, and I can read almost anything. I can read newspapers and books in French. Of course there are some words I have to look up now and then, but I understand most of it, so I know I can keep on reading. Although spoken French is sometimes hard, because they speak so fast, I at least understand most slow French. The biggest problem with duolingo is that I don't speak French for shit. But I have a really good fundament for doning that in the future. I could either move to a French speaking area for a period of time or use iTalkie for practicing. I would probably use much less time than starting from scratch....
That USED to be the case, but these days Duolingo is just SUCH. A. SLOW. INTRO. DUCTION. TO. THE. LANGUAGE. French is mostly English pronounced differently. You don't understand it because of Duolingo, you understand it because it's obvious.
@@daysandwords Ok. But here's the twist. I'm Norwegian...... and I speak a North Germanic language.... I also learn duolingo German (almost done), and that is to me somewhat in the way you say.... but French is left field for me. That is actually why I chose it, because it would be the most challenging West European language for me (except Greek and Finnish). It is actually (theoretically) more challenging than for a Swedish native, because Swedish has adopted many French words (trottoar, affär and so on) of obvious historic reasons.
You obviously have enough English that French isn't truly foreign though. Sorry but there's no "twist" extreme enough to make Duolingo a genuinely good use of time in something like French. Check out Inner French.
For smaller languages duolingo also has really glaring flaws that make it significantly less useful. In Hebrew, to know how to pronounce a new word, you have to either hear it or you need the vowel dot markers which are usually only present in kids content or learners content. Hebrew Duolingo frequently both doesn't have audio OR the vowels, making those slides essentially useless because the word could theoretically have like 9 pronunciations
I'd personally say that even watching shows in your target language with subs in a language you are comfortable in, is more effective than using duolingo.
@@viridianiteHaha normally mine isn't. I had this idea that if I did more "organised" study I'd be better. These days I just let the subconscious do its thing.
Let me disagree about the utter uselessness of Duolingo. For me, "Duolingo" should be replaced with "my school program", because it seems I learned much more grammar on the Duolingo English course (I'm not a native) in around half a year than on my full school program from 5 to 11 years. Duolingo proposes a practical approach to grammar study, it's really more effective than any textbook (since I haven't get almost anything from them). But Duolingo shouldn't be overrated, I agree with you on that. It can never replace immersion, just be a helpful tool to get acquainted with the language structure. For me, there are 3 ways that have proven to be useful: 1) Duolingo, 2) immersion (using AI for explanations), 3) communication with other speakers.
"Duolingo" should be replaced with "my school program"" The other way around. What you said means taking Duolingo, which you were already doing, and replacing it with a school program. You want to do the opposite. " Duolingo proposes a practical approach to grammar study, it's really more effective than any textbook (since I haven't get almost anything from them)." Yeah, textbooks suck, but Duolingo is famous for having a terrible approach to grammar study, so I think your argument falls down there. You got fluent by listening to and reading lots of English. That's it.
I Disagree About Your Stance On Duolingo. I've Been Learning Italian For Over Two-Hundred Day, And I Can Recognize Most Of The Words In A Short Story. I Also Spent Six Month In Italy. I Didn't Practice Much While There.
But you can't just disagree with evidence presented in the video, unless you can refute it as being untrue, which it isn't. Why did Kate have to spend like 20 minutes repeating the FRENCH for CAT, which is basically the same as the English? Why did you USED to be able to go through the course at 5x the rate you can now? Your evidence is basically "I learned a small amount of Italian in almost 7 months, so you're wrong." Yes, you will learn a small amount of a language that is somewhat similar to one you already speak. But with something good, you can learn a LOT of that language.
My position is that it wouldn't do very much even in 700 days. Anything it did do in that time would be able to be done in about 2 months of most other things.
@@daysandwords it got me to a conversational level in Swedish when I first got into language learning, it just took a long time. I've achieved much more in korean in less time using other methods.
@@michaelshort2388Yeah but you do realise I'm saying that it's now forcing people to do it at literally 1/10th the speed right? It sounds like you're saying "It's ok but not great" but that's what it USED TO be, now it's actively terrible. It's not the same thing as what you learned your Swedish with.
So... you don't speak Swedish then? In all seriousness, you need close to 10,000 words to be mostly fluent (numbers and ideas of fluency may vary). Even if you learned a word a day with duolingo, you'll never reach fluency. You've dunning kruger'ed yourself.
It's the Chicago Cubs but it's their "City Connect" hat, which will only make sense if you know what that even means. In case you don't: It's basically Nike and New Era coming up with a way to make more uniforms to sell more merch. But as someone who lives in the country that they send all merch to be cleared at below-cost price, that doesn't bother me.
Get to 1200, have a little celebration party and then say an active goodbye to it. It'll feel better than just "giving up" or letting it lapse. Think of it as a celebration of what you've done and now a moving on to better things.
I'm learning Chinese, hsk 2 level, and Duolingo sucks. Like, not in the way you mention that "doesn't really teach you", like in the way it simply teaches you wrong, and doesn't know about the languages they are teaching. Because, for example, they tell you the bathroom is called this way, xi shou jian (sorry, I don't have pinyin hahaha), and no, that is restroom, bathroom, as a place in the house where is a bath, is yushi, so is teaching me wrong. For italian is a little bit better, but it just through at you, words and verbs and doesn't explain you shit. Like for example, how to turn sustantives into plurals,. it has a rule, and if you learn through duolingo, you have to figure it out on your own, like reinvent the wheel again, why would you want that? I still like it for Italian, but to learn a few new words, not to learn the language.
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Just out of curiosity, what audiobook app are you using?
Yes I agree, Duolingo holds you back. And it is super annoying.
But I *use it* as a help to get comfortable in reading and writing Hebrew, and in remembering vocabulary.
The essential part of my Hebrew learning is immersion in videos and series.
I found Duolingo helpful as an introduction to a new alphabet.
I don't have the energy to study 'old school', and the app is convenient and easy to use.
I just wish I could skip through sections however I want and need. But Duolingo forces you to go at their pace, which means very slow.
Great video, and thanks for taking the time to chat with us, we enjoyed meeting you! It’s so weird seeing our faces on your video, haha. We will definitely be doing more language related experiments and content in the future along with the other videos on our channel!
Cheers guys!
Duolingo doesn't want you to learn a language. Tinder doesn't want you to fall in love and get married. What these apps want is to have and keep users on the app and either charge subscription fees or show advertisements.
Beginners content is meant to be left behind. Apps want you to stay. Why anybody would choose to spend their time translating "The dog drinks milk" for weeks is beyond me.
