Comment by bretthopper | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bretthopper | Hacker News Reader

There's a lot of meta discussion about learning languages but I'd like to thank the author for two great tips in particular:

* using the desktop version of Duolingo

* the shared Ankiweb decks for <x> most common words in <x> language

I've been slowly learning Spanish via a few short classes and intermittently using Duolingo on my phone.

I'm not even sure I knew a non-mobile version of Duolingo existed until now and it's so much better. Even though I knew that turning off the work bank was better for learning I didn't do it because typing on my phone sucks.

And I had never used Anki before but earlier today I downloaded it and a top 5000 Spanish word deck and already went through my first lesson.

Even these two small things will help me a lot so thank you.

Author here. Don't quote me on this, but I think something like 90% of Duolingo users are mobile. Mobile is more "fun" and good for casual users who want to do 5 minutes everyday to feel like they're making progress. I imagine Duolingo's business model leads to it heavily promoting the mobile platform, but thankfully the desktop version is quite good too.

I didn't like the Anki UI at first but I got used to it quickly. My Anki pace of 50 new cards a day was very aggressive, but this was largely possible due to the massive number of cognates between English and French. I imagine the same will hold for you in Spanish, though perhaps to a slightly lesser extent. I think Anki is wonderful for acquiring vocab though, so keep at it and you should do quite well! Also consider making your own Anki deck or using sentences instead of words. While this 5000 word deck was good enough to get to B2 for me, those methods are very likely more effective for long-term retention of more obscure words, although of course they are far more time-consuming.

I don't doubt the 90%. You can tell they don't care really care about desktop so it doesn't have the heart system.

Yeah I'll eventually build my own Anki deck. I'm spending a month in Mexico right now so that's definitely helping too :)

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