No. The stuff it teaches can be wrong, offensive or just useless.
Its great to practice hiragana and katakana as a beginner because it has a fun interface and its free.
No resource is going to be a magic bullet that will give you instant fluent Japanese! Just got to try different things and see what works for you. Try the free version and if you can consistently use it for a month then maybe consider investing.
But ALSO look at other options, like nihongo fun and easy, genki, and other beginner textbooks that are geared for conversation.
Not useless, but definitely not a one stop resource. I use it pretty regularly and it is good for vocab and getting a ton of reps at basic stuff.
It is horrible at teaching Kanji and Grammar specifically, so I’ve added Cure Dolly, Tae Kim and the Kanji! app to try and fill out Duos deficiencies I’ve seen.
For context my learning goals are to be able to read and understand most common Japanese content. For someone needing high precision and accuracy Duo is not a great path.
I used it learn hiragana and katakana. So yeah, that
no, use a textbook
It’s fine if you are just starting out and aren’t sure if you are going to go all the way with it. It’s an excellent 15 minutes a day when you have nothing else going on program to get used to the language.
I’ve been using it everyday for the past 69 days and I’m loving it. It isn’t the only thing I use but it’s a really great thing to just keep using everyday to keep things fresh. It has helped me a lot so far!
You definitely want to find other resources for grammar and things like that. What’s nice is you can do it while in line at the pharmacy and brush up on your katakana, etc.
r/LearnJapanese is generally anti-Duolingo because people will try to use only the app to learn a whole language, which just isn’t possible. The truth is that Duolingo is a supplemental tool and it is genuinely helpful when it’s used alongside a main learning item, like a textbook or a tutor. You won’t learn Japanese with just Duolingo. But you WILL get lots of example sentences using the concepts you just learned with Genki or Minna or whatever your teacher is giving you.
Just like Anki or Satori, Duolingo is a good side tool to help with your learning. It just won’t teach you the language on its own.
It’s fine. You don’t really need to pay for anything. It has a kinda bad rep but it’s perfectly fine as an intro learning tool or something to keep you honest and studying daily.
I used it to learn hiragana and katakana And I think it’s fine for that. It’s also great for getting started to see if you will stick with it. In my experience, the gamification got in the way of my learning and I stopped using it and started doing an Anki deck instead. Still free, but I feel I retain the info better. And I go through Genki.
Honestly, at first yes.
If you have no better option, then yes.
But there are so many better options than DuoLingo.
Recently I have stumbled on [Watercolor by Shibasaki](https://www.youtube.com/c/WatercolorbyShibasaki). It’s an incredibly fun channel about drawing! Has a lot…
12 comments
no
No. The stuff it teaches can be wrong, offensive or just useless.
Its great to practice hiragana and katakana as a beginner because it has a fun interface and its free.
No resource is going to be a magic bullet that will give you instant fluent Japanese! Just got to try different things and see what works for you. Try the free version and if you can consistently use it for a month then maybe consider investing.
But ALSO look at other options, like nihongo fun and easy, genki, and other beginner textbooks that are geared for conversation.
Not useless, but definitely not a one stop resource. I use it pretty regularly and it is good for vocab and getting a ton of reps at basic stuff.
It is horrible at teaching Kanji and Grammar specifically, so I’ve added Cure Dolly, Tae Kim and the Kanji! app to try and fill out Duos deficiencies I’ve seen.
For context my learning goals are to be able to read and understand most common Japanese content. For someone needing high precision and accuracy Duo is not a great path.
I used it learn hiragana and katakana. So yeah, that
no,
use a textbook
It’s fine if you are just starting out and aren’t sure if you are going to go all the way with it. It’s an excellent 15 minutes a day when you have nothing else going on program to get used to the language.
I’ve been using it everyday for the past 69 days and I’m loving it. It isn’t the only thing I use but it’s a really great thing to just keep using everyday to keep things fresh. It has helped me a lot so far!
You definitely want to find other resources for grammar and things like that. What’s nice is you can do it while in line at the pharmacy and brush up on your katakana, etc.
r/LearnJapanese is generally anti-Duolingo because people will try to use only the app to learn a whole language, which just isn’t possible. The truth is that Duolingo is a supplemental tool and it is genuinely helpful when it’s used alongside a main learning item, like a textbook or a tutor. You won’t learn Japanese with just Duolingo. But you WILL get lots of example sentences using the concepts you just learned with Genki or Minna or whatever your teacher is giving you.
Just like Anki or Satori, Duolingo is a good side tool to help with your learning. It just won’t teach you the language on its own.
It’s fine. You don’t really need to pay for anything. It has a kinda bad rep but it’s perfectly fine as an intro learning tool or something to keep you honest and studying daily.
I used it to learn hiragana and katakana And I think it’s fine for that. It’s also great for getting started to see if you will stick with it. In my experience, the gamification got in the way of my learning and I stopped using it and started doing an Anki deck instead. Still free, but I feel I retain the info better. And I go through Genki.
Honestly, at first yes.
If you have no better option, then yes.
But there are so many better options than DuoLingo.