this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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God, even before the AI bullshit and CEO defending it, why did people use Duolingo. You're not learning a language, you're learning how to play a game that is coincidentally about languages. The only good thing Duolingo does is getting you motivated to learn, and teaching basic vocab. That's literally it. The best advice I got on that platform when I used it as a kid was how it was incorrect, and where I should go to learn from better sources, which is probably why they got rid of forums and comments.
Edit: Forgot to mention the awful and scummy monetization of making people wait to do lessons because of the heart system, while giving paid users unlimited lives. I've literally seen a comment on Lemmy where a user said they used a cracked version of Duolingo to get unlimited lives for lessons. Why should you have to crack your language learning app to make it bearable?
YouTube is free, and almost guaranteed to be better. Mango languages is free for students and library card holders apparently, haven't used it, but others seem to like it. Get yourself some books to read, a textbook/grammar book to practice shit, and watch content online for listening. Use exchange apps for speaking. Use multiple resources, one resource that claims to teach it all is probably lying and can only do so much.
Edit: Not hating on the meme btw, just ranting
I've been doing daily lessons on it for almost a whole year with the goal of being able to watch anime without subtitles.
I have achieved my goal almost completely. I just need to learn more vocab because DuoLingo has only taught about 150 or so words. Gamifying learning works; if you can stick with it. Which is the whole point in making it like a game: so you stick to it.
Whether or not that will continue to be the case when everything is handled by AI has yet to be seen. I am doubtful, considering how fucking God awful LLMs are at providing ACTUAL info and not just creating a madlib with what it has been trained on.
I'd like to point out that while Gamifying learning CAN work when done correctly, DuoLingo absolutely does not do it correctly.
Sure, I learned hundreds of words but even after 3+ years of daily check-ins, I still don't even think I would consider myself A1, and definitely not A2.
So, I would have to disagree that just "sticking with it" is not enough to make up for the crap lesson plans and approach DuoLingo takes.