I live in Slovenia for last 6 years, and I barley understand Slovene. I do Polish in Duolingo for 30 days, and I think I'll soon be better in Polish then Slovene.
Yeah, I lived in Finland for a bit over a year, and still the majority of Finnish I know is from Duolingo. If you don't live in the country for fun, it's actually really hard to learn the language
I love Duolingo, but I think they need to really focus on 2 things: 1) bring back the discussion section. It's so useful, but unfortunately at this point the only comments you can see are old, so new sentences and lessons don't have any comments to read. 2) Maintain and expand all the languages, not just the 5 most popular ones! You mentioned some features, such as the stories, that I have never seen as a Swedish learner. It's become evident to me that they've been neglecting many of their courses. Swedish is a small course and far from sufficient if one wants to become fluent. It's lacking many features and categories. They spend all this effort developing these pointless social features while not spending an ounce of effort on the parts that actually matter for learning a language.
Yes! The update streamlined the big courses, which is still questionable, but ruined the smaller courses. For example Finnish was always limited but became useless for me over night. I haven't used Duolingo since the update
My only issues with duolingo is 1.) It doesn't teach you grammar. One of my biggest gripes is it doesn't teach you if a word is masculine or feminine, so I have no idea what suffixes I need to make it a plural, or which prefixes to turn it from "a/ an" to "the". 2.) It'll spend ages teaching me that "x" is the word for a specific thing. All questions use "x" as that word. Then I'll answer a question with "x" because that's what it's taught me, say it's wrong, and tell me it's a completely new "Y" that it's not yet taught me. How the heck was I supposed to know that?! 21 days into a Swedish streak with one freeze 😊
Reading through the discussion forum for most questions is quite helpful for learning grammar as people tend to share grammar tips there. Unfortunately, the forums are locked now but you can still see what people have written in the past.
It they have a whole tree just for grammar it will be good. A tree with comprehensible stories will make it perfect. And longer story like 15-30 mins like a podcast. These will help users learn fast but the problem with apps is that apps want you to learn as slow as possible to maximize their profit.
I really wish Duolingo had a feature that showed you how much progress you have made, like how many words you've learned and what not, and something that made it easier to practice things like vocabulary.
@@georgek5737 we used to have a full list that told you how long it had been since you had encountered a word or something. edit: it used to be visible on the website (computer) version. it's not there anymore, i just confirmed it
As a former Duolingo host, I could rant for hours about the fact that they gave us all of 60 days notice that they were shutting us down with a very patronizing letter saying how much they appreciated us. 🤬
i was SO upset when tips got replaced with "key phrases". i actually used to look at tips and write them down (imagine having a conjugation chart to refer to!!) but now i don't even look at them because it's just sentences that i'll see in the lessons. the explanations helped so much and it's made learning so much more difficult because it feels like now i'm expected to already know it. like how do i know what differentiates noun genders in russian if there are no articles and no tips to look at? edit: the second you mentioned legacy trophies, i thought of neopets.
the tips going bye-bye was honestly for me the last straw. It was bad enough that many of the course's tips had gotten funky in a bad way over the years but with the new stuff, yeah just useless. The tips was the only part of Duolingo that actually *taught* rather than just exercise
One simple way to force Duolingo to bring back the tips and the discussions: *Spam The Frick Out Of Their Flagging System* Anytime you get to a question where you don't understand the answer, hit the little flag button at the bottom and send them a message. But, and this is the most important part, make sure that you type in at the bottom where it gives you a chance to explain why you're flagging it that you don't understand the answer to this question and that you could have either learned the lesson through a tip or you could have gotten your answer by being able to post in the discussion section but since those features are no longer available you have no choice but to reach out to them. After they have read through millions of messages saying basically "You wouldn't have had to read this message if you still had these useful features," I guarantee you they will bring back those features! This will only work if an enormous amount of users start to do it, so please spread the word. Let your voice be heard and let them know that we will not settle for not having these features and that we want them back!
It's hilarious when friends tell me I can only really learn a language by "immersing myself in the culture completely"; otherwise, all the apps, studying, and resources I'm using are a waste of time. Me: "Sure. Let me just drop everything, quit my job, and move to another country with the $200 in my savings account."
Plus those are the friends that ARENT learning a language or improving themselves at all just attempting to dissuade YOU. Give it a couple years and then we’ll see 😉
Flashcard as much vocabulary as you can. Listen to Podcasts, read, and watch shows/movies in target language. Pick up some grammar here and there. That's my idea of immersion. Not necessarily moving to the country.
I feel that so hard! People that aren't just friends they are like family members for me, they told me that visiting other countries is way better to learn a language and to make you more mature. They say all the time when introducing themselves to other people, that they have visited many countries over the world, they tell the countries, as if they thought they were better by doing that. No, I'm not anyone to tell someone where I was and even if I didn't went to any country yet, what does it matter, we are all people, do I need to feel like the best, no. So I just calm down, don't listen and ignore such sentences completely. Even though they are really kind, and they love me and I can't be mad at them.
One gripe I have with Duolingo that others have pointed out is that it doesn’t explicitly teach you grammar rules, which is especially hard when learning Korean-for me, at least. It took messing up over and over to notice the difference between “walked up to the escalator” and “walked up the escalator” because I wasn’t catching the way the suffix changed.
I am really bad at memorizing, but when I actually understand a concept, I have no problems remembering it later. I cannot learn the duolingo way because it requires me to memorize things instead of explaining to me how and why some things happen the way they do. I really need the grammar of a language to fully understand and learn it, especially when we encounter grammatical structures or features you don't have in your own language. It could be soooo hard to grasp a concept when it doesn't even exist in your language to begin with, so i find extremely helpful to understand the inner workings of my target language.
this so much. i am going to understand how the grammar works better if you just tell me a rule to learn rather than trying to get me to intuit it by showing me several examples in a language i don't understand fully yet. i still use duolingo for french because i have a quebecois friend who has been able to explain grammar stuff to me, but i moved to lingodeer for korean even though it costs money. lingodeer is designed to teach asian languages to westerners, so it's much more explicit with grammar.
Aaaand they completely removed the stories from the korean learning path as well (which were available before) ugh. I supplement duolingo with lingodeer for korean grammar and it is very helpful in this regard. Lingodeer is basically the better duolingo, as it has native speaker reading/pronouncing each sentence out loud and does away with the whole translate into english thing to focus on teaching you the phrase more in depth. Plus extended grammar tips and practice. But oddly enough i get the word/sentence order easier in the correct order duolingo than in lingodeer, lol. The only downside is of course that it is a paid app instead free like duolingo but really worth it imo. (Drops is also a great app for vocab and hangul reading practice)
@@Bloomingtide yeah I do wish lingodeer had a free option because I really think it’s a higher quality app and they don’t seem to arbitrarily take things away
Yeah, I had that experience with Spanish, I succeeded in lessons on imperfect or something but felt like I was guessing. Once I covered the material in a way with grammar tables it was much clearer and my accuracy, speed and confidence. There used to be info you could read contributed with the courses but they ditched that in a catastrophically badly thought out set of changes which caused long forum dissent, that they started stamping out.
My daughter started second grade this year. She moved schools and got into a dual language program (All the Spanish speaking kids who are learning English are in the class and all the English speaking kids who want to learn spanish are in the class. It taught half in Spanish and half in English). All the other kids in the program started in kindergarten. The principal told us that they were willing to put her in the program, but if she was falling behind the other students, they would need to put her into a regular class. So I bought a duolingo family plan. Everyday we do enough to get at least one quest done so we can get the badge before the end of the month. My daughter was recently singled out in class and told how much better she is doing learning Spanish than all of the other students. So far I would say it was worth the money. I just wish learning a language wasn’t so hard, because even though my daughter is doing well, I’m struggling lol.
@@adminanonymous1521 It could also be the daughter is in an actual class alongside the app. And is surrounded by native speakers of that language in school.
Exposure is the best source of retention, no matter your learning speed. I can attest to how much maintenance I need to do to any of my languages that are lacking natural exposure but I'm trying to keep up competency.
Well, if it’s any consolation, children tend to absorb language far more easily than adults can. When I was like a first or second grader and my dad, I moved to Germany, I thought I would struggle with it, but I realized that I was absorbing the language so quickly that I didn’t even wanna speak English at home because it just clicked in my head that these are the phrases I’m supposed to say in order to say the certain things and it just became so easy.
100% agree with you. I’m so annoyed about the tips disappearing. They were so useful. Now when they introduce a new word or idea, you have no idea where it comes from or how you might use it in anything other than the one sentence they show you. It’s such a backward step for a purported “educator” to take. And nobody seems to talk about it. You’re the first person I’ve heard talk about it since it disappeared.
Duolingo NEEDS to see this video. I agree wholeheartedly with everything you said, you highlighted the positives and brought up ALL the same issues I have, even down to the getting the double XP from a friend quest and not being able to save it. I hope duolingo can see this and take notes....
Same! I just want it to give me some gentle reminders so I try to do it everyday on my own and maybe tell me milestones? Like 1 month streak, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, etc,.
I know what you mean! I've been using Duolingo steadily for about three years now, but my streak is only 30 days long because I was sick and unable to complete any lessons. I also broke my streak when I had covid last year... shame on me, not practicing French while out of my mind sick with covid! I know it's super important to practice a little each day over a long period of time, but sometimes life events get in the way.
it did the same for me, until i started actually wanting to keep it. and now to keep the days going i use it at midnight because im mostly on my phone at night
My recommendation is get streak freezers and set up notifications on your phone. Mentally Schedule one lesson right when you wake up or right before going to bed. If you can't do that I don't know how to help, routines help me. I have a 1300 day streak.
I loved the stories sooo much. I was so disappointed when they took them away. I had so many of the japanese a bunch of the japaense ones completed and I had so many more that I had unlocked that I was waiting to complete because they were so fun to me that I wanted to save them :( I really hope they bring the stories back closer to the way it was before.
@@luciferfaust The Japanese stories are completely gone now. I'm making up for it personally by abusing the lightning rounds and rank-ups after every main lesson until I feel confident enough with recalling the lesson to move on to the next part of the course.
I too hate that they took them away. Why Duolingo, why? Sometimes it's part of my daily quest to complete one, which is impossible since they are now embedded in the lesson path instead, as single steps otherwise unaccessible. I don't get it? 😢
Yes! You mentioned the tips! I’m learning French and have been since 2019, so I’m pretty far along. They started THE SUBJUNCTIVE the other day, something I knew was going to be a bit difficult because yes, I look at more language learning stuff than just DL, without even mentioning what it was that I was learning. And there is something called Guidebook, but when you click it, it only has sentences, no mention of what’s happening in the grammar at all. I personally have trouble truly learning something if I don’t know reasons for what is happening.
I'd really like Evan to try one of the less loved courses like Greek to see what Duolingo is like for the thousands of people who want to learn something other than English/French/Spanish/German. I'd love to hear all his thoughts about how different they are and what he thinks they need.
Gosh, and the zulu course. I know that probably not a lot of isixhosa and/or isizulu speakers work for duolingo but MAN. Its an oral language. The whole point is to get the pronunciation down cold. The grammar and writing is basically irrelevant. I wish there was a better way to improve your pronunciation especially for a click language. Oh well. Im happy they have one of my countries beautiful languages on the app even if the course absolutely needs work.
@@kakonthebed I’m learning Scottish Gaelic, and the lack of speaking is so annoying. I can spell the words but pronunciation is so different to what I would assume in English. I imagine Zulu is a million times worse.
@@parsnip1 Ouch that sucks. Yeah zulu is pretty ass because the language itself was never actually written until the colonials came. So the culture of the language, the poetry, and the entire point of it is mostly verbal. Its a beautiful spoken language so jt sucks that you can’t learn the spoken part. Welsh is also rather lovely.
I’m learning Greek on Duolingo now. What I’m struggling with is that there’s no “lesson” to show you how verb conjugations work before it jumps right into the questions. I want an option to watch a 3 minute video that explains it before I practice.
@@micahmorrill6966 Same with Hungarian, it doesn't explain basic grammar or anything, which is kind of important especially with an agglutinative language such as it that has such different grammar rules compared to English. Maybe it the future they'll add to the course, but considering how few people are actually learning Hungarian on Duolingo, it probably isn't one of their priorities.
I can’t agree more about the tips part. I’m learning Greek on Duolingo and sometimes I reallyyyyy neeeed to see an explanation about a new tense or whatever, and now that the tips are gone I feel so lost sometimes. The tips were so useful in the old Duolingo and explained the grammar simply and fantastically, it makes approximately 0.0% sense to get rid of them. Why Duolingo, why?? 😭😭
I started after the tips got removed, so I never even stood a chance. 😭 Idk how far in you are, but I'm finding that Language Transfer's Greek course explains the grammar stuff really well. You can't really do it on your way to places, but I've been getting around that by making Anki cards of the phrases you translate in the lessons so I can practice while waiting for buses and the like.
@@theredlioness2502 we are on the same wavelength I LOVE language transfer!! Fortunately I finished the podcast while Duolingo still had the tips so I understand the basic grammar now, but when it comes to tenses like κοιμόμουν (I was sleeping) I’m at a loss 😣. Good luck on your Greek journey, you should be fine as you sound very resourceful!!
One simple way to force Duolingo to bring back the tips and the discussions: *Spam The Frick Out Of Their Flagging System* Anytime you get to a question where you don't understand the answer, hit the little flag button at the bottom and send them a message. But, and this is the most important part, make sure that you type in at the bottom where it gives you a chance to explain why you're flagging it that you don't understand the answer to this question and that you could have either learned the lesson through a tip or you could have gotten your answer by being able to post in the discussion section but since those features are no longer available you have no choice but to reach out to them. After they have read through millions of messages saying basically "You wouldn't have had to read this message if you still had these useful features," I guarantee you they will bring back those features! This will only work if an enormous amount of users start to do it, so please spread the word. Let your voice be heard and let them know that we will not settle for not having these features and that we want them back!
I'm currently using Duolingo to learn Italian. I'm doing it through two courses, English to Italian and Spanish to Italian. English to Italian is the stronger course, but as the word order to learn the language changes depending on your starting language I can learn different information as I go along.
I also do English to Italian. They don't have my language (Dutch) to Italian. Which sucks, but most of it is fine. However for some forms the word order is way more logical if it were Dutch to Italian instead of English. English makes a lot of sentences way more simplified than both Italian and Dutch
I’m also on the English to Italian path, as a long term user, but it’s been unusable since ‘the update’ . It’s never taught me higher numbers or how to ask my in laws how they are or if they enjoyed something. Instead, most recently been ‘taught’ the phrase ’The Spaniard stopped and then he fell in the courtyard’ 😟I have so many questions about that, but no, I can’t remember the Italian, it’s all feeling pointless Worst of all my native Italian partner is endlessly correcting the Duolingo answers . He scores around 30% on a lesson to my 100%. Such a shame as I love the language and want to learn to better communicate with my family in law and it used to seem like good tool, at least for vocabulary
From my experience, Duolingo is great if you already have some knowledge of the language you are learning. I made amazing progress in French having studied the basics when I was at school- when I started learning Russian as a complete beginner it felt impossible without having those foundations in the language already. Definite pro/con I’ve found with the app, but that’s not to say it’s all bad!