I think the penny dropped for me now. If you feel you are repeating yourself, please know that I needed to hear you say it in this way after watching your videos for a couple of years for it to be this concise. I am pretty sure you made this point a hundred times in videos I already watched. Great content as always.
"Duolingo does teach you languages: It has words and sentences, and it tells you what they mean."
This is pure gold lmao
Drinking soda and eating ice cream every day is a good way to get in shape. You can't get healthy by only eating ice cream. You need to supplement it with other types of food. I didn't become healthy from only eating ice cream. But It's a good foundation for a healthy diet. Also, it has protein, so it's not 100% useless!
LOL. Now watch the DLDLDL actually use this argument for real.
lol this is a great analogy
It took me around 3 months to get through German "Animal Farm", but by the end of it I was astounded by how my attitude switched from feeling illiterate to loving what I'm reading.
Now I'm doing the same for a Swedish children's book, but translating new words with LingQ and repeatedly listening while reading. After just 2 weeks I can already feel how translating chapters becomes slightly easier each time.
(Of course reading a book combined with consuming series, RUclips, podcast etc.)
I remember when I wanted to try the Navajo course on Duolingo because the language had few resources, only to find out the course didn't even have audio. When I pointed out that courses shouldn't be able to be released without audio, especially phonetically complex languages like Navajo, I had a bunch of Duolingo fanatics say it was better than nothing and I could supplement it with other sources. My response was that Duolingo was like an engine without a car, and that they were basically telling me to get another car, take the engine out, and putting it into the Duolingo car, instead of just using the other car.
😂 Oh man. I've already got a video in editing that mentions Navajo but I make the disclaimer that I've no idea if the course is good. No audio? That's ridiculous.
the engine analogy is genius
yeah, i felt the same way about example sentences, like oh i'd like to see more examples of this word or sentence structure being used, but there's no links here and no more places to ask the question
when the machine of dimple example sentences does not have enough or the right sentences, why am i even using it at this point?
Navajo used to have audio recorded I guess by some users of the language but it seems they deleted it and didn't bother to prepare the new version of the audio.. strange.
@@aldareiiYep, it's almost like they don't actually care about language learners. 😂
I remember hearing audio in Navajo too. Boy, that was hard. No cognates or familiar words at all. And tonal to boot. no wonder it was used for war communication. If the audio went away, this would be impossible.
Currently I am trying my hand on Haitian Creole. That course has decent audio, but no slowed down ones at all. All these nasal definite articles at the end, and also the penchant for shortening pronouns to just one letter makes it hard to hear at the first time, but you cannot hear it slowly at all. And don't get me started on the guidebooks, they sometimes have no sound. Thanks to the phonetic spelling of Haitian Creole (which is French based) that's not so big of an issue but, nonetheless an issue.
I came back to duolingo after a few years and I couldn’t do it. I was so frustrated because it felt like each unit maybe introduced 5-10 new words if that sometimes and just drilled them for hours on end
14:01 "The Duolingo Paradox"
I swear that everything I want to comment is already in this video.
As soon as I finished my N5 grammar practice for Japanese, Duolingo stopped being fun. I would sit there for an hour, blood boiling because I feel like I'm not learning anything anymore.
I started to phase it out with normal vocab + grammar study (this was after you pointed out, in a different video, that ppl seem addicted to Duolingo...which I was.)
Now, I'm alternating between studying grammar and getting lots of reading/listening input
Hi Fatimah! What do you recommend for getting started reading and listening in Japanese? :)
@@lisa_eeyore Something like the listening exercises from Japanese Pod 101 (on RUclips). There's clear audio. The subtitles aren't too difficult in the beginning and there are visuals.
The grammar is a little difficult but the vocab is easy to pick up.
@@lisa_eeyore Honestly, any combination of audio, text and visuals is great, especially if you're going to repeat it.
Vlogs on RUclips are a good place to start. A lot of Japanese vlogs come with subtitles and if you start with the beginner stuff the audio won't be too fast.
You can switch off CC if you want to focus on listening, or, switch off the volume to focus on reading the subtitles only. It's a solid way to pick up vocab and kanji without actually studying them.
(You can add podcasts and books if you feel up for the challenge. They give the best results, but, are difficult to start. One easy book and one that you really like is a great combo to study with.)
Hope this helps 😅 I know it's a bit much
I absolutely felt this as well. I noticed the second I started trying other ways and sources to learn Japanese, my Duolingo performance actually dipped. I was answering the "create a sentence" questions differently (albeit still correctly) than Duolingo expected and it just can't handle that.
Input really is the way to go. I’m Canadian and did French immersion for 8 years in school and still couldn’t understand anything when listening to a French person talk though I knew a lot of grammar, vocabulary and how to formulate sentences. I started listening to podcasts in French and it was actually shocking how quickly my comprehension improved, I noticed an improvement in only a few days
all that background knowledge floating around in your head has its uses :) nice job
Podcast Were Better Than Real People?
@@GFAprodite Podcasts are often better than real people because they don't stop, don't switch to English and they're much more accessible. The limitation of real people is that they want you to respond, which sounds like a good thing, but basically it says "OK here I just used the language really well for 12 seconds... Now let's waste 2 minutes getting you to form a response to that".
This is why my Swedish is significantly better than a lot of people who have lived in Sweden for a long time.
How did you went through French immersion without understanding French? You did understand Canadian French right?
@@freeeggs3811 The french learned in school is a more traditional french, whereas everyday spoken french has a lot more abbreviated words or a lot of words taken out of sentences which isn't taught in school.
Duolingo, like many things, reminds me of the story of the stone soup. Yeah, you can make a soup of stone, but it’s especially good if you add all the other ingredients haha
I liked the format of this video. Collaboration is so much better than attacks. Much respect both ways.
I know you didn't say that I attacked anyone, but I actually never attacked Evan either. He just took it as that rather than admit that Duolingo kind of duped him.
Trying to find a balance between immersion, study and speaking feels impossible D:
That comment from vinylhead was the perfect pull for highlighting the problem with Duolingo. Their plan SHOULD have worked, if duolingo was what people said it was. They had a perfectly realistic idea of how to progress to higher levels of a language, were willing to slog through lower levels of comprehension and weren't expecting for duolingo to make them fluent. They just thought it would work to "get started." That was helpful for thinking about how to frame the advice I give people so it can't be misinterpreted (I can't be blunt with everyone who asks me and I don't want to water the message down either).
Hope you're feeling better! Will check out the podcast.
Thank you for the shoutout! ❤️
It was an honor having you on the podcast, especially after being a subscriber for years 🙌🏻 onwards!
@Days and Words I mostly agree with this with there being just one major point of disagreement at the end. I don't think starting to immerse knowing absolutely nothing is a great idea for most people.
