I see a lot of anti-Duolingo posts/replies/comments. I’m about a month into messing around with it and decided to get serious, bought Genki 1 & 2 and downloaded a pile of apps.
I actually kind of enjoy Duolingo, is it really that bad as a learning tool when talking about specifically, and individually: Kama, kanji, grammar, vocabulary?
Looking at LingoDeer – which a bunch of people here have gushed about – it seems like the same cat skinned a different way?
Interested in hearing from people 6-28 months into learning, and truly proficient people/teachers whether they ascribe any value to Duo, and what are the best companion learning platforms to Genki.
21 comments
I don’t hate it, I just think it is inefficient. There are better tools for learning vocab, kanji and grammar. Anki, Wanikani, Bunpro, to name a few.
Duolingo style of reviews just make you progress too slowly. This makes you more likely to not see progress and eventually burn out. If you just enjoy using duolingo though, go for it.
I use Genki and the Kodansha Learners’ Dictionary with Duo. It’s a mix that works for me. I would be happier with it if the Duo Japanese class didn’t have so many fumbles in its furigana.
Genki gives me some proper grammar. Duo gives me vocabulary that doesn’t revolve around the world of a college sophomore (I am old enough to be Mary’s grandmother), and audition exercises at speed. Kodansha is a fantastic nerd toy and gives me mnemonic hooks to help memorize kanji.
I’ll review whether Duo still works for me in a couple of months. I should be close to the end of its course by then.
It motivates you to practice by making a game out of language learning. That seems to work for some people. It is a limited resource, though.
When I did the Duolinguo course it was awful and taught me very little. It had some pretty silly errors too like verifying numeric digits whenever the answer was in Katakana or something dumb like that.
I assume they must have improved it since, but I have switched to another provider that seemed far more committed to their Japanese course.
It’s just plain bad. The worst part is it will feel like you are learning, but as soon as you come across real Japanese, you will fold like a melted cheese sandwich. The best use for it would be to learn Kana I guess.
It’s just bad. Beginners just don’t realize it because they don’t know enough Japanese to see the problems. You can’t know what you don’t know.
Here’s a good reason why Duolingo sucks: [https://youtu.be/gFOcC97-3N0](https://youtu.be/gFOcC97-3N0)
It doesn’t take into account the Japanese contextual way of speaking. You don’t have to use pronouns when people know obviously whom you’re referring to.
Duolingo teaches Japanese like Google Translate, expecting a 私 and an あなた every freaking time. It’s shit.
i use duolingo on the daily, but essentially just so i can keep my streak going and learn a couple words here and there. i know it’s absolutely not an amazing resource and i don’t depend on it, but i also don’t think it should be written off completely.
It doesn’t actually teach grammar, it simply feeds one with enough example sentences until one actually gets somewhere, but that’s a very slow approach.
It also introduces vocabulary far too slowly for Japanese in my opinion. This might work with other languages but Japanese is a language that is very high on vocabulary.
Duolingo is not the worst thing ever, it’s just not good enough on its own. As a phrasebook for learning some vocab that might be of some practical use, and a way of motivating you to learn by game-ifying the process somewhat, it’s not bad. As far as its shortcomings, as many have pointed out it does have a few silly errors like occasionally giving you the wrong furigana but I don’t think that’s such a big deal.
The real problem with Duolingo is that if it’s the only thing you’re using, you could spend years on it and, when you try to actually read some kind of native content or understand a native speaker, find that you still have absolutely no idea what’s being said because you haven’t really been learning Japanese at all – what you’ve been learning is a kind of fictional, robotic, hyper-polite phrase book version of Japanese that is designed to help tourists and foreigners feel like they can communicate with some degree of confidence without accidentally offending anybody. It doesn’t get into anywhere near enough detail regarding sentence particles, word order and other vital grammatical concepts. It doesn’t teach you anything about verb conjugation or levels of politeness. It doesn’t really try to get you to learn much about kanji or explain multiple on/kun readings or radicals. It’s a fun way to keep you engaged with the language, but if you want to actually learn the language you need to look elsewhere
It’s good for reps and if you come in kind of already knowing sone Japanese.
I had to bail on it for a while as I could see it was not going to get me the Kanji and grammar teaching I needed. I decided to complete Wanikani, Lingodeer and Tae Kim in 2023 to fill in my weak spots, and might loop back on Duo later.
But to your original post yeah it gets a lot extra hate for sure, but definitely better than a lot of things
Duolingo is fundamentally translation of a single sentence. It is passable as practice, but you will not learn anything that you don’t already know. You will get a lot more out of it if you type your answers with the keyboard instead of selecting words on the screen.
Because examples are a single sentence, it overuses は and 彼 instead of more natural speech which uses context.
It often introduces words without giving you the meaning. It has a lot of audio mistakes from multiple readings.
I think I can answer this as someone who’s used DuoLingo for learning some Italian and Japanese, which were two very different experiences.
As a native English speaker, you have a headstart with many other European languages because they share so many similarities (especially the alphabet and at least a few grammar concepts).
Japanese, on the other hand, doesn’t work so well with DuoLingo’s “throw you right in the deep end” approach. I’ve heard it’s got better recently with teaching you some Japanese writing, but by itself it’s still frustrating. I found it expected me to know certain kanji without me ever having seen it before. I could obviously tell what ‘automobile’ means in Italian the first time I saw it, ‘車’ not so much.