@pxrtmanvidsonig3641 I think it’s great they’ve got the alphabet on there now! When I started it wasn’t a feature so that made it tricky for me at the beginning 😊
A few languages had chat rooms for a while where you could actually speak in your target language with other learners. That was super helpful and fun but I don’t understand why they took it away… even if I wasn’t speaking, I would turn it on and listen through context clues and figure out what they were talking about, like immersive learning
I’m actually so surprised that you like the new path structure better than the previous one. I liked that I could pick between many different topics, but now I am forced to do the next lesson in the path.
Me too. I have lost most of the motivation, now. Japanese used to be quite good, but with the endless path and the elimination of stories, it has become tedious. And I can't even watch the old forum discussions. I started on Japanese just right before they took the whole forum away. They have also some issues about the sound. At the beginning they seemed to correct the issues I reported, but now, they don't seem to bother. I also miss that you could go back and repeat the different themes at will, and that you at least got ten points for it. Now, only five.
I used to be able to acquire more vocabulary faster too with the old tree since you only needed to complete the first level of each "circle" to unlock new ones. I find myself getting bored quicker with the new tree.
Completely agree with this. The only advantage is that they will skip you forward if you're doing very well in a section. But I miss the free choice of lessons and stories.
This!! It was super useful being able to essentially pick what I wanted to learn. I picked up what was relevant, and would do the stuff I didn’t need later. Removing stories was the nail in the coffin for Duo for me. Can’t justify paying for the app without any of the things that I enjoyed about the app :/
You can go back and practice earlier units on the path, but I agree that it's not as good as saying: I need to practice names for body parts, past tense, etc.
My thoughts so far with the update: I miss just being able to do a few stories (mainly the speaking ones) The TIPS ! they were super helpful especially in the later stages The audio lessons were nice - but I didn’t use them much, I should have used them more before they were gone. If I’m going to do a lesson I’ll use the desktop shortcut where I can access the old tree version Also when my Italian and Spanish switched to the new path I lost a MAJOR amount of progress in Spanish, which really zapped my motivation. I wish there was a way to appeal your level and request for a better boost. Like when I try and test out I know the unit but sometimes my spelling or the vocabulary in the lesson is new and I miss some of the context clues.
One simple way to force Duolingo to bring back the tips and the discussions: *Spam The Frick Out Of Their Flagging System* Anytime you get to a question where you don't understand the answer, hit the little flag button at the bottom and send them a message. But, and this is the most important part, make sure that you type in at the bottom where it gives you a chance to explain why you're flagging it that you don't understand the answer to this question and that you could have either learned the lesson through a tip or you could have gotten your answer by being able to post in the discussion section but since those features are no longer available you have no choice but to reach out to them. After they have read through millions of messages saying basically "You wouldn't have had to read this message if you still had these useful features," I guarantee you they will bring back those features! This will only work if an enormous amount of users start to do it, so please spread the word. Let your voice be heard and let them know that we will not settle for not having these features and that we want them back!
I truly wish they would explain more about the grammar instead of just exposing you to it. The French and Spanish actually put you through conjugation tables we're German has no such thing. Der, den, dem...diese, dieser, dieses, etc. I still bang my head on the desk and I've been slamming 3 languages for 2 months ( though I did have French in high school over 30 years ago and Spanish in college over 20 years ago), but I caught myself spending less time with German and it's the reason I started Duolingo!
I don't know why more people are complaining about this. Phrasebooks do not teach you language. Why on Earth did they think this was a good idea? Studying and attempting to understand was distracting people from the games? How far can you get in a language when you don't know the conjugation rules or about cases?
You are aware that there are plenty of resources avaliable for free where you can find german conjugation tables, right? I really don't see why this would be an issue for anyone
@@alvaeriksson3623 Well you are right. The issue now is finding a resource does teach those. Duolingo teaches nothing about language at all now and is no good for people who are new to language learning.
The popular languages (ie French and Spanish) have a Guide in many of the lessons. I think Tips were renamed to Guide. I don’t know if they are accessible on a cellphone (Tips were not accessible). I use a laptop.
Thank God! Someone who doesn't trash Duolingo. I used it a lot when starting out in Spanish until intermediate level and beyond and it really helped. I speak Spanish fluently now. Great tool and fun.
I haven't done Duolingo in a while but my biggest tip is that even if you do just 1-2 lessons a day, whenever you encounter a new word/sentence, pronounce it a few times and read the comments section. You'll find lots of useful info there. I did the Italian for English speakers course as a beginning stage of my Italian learning journey and reading the comments, pronouncing the exampkes from them (the approved ones) making sure I got the pronunciation right and didn't miss any words, has done more for me than the lessons themselves
At first, I really didn't like the new path, but as I started getting used to it, I found I actually really like it. It's less overwhelming, and while I originally didn't like that they took away my ability to choose what subject to practice, I found that this new path keeps me more concentrated and consistant. I do still loath the fact that I'm being forced to learn how to say rhinoceros and raccoon dog before numbers though. Yes, to become fully fluent in a language, I would need to learn the names of animals, but when rhino is unit 10, and numbers is unit 15, I feel like the owl got their priorities a bit twisted lol
The new path in Dutch gives me so much repetition that I usually get perfect lessons. The new path in Hebrew is a disaster - I see a word twice, it decides that I've "mastered it", and then I see it again a week later. Really, really frustrating. I'm going back to Aleph with Beth, I think.
I know you're learning Korean because I am also learning rhinoceros and raccoon dog before the numbers 😭 Also my favorite Korean word so far is parrot (앵무새)
For real! I'm on unit 23 & they're just now introducing how to say other colors besides red, blue, and green. There are so many A1 level things it hasn't gone over before showing B1 content
@@DesnySaldate I definitely gave up on Korean after a while for that same reason. It was too frustrating with the priority issues as well as the fact it doesn’t really explain any of the grammar (at least it didn’t when I was learning) so I had to learn from outside sources… either way, I give kudos to everyone learning Korean still despite the difficulties
Yes the prioritization in duo leaves room for growth. Apparently I’m meant to learn animals & colors before learning both sets of numbers in Korean which makes me think the map was built for kids rather than adults grabbing a lesson In between appointments. They could be interspersing both number sets into my path so I was used to seeing them but nah.
Duolingo as a language learning app is fundamentally about being able to communicate with more people and the CEO can't even do that for the most basic of things....how ironic
It's worth noting that only iOS has some of the new features - such as practice mode, and the units/modules you mentioned. Here in Android world, I have an infinite snake which almost feels worse than the old method. And I find it hard to revisit previous content! Thanks for giving me some optimism about the new update though.
It's weird because Android is still infinite snake like Desktop, but they just made it to where the 30min 2x potion can be saved for later (3 days), which he said iOS doesn't have.
Exactly, even if I took everything in order it was more motivating for me to see the end in sight than an infinite scroll like it is now. I also must add that I hate how to hey are playing everyday with the structure of the lesson, sometimes they ask you to guess words, sometimes they give you pictograms sometimes they are completely missing. Also, what ai don't appreciate with the new Duolingo is the impression that you go round in circles because they keep playing the old sentences already learned in the old tree or they keep putting them in different modules.
I already have the practice hub in my android phone, but not the modules. It would quite helpful to organize better the course units and doesn't seem like a complex feature to implement.
Thank you for mentioning this, because I was trying to find what he was talking about, but that explains it. I look forward to that because I do want to know what level I'm at.
I left duo lingo after almost two years for several reasons, most of which have been very thoroughly covered already in other comments. I was doing French, German, Japanese (already previously studied) and Chinese (completely new to me). However, my main gripe was the poor standard of English in my control language. It consistently rejected my answers because it did not have sufficient vocabulary to recognise the words I chose to use, or it’s grammar was incorrect and it would not accept my grammatically correct answers…. Very frustrating, but it also led me to wonder whether I was learning an equally low level of my chosen languages as well. I quit and moved to other methods. IMO one thing they could do with is a genuine working facility for students to have input about errors, glitches, etc. Thanks for the update video.
Karen Adams, I so agree with you! Duo uses poor grammatical English construction much of the time, constructions that would have made my 19 years’ worth of teachers cringe (and, hence, myself as well). And now that I am going to other sources for learning French, I’m seeing how poorly I was being “taught” on Duo. Send that owl back to school!
Do you have examples? Most native English speakers don’t explicitly take English grammar classes, and your technical skills might not be as developed or accurate as you think
@@alexspencer5478 Thanks for the question. No, I have not bothered to remember any of the countless specific examples. Suffice to say that most were at the primary school level for native English speakers. Had they been at advanced level or in the category of preferential use, I would not have minded so much. Grammar Police is my middle name…. 😎😂
Duo uses American English, so for certain phrases such as the way you say the date it could come up as wrong. What were the grammar errors? From my experience it would be phrasing of a question. French doesn’t have a direct translation for the phrase ‘Are you?’. So they are multiple words of conveying that in French ‘Vous + the verb’ or ‘Est ce que’, are a few examples.
@@karenaadams5988 just so it is clear I wasn’t attacking you. But sometimes, when English speakers are given a grammar test or have to give a strictly correct grammatical answer, they struggle because they passively picked up grammar during adolescence and haven’t had the need to remember explicit grammar lessons!
ABSOLUTELY agree with your assessment. I like the new learning path, but I really miss the audio lessons - I used to listen to those while I cook (an activity that I hate) to keep me sane with interesting, real-world French lessons. :( It's the main reason I've refused to get Super Duolingo, because they removed my favorite feature...
I agree with most of your points. But one thing that makes me so mad about all these recent updates is that they're teaching us 4-5 concepts at a time most of the time. If you manage to check out the old tree, you'll see that you're learning multiple new skills and they don't even get maxed out to legendary because they've shortened the lessons by a significant amount. I'm currently learning People 3, School 2, Family 2, and Work.. according to the old tree at least. It's just a lot of stuff to remember especially if you're a slower learner.
Yes, it isn't the most efficient way to learn a language, but you're right. It's sometimes one of the only ways to keep a language learning habit. Duolingo helps so much when caring for a newborn baby and moving, because sometimes a quick lesson or two on your phone is all you can manage and there's no shame in that! It's even better if you can use other things and resources a few times a week too
As someone trying to learn norwegian, I have noticed that some features in the more popular languages such as French and Spanish, such as stories, aren't even included in the other languages, so I have never had any opportunity to use stories, which is a shame. As well as I think for someone who struggles with listening comprehension, I think a good challenge is to have audio for a sentence in the language you're learning and have to immediately translate it in your language, which would help with more listening comprehension.
Hey I'm also learning Norwegian! Always seems like there's so few people learning it 😑 Which is probably why we never got any of the fun stuff the popular ones got. I think there's also a big difference between the iphone and android versions because I can't move bubbles around like he shows. I think android and the web version are running on a shared budget haha 🙃
Be aware that a few words are pronounced wrong. I speak Norwegian and a few times when I struggle on a sunday to stay in the diamond league I have been doing tasks in Norwegian to get points quicker;) and I remember especially «ender» which means ducks. They say it in a weird way, I have clicked on it several times but not sure when they will fix it. There was another one too but I can’t remember it now.
yes, they have the same issue with swedish :’) i learned spanish for a long time on duolingo and find the stories so helpful, so i’m sad they don’t have the stories for all languages
¡No sabía que la versión para computadora de Duolingo era más limitada que la versión de celular! Siempre es bueno visitar los vídeos de Evan cada cierto tiempo. ¡Gracias!
1748 days here. I have learned Italian and now I am learning Finnish. I absolutely hated the new format until I noticed it was actually pushing me forward to learn new stuff and taking me out of the comfort zone instead of repeating lessons over and over due to laziness (I used to do it I lot, hard to admit). I worked in an English school in Brazil for two years and what separated people learning effectively from the ones not learning was very obvious: finding several ways to get in contact with the language instead of only studying that hour in the school once a week. Music, videos, cartoons, groups on Facebook with other learners, anything is valid! I have been in the Diamond League for a year now, last week I almost gave up as the first place had over 11 thousand XPs and I had to do a ridiculous amount of it just not to get demoted. Quit edit: it is sad how Finnish was released almost 3 years ago but it is still a beta version without lots of features.
Hi, I hope you don't mind me commenting lol, but I just wanted to say I have the complete opposite experience with the new format! Earlier this week I lost my 443 day streak (which may not seem like a lot but it felt like a lot to me :'')). I couldn't get into the new format at all, and I still hate it with every fiber of my being. I quite liked being able to jump around in the old format and choosing what I wanted to learn, as opposed to being sort of forced in a linear direction, not even mentioning I felt like the new format introduced me to content I hadn't actually learned at that point. Which is why, after about 1 to 2 months of trying to give the new layout a chance, I cracked and just started doing the first couple of lessons over and over again just to continue my streak (which I don't recommend doing, as it also made me lose a lot of my motivation towards learning the language). Perhaps - and this is just speculation on my part - the new format somehow works better for neurotypical people? I've seen a lot of neurodivergent people, including myself, that are unable to get into the new format because it is stricly linear and you can't really jump around in a chapter like you could before. Again, this is just speculation and not meant to be taken as fact, but I found it curious to note. As I mentioned earlier, I lost my streak earlier this week, and I'm still debating with myself wether or not it will be worth it if I restart again - only time will tell I guess. Congrats on your streak, though!
The format is garbage. Don’t lie to yourself. It just wants you to repeat the same boring lessons again and again, until you subscribe to Super or buy gems. 10.000 lessons = 800 hours just to complete the Spanish path is ludicrous. 800 hours for B1 max without proper speaking and listening lessons. But keep wasting your time!
@@paralytaatylarap9715 "It just wants you to repeat the same boring lessons again and again" I've been repeating the same lessons again and again for months in the previous version. Because they were easy and I could do them fast and get more points from that. Now I just stick to my one lesson per day, and slowly make progress. If I get too bored, I rotate to another language and learn it instead, and then go back when I feel like doing so.
I miss having access to the forums so much! I'm learning gaelic right now and it's one of those courses that isn't super build up yet. Being able to ask questions or just read the answers already given to previous questions was so helpful.
Agreed. Even just being able to see that others had similar problems was heartening. Getting explanations from more fluent speakers was a bonus and, of course, when the opportunity arose where you were able to explain something yourself, that's when the learning really sticks.
Something that I hate with all my soul is that everyone seems to have completely different updates: some people say the got the ability to earn hearts by practicing; I lost that ability. Some people say the German forum is open again; not for me. It is so annoying. Also, if you are trying to get back to a language you abandoned, the path keeps trying to place you immediately where you left before without acknowledging that you completely forgot many things. And getting back in the path is a nightmare. That's what happened with my Hebrew after 2 years in the freezer and I just kept guessing the meaning based in what I remembered and the bubbles but didn't feel like I was actually learning. Today, I decided to erase all my progress in Hebrew and start the tree all over again. That would have never been necessary in the tree, I just would have gone to the part of the tree I felt I actually understood and start moving up again to the point I was before the hiatus.
I've always used the desktop version and I don't mind it at all. I prefer the infinite snake to the overwhelming pyramid of hell from before. I've never even tried the bubbles thing because typing everything out yourself is much better anyway. But you make excellent points, of course it could be a lot better. The fact that they don't have grammar lessons anymore is absolutely wild. Love it when a lesson just throws 20 different pronouns at me without explaining which ones to use in what context. And then when I use a wrong one it just tells me "Nope, not that one!"
