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Comment by johnkpaul | Hacker News Reader

I have a 2201 day streak playing Duolingo. I love Duolingo. I have taken Spanish and French that whole time and German for a few years.

I find Duolingo to be an extremely fun game. My wife and I really enjoy trying to speak other languages and even more so now that we have talking children. I can speak passable Spanish and can string together broken sentences in French to be effective (they get what I mean) and hilarious to native speakers.

Duolingo has never purely taught me a language. If my wife didn't know Spanish and learning French like me, I would have never been able to practice enough in the real world to know.

I enjoy using Duolingo immensely. For me it is a fun way to toy around with a hobby I've had for years without committing myself to dedicated training costs and time.

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>I enjoy using Duolingo immensely. For me it is a fun way to toy around with a hobby I've had for years without committing myself to dedicated training costs and time.

My exact experience. Been wanting to learn Dutch for years but I just can't invest the time and effort. I've got a 300 day streak on Duolingo now and I'm close to A2 level and I can already participate in some online conversations and understand a great deal. It is language learning for "free", I'm not talking about monetary cost here. I wanted to learn a new language but didn't want to put the effort in. It feels like I'm learning for free, without the effort which is exactly what my lazy ass wanted.

If I were in a hurry, or wanted to put in serious effort, it probably wouldn't be the most efficient way. But I'm not in a rush. English is my second language and my formal training brought me to B1 level at most. The rest I learned through exposure online over the years (and got an almost perfect TOEFL score a decade ago) - I assume the same will happen with Dutch too - I got a foot in the door thanks to Duolingo. I don't care if it takes a couple more years compared to another method that I'd probably never consistently use.

That last sentence is exactly what I like about Duolingo. 716 day streak here. Without Duolingo, I would not have commited to at least some minutes spending with a foreign language. Now I can at least give directions in French. I managed to have 8 years of French at school without being able to do that in the end.

I’ve been working on my own version of “DuoLingo” for iOS for 10 years now; longer than DuoLingo. I’ve never gained much traction. I’m looking for other ideas to help language learners.

Recently, I’ve tried writing smaller apps to supplement what Duo provides because they have a great product and I’ll never compete directly as a solo developer.

Anyway, any other small app ideas that people would like to see implemented? Game ideas that help with the necessary repetition, for example?

One idea would be to use a wide variety of pictures for learning a particular word. If I am learning what the word for room is, if the picture is always the same picture of a bedroom, my mind will be building an association with bedroom instead of room in general.

Also as someone trying to pick back up on my Japanese after letting it slide for a decade (well to be honest I never had more than enough to do greetings and basic restaurant ordering), many kana/kanji matching apps leave a lot to be desired. Katakana is a personal weak point and the apps I've tried all limit the extent of matches to picking one of the matching 3 or 4. Process of elimination makes it so that I can get 100% of these quizzes despite only knowing 80% of the material. Something that would allow customizing 10 or 20 possible answers to pick from would be nice. But I don't know if this would have any bearing on other languages to be worth developing (and there might be an existing app I just haven't found yet).

> wide variety of pictures for learning a particular word

That idea doesn't scale. Much simpler to look at definitions and example sentences, especially for non-obvious words like abstract ideas, context-dependent words, and particles.

> Katakana is a personal weak point

Just use flash cards. It's rote memorization, so there's no substitute for time and repetition. If you're able to commit an hour each day, you should be done by the end of the week.

The problem with looking at words is that you are learning language to language translation instead of language to thought. When I think of "pencil", I have a schema of a pencil appear in my mind. When I see enpitsu (well, the hiragana or kanji for it), if I have to think "pencil" to bring up the schema of a pencil that is an extra layer of thought that slows one down. With more abstract concepts there might now be a better solution, though with more abstract concepts you also have greater issues with things not being one to one translations.

>Just use flash cards.

That is effectively what the apps are mimicking and what I am using. What I'm bringing up in a desired feature I haven't found (granted, I've only checked out a dozen or so apps which is worlds apart from serious market research). As for why I use an app over flash cards? Phone is more convenient and always on me. Also, other than a stack of the most common kanji, flash cards don't really scale in a portable format.

But I probably should buy a deck including kanji for at home usage.

Sure, the ideal end state is that you know the Japanese word intuitively without English or another language as an intermediate step. But starting from a totally unfamiliar word, dictionary definitions and example sentences are both fast to access and easy to copy down. (For a sufficiently advanced learner, I would encourage using Japanese language dictionaries instead of Japanese-English ones.)