Then, you mention that LingoDeer seems largely the same. But, the reason I find LingoDeer so much better for Japanese is it takes the same basic approach as DuoLingo, making the learning fun and interactive, but every lesson comes with a grammar explanation, which I think is key with learning Japanese.
I had my ups and downs with Duolingo ,the thing I learned by my own are hiragana and katakana ,I couldn’t memorize them I had to write them on paper ,but other wise like Grammer and making sentences it’s the best thing I found ,it’s challenging but effective, I’ve had my pauses with the app ,I’ve reached 100 day streak and felt good about it.
But I have in mind that it’s a language and it can’t be learnt quickly .
Plus for me I would love a job in Japan so I have a goal to acheive ,that helps
My thesis is actually over the gamification of language learning. Specifically, if apps like Duolingo are more for language tourists rather than serious learning.
My personal opinion is that Duo has cemented itself as a game that distracts from true learning, but of course many would and should share their positive experiences.
Personally, yeah I think duolingo and lingodeer are pretty similar under the surface. They both cover under 3000 words. My big problem with them is they cover so little, but sort of imply you can study 1 session a day and learn. The reality is the apps do work fine. If you understand you will not be fluent when done, you’ll be upper beginner. And since they do not go up very high, I think they can cause Very Slow progress if a learner only does one 5 minute session a day. If someone goes through duolingo 1 hour daily, just like Genki 1+2 for 1 hour daily, they’ll probably cover that beginner material in both cases in a year. If someone does duolingo 5 minutes a day, in a year they’re going to wonder why they barely learned anything compared to a beginner Japanese 1+2 class that in 2 semesters (less than a year) would have completed all of Genki 1 at least. Basically, if the apps are used keeping in mind they need an hour or more of study a day to get the same kind of progress as another material, they work fine. Alternatively, if someone uses another resource for that hour+ study time and uses an app just for 5 minute practice sessions its fine. I think the problem is when people go to an app which only has beginner content, does the 1 session a day like the app implies by giving bite size lessons, then 2 years later wonders why they aren’t intermediate or fluent yet. If a learner is studying enough time per day to make progress in the amount of years they want? Then any app will work fine as part or a majority of that study, even duolingo.
I got Lingodeer once because they kept saying theyd eventually add N3 words and grammar and I was hoping for an app that went into Intermediate material. But in the few years I had duolingo they never went about N4 content for Japanese, and never above beginner content for chinese either which I was also studying. Maybe lingodeer eventually added intermediate content after I left. But for how much one has to learn with a language with few cognates and similarities to English like Japanese, apps that offer More Content will be more valuable. Anki offers user made decks going into 6000 words (and let’s people make their own decks), so it’s popular. I’m trying a new app LangList which offers 5000 common words so it’s useful to me, Clozemaster back when free account had unlimited study was valuable to me because it went farther into intermediate content than duolingo/lingodeer type apps.
Okay so the target demographic you’re looking for (i.e. people with hindsight) are tired to repeat the same damn thing, so you can’t really expect them to come and reply.
Sure duolingo supposedly improved over the years, but if an app is intended to be educational, it shouldn’t be making mistakes like *oh no this app is showing a wrong kanji reading* in the first place.
Anyways, fortunately there’s one user who definitely has the power of hindsight and commented on duolingo recently, so go check [this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/101fdwj/any_alternatives_to_duolingo/j2n4cjp/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3) and decide how useful it is.
I personally believe there are so many better alternatives, and there is no reason to stand by an app that is known to commit errors in teaching Japanese.
I’ve only used Duolingo so far. I can definitely say that I’m frustrated with what it’s not teaching me, like how to actually use particles.
It’s a toy that can reinforce some things but also gets stuff wrong a lot of the time. I have a friend who sends me Duolingo errors regularly and ask me why it’s wrong and I say it’s not the app just wants you to do it differently for some reason.
Treat it as a bit of time wasting on your phone not a serious way to get proficient and you’ll be fine.
Personally i dont like Duolingo because as a native spanish speaker, ive seen the spanish sentences learners are given and man do i suffer everytime. Unnatural and awkward sounding sentences, reduntant use of pronouns (which will lead you to developing bad habits), use of certain verb conjugations that are technically right on books but no native speaker would ever use them that way irl, etc.
It hurts me knowing people out there are studying those sentences and thinking theyre usable in an actual conversation.
Also, its not the best tool to learn new vocabulary and the like.
Pretty inneficient learning app overall imo
I think Duo Lingo is a good stepping stone to help reinforce certain words or things when on the bus, etc but everyone should already be using a variety of tools. Watching a youtube segment, watching the news at half speed, singing karaoke to train your pitch for speaking, etc. There’s a difference that the feeling of wanting to master a language that helps push yourself from DL. It’s a good tool to help start especially when you don’t necessarily know the grammar or many phrases.
I started using Duolingo after two years of Japanese in college (and then many years to forget), so I was not a beginner and I’m not sure if the hate comes from there. But I personally found it to be extremely helpful for vocab and grammar. Not for Kanji. But I learned way more grammar and vocab from Duo in a few months than I did in my two years of clases. Most important thing for making it stick is to use the keyboard to type your answers instead of multiple choice.