I don’t comment much, but I’ve been using duolingo since 2016 and it hasn’t really stuck, that is, until I started taking Italian at college this year - never having done it before. I got nervous about being so new AND it being a college class, so I started “pregaming” basically and doing duolingo that summer. What i basically ended up getting from duolingo was a basic familiarity with the language that helped me a ton in those first few weeks! I’ve seen some other people say that duo works we in combination with other language learning programs and it absolutely does! I keep up with it just so I am engaging with the language every day when I don’t have time to study. Just wanted to throw in I think that duo can be a great way to ease your way into more rigorous language learning :)
I am a believer in Duolingo as a supplement to other learning. My experience: summer 2019 I spent about 2 months using Duolingo every day for Italian. At this point I already spoke C1ish level French so naturally I wasn't starting at zero. I then lived in Italy for 4 months. I found that Duolingo gave me an arsenal of nouns and basic verbs, along with their conjugations, and a vague enough understanding of sentence structure to be able to communicate basic stuff in every day life. I could then look up new words and verbs I needed and add on to my knowledge.
I'm not happy with the update because i feel i'm not working on old words enough; i loved the "broken" lessons because i knew when to do what. Also i wish there was more structure for grammar learning... I've been learning Ukrainian for 9 months now and i still have no clue about tenses or masculine/feminine words... I teach Latin irl so i' d really prefer some conjugation tables ;)
I did Polish with Duolingo for two years but I knew it wasn't for me when they started to tell me "It's about progress, not perfection". Then they changed it and I was out. I am not under any pressure to learn quickly and all the other languages I have learnt, I aimed for, and achieved, a certain amount of perfection. None of the features Evan is talking about were available for Polish - they sound as though they would only be distracting anyway. I am a boomer and used to traditional learning and need lists of vocabulary and tables of conjugations to orientate myself. Also, at my age, it takes longer to learn and retain new words, so I needed to go back and reinforce and revise earlier lessons to keep everything in my memory. This was no longer possible. I don't mind "plateauing" for that very reason.
As for the Friend's Quests - I've noticed in the last two weeks, they are allowing you to bank the 2x thingy for a couple of days. It used to super annoy me because it always happened at the most inopportune of times, but now you can bank them in the shop. Just though you might appreciate knowing this. I'm gathering you may have filmed this before the update happened though, so you may be aware of this.
I think it's currently in A/B testing, so only certain people have access to this - my husband banked one of his friend quest double XP boosts the other day, but I wasn't able to bank mine yesterday
I can bank the 2x booster if it's the other person who finished off the friends quest. Just as long as I don't click on the tab, it remains untouched. But if I am the one who finishes the quest, the booster comes up and I either use it right now or it's gone. I really do wish I could save it for later regardless of who does the last lesson or earns the last XPs.
@@annaflitz2838 That's been the case for a while. When my husband got one last week, he was given the option to store it in the shop for a few days - so it still had a limit on using it, but he could finish the quest one evening and not have to use the 30 minute boost until the next day, when he had more time to spend on lessons
Your streak is insanely impressive! I miss being able to listen to the pods while cleaning and receiving experience points. I adore Duolingo! I play French everyday! Almost for a whole year.
I used it years ago before going to Spain, and it was very helpful. Then, they updated the app, and I quit. I guess I was frustrated because I had a routine, which I was not willing to change.
I’m gonna be honest bro, I feel like the “things Duolingo helped me do” you mention at the beginning were more beneficial for your learning than the Duolingo was. I speak from experience. My Japanese got much better much faster by listening to podcasts, doing some supplementary flash cards on Anki, and reading actual things. Podcasts, especially, are wonderful. It takes some time, patience, and concentration to get beyond the “I can’t understand anything here” phase, but you will, and it’s easy to immerse this way once you do.
can you recommend some very beginner podcasts that maybe translate the sentences and explain which word is what in english? or did you only listen to regular japanese podcasts
I love watching your takes on duolingo! It bugs me to no end the way people dismiss it so much. It may not be the best way to learn quickly, but it’s the reason I’ve stuck with learning Spanish for 2 years now. I am currently at a conversationally fluent level, but that’s because I’ve used other tools and practice outside of duolingo. Duo is just what keeps me in the habit. Keep up the good work!
Yes I suppose it also depends on what your goals or expectations are for this app. I got it strictly for the ease of use and simple time investment. I’m learning Korean lessons via online programs and Duo feeds me daily reminders. So for me it works.
I've been learning languages through other means and only just decided to try duolingo mostly because of all the negative attention it gets. There are definitely some problems, like sentences that make no sense and even errors in translation sometimes, but if you use it alongside other apps or methods of learning as a practice and consolidation tool then it's very useful i think
I used to use it to practice running through a couple of lessons daily, after completing both Spanish & German courses, but they soon made changes which ruined it for me. Despite my sub their support was abysmal, so I just cancelled and removed the app not missing it, when they started suppressing dissent about the update on the forum. I always felt though it was popular it wasn't the best app for vocabulary or teaching lessons. I didn't really mind "the boy eats spiders" and so on, but it "objecting" to correct English and not allowing fixing typos drove me crazy. Memrise had much better native pronunciation to practice speaking clearly.
I was a moderator on the Finnish forums and they gave us a heads-up about shutting it down long before it happened, but we weren't allowed to say anything about it publicly. I wasn't sure why they didn't just tell everyone right away. I was also baffled about the decision itself, because the social aspect of the site that is no longer there clearly breathed life into it and made learning much easier. I was very active on duolingo while the forums and sentence discussions were there, but have almost never been back since they were shut down.
currently learning french through duolingo and a agree with everything you’re saying. i definitely cannot afford french lessons but i have a duolingo subscription and for now, it’s a good affordable, accesible alternative. hopefully it’ll keep readjusting and some of the removed features will be brought back.
I'm learning Japanese on Duolingo and the one thing that really got me was a lack of teaching how a sentence gets laid out (it's very different than English). I was really struggling until I went and googled a chart.
Particles always got me when I was learning Japanese. And so much nuance comes down to verb endings.. and the 3000 kanji… it’s hard 😆 But 日本語がきれいだ I’m glad you’re learning Japanese & you got this!
Same with Korean. Duolingo to me was a simple practice app. I got thru it & am half-way thru Clozemaster, which is a step up (as in harder) as my practice app. I LEARN from TTMIK, the courses on Skillshare.
Even then, a chart will only show you the most basic structures. Duolingo alone will never get you to fluency. Eventually you just need to accept that it's an entirely new language and will take a large amount of time and effort to get good at. I recommend just buying a textbook and studying the hell out of grammar before you even begin to start seriously grinding vocab. Obviously everyone learns differently, but learning the vocab without grammar is like learning the notes of a piano without learning scales or chords. You're just making noise, and while it may occasionally make sense, it's largely directionless. Like they say, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. I recommend looking into good t4extbooks. The most popular one is Genki, but I personally think it's generally too slow, and a little too hand-holdy. The book I used for beginner through intermediate level was Yookoso, which was paced perfectly in my opinion. Idk what your level is, but I would imagine still fairly beginner due to the nature of your comment, but it gets you out of using romaji very quick, and starts you on core grammar soon. Just remember that there aren't any cheats or shortcuts to help you become fluent, and anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something (usually their online language course that can get you fluent in MONTHS! (as the kids say, cap)). I don't want this to discourage you. Japanese is genuinely an amazing language, and I absolutely think it's worth learning. The feeling you get the first time you have a regular conversation in Japanese without needing to pull out your phone feels better than damn near anything. Hell, I remember returning from a hiking trip in Nara with some friends and just speaking Japanese the entire ride back, and it was honestly some of the most fulfilled I've ever felt. But it's a huge amount ow work that requires consistent, focused effort. I hope you continue with learning though! It's my favorite language out there, and I recommend it to anyone
I'm using Duolingo to learn Japanese. I'm using it right now to learn Hiragana. It's something I'm admittedly learning more passively rather than actively right now. Maybe I'll be more active in the future. but I'm hoping by isolating it individually, I can connect the words with ideas as opposed to always translating it in my head. One language I want to learn much more about is Catalan because it is one of my heritage languages along with Spanish. However, they only have the Catalan course for castilian spanish speakers. The question people will inevitably ask is why don't I just learn spanish first THEN learn Catalan? Well, I think it's more interesting if I learn a niche language. It's like learning Welsh in Wales when everyone speaks English. Sure, more speak english. But it's like you're part of an exclusive group if you can speak the regional language. And my mum is catalan so... I feel like I can learn the spanish later. I think it would be harder to do it the other way around for me personally. (oh and Franco tried to kind of eradicate the language so... I want to stick two fingers to him by doing this.)
I highly recommend using other language apps in conjunction with Duolingo for Japanese. Lingodeer for me has more complete and more useful sentences. As you advance, you'll also want a dedicated app for Kanji. You can probably manage kana (katakana and hiragana) in one app, but Kanji is way more than that.
If you are currently learning the hiragana and katakana parts of Japanese I would try an app called ‘Write Japanese’ the app icon has a pencil in front of a blue background and the kana あ. I’m still working on katakana (because I am very lazy 😅) but I picked up hiragana in about a week using it. Just turn off your phones Wi-Fi before you open the app so you don’t get hit with ads.
Hello! I am Catalan myself, and got so excited when I found out Duolingo had Catalan to learn! Then I saw that you could only learn it from spanish so it would not be avaliable to any curious english speaker and my excitement totally disappeared . Is still nice they have it, but at this point more people can learn Valyrian than Catalan :(
learning japanese,catalan and spanish, well i feel you going to feel demotivated when you not make enough progress, learning a language take a long time. (dropped japanese after a while, too much to learn but is learning spanish instead now)
Green owl, the despot polyglot. I love that! Loved your tips and your concerns. I used to really like the tips and the tap with all the stories. I also enjoy using the desktop version to challenge myself with writing, and it's so bad... I hope they hear you/us and improve on these things!
Some of the issues you mention were why I didn't renew Super Duolingo. I enjoyed the stories and am disappointed with them disappearing, and also found it disappointing they removed the forums as well. I found the tree better than the infinite snake, but this is less important to me than the other things. Since going back to free, I find I'm using it more on desktop than the app so I don't have to worry about hearts and its a bit odd that the lingots and gems are separate numbers on each.
Funny thing about storie, in the old format I had a nice routine where I would do a couple of lessons and then a story. When the new learning path was implemented, it sent me back halfway in stories, so I've been listening to "old" stories for months now.... C'est la vie...
I had unlocked and finished all the Spanish stories over the past few years and then the new update happened and it set me back to maybe 25% complete. My go to for my daily lesson was to do a few speaking stories but that’s gone now.
This really is helpful. I'm also trying to learn Spanish. I've been on and off learning Spanish for most of my adult life, but I do better when I don't have a deadline since my memory is bad and I get test anxiety.
I’ve gotten used to the new tree (having it broken down into smaller chunks works more nicely for me imo), but I really miss the tips for lessons and the discussions on sentences. Both were very helpful for grammar. The guidebooks giving example sentences would be fine if it gave more details about what they were an example of. Also I would love it if duolingo were able to better develop some of the courses and implement some of the more advanced features that only exist for the most popular languages. But otherwise yes I do really like this app, actively use it, support them, as well as recommend it to people who ask about language learning.
I'm learning Japanese and using DL as like a pseudo flash card system and it's very helpful to turn off the romanized pronunciation that shows up with the actual characters, it's really helped me memorize all of the writing systems and I'm much better at reading than I would be with leaving it on. So basically extra tip turn off the pronunciation if you're learning a language with non-romanic characters.
A few weeks ago I started using Anki as well as Duolingo to help me learn German. Even in the past 20 or so days, I feel like I've learnt so much more vocabulary through Anki than I have in the last 200 days of Duolingo. Duolingo is good for learning grammar, while Anki is great for memorising vocab.
very inorganic way to learn a language, don't just learn words, immerse yourself, then you will naturally remember the words and their meanings, and situations they're used in, sometimes some words are hard to remember even if u see it a couple times but that's when you should use flashcards
Anki has helped me tremendously in my vocabulary. Far more than any app. It makes engaging with the language in reading and listening so much more rewarding. I’m the kind of person who would rather brute force learn 1000 of the most common words then start engaging with the language and add phrases back into Anki to solidify them
I switched to Comprehensible Input (mostly Dreaming Spanish, which is the best resource I've ever found) after many years of Duolingo and promptly dropped DL when I realised how much more fun I was having. I think it's good as a start to learn a few basics and see whether you like the language but then it just becomes loads of frustrating tests. In the real world you can get a gender wrong or miss an "a" and people will still be able to communicate with you. I found it too tedious having to be perfect every time. I do however love the podcast, as I find out loads about the history of Spanish speaking countries and hear lots of different accents.
I’ve been increasingly using those sorts of resources including Dreaming. They’re lots of fun. But I’m still primarily focusing on Duolingo. I have so much of the grammar I haven’t learned yet.
@@nendoakuma7451 I've stopped focusing too much on grammar at the moment until I have a 5 year old grasp of the language at least. There seems to be a fair bit of research that supports gaining input (like a toddler would) before starting to speak and especially before reading and writing. I was using Kwiziq to help with grammar before. There's a free version if you want to have a look. Lots of explanations and tests.
@@coolstertothecore yeah, I know about the importance of input, I’ve just been doing that with other languages for a long time. Duolingo’s approach seems relatively fresh to me and fun. I was never able to stick with Spanish for very long until I did Duolingo. But there’s definitely a lot of merit to what you’re doing.
@@nendoakuma7451 I think the gamification can really help with motivation and it's visually far more attractive than a textbook. And of course different approaches work for different people.
Now that you discussed more the Path update, I actually found the update good. I remembered back in the old version I just spend the time going back to the very first subjects with very basic stuff just to not let the purple icon crack, and after doing some I just decided "that's enough for the day" and not learning anything new. Now, I just need to keep going, not dealing with very basic stuff.
Just before Duo switched to the path, I discovered that it doesn't crack more than 3 units. Ha! I stopped restoring them. I didn't care about 3 broken icons. It was much worse before when you could wake up and see that half of your tree is broken.
@@evan Nope, that is completely wrong. Stop lying! They added at least 3-4 times the same lessons to keep you even longer in the app. If you want to complete the entire Englisch->Spanisch path and you don’t want to take shortcuts, you now have to do at least 10.000 lessons to finish it completely. That will take over 800 hours!!!! 800 hours for Spanish at B1 level. That is a waste of time.
I don't get why the easiest icons kept cracking while the much harder ones just stayed in tact forever on lol. I don't get why they'd want you to keep doing the easy stuff
That was an update they made a couple of months before the path. They could have just reverted that update and kept the tree. Or at least kept it as an optional format. They've lost me I'm afraid. Maybe if they build a European Spanish course I would consider coming back. But mixed LatAm Spanish.. no thanks.
I hate that they removed the forums. I liked seeing people's chitchat about questions and explanations etc. The match game isn't available for all languages either. I get it for French but for Japanese it's just Ramp Up which doesn't reward quite as much XP. I also still find it annoying that they haven't addressed issues like how Korean reuses sounds for different letters.
I remember when Duolingo first introduced Japanese onto the app. Since I had been doing light study with some books for a few years, I basically knew everything they had. And there was no Kanji so I finished all the lessons in like a month. The update over the years have made it way better to learn in. I like that they do the casual tenses from time to time for people that are fans of Japanese music and media too.