For people that are already good at learning languages or have great linguistic intuition, sure. But one must realize that the average person finds it much more difficult. I made the mistake of trying to learn Japanese (a very difficult language for English speakers) through mostly immersion very early, and after many months and even years, my progress has been abysmal.
I later learned that I was missing the *comprehensible* part of Comprehensible Input. When I would immerse, I was immersing with things that I understood almost not at all.
So for slower learners, like myself, I would suggest either immersing only a little and doing conscious study and vocab learning.
Or, make sure you immerse *a lot* in *very easy* content (for young children ideally or comprehensible input videos) and then slowly build up to more difficult content. Do not make my mistake of listening to tough content from the beginning.
I think there's definitely a sliding scale and it's different for every person. I also like doing a mix of concious study, vocab and listening reps. Having said that I still don't ever use Duolingo as I think even for basic vocab study there are just so many better options out there.
"I don't think starting to immerse knowing absolutely nothing is a great idea for most people."
I'm saying that you've got to immerse in order to increase comprehension. I'm saying that waiting until you understand something means you'll be waiting forever.
So I'm not saying that if you immerse for 5 hours and understand literally nothing, you should keep going. That's NOT what I'm saying. I'm saying that if you don't start immersing, then no matter what else you do, you'll never understand anything.
You’ll learn some things with Duolingo. It’s definitely not enough to just use it by itself though.
I like it
Watch the bit about the Paradox. Right on 14:00
Great video as always! I have to thank you again for your idea that you gave me I want to say a year or two ago probably 2 years ago where you watch the movie that you've seen so many times but watch it 50 times in your target language and break it up. That has gained me so much vocabulary and I really really appreciate that so much! I've taken that message and I love anime so much. So what I will do is find an anime that only has one season and anywhere from 6:00 to 13 episodes and they could be 20 minutes or 1 hour episodes. I will watch the entire series in my target language with no subtitles at all just trying to see if I can get cues from facial expressions, surroundings, body language or things that happened in the episodes. Then I will watch it in the target language all over again with the subtitles in the target language and watch it all the way through and see so I can match what I'm hearing with what I'm seeing and vice versa. Then I will watch it a third time in my target language but with the subtitles in English or vice versa to see how much I actually understood and picked up. sometimes I'm extremely proud of how much I actually picked up and learned and sometimes I'm like oh ouch I need more practice, lol. I've been doing dreaming Spanish for a few months now I want to say maybe 3 months now and absolutely love it. That has also helped me quite a bit.
So glad you were feeling up to making a video, but I’ll bet you’re exhausted now. Even though you may feel like it’s the same thing you’ve said a million times before, timing is everything and I needed this message today.
Videos take a while so I didn't have COVID when I actually filmed it. I only spoke to Kate and Nate like a full week after I saw their video.
Duolingo is a publicly traded company. Their goal is to drive shareholder profits above all else.
From that lens, how are they going to make the money? By getting new people that don't know how to acquire a language and keep them engaged as long as possible.
I'm not sure if you're saying this to make a point about politics, or if you genuinely don't fully understand what "Publicly Traded Company" means, so I'll help.
1. Publicly traded companies are not necessarily more shareholder-controlled than privately traded companies. What you are referring to, probably, is that a public company is under more scrutiny due to the diversification of interest combined with the fact that there are certain metrics a public company legally must report (often called "annual/quarterly reports"), which make the company's value fluctuate more as a factor of actual results, whereas private companies tend to be valued heavily on faith in the team. The way in which shareholders believe in the company affects this, however.
2. Shareholder control does not mean shortsightedness (although it usually does). Many companies do jump straight into shortsightedness, but some famous examples which didn't are Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Uber. These companies nearly faced ruin multiple times by refusing to take profit, instead investing all earnings (revenue and investment dollars) into continued growth with the goal of monopoly. Monopoly, contrary to popular belief, requires unmatched excellence to attain. After everyone else is dead, then you can pull a Microsoft and never build a single good thing ever, but to become the only one, you have to make everyone else so irrelevant that no one remembers they ever existed. This is a way of maximizing shareholder value, but it's method is by building a better product. Therefore, no, Luodingo being bad is not because it's public.
All that being said, your framing is fundamentally incorrect. You don't understand what products are. If you think Luodingo is trash, its because you dont unserstand it. Its not a tool to teach you a language, its a videogame that makes you work just hard enough so that you and everyone around you believe you have something to brag about to monolingual people.
If you think the entire language learning industry is worth what Luodingo is worth, then you need to think about just how large the market for Americans to feel superior to others is.
Most people who are clueless about human nature think we get things because they serve a purpose. This is rational. Humans are not rational. We only pay for things that tell us a story about ourselves that we want to believe. Everything from what you spend your money on, spend your attention on, which ideas you parrot, how you speak, everything is based off our need to have an identity which requires constant attention to maintain.
@@GrizikYugno-ku2zs I'm not really sure what you've said that contradicts what I've said. Duolingo is delivering for its shareholders by creating a product that ostensibly is about teaching a language, but in reality is just about capturing attention as long as possible like RUclips, TikTok or a video game.
Same reason why it's in Tinder's best interest to keep you single.
@@clownonabike exactly this! I think it's totally possible to make a profitable platform that actually does facilitate optimal language acquisition, but doing so is in direct odds with the big tech model.
Users are expensive to acquire and when you either need to offer them hundreds and thousands of hours of native content or accept that they will have a short account lifetime before they move onto something that meets their needs, it's much easier to slow down the whole process to keep people engaged as long as possible.
@@GrizikYugno-ku2zsLike Toby said, nothing you've said contradicts his actual point.
I think Duolingo is actually worse than described here. As someone with a decent amount of Spanish, I tried "testing out" to get to stuff I was uncomfortable with. But modern Duolingo uses some sort of SRS system that is independent of the unit you're in. So, you can frequently do an entire unit and not encounter any of the content it claims it will teach you because it spends every lesson "reviewing" earlier sentences, words, and ideas.
In other words, you can't really test out to go faster anymore. There is a maximum speed it allows you to go, and it's really, really slow.
THANK. YOU.
❤
I'm not convinced you can get a 100% off-topic unit, or at least I haven't seen one. There are "SRS" exercises in regular lessons, and there are "personalised practice" lessons completely based on their "magic".
The quality of the selection is poor, though, often showing me the same sentences over and over, making me wonder what the process looks like.
Not sure what they optimise for in their A/B tests.
Yep. It is insufferably slow now. You can spend one hour everyday and not make much progress.