And I'm only recommending flash cards and other rote tools for kana, because recalling them instantly is both important and relatively low-effort. I don't have a strong opinion on how to learn vocabulary, other than to prioritize based on actual usage: media you read/listen to, conversations, etc.

I'm not sure exactly what you're after, but the Hiragana Pro/Katakana Pro apps (android only, I believe) have two practice modes: choice from three pronunciations as you mentioned, as well as typing romaji with no hints. The latter makes it abundantly clear which kana I'm shaky on.

They're also each a dollar to unlock voiced/combined readings and remove ads. My pihole did block the ads while I was just trying them out.

I'm using both but kept missing kana due to hitting the wrong u/i/o keys as they are right next to each other. Any recommendations for kanji?

> I have a 2201 day streak playing Duolingo. I love Duolingo. I have taken Spanish and French that whole time and German for a few years.

> I can speak passable Spanish and can string together broken sentences in French to be effective

Things like this worry me. If we look at how long Spanish and French take, it is about 600hrs[0] (probably less because specifically French is really close to English and Spanish is close to French). If you only had 20 minutes a day you should be reasonably fluent. But if your wife and you are talking, I'm guessing you average more than that.

[0] https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-688ca4d9dd1f88f5f655be...

"Worry"? That seems like a strong word here.

This is a game that I enjoy playing. I have never tracked how long I take. Many days, I do only a single lesson. That's less than 5 minutes, sometimes less than 3.

I'm not trying to be fluent. I'm not really _trying_ to achieve anything. The closest I have to a goal is that I enjoy having another language's vocabulary that I can use when speaking around my children.

In that case, sticking with a premade Anki deck would likely be more effective for that amount of time.

But a lot less fun!:-)

Such is the nature of language learning. It's not really sexy or fun to study vocab or shadow along to something you're watching for the 10th time. I see language learning exactly the same as working out- it's just a lot of consistent hard work over years. ;-)

I think there’s a big difference with “practicing” sentences with your wife where neither has a good accent or the best ability to spot mistakes or knowledge of the word the other person doesn’t know (though I have no idea how much or how good the GP’s practice was), and practice with a native speaker (or even better an actual teacher too) who can quickly tell you about mistakes and unknown words to give faster feedback and more deliberate focused practice. I’m not at all surprised that GP’s Spanish is much better than their French.

The issue here is that the GGP has been doing this for 6 years. If this was a year of practice I wouldn't be surprised. But at 6 years? I think they hit a plateau.

2201 is really impressive streak. My current is just 355!

What I like about Duolingo is how casually it approaches you to make consistent efforts every day, without overexerting you to train, like many fitness apps usually do.

So far, I'm quite happy with it.

Duolingo is a learning game. It should not be treated as more than that. The dream is that all we need to do is play to learn a skill but Duoling has not found the secret sauce yet so it will not teach you a new language all by itself. You need to use it along with a teaching system.

What's a bit distubring is that it is being taunted as a complete system for beginners.

I think it's a disservice to new solo learners since eventually people give up and have not learned as much as they could have given the time and effort put forward.

I think Duolingo has a place but it should be an aside to a proven learning system not the only tool.

I had a near 1000 day streak when I had a medical procedure and was using some heavy medication. In this time, I lost my streak by 1-2 minutes. Ever since, I quit. It felt like a choir, so I was happy it was over. That said, it allowed me to learn a lot of Spanish. I also found out Spanish is a relatively easy language (while I always detested French as I found it very difficult). A while after I quit (my partner still plays it) they added annoying ads and subscription.

Ok I’m downloading it now

I had something similar happen — when my streak ended Duolingo asked me for $38 to restore it. It made me feel manipulated and sick to my stomach. I didn’t use it again for three months. Now I’ve turned off the leagues and try not to get sucked into the gamification. I’m a little sad because I used to love it. I wish there was a way to turn off the streak and XP and everything else.

Have you ever paid to continue the streak? I've heard you can pay to recover a forgotten day.

With virtual credits (which you'll have a ton of if you got a 1k streak), sure.

No I haven't. That feature came out years after I started.

I do have tons of twilio/glitch based reminders that I moved from crons on a VPS in 2017. I am aided by technology to remember, but I usually do it early in the morning.

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