I'm glad you mentioned the issue of grammar tips dissapearing! That's been my major gripe with the update, I've complained about this in several places before but the new "guidebooks" on the Scottish Gaelic course are terrible. There's also only 5 of them for a whole 69 unit course. I took a break from Duo this month, but I want to try to get back into it with a different strategy and paired with more learning sources. *EDITED 5/2/2023* It looks like Duolingo actually added new guidebooks up to unit 55! They're still pretty sparse but I appreciate that there's any improvement at all.
I am learning Czech on Duolingo, but I have reached the limit. I had already nearly completed the entire tree at the gold level when the new update happened, just a handful of lessons left to complete. The new update just made the whole tree complete and now the only thing left for me to do is legendary level, which is really frustrating because it punishes really inane mistakes (similar to the one you mentioned about adding "that").
HelloChinese is very similar to Duolingo but has more relevant sentences, grammar notes, clips of native speakers, and they just added stories. I've been switching back and forth now and then to keep things interesting and because I'm also using Duo for another language, but I do think HC is quite a bit better all in all for Mandarin.
@@rottworks Oh gosh I remember that app, I downloaded it when I first started learning and got super intimidated by it! Thanks for the recommendation, I'll need to give it another try now that I'm more confident.
I've been learning Arabic for a year now, and I have to say that I didn't know about half of the features that Evan talks about in this video. I've never once seen a story or a "Complete the sentence" type challenge before. Seems like the mileage you get on Duolingo HEAVILY depends on the language you want to learn and whether or not Duolingo has put any effort into the courses. Not every feature that the big languages has carries over to the less popular languages.
i’m a japanese learner & i completely agree, in that i’ve also progressed so much quicker since the layout changed to the snake! i used to spend ages trying to perfect the units before doing anything new which often meant i just wouldn’t do anything new. now i default to doing the newest lesson. also, japanese doesn’t have the writing a comment option at the end of the stories and i hope it gets it because that sounds really fun. i also hope it gets speaking lessons because it’s never had those. you can answer written lessons with speech to text but it’s… wonky.
the best part of the comments section was the amount of explanation and teaching there and also the reassurance that the problem you were having was not unique and is a tricky point.
I've been learning Swedish on Duolingo for the past month. I really don't mind that it's missing some features that would make it more comprehensive. It has jump-started me in the language and motivated me to seek other sources for learning culture and for listening comprehension. I think this is kind of the point - get outside the app and use your new language in the world as early as possible.
I never use the app because I hate the heart system but I guess I may need to try it as oppose to the desktop version because that one truly turned to crap. My main problem with duolingo is that I've somehow managed to get through some lessons without really learning the concepts and now as I try to move forward, those missing pieces are catching up with me but it's hard to go back and re-learn what I need. And when I just use the general practice button, I keep practicing stuff I mostly know pretty well. Those practices never move further down the tree.
Repeating Legendary doesn't give you 90XP with double XP anymore. You make more with new lessons and then the last one of the unit. Some things you mentioned are not available for every language or were never available. I use the app to learn Welsh and for a refresher in Japanese and Latin. All three have different styles of lessons. Btw. The worst is the update for the ones, who actually completed the available lessons, but don't feel secure yet, my friend has the issue with Mandarin. She basically lost all fun with learning. I haven't finished and yes, it's actually better for me now, than before. I'm forced to do new lessons instead of repeating old ones. It works for me.
I felt the same way about Mandarin. I still use Duolingo as a Japanese refresher, but I’m using HelloChinese for Mandarin now. I think it’s a much better app.
I watched this video when you posted it, and here I am eight days later with a solid streak. I don't feel pressured, I'm not forgetting about it, and I'm actually flying through my daily quest with zero mistakes. I have to hand it to you, the tip about the four leftover words really upped my confidence! Thank you!!
Trust me, if it weren't for Duolingo, I would have struggled so much with Japanese (the language I learned since February). Duolingo did me wonders and stuff I thought I was never capable of. I learned two of Japan's writing systems. And have good enough basic kanji knowledge (about more than 300 Kanji although kanji isn't really required to learn Japanese). The stories were my favorite thing about Duolingo, and really helped me create short stories in Japanese. But, the more I progressed in Duolingo, the more I started to realize it was not as effective compared to the earlier lessons. I noticed this within 2 months of using. That is where I started looking for alternatives. The way Duolingo teaches Japanese might be one of the worse ways because I am constantly relying on my English to progress in Duolingo. Japanese has a difficult first-time sentence structure that gets easier, but my main problem is that Japanese Duolingo crams a bunch of new grammar points and unnecessary sentence structures in lessons. Sounds a bit overwhelming. Worse case, some lessons would have one lesson that has a very different sentence structure that I never been exposed to and then, they don't even give me those repetitively. They just appear in one lesson forcing you to get it wrong. I have also used the free version of duolingo. Also, compared to Bunpro, Japanese Duolingo splits apart the Japanese Letters and Kanji which confuses enough already. Don't even get me started with the English ones too. Some English words would look too identical to another so, when I rush on their timed events, I would easily screw up the English. I found a solution to that by zooming in the display in the display settings of android. I also do not like the fact that they don't teach words, grammar points and, kanji individually. Luckily, Bunpro does this and it's only $5 a month. I have more criticism with Japanese Duolingo but it would be too much to fit in a RUclips Comment.
I would really love more language combinations: im learning japanese from english at the moment (because its not available from german - my mother tongue) and they have very complicated grammar, polite forms and stuff which i dont feel like im taught the best way possible because english is even simpler than german. And sometimes words just dont exist in english and then the japanese word gets translated weirdly (like konnichiwa = hello instead of good day - which would be the accurate translation but doesnt really exist in english...)
Good day does exist in English, and it also means hello. It’s less common in American English since it sounds a little old fashioned, but Duolingo is the only Japanese course in American English I’ve ever encountered that didn’t think “good day” was a perfectly good and understandable translation of konnichiha. Their choice of Japanese vocabulary and conversational phrases is impressive in my opinion, but the grammar situation is a catastrophe. I have a minor in the language, so I can only try to imagine what it would be like to attempt to learn Japanese grammar from a web service that seems to have some sort of unfortunate phobia of grammar tables. I’m honestly not sure I could stick with it. It’s depressing to see confused people asking questions in the discussion section that will never get an answer now.
Speaking of accurate translations, "konnichiwa" would rather mean "This day..." than "Good day", because there's no "good" anywhere in there. 😉 I agree with you on the language combinations, though. I've been learning Dutch as a German native speaker. Many sentences would be exactly the same word order in German and in Dutch. But I have to translate the sentences to English, where the word order can be quite different. That's a bit annoying at times. (But let's at least be glad that we have access to so many more languages as long as we master English to some degree...)
THE AUDIO LESSONS! THANK YOU!! I used to love the audio lessons, and although they have the podcast, it’s too advanced for me. It really baffles me. thank you for pointing it out
thank you for voicing these observations. i love Duolingo but I don't know how much more I am going to use it. Not having comments has made a big impact on my learning on Duolingo.
there’s one real downside to the new version: you can’t decide to go back and decide ton work on a particular grammar topic again since now everything is bunched up together. I finished Italian and would like work on some verbs again : it’s impossible. totally sucks.
If people are looking for an alternative and are willing and able to pay for it, I've personally really been impressed with Babbel since I stopped using Duolingo. It has a noticeably smaller pool of languages to choose from, but the Swedish course on Babbel has been way better for me. I genuinely feel like I'm making progress every lesson, which just wasnt the case with Duolingo after a few months.
My only problem with Duolingo is it made me FEEL like I was becoming fluent, when all I was really doing was learning how to play Duolingo better. I learned way more, a lot faster, with lessons with native speakers. Not saying it's impossible for someone to learn the language through Duolingo, but if you actually want to learn a language (not just kill time differently) it's not ideal.
Yeah, Duolingo is a memory game wearing a language teaching costume, and I would absolutely argue that it's impossible to learn a language through it. You can learn some basic stuff, but fluency is literally never going to happen if you only use the app. There's a certain point where you just kinda have to accept that you're learning a whole new language and that there's no easy way to do it whatsoever, and just buy textbooks and try to find native speakers to practice with. Get a strong base of grammar, then start learning vocab. If you have a good grammatical base, then it makes learning vocab through reading books much easier and more enjoyable than rote memorization.
Yeah, it's just a learning supplement. A little thing to engage with to start and keep a habit. Now they just give sample sentences in Guidebook and zero grammar explanation. They don’t need to full on map it out like a text book if they want you to "learn like a native speaker," with all intricate details explained, a few lines lines about it for each lesson.
I was not content at all with the old model but I discovered I love the new linear movement system. I feel like the old one was overwhelming and inconvenient. I would rather be guided through strict lessons and units with properly spaced reviews and stories integrated in instead of choosing a path myself and having to “strengthen” the same old skills later on. I take notes with Notion from my lessons and so far I have retained a lot. Of course I think you need to have some sort of language learning intuition to be good at learning from Duolingo because oftentimes they don't explain grammar well, if at all. Also if you just play the game without actually taking any info in then you won't learn anything. And definitely mix it with other methods. Do not rely on it alone.
I have been learning norwegian and have a 328 day streak i keep journals and practice writing everyday. Other than watching youtube i use no social media anymore and it has greatly reduced the stress in my life.
I sat down and told myself a few days ago that I would continue learning japanese. Had tried using doulingo before but life was busy stuff happens I made excuses. But as time goes on I have the drive more and more to learn japanese because I watch a lot of japanese media (yes some anime but also japanese movies) And would love to be able to understand the words going with the emotions I hear with the voices. I do believe it's very good at getting it to stick in your head as when I returned for the most part I had retained most of the lessons I had spent 1 week on with very few errors. I hope everyone looking into learning a new language has a wonderful journey! And don't tell yourself it's too hard (as cheesy as it sounds) You can do it!
Hey Even. Really enjoying your Duolingo videos. I couldn't find this video in your Duolingo playlist on your channel. I really enjoy your positive attitude.
The difficulty for me is that as much as I learn how to speak and write a language, understanding what people are speaking to you about is really hard. People don't speak their language grammatically perfect or with the correct pronunciations, it's always too fast or with different emphasis. That and the amount of slang and different locales isn't recognized. I'm trying to learn french, but I'm not in France, I'm in Quebec, which is veerrryy different. I have tried duo a couple times but the streak intimidates me and I feel like it's gamified too much. I'd prefer a much more conversational/written approach to learning a language.
i still recommend you try Duolingo for like a month to see how you feel about it! it's definitely intimidating but as soon as you understand and get into a rhythm it's so much easier to keep going. also, have you heard of the app language transfer? it's a bunch of recordings of a guy teaching someone a new language (including french!) from scratch. i have a harder time being consistent on that one but it seems similar to what you're looking for :)
Learning how to say, 'speak slower please, I'm learning (language)' helps. Most folks seem to be willing to slow down once they know you're new to the language.
I want to say that I have rather severe social anxiety and that's tripled when interacting with someone not in my native language, so yeah it's more realistic for me on a lot of levels to practice with an app rather than a human being. 😛
i started learning spanish in 2013. i was in middle school then, learning by really slow common core or whatever. i took on duolingo in 2016 when i got to high school. i made a ton of progress in the first three years, learning a ton about how to shop for food, clothes, navigate around a house or tell someone exactly where an item is (“mis llaves están encima del escritorio al lado de la mesa grande”), and a ton about animals too. i tested out of the first few lessons of duolingo’s spanish tree because i had already covered that stuff and was super strong in it. i stopped using it in 2018-ish (after finishing almost everything related to spanish in the app), and when i came back to learn french with it in 2022, suddenly i had to pay money to skip out of lessons??? the fuck kinda cash grab??? im looking for other ways to learn now. i miss the old duolingo, before they wanted every penny from your wallet :/
Great job, Evan. Your hard work, talent and time are very evident and appreciated. I also have been on Super Duolingo for over 3 years and feel the same frustrations. But I haven't done the research as to which language app would be better. Perhaps one day I will. Many thanks. 🙏
Wow, haven't watched your videos for a few years and almost didn't recognized you. Glad to hear that you're still holding on to your duolingo streak ^^ Liebe Grüße aus Deutschland 💚
1:59 Im here for you Evan
why is this pinned
@@DecidiousGreens because some people need a little boost. Life is hard out here, it cost nothing to be nice and acknowledge hard work. :)
@@RadicallyRiley01 👍
socialblade says he is getting between 313 and 5k a month for this it isn't free.
I love when people randomly tell strangers to move to another country as a valid alternative to a language gaming app.
Yeah, god forbid you want to learn two languages at once, you're going to have to live in country 1 Mon-Thu and in country 2 Fri-Sun lol
well thats what all the people that dont speak English are forced to do to get a f&%ing job
@@Etianen7 but don't commute by plane because that's bad for the environment
I live in Slovenia for last 6 years, and I barley understand Slovene. I do Polish in Duolingo for 30 days, and I think I'll soon be better in Polish then Slovene.
Yeah, I lived in Finland for a bit over a year, and still the majority of Finnish I know is from Duolingo. If you don't live in the country for fun, it's actually really hard to learn the language
I love Duolingo, but I think they need to really focus on 2 things:
1) bring back the discussion section. It's so useful, but unfortunately at this point the only comments you can see are old, so new sentences and lessons don't have any comments to read.
2) Maintain and expand all the languages, not just the 5 most popular ones! You mentioned some features, such as the stories, that I have never seen as a Swedish learner. It's become evident to me that they've been neglecting many of their courses. Swedish is a small course and far from sufficient if one wants to become fluent. It's lacking many features and categories. They spend all this effort developing these pointless social features while not spending an ounce of effort on the parts that actually matter for learning a language.
Yes! The update streamlined the big courses, which is still questionable, but ruined the smaller courses. For example Finnish was always limited but became useless for me over night. I haven't used Duolingo since the update
Same with Russian and Norwegian. No stories, the infinite snake, no tips. I wish they updated ALL the courses🫤
Ikr - and the language I really want to learn, Te Reo, was meant to come out in 2020. Its not even in beta yet
Yeah I was really confused as a swedish learner, because I haven't seen the stories or anything like that
I learn from french and the stories are just not available at all. It's frustrating because it's such à good feature !
My only issues with duolingo is 1.) It doesn't teach you grammar. One of my biggest gripes is it doesn't teach you if a word is masculine or feminine, so I have no idea what suffixes I need to make it a plural, or which prefixes to turn it from "a/ an" to "the".
2.) It'll spend ages teaching me that "x" is the word for a specific thing. All questions use "x" as that word. Then I'll answer a question with "x" because that's what it's taught me, say it's wrong, and tell me it's a completely new "Y" that it's not yet taught me. How the heck was I supposed to know that?!
21 days into a Swedish streak with one freeze 😊
Reading through the discussion forum for most questions is quite helpful for learning grammar as people tend to share grammar tips there. Unfortunately, the forums are locked now but you can still see what people have written in the past.
My only issue with duolingo was the grammar thing, but it was such a big part for me that it was enough to make me stop using it.
Does Swedish not have gendered articles?
It they have a whole tree just for grammar it will be good. A tree with comprehensible stories will make it perfect. And longer story like 15-30 mins like a podcast. These will help users learn fast but the problem with apps is that apps want you to learn as slow as possible to maximize their profit.
Welcome to the club! Just started with Swedish 3 weeks ago too.
I really wish Duolingo had a feature that showed you how much progress you have made, like how many words you've learned and what not, and something that made it easier to practice things like vocabulary.
does it not anymore?
@@turtles10 they show how much xp you have but not how many words youve learnt.