@@cmfrtblynmb02 That would explain... Almost a decade ago I used it to learn swedish for about a year of consistent practice. Combined with swedish youtube videos and SRS I actually got somewhere with duolingo. Duolingo gave me a structure and a path. It worked.
Ten years later and... yeah it's absolutely not recommended
I had used Duolingo for about 2 and a half months for my Dutch and after that just dropped it, 'cause it was just too slow and would basically not teach me anything except for maybe 2 words a week, so I just quit and started focusing more on watching Dutch RUclipsrs
That's the way to go. I did the same thing with Spanish. Some podcasts that I used to understand less than 30%, today I can understand more than 80% without even thinking too hard. It's a really great feeling.
@@travisashley2904can you give me suggestions for Spanish podcasts?
SpanishPod101, Dreaming Spanish... after doing enough that literally just google "Podcast espanol de mexico" or something that concerns the dialect you want to learn.
@@daysandwords thanks alot ❤️
I have a subscription to the dreaming Spanish platform and I absolutely love it! There are thousands of videos and it tracks how much you watch and it kind of helps motivate me to see how many hours of accumulated. They have super beginner videos beginner videos intermediate and advanced and there are multiple topics that get more and more interesting as you progress through intermediate and advanced levels. Also Lamont had mentioned a while ago that he learned from someone else that you take a video or a movie that you've watched that you know the words to and watch it 50 times and break it up in different ways. That has helped me tremendously! I watched it 50 times and the first 50 times I watched it and my target language with no subtitles, the second time I watched it in my target language with the subtitles in the target language as well, then another 20 times in my target language with my native language subtitles and then the remaining 10 I watched in my native language with the target language subtitles to see how much I was able to pick up. I picked up so many words that way.
I really liked that video, and it is so necessary. I use Duolingo because I think it is fun and low effort (low returns too, of course). But I usually do the first couple of lessons in the unit and then skip to the next unit, otherwise, it's insanely slow. I can't believe someone thinks they can learn a language only by doing Duolingo if they already used it for some time. But I think it can be a helpful (gamified) tool; e.g.: I like to do space repetition practice on Japanese characters, for example (which I am a beginner), or being able to speak in Latin (that I've learned in school) to "someone" that it's not my cat :D But like your advice, immersion is key, duolingo is a game that keeps me thinking about the languages I'm learning even when I am tired after a busy day or in my commute.
thanks for this comment i agree use it the same way and i guess the only way it is usefull
My boyfriend started using Duolingo to learn Chinese a few months ago. Having lived in China for many years, he can already speak Chinese at a decent level, and he learned the language through pure immersion: never did classes, never "studied", just by talking to people. And that's why he still can't read or write. I think Duolingo might be the only thing that could get him to work on his Chinese. That being said, I personally find it way too slow for me. Despite its gamification features (which can be pretty addictive, I admit), its method is quite old fashioned at its core: you learn through translation and not much else.
I used Duolingo to help me establish the habit of practising some Swedish daily. I found it helpful. That made me wonder what all the fuss was about.
And then you remarked about how it had changed since the late 2010s, which is when I last used it.
Jaha! Plötsligt förstod jag vad du menade! Jag lyssnar inte än ofta till någon svenska dagligt men jag anar att varje gång jag lyssnar på något svenskt content, även om jag inte förstår så mycket, jag tar ett till steg framåt. Och ibland märker jag någon skillnad med hur enkelt det blivit att uttrycka mig på svenska genom att skriva (även om inte än genom att prata).
I actually re-started using Duolingo (free version) recently to begin to learn Irish in ten minute chunks, although I'm also learning Spanish basically entirely through immersion (reading/watching YT videos full speed) - the same way I mostly learned Japanese. While you're 100% right if it's a big language like French or Spanish, I still feel Duolingo is useful in getting started in some of the smaller languages. Once I decide to seriously pursue Irish I'll delete Duolingo and just use Anki decks and immersion.
Bro should change his name to "I hate Duolingo"
I tried but in Australia it costs $800.
A half hour of a graded reader a day while looking up stuff you don't understand for a year will get you further than a decade of duolingo.
My argument for this is that Duolingo has diminishing returns rather than it doesn’t work at all. I made a lot of progress initially but, after 300 days, it seemed like my progress that I made after about 150 days was the same amount. There’s definitely things that I was able to understand, I couldn’t really speak and didn’t have the skills that I thought I should have after 300 days. I’ve made a lot more progress using a combination of Rosetta Stone, RUclips, podcast, and actual physical books. What I ended up doing that has been working. The fastest is I’ve been writing out scripts in Russian and reciting them on TikTok to practice.
It used to be diminishing returns that started at a reasonable level, and so it was worth using until those diminishing returns kicked in. That's what I did.
But now, it STARTS at a level about 1/10th as useful as basically anything else. That's not diminishing returns, that's a bloody waste of time.
There seems to be a golden rule. If a language learning app is developed in Estonia, it is good. If it is not developed in Estonia, it is not as good, and often bad.
Was Duolingo developed in Estonia? No. I rest my case.
You know Steven, it's funny you say that right now.
I can't say why, but you'll see.
lamont launches estonian language learning service?
It was developed in Pittsburgh, a rust belt city in the US, by the same guy who invented Captcha.
@@Gabe-no5zy I'll not hold that against Pittsburgh though. Any city with a rookie pitcher throwing 101mph and a bible verse embroidered on his glove gets my approval. 😂
I always test out on the Duolingo units, if I don’t know any words, I’ll close out of it, and repeat the units. I honestly feel like I learn faster with Anki/Duo spaced repetition than watching tv or reading. Of course, I also listen to a lot of music, and speak to a lot of Spanish people, so after I learn the words, I generally hear them used or use them almost immediately after.
Duolingo used to be amazing lol it got me into Portuguese back in like 2014. Now I only ever use it as a warm up to my actual studying and just a way to get into the Russian or Chinese or whatever mood lol I also really hate they don’t update the duo store 🤦🏻♀️ it has so much potential, they used to have a pick up line lesson for Portuguese through the store 😂
I liked the part where you mentioned immersion and said it shouldn't take that long to learn the basics. I started Spanish in 2017 but I still have a hard time understanding spoken Spanish since I don't immerse that often. Same story with Portuguese actually. I can read a decent level of Portuguese, but my comprehension is so bad, I don't even claim to understand it.
She would learn more just doing comprehensible input like an hour a day and nothing else
Yeah I mean we know that, and she knows that. But that wasn't what the video was about.
@@daysandwords True
What you saying make so much sence. The reason that it so much easier for a Swede to learn english than german, even though german is a closer language, is because we have so much english speaking TV with subtitles but almost no german speaking TV.
