Ask HN: Any alternatives to Duolingo without gamification?

~B1 French here with Duo being an important step on the way.

The trick for Duolingo is to use the desktop version and disable all the "helpful" bits you can or at least use the browser version if on mobile. Desktop had far fewer gamified bits than the app as of a year ago (sadly the new UI broke my workflow and I dropped Duo altogether). Gems weren't a meaningful thing, etc.

In particular: Use your keyboard for everything. You'll probably want to be able to type in the target language anyway and it helps you avoid the trap of being really good at pattern recognition instead of really learning all the grammar quirks.

You can disable both animations and the leaderboard gamification in the settings (the latter by setting your profile to private). CSS/uBlock can help hide other distractions, add dark mode, etc. as needed.

It takes some extra work now to unbury the learning tool beneath but Duolingo itself, especially if you go in with a general idea of how to go about learning a language, is still really useful.

Super helpful link that I used along the way as well (not mine): https://runwes.com/2020/02/11/howilearnedfrench.html

Not exactly Duolingo alternative, but: I'm currently building an an app for language learning by reading books. It takes an (your) ebook and inserts translations:

—Arthur —dijo con tono cortante, ["Arthur," he said sharply.] y su voz sonó como el chasquido de una ratonera—, [and his voice sounded like the click of a mousetrap.]

There is zero gamification, as it's not needed - you're motivated by the pleasure of reading.

It won't help you to learn to speak (there is an option to read aloud a selected phrase though), but it will help you with vocabulary. I went with it from not being able to read even one page, to being able to understand 70% of a book (intermediate Spanish level) in about a month.

ATM looking for beta users, completely free of charge. Pls leave a contact in a comment if you're interested

This is an amazing idea! I use a much more rudimentary version of this to read (and learn along the way) multiple languages. My favorite method so far.

Sounds great! My Telegram is ttf92.

Super idea! You are welcome to use my ebooks which are free open source guide books for technology-related terminology. Your readers could learn many professional concepts and phrases.

https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/ has the guide books. Topics include startups, UI/UX, programming, project management, etc.

Feel free to email me joel@joelparkerhenderson.com. I can give you access to the repos, if you wish to add your translations there too. You're on to a really great idea IMHO.

wow, thanks a ton, I will contact you when I'll be adding books directly to the app; ATM I just have the option to upload a book for the users

Seems awesome would like to try! What languages? (I am learning Polish and am approx A2 level)

Theoretically any language that ChatGPT "speaks" is supported, but the more popular language the better quality of inserted translations.

This sounds great and I'd love to help test. Kevin at silent planet dot com. Thanks!

Love this idea and would be happy to beta test. tim@timwis.com

I'm interested- joe.r.collins@gmail.com

I'm going to guess the translations are mechanical, rather than professional?

Yes, mechanical. It's a copyright issue, I cannot offer translated books, so each user upload will get separate generated and inserted translations. Obviously the quality is not the best compared to professional translations. For that you can try beelinguapp.com or lingq.com, both mentioned in this thread. What's different in my app is that it inserts translations in the text, so no additional clicking, and it allows you to upload your own books.

I've tried using LibreTranslate, GoogleTranslate, DeepL, ChatGPT 3.5 and 4 for translations - in my experience ChatGPT is the best for this use case, 3.5 is good enough and economically viable, 4 is superior, especially if you want translation in a language different than English, but expensive compared to 3.5: ~$20 for a book.

Really cool. LingQ.com is a similar idea, you may want to take a look for inspiration.

I'm familiar with it, it's great. It's a bit different interface-wise, they do not insert translations intro text, you have to click on words to translate them

I'm currently learning Spanish at an intermediate level, so would love to try it!

gmail: antforce

This sounds fantastic, I've been learning Spanish for about 8 months and the most effective tool for building my vocab has been reading. My email is da/vis/jo/nathan38/0 [at] gmail.com without the forwardslashes!

Do you have a waitlist?

I don't

agile.beach5204@fastmail.com

Hey you won a new user! odysseas -+ a.t. +- dilmun ¢dot© net

This is the way I’ve felt is best for learning how languages work and building vocabulary. I’d love to beta (email in profile).

Looks interesting, worth giving a try! Gmail - idealpriyanshu

Where is your site project? Could you show us the link? Thx

ATM there is basically no landing page, and without beta user code you wont be able to use the app

Hi! This sounds exactly like Beelinguapp, have you tried that one? You can read books in 2 different languages with audio as well. https://beelinguapp.com/get

Hi, yes I tried, it's great. They do not let you upload your own books though, and for me (as an user) it is important

All the other comments: I've sent you an email with access link & info. Thanks for the interest and sorry it took me a whole week to get back to you!

Fluent Forever is an alternative to Duolingo which is based on flashcards which you customize from app-provided vocabulary and sentences, and are presented to you in spaced-repetition intervals. (The founder based the method off of his own experience learning languages with Anki.)

The gamification is less than Duolingo. When I complete a review it praises me for my keeping up my streak, and they also added achievements. However there aren't gems, premium upsell ads (it's a paid app), etc.

I feel your pain, it was getting worse and worse over the years and now it’s just trying to game as much “engagement” as possible. Feels like screen time is the only metric they have.

I switched from Duolingo to Busuu for my Japanese learning and it’s so much better. They did add leagues to it too but you can just ignore it.