@@OminousShadow They do tell you how many words you have learnt though. In the achievements.
@@georgek5737 we used to have a full list that told you how long it had been since you had encountered a word or something.
edit: it used to be visible on the website (computer) version. it's not there anymore, i just confirmed it
that is exactly how Busuu is, try it.
As a former Duolingo host, I could rant for hours about the fact that they gave us all of 60 days notice that they were shutting us down with a very patronizing letter saying how much they appreciated us. 🤬
What is a Duolingo host?
@@bouji_ Duolingo used to have a hosting platform for language events that they suddenly abandoned with only two months warning.
@@brainstem2023 Oh I see. Did it cost them money?
@@bouji_ I'm sure it did. But that's no excuse for how poorly they handled the sunset of the program.
@@brainstem2023 Where was the platform though? Was in an in person type of event? Or did you guys just meet on discord or somewhere else?
i was SO upset when tips got replaced with "key phrases". i actually used to look at tips and write them down (imagine having a conjugation chart to refer to!!) but now i don't even look at them because it's just sentences that i'll see in the lessons. the explanations helped so much and it's made learning so much more difficult because it feels like now i'm expected to already know it. like how do i know what differentiates noun genders in russian if there are no articles and no tips to look at?
edit: the second you mentioned legacy trophies, i thought of neopets.
I did this too, and it was really nice!
Tips are available for the most popular courses. Just scroll past the key phrases.
@@justsomeguy5103 yeah sadly for the 'non popular' ones it was removed, it's not even at the bottom :/
the tips going bye-bye was honestly for me the last straw. It was bad enough that many of the course's tips had gotten funky in a bad way over the years but with the new stuff, yeah just useless. The tips was the only part of Duolingo that actually *taught* rather than just exercise
One simple way to force Duolingo to bring back the tips and the discussions:
*Spam The Frick Out Of Their Flagging System*
Anytime you get to a question where you don't understand the answer, hit the little flag button at the bottom and send them a message. But, and this is the most important part, make sure that you type in at the bottom where it gives you a chance to explain why you're flagging it that you don't understand the answer to this question and that you could have either learned the lesson through a tip or you could have gotten your answer by being able to post in the discussion section but since those features are no longer available you have no choice but to reach out to them. After they have read through millions of messages saying basically "You wouldn't have had to read this message if you still had these useful features," I guarantee you they will bring back those features!
This will only work if an enormous amount of users start to do it, so please spread the word. Let your voice be heard and let them know that we will not settle for not having these features and that we want them back!
It's hilarious when friends tell me I can only really learn a language by "immersing myself in the culture completely"; otherwise, all the apps, studying, and resources I'm using are a waste of time.
Me: "Sure. Let me just drop everything, quit my job, and move to another country with the $200 in my savings account."
Plus those are the friends that ARENT learning a language or improving themselves at all just attempting to dissuade YOU. Give it a couple years and then we’ll see 😉
Immersion only requires media to immerse in. Try it
Flashcard as much vocabulary as you can. Listen to Podcasts, read, and watch shows/movies in target language. Pick up some grammar here and there. That's my idea of immersion. Not necessarily moving to the country.
You can get to at least A2 if not B1 without moving anyways. But for C2, yeah, that might require total immersion for several years.
I feel that so hard! People that aren't just friends they are like family members for me, they told me that visiting other countries is way better to learn a language and to make you more mature. They say all the time when introducing themselves to other people, that they have visited many countries over the world, they tell the countries, as if they thought they were better by doing that.
No, I'm not anyone to tell someone where I was and even if I didn't went to any country yet, what does it matter, we are all people, do I need to feel like the best, no. So I just calm down, don't listen and ignore such sentences completely.
Even though they are really kind, and they love me and I can't be mad at them.
One gripe I have with Duolingo that others have pointed out is that it doesn’t explicitly teach you grammar rules, which is especially hard when learning Korean-for me, at least. It took messing up over and over to notice the difference between “walked up to the escalator” and “walked up the escalator” because I wasn’t catching the way the suffix changed.
I am really bad at memorizing, but when I actually understand a concept, I have no problems remembering it later. I cannot learn the duolingo way because it requires me to memorize things instead of explaining to me how and why some things happen the way they do.
I really need the grammar of a language to fully understand and learn it, especially when we encounter grammatical structures or features you don't have in your own language. It could be soooo hard to grasp a concept when it doesn't even exist in your language to begin with, so i find extremely helpful to understand the inner workings of my target language.
this so much. i am going to understand how the grammar works better if you just tell me a rule to learn rather than trying to get me to intuit it by showing me several examples in a language i don't understand fully yet. i still use duolingo for french because i have a quebecois friend who has been able to explain grammar stuff to me, but i moved to lingodeer for korean even though it costs money. lingodeer is designed to teach asian languages to westerners, so it's much more explicit with grammar.
Aaaand they completely removed the stories from the korean learning path as well (which were available before) ugh. I supplement duolingo with lingodeer for korean grammar and it is very helpful in this regard. Lingodeer is basically the better duolingo, as it has native speaker reading/pronouncing each sentence out loud and does away with the whole translate into english thing to focus on teaching you the phrase more in depth. Plus extended grammar tips and practice. But oddly enough i get the word/sentence order easier in the correct order duolingo than in lingodeer, lol. The only downside is of course that it is a paid app instead free like duolingo but really worth it imo. (Drops is also a great app for vocab and hangul reading practice)
@@Bloomingtide yeah I do wish lingodeer had a free option because I really think it’s a higher quality app and they don’t seem to arbitrarily take things away
Yeah, I had that experience with Spanish, I succeeded in lessons on imperfect or something but felt like I was guessing.
Once I covered the material in a way with grammar tables it was much clearer and my accuracy, speed and confidence.
There used to be info you could read contributed with the courses but they ditched that in a catastrophically badly thought out set of changes which caused long forum dissent, that they started stamping out.
My daughter started second grade this year. She moved schools and got into a dual language program (All the Spanish speaking kids who are learning English are in the class and all the English speaking kids who want to learn spanish are in the class. It taught half in Spanish and half in English). All the other kids in the program started in kindergarten. The principal told us that they were willing to put her in the program, but if she was falling behind the other students, they would need to put her into a regular class. So I bought a duolingo family plan. Everyday we do enough to get at least one quest done so we can get the badge before the end of the month. My daughter was recently singled out in class and told how much better she is doing learning Spanish than all of the other students. So far I would say it was worth the money. I just wish learning a language wasn’t so hard, because even though my daughter is doing well, I’m struggling lol.
Children's brains are muuuch more equipped to learn languages though.
So don't kick yourself too hard.
@@adminanonymous1521 It could also be the daughter is in an actual class alongside the app. And is surrounded by native speakers of that language in school.
Exposure is the best source of retention, no matter your learning speed. I can attest to how much maintenance I need to do to any of my languages that are lacking natural exposure but I'm trying to keep up competency.
Praise!. Your whole family.
Well, if it’s any consolation, children tend to absorb language far more easily than adults can. When I was like a first or second grader and my dad, I moved to Germany, I thought I would struggle with it, but I realized that I was absorbing the language so quickly that I didn’t even wanna speak English at home because it just clicked in my head that these are the phrases I’m supposed to say in order to say the certain things and it just became so easy.
100% agree with you. I’m so annoyed about the tips disappearing. They were so useful. Now when they introduce a new word or idea, you have no idea where it comes from or how you might use it in anything other than the one sentence they show you. It’s such a backward step for a purported “educator” to take. And nobody seems to talk about it. You’re the first person I’ve heard talk about it since it disappeared.
I thought I was losing my mind when the path suddenly jumped to a new topic of learning and I don’t know the rules!😢
agree, I actually thought I imagined that feature because I used it like 4 years ago and last year i started with French and it wasn't there anymore.
Duolingo NEEDS to see this video. I agree wholeheartedly with everything you said, you highlighted the positives and brought up ALL the same issues I have, even down to the getting the double XP from a friend quest and not being able to save it. I hope duolingo can see this and take notes....
You can save it in the shop now the XP from the friend quest
They've introduced that. It's great
There aren't any stories for Ukrainian
@@Picla_Peremohy Or for Swedish
they are going for the corporate path when they decided to remove the forum.
I feel like duolingos streak mechanism is super helpful for others, but for me, it just makes me feel guilty and does the opposite of motivating me
Same! I just want it to give me some gentle reminders so I try to do it everyday on my own and maybe tell me milestones? Like 1 month streak, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, etc,.
I know what you mean! I've been using Duolingo steadily for about three years now, but my streak is only 30 days long because I was sick and unable to complete any lessons. I also broke my streak when I had covid last year... shame on me, not practicing French while out of my mind sick with covid! I know it's super important to practice a little each day over a long period of time, but sometimes life events get in the way.
it did the same for me, until i started actually wanting to keep it. and now to keep the days going i use it at midnight because im mostly on my phone at night
@@artstormingishere it does do that.
My recommendation is get streak freezers and set up notifications on your phone.
Mentally Schedule one lesson right when you wake up or right before going to bed. If you can't do that I don't know how to help, routines help me. I have a 1300 day streak.
I loved the stories sooo much. I was so disappointed when they took them away. I had so many of the japanese a bunch of the japaense ones completed and I had so many more that I had unlocked that I was waiting to complete because they were so fun to me that I wanted to save them :( I really hope they bring the stories back closer to the way it was before.
omg are they totally removed? i started learning Mandarin and I just assumed they weren't supported in that language yet
@@ppaperclip they're included in the course on spanish
@@luciferfaust The Japanese stories are completely gone now. I'm making up for it personally by abusing the lightning rounds and rank-ups after every main lesson until I feel confident enough with recalling the lesson to move on to the next part of the course.
@@luciferfaust yup
I too hate that they took them away. Why Duolingo, why? Sometimes it's part of my daily quest to complete one, which is impossible since they are now embedded in the lesson path instead, as single steps otherwise unaccessible. I don't get it? 😢
Yes! You mentioned the tips! I’m learning French and have been since 2019, so I’m pretty far along. They started THE SUBJUNCTIVE the other day, something I knew was going to be a bit difficult because yes, I look at more language learning stuff than just DL, without even mentioning what it was that I was learning. And there is something called Guidebook, but when you click it, it only has sentences, no mention of what’s happening in the grammar at all. I personally have trouble truly learning something if I don’t know reasons for what is happening.
hey, what’s your level in french? was that the first time you stumbled upon subj?
I am so surprised? How did it take you this long to get to the subjunctive?!! Did you take breaks? How much do you practice?
I'd really like Evan to try one of the less loved courses like Greek to see what Duolingo is like for the thousands of people who want to learn something other than English/French/Spanish/German. I'd love to hear all his thoughts about how different they are and what he thinks they need.
Gosh, and the zulu course. I know that probably not a lot of isixhosa and/or isizulu speakers work for duolingo but MAN. Its an oral language. The whole point is to get the pronunciation down cold. The grammar and writing is basically irrelevant. I wish there was a better way to improve your pronunciation especially for a click language.
Oh well. Im happy they have one of my countries beautiful languages on the app even if the course absolutely needs work.
@@kakonthebed I’m learning Scottish Gaelic, and the lack of speaking is so annoying. I can spell the words but pronunciation is so different to what I would assume in English. I imagine Zulu is a million times worse.
@@parsnip1 Ouch that sucks. Yeah zulu is pretty ass because the language itself was never actually written until the colonials came. So the culture of the language, the poetry, and the entire point of it is mostly verbal. Its a beautiful spoken language so jt sucks that you can’t learn the spoken part. Welsh is also rather lovely.
I’m learning Greek on Duolingo now. What I’m struggling with is that there’s no “lesson” to show you how verb conjugations work before it jumps right into the questions. I want an option to watch a 3 minute video that explains it before I practice.
@@micahmorrill6966 Same with Hungarian, it doesn't explain basic grammar or anything, which is kind of important especially with an agglutinative language such as it that has such different grammar rules compared to English. Maybe it the future they'll add to the course, but considering how few people are actually learning Hungarian on Duolingo, it probably isn't one of their priorities.
I can’t agree more about the tips part. I’m learning Greek on Duolingo and sometimes I reallyyyyy neeeed to see an explanation about a new tense or whatever, and now that the tips are gone I feel so lost sometimes. The tips were so useful in the old Duolingo and explained the grammar simply and fantastically, it makes approximately 0.0% sense to get rid of them. Why Duolingo, why?? 😭😭
I started after the tips got removed, so I never even stood a chance. 😭 Idk how far in you are, but I'm finding that Language Transfer's Greek course explains the grammar stuff really well. You can't really do it on your way to places, but I've been getting around that by making Anki cards of the phrases you translate in the lessons so I can practice while waiting for buses and the like.
@@theredlioness2502 we are on the same wavelength I LOVE language transfer!! Fortunately I finished the podcast while Duolingo still had the tips so I understand the basic grammar now, but when it comes to tenses like κοιμόμουν (I was sleeping) I’m at a loss 😣. Good luck on your Greek journey, you should be fine as you sound very resourceful!!
One simple way to force Duolingo to bring back the tips and the discussions:
*Spam The Frick Out Of Their Flagging System*
Anytime you get to a question where you don't understand the answer, hit the little flag button at the bottom and send them a message. But, and this is the most important part, make sure that you type in at the bottom where it gives you a chance to explain why you're flagging it that you don't understand the answer to this question and that you could have either learned the lesson through a tip or you could have gotten your answer by being able to post in the discussion section but since those features are no longer available you have no choice but to reach out to them. After they have read through millions of messages saying basically "You wouldn't have had to read this message if you still had these useful features," I guarantee you they will bring back those features!
This will only work if an enormous amount of users start to do it, so please spread the word. Let your voice be heard and let them know that we will not settle for not having these features and that we want them back!
Check Duome for grammar tips and lessons!
@@BGing_Foodie thank you so much!!
"An update rant with tips" is a very good label for a RUclips video of this nature. I love it.
Thanks! It started out as a 2023 top tips update but ended up being quite a rant 😅
@@evan hadn't even watched yet but knew exactly what I was getting 😆
I'm currently using Duolingo to learn Italian. I'm doing it through two courses, English to Italian and Spanish to Italian.
English to Italian is the stronger course, but as the word order to learn the language changes depending on your starting language I can learn different information as I go along.
Complimenti for the effort! I'm Italian, I'd be happy to help sometimes :)
I also do English to Italian. They don't have my language (Dutch) to Italian. Which sucks, but most of it is fine. However for some forms the word order is way more logical if it were Dutch to Italian instead of English. English makes a lot of sentences way more simplified than both Italian and Dutch
@@LadyQAB agree, that's also why I'm studying mandarin Chinese through English and not Italian!
Agreed. Spanish through English and Spanish through French have a very different order of skills, and both are useful to me.
I’m also on the English to Italian path, as a long term user, but it’s been unusable since ‘the update’ . It’s never taught me higher numbers or how to ask my in laws how they are or if they enjoyed something. Instead, most recently been ‘taught’ the phrase ’The Spaniard stopped and then he fell in the courtyard’ 😟I have so many questions about that, but no, I can’t remember the Italian, it’s all feeling pointless Worst of all my native Italian partner is endlessly correcting the Duolingo answers . He scores around 30% on a lesson to my 100%. Such a shame as I love the language and want to learn to better communicate with my family in law and it used to seem like good tool, at least for vocabulary
From my experience, Duolingo is great if you already have some knowledge of the language you are learning. I made amazing progress in French having studied the basics when I was at school- when I started learning Russian as a complete beginner it felt impossible without having those foundations in the language already. Definite pro/con I’ve found with the app, but that’s not to say it’s all bad!