Conheci o canal a pouco tempo e estou gostando muito dos conteúdos. Você faz um trabalho maravilhoso por aqui! Parabéns!!
I unsubscribed and resubscribed just to check if anything happens with the subscribe button when you say "subscribe". Nothing happens, only when I click "subscribe" again. So now I messed up your statistics for nothing.
I think you need to not have been subscribed recently, and also you being a channel member might mess with it.
It does work normally. You should see it in other videos (by other people, I mean).
Maybe it requires a specific phrase? Or it only works when said in an American accent (as most of the training data comes from the US)?
I've seen it before on other channels, not sure what exactly they said in which way.
I think the problem was that he did it too early in the video? Or he didn't say the full phrase? Subscribe, like and hit the bell?
@@francegamble1Hmm, no, you don't have to say that. It's supposed to listen out for the word "subscribe". I'll fiddle with the subtitles later, they might have something to do with it.
@@daysandwords I know it usually does it. Lol. I think it is funny when it happened the first time.
Honestly I stopped using Duolingo after your previous video a while back, so many better ways to learn another language: dictation, reading, watching TV, speaking to people. But personally for me, not Duolingo
Hey it's me again and i'm back with a couple of questions...
oh and somdthing worth mentioning is that my goal is not at all to become fluent, but rather something like low B1
1. I'm, at most, willing to spend about 20 minutes a day learning Hebrew. Say if i were watch an episode a day of a show in that language, would that be enough to make significant progress
2. Should I use subtitles when watching? Currently, when watching a simple kids show such as spong ebob loolll but dubbed, i'm able to understand or at least reckognis about half the words i hear and from context i can make out most sentences? Is this too easy and therefore no subtitles is better as it reflects the realword where this is not gonna be a thing.
3.Will listening comprehension also increase my output and ability to speak it by much?
4. I'm currently facing a barrier with the linguistic side of specifcally hebrew and that is learning how to speak in past and future tesne (it's a complicated system and it's diffrent for every verb and stuff). would u say i PRIORITISE the grammer type stuff before i try getting cmprehensible input, or is it a waste of time?
Absolute hands down to this video: if you like to study grammar as analytical knowledge, go do so. But don't ever say that it's a good way to grasp the complexity of a language, when it can hinder it because you're consciously thinking about the language.
I am not sure if duolingo had an update, or if french is just different, but i can do a whole spanish unit in like 30 minutes. I dont know how it took her an hour and a half to do two circles.
It sounds like YOU'RE the exception here... My experience lines up with hers. What OS is this on?
My Duolingo experience is very different depending on the language. As I was already strong to fluent in English, German, Spanish and Italian, I got a good foundation in French very quickly (and am doing the same in Portuguese, where I admittedly can already understand a lot of native content just from Spanish). Polish should theoretically be pretty good, having finished the course, but I paralyze completely when trying to actually converse with somebody. Got to find some videos there to save something from that time sink. Dutch building from German has me actually able to productively converse in the language, and I suspect I'd actually pass a B1 or B2 test. On the other hand, the Hebrew course seems to be in "turbo mode" and I can't possibly keep up with the vocabulary that is introduced too quickly and never reviewed. I had some fun doing Japanese there, but having no realistic application, I dropped it for Portuguese, as I move to Brazil in a couple of months.
I dabbled in Rosetta Stone for Spanish back when I was a teenager in the early 2000s and never really learned anything from it, so in my early 30s when I actually did decide to go all in and learn Spanish I decided to stay away from these types of courses.
Honestly, what helped me the most was buying a really good book with tons of exercises on verb conjugation and I worked through conjugation in every tense over the course of like 3 or 4 months and kinda filled in vocabulary along the way. And then I made friends who I could text in spanish so that I could have conversations at a slower pace.. and then I made friends in person who don't speak any English so that I could actually start speaking and after that my spanish capabilities increased exponentially. If I were to ever learn another language, I would take a similar approach again because it worked well for me.
i use duolingo as an additional tool but not as my main way of learning, i think that duolingo is great to learn some keypoints ect getting familiar with the constructions of sentences but beside of that i watch a lot of youtube videos of people teching the language in small quality videos :D and ofcourse using the laanguage :) all combined works very well for me.
ahh and my plan is i do 2 circles in duolingo a day ( usually 5 lessons and 1 story) this way i take 3 days to complete 1 unit and don't rush the stuff that causes me to forget it. after i feel like it sticks pretty well what i've learned :D
But you don't need the Duolingo. That's what this video argues quite well. Whenever you do anything else that works, the Duolingo becomes useless.
Better thing to do for five minutes a day would be reviewing sentences from immersion.
Since Duolingo doesn’t even have those little grammar tidbits anymore I find it completely useless.
In 2020 I did the entire French course (for German natives) on Duolingo. I must have spent at least an hour per day. At the end I was able to somewhat read French, but my listening comprehension was non-existant. So about what you say: Duolingo doesn't get you far and it takes way to much time. It is ineffective.
But: At the moment I am working on the Hindi course of Duolingo. The Hindi course is especially bad.(E.g. the machine voices are terrible. No explanation on the grammar.) Again: Progress is painfully slow. And that is exactly what I need. I am dyslexic. The endless repetitions are the only way for my dysfunctional brain to make the Devanagari characters stick. If all I get out of this course is the ability to read basic Hindi vocabulary in Devanagari, it has done a good job for me.
Duolingo is a tool. Know how and when to use it, what it can do for you and its limitations. You may be better off using an other tool.
I feel like you've perfectly described why it's terrible and then said "So, like, it's a tool that you can use..." - Um, yeah, but it's terribly slow and ineffective, which is exactly what I'm saying...
Are you sure YOU didn't write this video? Lamont Durdan... Is that you?
@@daysandwords I did't make this clear in my first post: Yes, I currently use the Duolingo Hindi course. But only a few lessons a day, maybe 10 to 15 minutes max. The intent is not to learn Hindi. (Duolingo is not able to really teach you Hindi.) But to learn reading Devanagari. As a neat side effect I also learn some basic vocabulary. Due to my dyslexia something slow and repetitive like Duolingo works good. In my very particular situation. Others may be better off with something else. Once I can read देवनागरी sufficiently good I have to ditch Duolingo and find better ressources to really learn Hindi. As you said: Even if you could learn a language with Duolingo, it is inefficient due to its slowness. I realized all this only while watching your video. I had all this somewhere in vague fragments in the back of my mind. But it never really manifested as an explicit, coherent insight. Your video surfaced it.
There is an other good use of Duolingo: Wasting time with some Duolingo lessons is for sure better then "scrolling through social media". But then your intent is not to learn a language, but to waste your time. Learning some aspects of a language becomes a side effect. Learning anything even slightly useful or relevant is better then social media.
