Duolingo is very much on the Enshittification path, seems like they fired a number of translators and have the rest just proofreading AI.
For the interested, here’s the place where you can request your personal data and delete your account
Duolingo is very much on the Enshittification path, seems like they fired a number of translators and have the rest just proofreading AI.
For the interested, here’s the place where you can request your personal data and delete your account
I noticed that they stopped giving free streak freezes two weeks ago. I have a 1200 day streak and my premium sub renews this month but I might just switch to another platform.
What other platform is available?
Anecdotally, a friend who’s pretty handy at languages uses more Memrise than Duolingo now. Similar sort of setup, but with a different style of delivery - more visual cues and a better repetition approach.
in my experience, Memrise teaches you useful phrases much faster, while Duolingo drills you about horses eating blue apples and turtles wearing yellow hats.
I just tried it out and I like it a lot better than duolingo.
Duolingo is super gamified and you can’t keep practicing after you made a few mistakes. I just practiced for an hour with memrise and it was nice. There’s also video exercises in the app, and you can also practice chatting (with an AI probably?). I hope it holds up.
I would love to compare babbel too, but Arabic is not available there.
Awesome, I think I may go back to a language myself. Thanks for checking it out and letting us know!
The duolingo format was never popular with polyglots. The game format makes it easy to feel like you did something which is a great thing, but the is the only pro people who have learned multiple languages find with it.
There is a lot of debate about what the best way to start is, but all agree that you need to interact with the real language in real world type settings (watching a movie in the language with subtitles is real world, though you need to make an effort to listen not just read!) They also agree that time is important, you need to study at least an hour every day to make progress.
I’ve found Babble to be okay
Do you mean Babbel? Hadn’t heard of it, will keep it in mind
Sadly it didn’t work for me. I liked the concept but gave up after two weeks because I didn’t enjoy the experience at all and didn’t seem to make any progress (Swiss learning Spanish). YMMV of course.
Yup, that’s the one
Back in the day, I found Rosetta Stone to be a decent approach, it’s the only reason I still know how to say “the kid is under the plane” in Arabic, without barely knowing any Arabic (it was in the first free demo lessons). The context turned a bit dark after 9/11, though…
Free streak freeze? As in an option to stop an arbitrary counter that does nothing from being reset?
Humans are so massively susceptible to gamification. It’s nice for providing motivation, but it ends up being like an addiction the way companies leverage it.
I just got free streak freezes 11 days ago.
So perhaps it’s regional.