@pxrtmanvidsonig3641 I think it’s great they’ve got the alphabet on there now! When I started it wasn’t a feature so that made it tricky for me at the beginning 😊
A few languages had chat rooms for a while where you could actually speak in your target language with other learners. That was super helpful and fun but I don’t understand why they took it away… even if I wasn’t speaking, I would turn it on and listen through context clues and figure out what they were talking about, like immersive learning
I’m actually so surprised that you like the new path structure better than the previous one. I liked that I could pick between many different topics, but now I am forced to do the next lesson in the path.
Me too. I have lost most of the motivation, now. Japanese used to be quite good, but with the endless path and the elimination of stories, it has become tedious. And I can't even watch the old forum discussions. I started on Japanese just right before they took the whole forum away.
They have also some issues about the sound. At the beginning they seemed to correct the issues I reported, but now, they don't seem to bother.
I also miss that you could go back and repeat the different themes at will, and that you at least got ten points for it. Now, only five.
I used to be able to acquire more vocabulary faster too with the old tree since you only needed to complete the first level of each "circle" to unlock new ones. I find myself getting bored quicker with the new tree.
Completely agree with this. The only advantage is that they will skip you forward if you're doing very well in a section. But I miss the free choice of lessons and stories.
This!! It was super useful being able to essentially pick what I wanted to learn. I picked up what was relevant, and would do the stuff I didn’t need later. Removing stories was the nail in the coffin for Duo for me. Can’t justify paying for the app without any of the things that I enjoyed about the app :/
You can go back and practice earlier units on the path, but I agree that it's not as good as saying: I need to practice names for body parts, past tense, etc.
My thoughts so far with the update:
I miss just being able to do a few stories (mainly the speaking ones)
The TIPS ! they were super helpful especially in the later stages
The audio lessons were nice - but I didn’t use them much, I should have used them more before they were gone.
If I’m going to do a lesson I’ll use the desktop shortcut where I can access the old tree version
Also when my Italian and Spanish switched to the new path I lost a MAJOR amount of progress in Spanish, which really zapped my motivation. I wish there was a way to appeal your level and request for a better boost. Like when I try and test out I know the unit but sometimes my spelling or the vocabulary in the lesson is new and I miss some of the context clues.
I spent what felt like a couple of months repeating lessons in Spanish I already did in the tree version!
One simple way to force Duolingo to bring back the tips and the discussions:
*Spam The Frick Out Of Their Flagging System*
Anytime you get to a question where you don't understand the answer, hit the little flag button at the bottom and send them a message. But, and this is the most important part, make sure that you type in at the bottom where it gives you a chance to explain why you're flagging it that you don't understand the answer to this question and that you could have either learned the lesson through a tip or you could have gotten your answer by being able to post in the discussion section but since those features are no longer available you have no choice but to reach out to them. After they have read through millions of messages saying basically "You wouldn't have had to read this message if you still had these useful features," I guarantee you they will bring back those features!
This will only work if an enormous amount of users start to do it, so please spread the word. Let your voice be heard and let them know that we will not settle for not having these features and that we want them back!
Check Duome for grammar tips and lessons!
I truly wish they would explain more about the grammar instead of just exposing you to it. The French and Spanish actually put you through conjugation tables we're German has no such thing. Der, den, dem...diese, dieser, dieses, etc. I still bang my head on the desk and I've been slamming 3 languages for 2 months ( though I did have French in high school over 30 years ago and Spanish in college over 20 years ago), but I caught myself spending less time with German and it's the reason I started Duolingo!
I don't know why more people are complaining about this. Phrasebooks do not teach you language. Why on Earth did they think this was a good idea? Studying and attempting to understand was distracting people from the games? How far can you get in a language when you don't know the conjugation rules or about cases?
You are aware that there are plenty of resources avaliable for free where you can find german conjugation tables, right? I really don't see why this would be an issue for anyone
@@alvaeriksson3623 Well you are right. The issue now is finding a resource does teach those. Duolingo teaches nothing about language at all now and is no good for people who are new to language learning.
Yep, from looking at example comments for German it was obvious that students without other lessons were just completely confused
The popular languages (ie French and Spanish) have a Guide in many of the lessons. I think Tips were renamed to Guide. I don’t know if they are accessible on a cellphone (Tips were not accessible). I use a laptop.
Thank God! Someone who doesn't trash Duolingo. I used it a lot when starting out in Spanish until intermediate level and beyond and it really helped. I speak Spanish fluently now. Great tool and fun.
I haven't done Duolingo in a while but my biggest tip is that even if you do just 1-2 lessons a day, whenever you encounter a new word/sentence, pronounce it a few times and read the comments section. You'll find lots of useful info there. I did the Italian for English speakers course as a beginning stage of my Italian learning journey and reading the comments, pronouncing the exampkes from them (the approved ones) making sure I got the pronunciation right and didn't miss any words, has done more for me than the lessons themselves
The commments section no longer exists! One day, it just suddenly disappeared. I HATE how Duo has changed.
At first, I really didn't like the new path, but as I started getting used to it, I found I actually really like it. It's less overwhelming, and while I originally didn't like that they took away my ability to choose what subject to practice, I found that this new path keeps me more concentrated and consistant. I do still loath the fact that I'm being forced to learn how to say rhinoceros and raccoon dog before numbers though. Yes, to become fully fluent in a language, I would need to learn the names of animals, but when rhino is unit 10, and numbers is unit 15, I feel like the owl got their priorities a bit twisted lol
The new path in Dutch gives me so much repetition that I usually get perfect lessons. The new path in Hebrew is a disaster - I see a word twice, it decides that I've "mastered it", and then I see it again a week later. Really, really frustrating. I'm going back to Aleph with Beth, I think.
I know you're learning Korean because I am also learning rhinoceros and raccoon dog before the numbers 😭
Also my favorite Korean word so far is parrot (앵무새)
For real! I'm on unit 23 & they're just now introducing how to say other colors besides red, blue, and green. There are so many A1 level things it hasn't gone over before showing B1 content
@@DesnySaldate I definitely gave up on Korean after a while for that same reason. It was too frustrating with the priority issues as well as the fact it doesn’t really explain any of the grammar (at least it didn’t when I was learning) so I had to learn from outside sources… either way, I give kudos to everyone learning Korean still despite the difficulties
Yes the prioritization in duo leaves room for growth.
Apparently I’m meant to learn animals & colors before learning both sets of numbers in Korean which makes me think the map was built for kids rather than adults grabbing a lesson In between appointments. They could be interspersing both number sets into my path so I was used to seeing them but nah.
Duolingo as a language learning app is fundamentally about being able to communicate with more people and the CEO can't even do that for the most basic of things....how ironic
This is the most underrated comment here.
It's worth noting that only iOS has some of the new features - such as practice mode, and the units/modules you mentioned. Here in Android world, I have an infinite snake which almost feels worse than the old method. And I find it hard to revisit previous content!
Thanks for giving me some optimism about the new update though.
It's weird because Android is still infinite snake like Desktop, but they just made it to where the 30min 2x potion can be saved for later (3 days), which he said iOS doesn't have.
Exactly, even if I took everything in order it was more motivating for me to see the end in sight than an infinite scroll like it is now.
I also must add that I hate how to hey are playing everyday with the structure of the lesson, sometimes they ask you to guess words, sometimes they give you pictograms sometimes they are completely missing. Also, what ai don't appreciate with the new Duolingo is the impression that you go round in circles because they keep playing the old sentences already learned in the old tree or they keep putting them in different modules.
I already have the practice hub in my android phone, but not the modules. It would quite helpful to organize better the course units and doesn't seem like a complex feature to implement.
Thank you for mentioning this, because I was trying to find what he was talking about, but that explains it. I look forward to that because I do want to know what level I'm at.
I left duo lingo after almost two years for several reasons, most of which have been very thoroughly covered already in other comments. I was doing French, German, Japanese (already previously studied) and Chinese (completely new to me). However, my main gripe was the poor standard of English in my control language. It consistently rejected my answers because it did not have sufficient vocabulary to recognise the words I chose to use, or it’s grammar was incorrect and it would not accept my grammatically correct answers…. Very frustrating, but it also led me to wonder whether I was learning an equally low level of my chosen languages as well. I quit and moved to other methods. IMO one thing they could do with is a genuine working facility for students to have input about errors, glitches, etc. Thanks for the update video.
Karen Adams, I so agree with you! Duo uses poor grammatical English construction much of the time, constructions that would have made my 19 years’ worth of teachers cringe (and, hence, myself as well). And now that I am going to other sources for learning French, I’m seeing how poorly I was being “taught” on Duo. Send that owl back to school!
Do you have examples? Most native English speakers don’t explicitly take English grammar classes, and your technical skills might not be as developed or accurate as you think
@@alexspencer5478 Thanks for the question.
No, I have not bothered to remember any of the countless specific examples. Suffice to say that most were at the primary school level for native English speakers. Had they been at advanced level or in the category of preferential use, I would not have minded so much.
Grammar Police is my middle name…. 😎😂
Duo uses American English, so for certain phrases such as the way you say the date it could come up as wrong. What were the grammar errors? From my experience it would be phrasing of a question. French doesn’t have a direct translation for the phrase ‘Are you?’. So they are multiple words of conveying that in French ‘Vous + the verb’ or ‘Est ce que’, are a few examples.
@@karenaadams5988 just so it is clear I wasn’t attacking you. But sometimes, when English speakers are given a grammar test or have to give a strictly correct grammatical answer, they struggle because they passively picked up grammar during adolescence and haven’t had the need to remember explicit grammar lessons!
ABSOLUTELY agree with your assessment. I like the new learning path, but I really miss the audio lessons - I used to listen to those while I cook (an activity that I hate) to keep me sane with interesting, real-world French lessons. :( It's the main reason I've refused to get Super Duolingo, because they removed my favorite feature...
I agree with most of your points. But one thing that makes me so mad about all these recent updates is that they're teaching us 4-5 concepts at a time most of the time. If you manage to check out the old tree, you'll see that you're learning multiple new skills and they don't even get maxed out to legendary because they've shortened the lessons by a significant amount. I'm currently learning People 3, School 2, Family 2, and Work.. according to the old tree at least. It's just a lot of stuff to remember especially if you're a slower learner.
Yes, it isn't the most efficient way to learn a language, but you're right. It's sometimes one of the only ways to keep a language learning habit. Duolingo helps so much when caring for a newborn baby and moving, because sometimes a quick lesson or two on your phone is all you can manage and there's no shame in that! It's even better if you can use other things and resources a few times a week too
As someone trying to learn norwegian, I have noticed that some features in the more popular languages such as French and Spanish, such as stories, aren't even included in the other languages, so I have never had any opportunity to use stories, which is a shame.
As well as I think for someone who struggles with listening comprehension, I think a good challenge is to have audio for a sentence in the language you're learning and have to immediately translate it in your language, which would help with more listening comprehension.
Hey I'm also learning Norwegian! Always seems like there's so few people learning it 😑 Which is probably why we never got any of the fun stuff the popular ones got. I think there's also a big difference between the iphone and android versions because I can't move bubbles around like he shows. I think android and the web version are running on a shared budget haha 🙃
@@mewichigo21794 oh that's interesting! Yeah maybe so!
Be aware that a few words are pronounced wrong. I speak Norwegian and a few times when I struggle on a sunday to stay in the diamond league I have been doing tasks in Norwegian to get points quicker;) and I remember especially «ender» which means ducks. They say it in a weird way, I have clicked on it several times but not sure when they will fix it. There was another one too but I can’t remember it now.
Ahh finally someone else learning norwegian
yes, they have the same issue with swedish :’) i learned spanish for a long time on duolingo and find the stories so helpful, so i’m sad they don’t have the stories for all languages
¡No sabía que la versión para computadora de Duolingo era más limitada que la versión de celular! Siempre es bueno visitar los vídeos de Evan cada cierto tiempo. ¡Gracias!
1748 days here. I have learned Italian and now I am learning Finnish. I absolutely hated the new format until I noticed it was actually pushing me forward to learn new stuff and taking me out of the comfort zone instead of repeating lessons over and over due to laziness (I used to do it I lot, hard to admit). I worked in an English school in Brazil for two years and what separated people learning effectively from the ones not learning was very obvious: finding several ways to get in contact with the language instead of only studying that hour in the school once a week. Music, videos, cartoons, groups on Facebook with other learners, anything is valid!
I have been in the Diamond League for a year now, last week I almost gave up as the first place had over 11 thousand XPs and I had to do a ridiculous amount of it just not to get demoted.
Quit edit: it is sad how Finnish was released almost 3 years ago but it is still a beta version without lots of features.
Hi, I hope you don't mind me commenting lol, but I just wanted to say I have the complete opposite experience with the new format! Earlier this week I lost my 443 day streak (which may not seem like a lot but it felt like a lot to me :'')).
I couldn't get into the new format at all, and I still hate it with every fiber of my being. I quite liked being able to jump around in the old format and choosing what I wanted to learn, as opposed to being sort of forced in a linear direction, not even mentioning I felt like the new format introduced me to content I hadn't actually learned at that point. Which is why, after about 1 to 2 months of trying to give the new layout a chance, I cracked and just started doing the first couple of lessons over and over again just to continue my streak (which I don't recommend doing, as it also made me lose a lot of my motivation towards learning the language).
Perhaps - and this is just speculation on my part - the new format somehow works better for neurotypical people? I've seen a lot of neurodivergent people, including myself, that are unable to get into the new format because it is stricly linear and you can't really jump around in a chapter like you could before. Again, this is just speculation and not meant to be taken as fact, but I found it curious to note.
As I mentioned earlier, I lost my streak earlier this week, and I'm still debating with myself wether or not it will be worth it if I restart again - only time will tell I guess. Congrats on your streak, though!
The format is garbage. Don’t lie to yourself.
It just wants you to repeat the same boring lessons again and again, until you subscribe to Super or buy gems.
10.000 lessons = 800 hours just to complete the Spanish path is ludicrous.
800 hours for B1 max without proper speaking and listening lessons.
But keep wasting your time!
@@kyravh4939 same as you I lost 800+days in Spanish and so hard for me to go back to the new version!
@@paralytaatylarap9715 "It just wants you to repeat the same boring lessons again and again" I've been repeating the same lessons again and again for months in the previous version. Because they were easy and I could do them fast and get more points from that. Now I just stick to my one lesson per day, and slowly make progress. If I get too bored, I rotate to another language and learn it instead, and then go back when I feel like doing so.
@toby wong I just don't like the thought of loosing the streak. It motivates me to do at least one lesson daily. + streak freezes
I miss having access to the forums so much! I'm learning gaelic right now and it's one of those courses that isn't super build up yet. Being able to ask questions or just read the answers already given to previous questions was so helpful.
Agreed. Even just being able to see that others had similar problems was heartening. Getting explanations from more fluent speakers was a bonus and, of course, when the opportunity arose where you were able to explain something yourself, that's when the learning really sticks.
So what Gaelic are you learning Scottish or Irish also have you noticed that the computer version of it is less intuitive to learning noq
@@evelynn1173 I'm learning Scottish gaelic (: and I haven't used the computer version for gaelic yet so I can't comment on that.