Yes, learning to read different alphabets is one more legitimate use of Duolingo that I have pointed out many times, but it stops there.
Thank you
Recommend any Spanish/ Mexican RUclipsrs?
wonderful video
I used delingo 4 3 months... it taught me words.. and helped me read.. but i wasnt close to speaking with a person. But i can go to the corner store now and say stuff like Dos Pollo tacos.. and they laugh every time but they know what im saying... and at 1st they would say.. you know we speak English... lol and id tell them im trying to learn street Spanish.. lol. They r cool and talk to me in Spanish and they will point and say the word like im 1.. when they aint busy..
The crazy thing is I used to be a member of the DLDL. Needless to say, I wouldn't touch Duolingo with a ten foot pole now that I have acquired intermediate Mandarin after a year of 20 minutes of input a day.
I started learning German in 2005-2006 in Highschool. In College from 2008-2009 I had to take German 150, 201, 202 for my degree. I worked in Germany from 2016-2020 and met my wife here, who is German. We moved to the states from 2020-2023, but recently moved back to Germany. In April I decided to get serious about learning German. I use Duolingo, but I only do one lesson a day to show the streak. (It takes about 3-4 minutes for a lesson) I do this because I started with Duolingo, but quickly did research and switched to comprehensible input. It's been 93 days of me listening and reading compressible input for 2-4 hours every day and like 5 days ago it just started to click that I can listen and understand 95% of the children's show "Bluey" in German. The point is, I only use Duolingo as a marker for how many days I have been studying and that language learning is really difficult. The Bluey breakthrough was a good feeling, but I still have a long way ahead of me to actually become fluent. It's okay though, I don't stress about it and try to enjoy the journey.
5:18 wait what?? i need more info on this! 😮😮
What do you mean? There are heaps.... what country do you mean?
I’m in Canada. RUclips thinks I’m in Italie (via Surfshark). RUclips serves me up ads in Italian. 😅
Oh Wow, I didnt know about the subscribe button! It worked! Haha
i have a question lamont, I am intermediate speaker of english ( b1-b2 ) i can understand your videos without subtitles and at any rate understanding youtube is easier than netflix, however i want to get to a level where i can understand netflix easily too. do you have any recommendations of the steps i have to go through? something along the lines of " watching the first time with english subtitles and then without or watching the same series for 4/5 times exchanging between subtitles and without? i have no idea in what way i should be approaching this, with all of your experience on language learning, what would be your tips ?
My two cents: Just jump levels with Duolingo. One does the as early as possible immersion and jumps levels as much as one can so... it ends with B1-B2 practice in Duolingo pretty fast, Trying to keep it challenging. No point in learning le chat 1 000 000 times. You already know it.
I said that in this video. Those are MY 2 cents haha.
great content thanks
I’m subscribed to Duolingo because I get bored and don’t feel like doing anything. It was simply a matter of passing time. I didn’t want to add more games, so I thought this would be better.
I was so disappointed. Although I paid for it simply as a way to pass time, I found it mind-numbing boring. I wish I hadn’t.
Fortunately they also had new math and music courses. I started the math, and it appears to be new math. Nothing like the way I learned. No wonder kids these days don’t know their math.
If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t. I’m learning even less than I thought I would. I tried it several years ago and it was a much better course. Progress doesn’t always mean improvement.
I had to dreams that some1 was talking to me in Spanish during the time i was trying. But in dream i didnt understand anything...lol but i took those 2 dreams as my brain changing and ready to move 4word.. just guessing. But i gave up.
Hi everyone 👋, where do people take tests to see what level you are at on a particular language?
I, being weird, and having paid for the app decided 200 or so days away to complete one year as a streak and stop Duolingo.
My favourite system at present is to watch UK or US TV series with French subtitles.
All, I want to do is be able to communicate not challenge Dumas or Hugo!
Also the leagues are nonsense as the front runner in the diamond league must spend 30 hours a day! In order to achieve their points totals!
Also why would someone with six years learning still be ‘studying’ with Duolingo?
The only positive thing is the regular nag to study
Working slowly and not working is the same.
A person says they literally didn't understand one word when trying to listen after a year of studying. And that's the anecdotal evidence you're willing to take at face value.
The Duolingo paradox you mentioned implies that if you, for example, try to do listening along with Duolingo, well that's dumb because at that point you don't need Duolingo but ONLY listening.
Yeah you're very reasonable and your Spanish sounds great 👍
Why would he make that up? It makes him look stupid and he never wanted to be included in any video, he was just telling of his experience.
My Spanish isn't great but that's cos I've hardly done any. But I learned it for 6 months and I'll say mine's is better than a certain person who's been using Duolingo Spanish for 3 years. 😬
@@daysandwords again, your reasoning is flawless 👏👍
@@raulgarcia8627Gracias. ❤
I recently got into learning Spanish (like 6 days ago) and It’s my 1st attempt at learning another language so idk what I’m doing. I decided to use games to help me learn, I removed any game that didn’t have Spanish audio or Spanish subtitles from my console. My question is would Duolingo combined with gaming be a decent way to learn?
maybe watch the video one more time...
Learning from Duolingo is like driving a car that can move only 1 kilometer per hour. Yeah, technically you could go with that from point A to point B, just as you technically could progress with Duolingo from A0 to A1. But why bother, just admit that the car is broken and move on to a better vehicle (or just walk). But the DL fans would claim it's a normal functioning car, very useful and even pay a monthly fee for using that car. Smh
Wow, Xioamanyc was able to learn German in basically one day, by memorising 100 sentences or whatever, and then was conversational in German, because he had an UNREHEARSED conversation with a GENUINE German in real time LIVE.
You should just try that.
Same issue for me... I remember I spend like 300 days in Japanese with Duolingo and, the first conversation I tried to have, I couldn't understand anything, not even one word.
Hey man, can you explain to me what you mean by immersing. E.g. is it merely playing a podcast while driving or running. If its that, how would i be getting comprehensible input if im only listening without looking and seeing subtitles or activity happening in a show or a video. Can you help me answer this?
Thanks !
Immersing means spending time with your eyes or ears in the language, so yes, listening to a podcast while running is immersion, although that is PASSIVE immersion which is different to active immersion.
What language is this for? It makes a big difference whether we're talking about Japanese or German.
If you are using Duolingo, you clearly have more toilet time per day than is medically recommended.