Pimsleur has rebranded to an internet product, but the old Pimsleur tapes are great if you can find them. I started learning Armenian with these and it put me on the right track.

There are Anki decks for most languages, what are you having trouble with?

Anki is pretty good, but you have to find the good decks, and more importantly constantly update them for your purposes

What drove me crazy with anki was how much it sticks to the idea it's not a flashcard system, even though it looks like one in every way. The "cards" are shared between decks and things automatically get overwritten based on the content of front.

Anki is totally a flashcard system... what do you mean? The cards technically can be shared between decks if you so choose, but it's not mandatory.

You get forced into the anki system of doing things. If it was just decks and cards it would be alot more flexible.

It's been a few months but I had issues importing csvs of words I was learning, trying to create new decks. I think I couldn't have two cards with the same front

The Anki system of doing things is just decks and cards. It can be more flexible if you want to go beyond that simple concept. You can totally have two cards with the same front.

It isnt, I was trying to make subdecks of other decks and trying to manage vocabulary imports with csvs from the sources I was getting words from. Things were more tied together then just being cards. I dont remeber exactly what I was doing with it, it was a few months ago and I gave up on it.

It seems that only me commenting this thread knows LWT. A really cool program for learning every kind of languages... with lots of resources if configured properly. It is a package for setting a Localhost server and feed with whatever texts will want from, e.g. Latin, Greek, German, Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, English, Japanese, Chinese, you name it! It has lots of resources like exporting to anki flashcards, controlling your learning pace, converting to html format, etc... etc...

https://sourceforge.net/projects/learning-with-texts/

Apart from that, there are a few good tutos on the internet about how to use it. But, the official documentation on the website is just enough... I wish the owner would open-source it. But, even though it is an amazing free program...

Another program (in reality, a Lisp machine I use to learn Languages is the might Emacs). It has org mode and you can also use bash scripts, GNU/Linux commands for learning and manipulating stuff, including languages, all inside the beast, and so on, and so forth... (neo)vim are also good friends for learning languages and not just programming...

Mango is a nice alternative. I have access to Mango via my local community library (I am in US - Michigan)

I used to use Mango too, great alternative.

Is this the one- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mango.andr...?

Yes that is the one

Language Transfer: https://www.languagetransfer.org/

Did you personally have a good result with it? What language? (Didn't retain much personally)

IMO this is a lifesaver. The approach on this website (I only tried for 2 european languages) is really good. It focuses on remembering, listening and speaking, not playing a game. The teacher also tells words with common roots with english words - spelling differences, meaning differences, etc.

I really have to plug the method of Comprehensible Input (CI) [0].

Specifically, Pablo Román's effort to make this viable for Spanish [1]. I started before there was a website or anything, just watching free youtube videos. Now I'm definitely B2 or C1. I subscribe partially just to show my support even though I mostly consume native-level media now.

Similar and helpful along he lines of CI are [2] and [3].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis [1] https://dreamingspanish.com [2] https://refold.la/ [3] https://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/

I've enjoyed using Clozemaster - it's an app that uses the sentence-mining concept advocated by Glossika. That is, it uses pre-made cloze deletions that help you learn words in the context of a sentence. It has some advanced material and has been a good language learning tool somewhere "in-between" Duolingo and Anki.

For a free, Anki-native version of this see https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1713698257

+1000 for Clozemaster. After a lot of research it’s the one I most vibe with. I also do LingQ and WaniKani every day.

It’s perfect because it doesn’t demand much, you can do other thing a at the same time even, is extremely straightforward but is also incredibly productive.

I will also give recommendations to Language Transfer, Drops, and good old Anki.

Hi, I have an app you might want to check out: https://flreader.com/ It works by reading books and clicking to translate the words you dont understand. The app is new, so I set up a group on reddit to receive feedback on the app, so please pass by and tell me if you enjoy it!

Really surprised nobody has said babbel, great app with a good mix of grammar, explanation, useful vocabulary and spaced repetition based review.

IMO, it IS better than Duolingo.

I quite like Mosalingua: https://www.mosalingua.com/en/

Much more focused on vocabulary, and learning things that you will use in daily life. And less gamification as well.

I moved back to audio courses (michel thomas) and grammar workbooks. Worked very well

ChatGPT4

ask it for a 12-week curriculum and have it go through it with you

It can do languages and you can get google to pronounce things, and ChatGPT again to explain unexpected nuances

when multimodal is rolled out to your profile, you can practice handwriting too

I recommend Lingq. Support to many languages, you can add your own texts, simple and clean interface and nice for begginers and advanced users. The owner is quite a nice person too.

Have you tried Chomky? https://www.chomky.io/en

https://www.livelingua.com/fsi/

https://kosmonautas.com

I like "Hello Chinese" but as the name suggests, it's just for Chinese :D

You might have better luck with an app specifically for your language by an indie dev

language penpal sites.

It's not an app... but rather learning with others.

Advanced-level language learners may want to transition into actual real live conversations-- it's so you can spontaneously learn new concepts, expressions, and vocabulary.

I used to use a good penpal-language learning website called MyHappyPlanet. It was back around 2007-2010-ish, and the site no longer exists.

But looks like there are alternatives here:

https://www.fluentu.com/blog/foreign-language-penpal/