Oh wow! I would love that but I’m hectic with Korean and Scottish Gaelic is maybe 3/4th on my list. deagh fhortan!
@@evelynn1173 usually Irish isn’t called Gaelic for future reference
Something that I hate with all my soul is that everyone seems to have completely different updates: some people say the got the ability to earn hearts by practicing; I lost that ability. Some people say the German forum is open again; not for me. It is so annoying.
Also, if you are trying to get back to a language you abandoned, the path keeps trying to place you immediately where you left before without acknowledging that you completely forgot many things. And getting back in the path is a nightmare. That's what happened with my Hebrew after 2 years in the freezer and I just kept guessing the meaning based in what I remembered and the bubbles but didn't feel like I was actually learning. Today, I decided to erase all my progress in Hebrew and start the tree all over again. That would have never been necessary in the tree, I just would have gone to the part of the tree I felt I actually understood and start moving up again to the point I was before the hiatus.
I've always used the desktop version and I don't mind it at all. I prefer the infinite snake to the overwhelming pyramid of hell from before. I've never even tried the bubbles thing because typing everything out yourself is much better anyway. But you make excellent points, of course it could be a lot better.
The fact that they don't have grammar lessons anymore is absolutely wild. Love it when a lesson just throws 20 different pronouns at me without explaining which ones to use in what context. And then when I use a wrong one it just tells me "Nope, not that one!"
I don’t comment much, but I’ve been using duolingo since 2016 and it hasn’t really stuck, that is, until I started taking Italian at college this year - never having done it before. I got nervous about being so new AND it being a college class, so I started “pregaming” basically and doing duolingo that summer. What i basically ended up getting from duolingo was a basic familiarity with the language that helped me a ton in those first few weeks! I’ve seen some other people say that duo works we in combination with other language learning programs and it absolutely does! I keep up with it just so I am engaging with the language every day when I don’t have time to study. Just wanted to throw in I think that duo can be a great way to ease your way into more rigorous language learning :)
I am a believer in Duolingo as a supplement to other learning. My experience: summer 2019 I spent about 2 months using Duolingo every day for Italian. At this point I already spoke C1ish level French so naturally I wasn't starting at zero. I then lived in Italy for 4 months. I found that Duolingo gave me an arsenal of nouns and basic verbs, along with their conjugations, and a vague enough understanding of sentence structure to be able to communicate basic stuff in every day life. I could then look up new words and verbs I needed and add on to my knowledge.
I'm not happy with the update because i feel i'm not working on old words enough; i loved the "broken" lessons because i knew when to do what.
Also i wish there was more structure for grammar learning... I've been learning Ukrainian for 9 months now and i still have no clue about tenses or masculine/feminine words... I teach Latin irl so i' d really prefer some conjugation tables ;)
I did Polish with Duolingo for two years but I knew it wasn't for me when they started to tell me "It's about progress, not perfection". Then they changed it and I was out. I am not under any pressure to learn quickly and all the other languages I have learnt, I aimed for, and achieved, a certain amount of perfection. None of the features Evan is talking about were available for Polish - they sound as though they would only be distracting anyway. I am a boomer and used to traditional learning and need lists of vocabulary and tables of conjugations to orientate myself. Also, at my age, it takes longer to learn and retain new words, so I needed to go back and reinforce and revise earlier lessons to keep everything in my memory. This was no longer possible. I don't mind "plateauing" for that very reason.
As for the Friend's Quests - I've noticed in the last two weeks, they are allowing you to bank the 2x thingy for a couple of days. It used to super annoy me because it always happened at the most inopportune of times, but now you can bank them in the shop. Just though you might appreciate knowing this. I'm gathering you may have filmed this before the update happened though, so you may be aware of this.
I think it's currently in A/B testing, so only certain people have access to this - my husband banked one of his friend quest double XP boosts the other day, but I wasn't able to bank mine yesterday
I can bank the 2x booster if it's the other person who finished off the friends quest. Just as long as I don't click on the tab, it remains untouched. But if I am the one who finishes the quest, the booster comes up and I either use it right now or it's gone. I really do wish I could save it for later regardless of who does the last lesson or earns the last XPs.
@@annaflitz2838 That's been the case for a while. When my husband got one last week, he was given the option to store it in the shop for a few days - so it still had a limit on using it, but he could finish the quest one evening and not have to use the 30 minute boost until the next day, when he had more time to spend on lessons
I got into this testing experiment just this week, it's super nice. They should make it available do everyone as soon as possible.
Your streak is insanely impressive! I miss being able to listen to the pods while cleaning and receiving experience points. I adore Duolingo! I play French everyday! Almost for a whole year.
I used it years ago before going to Spain, and it was very helpful. Then, they updated the app, and I quit. I guess I was frustrated because I had a routine, which I was not willing to change.
I’m gonna be honest bro, I feel like the “things Duolingo helped me do” you mention at the beginning were more beneficial for your learning than the Duolingo was.
I speak from experience. My Japanese got much better much faster by listening to podcasts, doing some supplementary flash cards on Anki, and reading actual things. Podcasts, especially, are wonderful. It takes some time, patience, and concentration to get beyond the “I can’t understand anything here” phase, but you will, and it’s easy to immerse this way once you do.
can you recommend some very beginner podcasts that maybe translate the sentences and explain which word is what in english? or did you only listen to regular japanese podcasts
I love watching your takes on duolingo! It bugs me to no end the way people dismiss it so much. It may not be the best way to learn quickly, but it’s the reason I’ve stuck with learning Spanish for 2 years now. I am currently at a conversationally fluent level, but that’s because I’ve used other tools and practice outside of duolingo. Duo is just what keeps me in the habit. Keep up the good work!
Yes I suppose it also depends on what your goals or expectations are for this app. I got it strictly for the ease of use and simple time investment. I’m learning Korean lessons via online programs and Duo feeds me daily reminders. So for me it works.
I've been learning languages through other means and only just decided to try duolingo mostly because of all the negative attention it gets. There are definitely some problems, like sentences that make no sense and even errors in translation sometimes, but if you use it alongside other apps or methods of learning as a practice and consolidation tool then it's very useful i think
I used to use it to practice running through a couple of lessons daily, after completing both Spanish & German courses, but they soon made changes which ruined it for me.
Despite my sub their support was abysmal, so I just cancelled and removed the app not missing it, when they started suppressing dissent about the update on the forum.
I always felt though it was popular it wasn't the best app for vocabulary or teaching lessons.
I didn't really mind "the boy eats spiders" and so on, but it "objecting" to correct English and not allowing fixing typos drove me crazy.
Memrise had much better native pronunciation to practice speaking clearly.
I really like the way you structure your videos. Saying the most important stuff first. Very good!
I was a moderator on the Finnish forums and they gave us a heads-up about shutting it down long before it happened, but we weren't allowed to say anything about it publicly. I wasn't sure why they didn't just tell everyone right away. I was also baffled about the decision itself, because the social aspect of the site that is no longer there clearly breathed life into it and made learning much easier. I was very active on duolingo while the forums and sentence discussions were there, but have almost never been back since they were shut down.
currently learning french through duolingo and a agree with everything you’re saying. i definitely cannot afford french lessons but i have a duolingo subscription and for now, it’s a good affordable, accesible alternative. hopefully it’ll keep readjusting and some of the removed features will be brought back.
So far, 2 of my French videos have galaxies, the one on star signs, and I think the other one is about the days of the week and their etymologies.
I'm learning Japanese on Duolingo and the one thing that really got me was a lack of teaching how a sentence gets laid out (it's very different than English). I was really struggling until I went and googled a chart.
Particles always got me when I was learning Japanese.
And so much nuance comes down to verb endings.. and the 3000 kanji… it’s hard 😆
But 日本語がきれいだ
I’m glad you’re learning Japanese & you got this!
Same with Korean. Duolingo to me was a simple practice app. I got thru it & am half-way thru Clozemaster, which is a step up (as in harder) as my practice app. I LEARN from TTMIK, the courses on Skillshare.
Even then, a chart will only show you the most basic structures. Duolingo alone will never get you to fluency. Eventually you just need to accept that it's an entirely new language and will take a large amount of time and effort to get good at. I recommend just buying a textbook and studying the hell out of grammar before you even begin to start seriously grinding vocab. Obviously everyone learns differently, but learning the vocab without grammar is like learning the notes of a piano without learning scales or chords. You're just making noise, and while it may occasionally make sense, it's largely directionless. Like they say, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. I recommend looking into good t4extbooks. The most popular one is
Genki, but I personally think it's generally too slow, and a little too hand-holdy. The book I used for beginner through intermediate level was Yookoso, which was paced perfectly in my opinion. Idk what your level is, but I would imagine still fairly beginner due to the nature of your comment, but it gets you out of using romaji very quick, and starts you on core grammar soon.
Just remember that there aren't any cheats or shortcuts to help you become fluent, and anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something (usually their online language course that can get you fluent in MONTHS! (as the kids say, cap)). I don't want this to discourage you. Japanese is genuinely an amazing language, and I absolutely think it's worth learning. The feeling you get the first time you have a regular conversation in Japanese without needing to pull out your phone feels better than damn near anything. Hell, I remember returning from a hiking trip in Nara with some friends and just speaking Japanese the entire ride back, and it was honestly some of the most fulfilled I've ever felt. But it's a huge amount ow work that requires consistent, focused effort. I hope you continue with learning though! It's my favorite language out there, and I recommend it to anyone
I'm using Duolingo to learn Japanese. I'm using it right now to learn Hiragana. It's something I'm admittedly learning more passively rather than actively right now. Maybe I'll be more active in the future. but I'm hoping by isolating it individually, I can connect the words with ideas as opposed to always translating it in my head.
One language I want to learn much more about is Catalan because it is one of my heritage languages along with Spanish. However, they only have the Catalan course for castilian spanish speakers.
The question people will inevitably ask is why don't I just learn spanish first THEN learn Catalan?
Well, I think it's more interesting if I learn a niche language. It's like learning Welsh in Wales when everyone speaks English. Sure, more speak english. But it's like you're part of an exclusive group if you can speak the regional language. And my mum is catalan so... I feel like I can learn the spanish later. I think it would be harder to do it the other way around for me personally.
(oh and Franco tried to kind of eradicate the language so... I want to stick two fingers to him by doing this.)
I highly recommend using other language apps in conjunction with Duolingo for Japanese. Lingodeer for me has more complete and more useful sentences. As you advance, you'll also want a dedicated app for Kanji. You can probably manage kana (katakana and hiragana) in one app, but Kanji is way more than that.
If you are currently learning the hiragana and katakana parts of Japanese I would try an app called ‘Write Japanese’ the app icon has a pencil in front of a blue background and the kana あ. I’m still working on katakana (because I am very lazy 😅) but I picked up hiragana in about a week using it. Just turn off your phones Wi-Fi before you open the app so you don’t get hit with ads.
Hello! I am Catalan myself, and got so excited when I found out Duolingo had Catalan to learn! Then I saw that you could only learn it from spanish so it would not be avaliable to any curious english speaker and my excitement totally disappeared . Is still nice they have it, but at this point more people can learn Valyrian than Catalan :(
It’s honestly way better if you learn Spanish first before Catalan.
learning japanese,catalan and spanish, well i feel you going to feel demotivated when you not make enough progress, learning a language take a long time. (dropped japanese after a while, too much to learn but is learning spanish instead now)
Your honesty is refreshing!
Green owl, the despot polyglot. I love that!
Loved your tips and your concerns. I used to really like the tips and the tap with all the stories. I also enjoy using the desktop version to challenge myself with writing, and it's so bad... I hope they hear you/us and improve on these things!
Some of the issues you mention were why I didn't renew Super Duolingo. I enjoyed the stories and am disappointed with them disappearing, and also found it disappointing they removed the forums as well. I found the tree better than the infinite snake, but this is less important to me than the other things. Since going back to free, I find I'm using it more on desktop than the app so I don't have to worry about hearts and its a bit odd that the lingots and gems are separate numbers on each.
Funny thing about storie, in the old format I had a nice routine where I would do a couple of lessons and then a story. When the new learning path was implemented, it sent me back halfway in stories, so I've been listening to "old" stories for months now.... C'est la vie...
I had unlocked and finished all the Spanish stories over the past few years and then the new update happened and it set me back to maybe 25% complete. My go to for my daily lesson was to do a few speaking stories but that’s gone now.
@@Drawfield yeah, It's a bummer. What I do now is listen to their french podcast instead of stories. But that doesn't get you any points
This really is helpful. I'm also trying to learn Spanish. I've been on and off learning Spanish for most of my adult life, but I do better when I don't have a deadline since my memory is bad and I get test anxiety.
I’ve gotten used to the new tree (having it broken down into smaller chunks works more nicely for me imo), but I really miss the tips for lessons and the discussions on sentences. Both were very helpful for grammar. The guidebooks giving example sentences would be fine if it gave more details about what they were an example of. Also I would love it if duolingo were able to better develop some of the courses and implement some of the more advanced features that only exist for the most popular languages.
But otherwise yes I do really like this app, actively use it, support them, as well as recommend it to people who ask about language learning.
I'm learning Japanese and using DL as like a pseudo flash card system and it's very helpful to turn off the romanized pronunciation that shows up with the actual characters, it's really helped me memorize all of the writing systems and I'm much better at reading than I would be with leaving it on. So basically extra tip turn off the pronunciation if you're learning a language with non-romanic characters.
A few weeks ago I started using Anki as well as Duolingo to help me learn German. Even in the past 20 or so days, I feel like I've learnt so much more vocabulary through Anki than I have in the last 200 days of Duolingo. Duolingo is good for learning grammar, while Anki is great for memorising vocab.
based anki
very inorganic way to learn a language, don't just learn words, immerse yourself, then you will naturally remember the words and their meanings, and situations they're used in, sometimes some words are hard to remember even if u see it a couple times but that's when you should use flashcards
@@kimaya.3563 Naturally, I do that too, but Anki helps with the raw memorisation.
Anki has helped me tremendously in my vocabulary. Far more than any app. It makes engaging with the language in reading and listening so much more rewarding. I’m the kind of person who would rather brute force learn 1000 of the most common words then start engaging with the language and add phrases back into Anki to solidify them
I switched to Comprehensible Input (mostly Dreaming Spanish, which is the best resource I've ever found) after many years of Duolingo and promptly dropped DL when I realised how much more fun I was having. I think it's good as a start to learn a few basics and see whether you like the language but then it just becomes loads of frustrating tests. In the real world you can get a gender wrong or miss an "a" and people will still be able to communicate with you. I found it too tedious having to be perfect every time.
I do however love the podcast, as I find out loads about the history of Spanish speaking countries and hear lots of different accents.
Same.
I’ve been increasingly using those sorts of resources including Dreaming. They’re lots of fun. But I’m still primarily focusing on Duolingo. I have so much of the grammar I haven’t learned yet.
@@nendoakuma7451 I've stopped focusing too much on grammar at the moment until I have a 5 year old grasp of the language at least. There seems to be a fair bit of research that supports gaining input (like a toddler would) before starting to speak and especially before reading and writing. I was using Kwiziq to help with grammar before. There's a free version if you want to have a look. Lots of explanations and tests.
@@coolstertothecore yeah, I know about the importance of input, I’ve just been doing that with other languages for a long time. Duolingo’s approach seems relatively fresh to me and fun. I was never able to stick with Spanish for very long until I did Duolingo. But there’s definitely a lot of merit to what you’re doing.