One positive thing though, once you test out of all the lessons, you can use the practice function to give you random sentences while you wait in line at the burger joint
Although I'll accept that as a better use Duolingo than pretty much any other use, I'm also becoming more and more convinced of the need for us to spend time just waiting for stuff, not doing anything and just kind of... soaking in the atmosphere. I think depending where you are (physically), as a language learner, this can actually be hugely beneficial.
I'm confused, why would it take years to go through the French or German duolingo tree? I did the Swedish one in two months without putting in crazy hours (a couple hours a day at most but less than that on average) and it felt like an excellent introduction. Are the trees that bad in some languages? Or are some people just horribly slow. Each lesson takes me from 1 minute to 5 at the very most once it gets much more complex.
It also took me years to understand spoken English after learning to read and write it and that was despite watching movies and shows with subtitles. Developing an ear for a language can be very difficult and Duolingo doesn't really help with that because it's not what it does, it gives you mainly just one or two voices, that sometimes sound robotic. It will work better if your target language already sounds like a language you know, for instance my first language is French and I can hear Italian or Spanish words and sometimes guess their meaning without much knowledge of these languages due to how much they sound like French.
Swedish is also known for being difficult to hear, and many syllables can be skipped when speaking it. German is much easier, for example.
You can also just skip to the next unit once you master one.
I am not here to defend Duolingo but clearly a lot of the blame against it is user error and not a specific Duolingo failure. There's always so much exaggeration like that person doing what must be 20 minutes of Swedish a day at most then complaining about understanding nothing. I could understand bits here and there after 2 months, but I did as you say, I started watching videos in Swedish early on (there are many videos meant for beginners).
So, you might be missing a few things.
1: The "big languages" are HUGE trees compared to the languages like Swedish. Like 5 or 6 times the length.
2. WHEN did you do the Swedish tree? I also did the Swedish tree and I did a fair bit (like 45 minutes a day) and it took about 8 months, but this was years and years ago. As this video points out, Duolingo now ENFORCES a slower pace that is just horrendously slow.
Guessing from what you've written, you're talking about old Duolingo when it was the TREE not the path.
Basically, language learning is my job, and I check these things routinely, and get feedback from hundreds of comments. It's very unlikely that I'm making an error that you just happened not to make and more likely that you're comparing old Duolingo with new Duolingo.
I taught myself French without Dulingo. Now I am teaching myself Spanish through French without Dulingo. I am an American without any French or Spanish heritage. Immersion is the only way to learn.
Dulingo is at least if not more useless than the French and Spanish that I took in school.
I have to argue with you Lamont. As a B1 in American Sign Language. Immersion was not the way for me to learn ASL. I had to take classes where I used the language to learn and remember the language. Now, this is the ONLY language (excluding British Sign language, etc) I say that Immersion won't work at the start. I can't exactly say why, but if you have an idea, I'd be curious to hear about it!
Maybe there just isn't enough content in ASL to fully immerse?
Come on now, Sign Languages are by definition, an exception. I'm not trying to be ableist but sign languages are obviously not going to work in the same way as vocal languages.
Also, are you mistaking what I'm saying for "You ONLY need to immerse" - because I'm not saying that.
I'm saying that immersion MUST happen. And I would still think that should be the case with ASL but it's obviously going to be different.
thing is, you're going to see better results not "studying" with duolingo and just watching native content, instead. after watching hours upon hours of tv shows in my target language without ever touching a textbook I was surprised how quickly I grasped the basics when I actually started to study, because it was just solidifying what I had already processed in my brain through input. this is how we learn our native languages, too--we immerse first and gain our understanding of how the language actually works later.
for beginners it is CRUCIAL to get that input first, and a lot of it. meanwhile duolingo doesn't even seem like a good supplement to any kind of learning method.
Love your content Lamont, you're speaking from my heart! I feel guilty about still having Duolingo installed on my phone, but I don't see it as a real learning tool, rather than a distraction. I can confirm that it's absolutely useless, there are many better ways to reach fluency!
I wonder if we had someone watch toddler and preschool shows in the language and another person do duolingo for a month... which person, doing the same amount of time, would have a better grasp of the language?
I think "a better grasp" would be very difficult to measure and that's half the problem here.
People don't realise that when you're subconsciously acquiring it, you don't feel like you're learning it but then one day suddenly all this stuff comes bubbling out. So I think the Duolingo person would do better on a test but the toddlers' shows person would be poised to leave them in the dust.
@@daysandwords I think it would be an interesting experiment. 😂
Huh - when I used to use Duolingo (years and years ago) - it wasn't that bad. It took maybe a month for a level? (A1->A2). Of course- the vocabulary was hit and miss - but it still seemed somewhat useful than.
Yeah it's been nerfed beyond belief now
0:32 I want my money back! The colours didn't dance around the button, I even tried unsubscribing in case that affects it, But still nothing!
Oh wait I didn't pay any money? Then I want my time back! Wait, It took more time because I kept backing up and tried refreshing the page, So really it's my fault? Darn!!!
So, I can confirm that you have to have NOT been subscribed, at least recently.
It only does that for new viewers.
@@daysandwords Truly a shame, Us folks who been watching for years don't get the nice colours.
Yeah it's like showing up early to the airport... All they do is de-prioritise you, whereas if you show up 30 minutes before take off, you get rushed through like you're a celebrity.
I'm learning to read Japanese with duolingo. It's slow but it's nice for maintaining my Japanese while I do other things.
The Japanese course has definitely had a revamp which makes me feel like it's decent compared to the dog poo level it was a few years ago.
Get the Tadoku graded readers, they're free. They start at a below toddler level, and end at an almost native level.
I recommend satori reader if you want to get good faster, learned tons of vocab and grammar from it. Works good if you’re intermediate
I've found Duolingo useful for learning alphabets and characters, to some extent at least, but that might be it.
Yes, I agree.
Duolingos German is terrible. Learning Spanish as a German that didn’t make sense. US company 🤦♀️
I learned Japanese to a native standard in just one day watching anime and drinking 15 pints of beer.
I gotta try this
11:30 Period. All those people who have gone through 30 textbooks over the course of 5 years and wonder why they can't understand even the simplest podcasts or shows, that's why.
Whenever I talk to people about Duolingo, everyone always says I only use it because xy but xy can be accomplished much faster and more effectively with other options. So it's a waste of time either way.
I have a different view on duolingo. It is looked at as an "easy" introduction. But for me it is something else. If you're smart enough, you will intuitively understand the grammar, even if don't know the terminology. I'm halfway into B1 in French, and I can read almost anything. I can read newspapers and books in French. Of course there are some words I have to look up now and then, but I understand most of it, so I know I can keep on reading. Although spoken French is sometimes hard, because they speak so fast, I at least understand most slow French. The biggest problem with duolingo is that I don't speak French for shit. But I have a really good fundament for doning that in the future. I could either move to a French speaking area for a period of time or use iTalkie for practicing. I would probably use much less time than starting from scratch....
That USED to be the case, but these days Duolingo is just SUCH. A. SLOW. INTRO.
DUCTION.
TO.
THE.
LANGUAGE.
French is mostly English pronounced differently. You don't understand it because of Duolingo, you understand it because it's obvious.
@@daysandwords Ok. But here's the twist. I'm Norwegian...... and I speak a North Germanic language.... I also learn duolingo German (almost done), and that is to me somewhat in the way you say.... but French is left field for me. That is actually why I chose it, because it would be the most challenging West European language for me (except Greek and Finnish). It is actually (theoretically) more challenging than for a Swedish native, because Swedish has adopted many French words (trottoar, affär and so on) of obvious historic reasons.
You obviously have enough English that French isn't truly foreign though.
Sorry but there's no "twist" extreme enough to make Duolingo a genuinely good use of time in something like French. Check out Inner French.
@@daysandwords Thanks for the tip.
How were these people’s reading abilities?
Chismecito 👀
Try watching before commenting on videos. It'll change your life.
For smaller languages duolingo also has really glaring flaws that make it significantly less useful. In Hebrew, to know how to pronounce a new word, you have to either hear it or you need the vowel dot markers which are usually only present in kids content or learners content. Hebrew Duolingo frequently both doesn't have audio OR the vowels, making those slides essentially useless because the word could theoretically have like 9 pronunciations
I'd personally say that even watching shows in your target language with subs in a language you are comfortable in, is more effective than using duolingo.
I would definitely say that.
Small language.... Lithuanian? Ancient Albanian Sign Language?
12:57 Do you mind explaining what you're doing here? What do the numbers in the margin mean?
This B roll was filmed about 5 years ago but I think I was just trying to write down 3000 French phrases or idioms basically.
@@daysandwords Gotcha! I do something similar from the Italian content I consume but yours look so much neater and organized that I figured I'd ask :)
@@viridianiteHaha normally mine isn't. I had this idea that if I did more "organised" study I'd be better. These days I just let the subconscious do its thing.
Let me disagree about the utter uselessness of Duolingo. For me, "Duolingo" should be replaced with "my school program", because it seems I learned much more grammar on the Duolingo English course (I'm not a native) in around half a year than on my full school program from 5 to 11 years. Duolingo proposes a practical approach to grammar study, it's really more effective than any textbook (since I haven't get almost anything from them).
But Duolingo shouldn't be overrated, I agree with you on that. It can never replace immersion, just be a helpful tool to get acquainted with the language structure. For me, there are 3 ways that have proven to be useful: 1) Duolingo, 2) immersion (using AI for explanations), 3) communication with other speakers.
"Duolingo" should be replaced with "my school program""
The other way around. What you said means taking Duolingo, which you were already doing, and replacing it with a school program.
You want to do the opposite.
" Duolingo proposes a practical approach to grammar study, it's really more effective than any textbook (since I haven't get almost anything from them)."
Yeah, textbooks suck, but Duolingo is famous for having a terrible approach to grammar study, so I think your argument falls down there.
You got fluent by listening to and reading lots of English. That's it.
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
I Disagree About Your Stance On Duolingo. I've Been Learning Italian For Over Two-Hundred Day, And I Can Recognize Most Of The Words In A Short Story.
I Also Spent Six Month In Italy. I Didn't Practice Much While There.
But you can't just disagree with evidence presented in the video, unless you can refute it as being untrue, which it isn't.
Why did Kate have to spend like 20 minutes repeating the FRENCH for CAT, which is basically the same as the English?
Why did you USED to be able to go through the course at 5x the rate you can now?
Your evidence is basically "I learned a small amount of Italian in almost 7 months, so you're wrong."
Yes, you will learn a small amount of a language that is somewhat similar to one you already speak. But with something good, you can learn a LOT of that language.
I think Duolingo does work, it;s just very slow. I am with you that it wouldn't work in 7 days
My position is that it wouldn't do very much even in 700 days. Anything it did do in that time would be able to be done in about 2 months of most other things.
@@daysandwords it got me to a conversational level in Swedish when I first got into language learning, it just took a long time. I've achieved much more in korean in less time using other methods.
@@michaelshort2388Yeah but you do realise I'm saying that it's now forcing people to do it at literally 1/10th the speed right?
It sounds like you're saying "It's ok but not great" but that's what it USED TO be, now it's actively terrible. It's not the same thing as what you learned your Swedish with.
I've learnt more than 2 words a week on duolingo 😂 one should listen to swedish else where but duolingo taught me the bulk of what I know of swedish
So... you don't speak Swedish then? In all seriousness, you need close to 10,000 words to be mostly fluent (numbers and ideas of fluency may vary). Even if you learned a word a day with duolingo, you'll never reach fluency. You've dunning kruger'ed yourself.
@@athenagreen5390I think that was their joke. I don't think they mean this comment seriously.
I didn't use Duolingo and Lamont had to teach me "andvändbar". See, the green bird is necessary!
When I saw your hat I thought it had the icon for the conservative party of canada on it, but that wouldn't make much sense. What is it actually?
It's the Chicago Cubs but it's their "City Connect" hat, which will only make sense if you know what that even means. In case you don't:
It's basically Nike and New Era coming up with a way to make more uniforms to sell more merch. But as someone who lives in the country that they send all merch to be cleared at below-cost price, that doesn't bother me.
should i give up on my 1180 day streak?
Get to 1200, have a little celebration party and then say an active goodbye to it. It'll feel better than just "giving up" or letting it lapse. Think of it as a celebration of what you've done and now a moving on to better things.
@@daysandwords ok thanks
@@NotJulius44how was the party?
@@vytah i'm using easy french & german on youtube now 😂
You can repeat the phrases, but do you actually know what they mean? Know how or why they work?
That should be how language works.
I'm learning Chinese, hsk 2 level, and Duolingo sucks. Like, not in the way you mention that "doesn't really teach you", like in the way it simply teaches you wrong, and doesn't know about the languages they are teaching. Because, for example, they tell you the bathroom is called this way, xi shou jian (sorry, I don't have pinyin hahaha), and no, that is restroom, bathroom, as a place in the house where is a bath, is yushi, so is teaching me wrong.
For italian is a little bit better, but it just through at you, words and verbs and doesn't explain you shit. Like for example, how to turn sustantives into plurals,. it has a rule, and if you learn through duolingo, you have to figure it out on your own, like reinvent the wheel again, why would you want that?
I still like it for Italian, but to learn a few new words, not to learn the language.