@@nendoakuma7451 I think the gamification can really help with motivation and it's visually far more attractive than a textbook. And of course different approaches work for different people.
Now that you discussed more the Path update, I actually found the update good. I remembered back in the old version I just spend the time going back to the very first subjects with very basic stuff just to not let the purple icon crack, and after doing some I just decided "that's enough for the day" and not learning anything new. Now, I just need to keep going, not dealing with very basic stuff.
Yup and that’s why they updated it!
Just before Duo switched to the path, I discovered that it doesn't crack more than 3 units. Ha! I stopped restoring them. I didn't care about 3 broken icons. It was much worse before when you could wake up and see that half of your tree is broken.
@@evan Nope, that is completely wrong. Stop lying!
They added at least 3-4 times the same lessons to keep you even longer in the app.
If you want to complete the entire Englisch->Spanisch path and you don’t want to take shortcuts, you now have to do at least 10.000 lessons to finish it completely.
That will take over 800 hours!!!!
800 hours for Spanish at B1 level.
That is a waste of time.
I don't get why the easiest icons kept cracking while the much harder ones just stayed in tact forever on lol. I don't get why they'd want you to keep doing the easy stuff
That was an update they made a couple of months before the path. They could have just reverted that update and kept the tree. Or at least kept it as an optional format. They've lost me I'm afraid.
Maybe if they build a European Spanish course I would consider coming back. But mixed LatAm Spanish.. no thanks.
I hate that they removed the forums. I liked seeing people's chitchat about questions and explanations etc. The match game isn't available for all languages either. I get it for French but for Japanese it's just Ramp Up which doesn't reward quite as much XP. I also still find it annoying that they haven't addressed issues like how Korean reuses sounds for different letters.
I remember when Duolingo first introduced Japanese onto the app. Since I had been doing light study with some books for a few years, I basically knew everything they had. And there was no Kanji so I finished all the lessons in like a month.
The update over the years have made it way better to learn in. I like that they do the casual tenses from time to time for people that are fans of Japanese music and media too.
I'm glad you mentioned the issue of grammar tips dissapearing! That's been my major gripe with the update, I've complained about this in several places before but the new "guidebooks" on the Scottish Gaelic course are terrible. There's also only 5 of them for a whole 69 unit course. I took a break from Duo this month, but I want to try to get back into it with a different strategy and paired with more learning sources.
*EDITED 5/2/2023* It looks like Duolingo actually added new guidebooks up to unit 55! They're still pretty sparse but I appreciate that there's any improvement at all.
I am learning Czech on Duolingo, but I have reached the limit. I had already nearly completed the entire tree at the gold level when the new update happened, just a handful of lessons left to complete. The new update just made the whole tree complete and now the only thing left for me to do is legendary level, which is really frustrating because it punishes really inane mistakes (similar to the one you mentioned about adding "that").
I really hope they're bringing some of these features to the Mandarin course, Stories definitely sounds like a way that I would learn well.
HelloChinese is very similar to Duolingo but has more relevant sentences, grammar notes, clips of native speakers, and they just added stories. I've been switching back and forth now and then to keep things interesting and because I'm also using Duo for another language, but I do think HC is quite a bit better all in all for Mandarin.
@@rottworks Oh gosh I remember that app, I downloaded it when I first started learning and got super intimidated by it! Thanks for the recommendation, I'll need to give it another try now that I'm more confident.
Wow interesting, you're the first person who's really praised the new update, and it makes sense as well, thanks!
I've been learning Arabic for a year now, and I have to say that I didn't know about half of the features that Evan talks about in this video. I've never once seen a story or a "Complete the sentence" type challenge before. Seems like the mileage you get on Duolingo HEAVILY depends on the language you want to learn and whether or not Duolingo has put any effort into the courses. Not every feature that the big languages has carries over to the less popular languages.
Thanks for your thoughts, I am learning German and Spanish as well with Duolingo and hope to get to around B1 in German this year and B2 in Spanish
Best of luck!
i’m a japanese learner & i completely agree, in that i’ve also progressed so much quicker since the layout changed to the snake! i used to spend ages trying to perfect the units before doing anything new which often meant i just wouldn’t do anything new. now i default to doing the newest lesson. also, japanese doesn’t have the writing a comment option at the end of the stories and i hope it gets it because that sounds really fun. i also hope it gets speaking lessons because it’s never had those. you can answer written lessons with speech to text but it’s… wonky.
I've found several spelling errors with Korean 🥴 I'm studying German too. Thanks for this videoooo ❤❤❤❤❤
the best part of the comments section was the amount of explanation and teaching there and also the reassurance that the problem you were having was not unique and is a tricky point.
I've been learning Swedish on Duolingo for the past month. I really don't mind that it's missing some features that would make it more comprehensive. It has jump-started me in the language and motivated me to seek other sources for learning culture and for listening comprehension. I think this is kind of the point - get outside the app and use your new language in the world as early as possible.
My native language is Spanish and now I'm learning Norwegian using Duolingo. One thing that helps me is writing down as many sentences as possible :)
I never use the app because I hate the heart system but I guess I may need to try it as oppose to the desktop version because that one truly turned to crap.
My main problem with duolingo is that I've somehow managed to get through some lessons without really learning the concepts and now as I try to move forward, those missing pieces are catching up with me but it's hard to go back and re-learn what I need. And when I just use the general practice button, I keep practicing stuff I mostly know pretty well. Those practices never move further down the tree.
Repeating Legendary doesn't give you 90XP with double XP anymore. You make more with new lessons and then the last one of the unit.
Some things you mentioned are not available for every language or were never available.
I use the app to learn Welsh and for a refresher in Japanese and Latin. All three have different styles of lessons.
Btw. The worst is the update for the ones, who actually completed the available lessons, but don't feel secure yet, my friend has the issue with Mandarin. She basically lost all fun with learning.
I haven't finished and yes, it's actually better for me now, than before. I'm forced to do new lessons instead of repeating old ones. It works for me.
I felt the same way about Mandarin. I still use Duolingo as a Japanese refresher, but I’m using HelloChinese for Mandarin now. I think it’s a much better app.
I watched this video when you posted it, and here I am eight days later with a solid streak. I don't feel pressured, I'm not forgetting about it, and I'm actually flying through my daily quest with zero mistakes. I have to hand it to you, the tip about the four leftover words really upped my confidence! Thank you!!
:)
I agree with everything you’ve highlighted in this video. Thank you for doing this.❤
Trust me, if it weren't for Duolingo, I would have struggled so much with Japanese (the language I learned since February). Duolingo did me wonders and stuff I thought I was never capable of. I learned two of Japan's writing systems. And have good enough basic kanji knowledge (about more than 300 Kanji although kanji isn't really required to learn Japanese). The stories were my favorite thing about Duolingo, and really helped me create short stories in Japanese. But, the more I progressed in Duolingo, the more I started to realize it was not as effective compared to the earlier lessons. I noticed this within 2 months of using. That is where I started looking for alternatives.
The way Duolingo teaches Japanese might be one of the worse ways because I am constantly relying on my English to progress in Duolingo. Japanese has a difficult first-time sentence structure that gets easier, but my main problem is that Japanese Duolingo crams a bunch of new grammar points and unnecessary sentence structures in lessons. Sounds a bit overwhelming. Worse case, some lessons would have one lesson that has a very different sentence structure that I never been exposed to and then, they don't even give me those repetitively. They just appear in one lesson forcing you to get it wrong. I have also used the free version of duolingo. Also, compared to Bunpro, Japanese Duolingo splits apart the Japanese Letters and Kanji which confuses enough already. Don't even get me started with the English ones too. Some English words would look too identical to another so, when I rush on their timed events, I would easily screw up the English. I found a solution to that by zooming in the display in the display settings of android. I also do not like the fact that they don't teach words, grammar points and, kanji individually. Luckily, Bunpro does this and it's only $5 a month.
I have more criticism with Japanese Duolingo but it would be too much to fit in a RUclips Comment.
For a company whose goal it is to teach communication, they don't seem to know much about communication.
I would really love more language combinations: im learning japanese from english at the moment (because its not available from german - my mother tongue) and they have very complicated grammar, polite forms and stuff which i dont feel like im taught the best way possible because english is even simpler than german. And sometimes words just dont exist in english and then the japanese word gets translated weirdly (like konnichiwa = hello instead of good day - which would be the accurate translation but doesnt really exist in english...)
Good day does exist in English, and it also means hello. It’s less common in American English since it sounds a little old fashioned, but Duolingo is the only Japanese course in American English I’ve ever encountered that didn’t think “good day” was a perfectly good and understandable translation of konnichiha.
Their choice of Japanese vocabulary and conversational phrases is impressive in my opinion, but the grammar situation is a catastrophe. I have a minor in the language, so I can only try to imagine what it would be like to attempt to learn Japanese grammar from a web service that seems to have some sort of unfortunate phobia of grammar tables. I’m honestly not sure I could stick with it. It’s depressing to see confused people asking questions in the discussion section that will never get an answer now.
Speaking of accurate translations, "konnichiwa" would rather mean "This day..." than "Good day", because there's no "good" anywhere in there. 😉
I agree with you on the language combinations, though. I've been learning Dutch as a German native speaker. Many sentences would be exactly the same word order in German and in Dutch. But I have to translate the sentences to English, where the word order can be quite different. That's a bit annoying at times. (But let's at least be glad that we have access to so many more languages as long as we master English to some degree...)
THE AUDIO LESSONS! THANK YOU!! I used to love the audio lessons, and although they have the podcast, it’s too advanced for me. It really baffles me. thank you for pointing it out
thank you for voicing these observations. i love Duolingo but I don't know how much more I am going to use it. Not having comments has made a big impact on my learning on Duolingo.
there’s one real downside to the new version: you can’t decide to go back and decide ton work on a particular grammar topic again since now everything is bunched up together.
I finished Italian and would like work on some verbs again : it’s impossible.
totally sucks.
If people are looking for an alternative and are willing and able to pay for it, I've personally really been impressed with Babbel since I stopped using Duolingo. It has a noticeably smaller pool of languages to choose from, but the Swedish course on Babbel has been way better for me. I genuinely feel like I'm making progress every lesson, which just wasnt the case with Duolingo after a few months.
My only problem with Duolingo is it made me FEEL like I was becoming fluent, when all I was really doing was learning how to play Duolingo better. I learned way more, a lot faster, with lessons with native speakers. Not saying it's impossible for someone to learn the language through Duolingo, but if you actually want to learn a language (not just kill time differently) it's not ideal.
Yeah, Duolingo is a memory game wearing a language teaching costume, and I would absolutely argue that it's impossible to learn a language through it. You can learn some basic stuff, but fluency is literally never going to happen if you only use the app. There's a certain point where you just kinda have to accept that you're learning a whole new language and that there's no easy way to do it whatsoever, and just buy textbooks and try to find native speakers to practice with. Get a strong base of grammar, then start learning vocab. If you have a good grammatical base, then it makes learning vocab through reading books much easier and more enjoyable than rote memorization.
I mean or course you’d learn faster having lessons with native speakers💀 what did you expect?
Yeah, it's just a learning supplement. A little thing to engage with to start and keep a habit. Now they just give sample sentences in Guidebook and zero grammar explanation. They don’t need to full on map it out like a text book if they want you to "learn like a native speaker," with all intricate details explained, a few lines lines about it for each lesson.
the stories and audio lessons were my favourite aspect too. absolutely agree with you on that one
The fact that you actually put the tips at the start was shocking. You get a sub for that.
I was not content at all with the old model but I discovered I love the new linear movement system. I feel like the old one was overwhelming and inconvenient. I would rather be guided through strict lessons and units with properly spaced reviews and stories integrated in instead of choosing a path myself and having to “strengthen” the same old skills later on. I take notes with Notion from my lessons and so far I have retained a lot. Of course I think you need to have some sort of language learning intuition to be good at learning from Duolingo because oftentimes they don't explain grammar well, if at all. Also if you just play the game without actually taking any info in then you won't learn anything. And definitely mix it with other methods. Do not rely on it alone.
I have been learning norwegian and have a 328 day streak i keep journals and practice writing everyday. Other than watching youtube i use no social media anymore and it has greatly reduced the stress in my life.
I sat down and told myself a few days ago that I would continue learning japanese. Had tried using doulingo before but life was busy stuff happens I made excuses. But as time goes on I have the drive more and more to learn japanese because I watch a lot of japanese media (yes some anime but also japanese movies) And would love to be able to understand the words going with the emotions I hear with the voices. I do believe it's very good at getting it to stick in your head as when I returned for the most part I had retained most of the lessons I had spent 1 week on with very few errors. I hope everyone looking into learning a new language has a wonderful journey! And don't tell yourself it's too hard (as cheesy as it sounds) You can do it!
With Japanese, just be aware that the app regularly gives the incorrect reading for Kanji, and sometimes for particles.
@@kathleenanne7868 Ya I've noticed that. Lately I spend maybe 20 minutes on doulingo and the rest is learning from actual native speakers.
Hey Even. Really enjoying your Duolingo videos. I couldn't find this video in your Duolingo playlist on your channel. I really enjoy your positive attitude.
your lighting is impeccable
The difficulty for me is that as much as I learn how to speak and write a language, understanding what people are speaking to you about is really hard. People don't speak their language grammatically perfect or with the correct pronunciations, it's always too fast or with different emphasis. That and the amount of slang and different locales isn't recognized. I'm trying to learn french, but I'm not in France, I'm in Quebec, which is veerrryy different. I have tried duo a couple times but the streak intimidates me and I feel like it's gamified too much. I'd prefer a much more conversational/written approach to learning a language.
i still recommend you try Duolingo for like a month to see how you feel about it! it's definitely intimidating but as soon as you understand and get into a rhythm it's so much easier to keep going. also, have you heard of the app language transfer? it's a bunch of recordings of a guy teaching someone a new language (including french!) from scratch. i have a harder time being consistent on that one but it seems similar to what you're looking for :)
Learning how to say, 'speak slower please, I'm learning (language)' helps. Most folks seem to be willing to slow down once they know you're new to the language.
I want to say that I have rather severe social anxiety and that's tripled when interacting with someone not in my native language, so yeah it's more realistic for me on a lot of levels to practice with an app rather than a human being. 😛
i started learning spanish in 2013. i was in middle school then, learning by really slow common core or whatever. i took on duolingo in 2016 when i got to high school.
i made a ton of progress in the first three years, learning a ton about how to shop for food, clothes, navigate around a house or tell someone exactly where an item is (“mis llaves están encima del escritorio al lado de la mesa grande”), and a ton about animals too.
i tested out of the first few lessons of duolingo’s spanish tree because i had already covered that stuff and was super strong in it. i stopped using it in 2018-ish (after finishing almost everything related to spanish in the app), and when i came back to learn french with it in 2022, suddenly i had to pay money to skip out of lessons??? the fuck kinda cash grab??? im looking for other ways to learn now. i miss the old duolingo, before they wanted every penny from your wallet :/
Great job, Evan. Your hard work, talent and time are very evident and appreciated. I also have been on Super Duolingo for over 3 years and feel the same frustrations. But I haven't done the research as to which language app would be better. Perhaps one day I will. Many thanks. 🙏
Wow, haven't watched your videos for a few years and almost didn't recognized you. Glad to hear that you're still holding on to your duolingo streak ^^ Liebe Grüße aus Deutschland 💚