Duolingo

riffmongous

Anyone use it? I try it every now and again as a quick way to learn a little bit at a time from different languages, and some of it does stick alright which isn't a bad use of 15 minutes on the bus or train.. but it sometimes suffers from terrible sentences and word choices.

It would be nice to get some useful words and phrases when you just start learning a new language rather than random ones like 'I do not have a stone', 'There is a stone in the lake', or fecking sushi, it shows up straight away in the Russian and Irish lessons. These weird ones feel so random and out of place that it puts me off the whole website, it makes me wonder if it was all put together by a bot of some kind and if it's really correct

Fr_Dougal

Sounds like you have the Palestinian version.

RobertKK

Yeah and I find it good, once one keeps at it.

riffmongous

Fr_Dougal wrote: »

Sounds like you have the Palestinian version.

riffmongous

RobertKK wrote: »

Yeah and I find it good, once one keeps at it.

Yes I found that too, I also need to repeat the same sections over and over as refreshers

**Timbuk2**

I was using the mobile app - and while ok, found I wasn't getting a good grip of the grammar rules.

Then I used the desktop version and realised it's much better - a lot more explanation and narrative around the rules being demonstrated (in addition to the interactive lessons).

This might be somewhere on the app, but it wasn't obvious to me at all.

AllForIt

Duolingo imo is a very slow inneffective way to learn a language. You'd be better off using flashcards to increase vocab.

igCorcaigh

Tried the android version for Irish and found it tedious. But maybe that is what learning a new language is like.

Maybe it's a useful tool in addition to something more structured... Personally I prefer the more systematic treatment of a new language, but maybe that's why I can't speak any.

riffmongous

**Timbuk2** wrote: »

I was using the mobile app - and while ok, found I wasn't getting a good grip of the grammar rules.

Then I used the desktop version and realised it's much better - a lot more explanation and narrative around the rules being demonstrated (in addition to the interactive lessons).

This might be somewhere on the app, but it wasn't obvious to me at all.

Desktop version on your phone or on a laptop?

arybvtcw0eolkf

I got pretty decent German through using it and conversing with German and Swiss German (mad language those Swiss Germans have, but their high German is spot on).

I found it great.

Didn't realise there was a desktop version. Do you know if it works well through an android chrome browser?

I like it and use it on the bus every day, but would like to see some narrative with the logic of the language which would make it easier to use in an intuitive way

Dennis Loose Trowel

Dennis Loose Trowel wrote: »

I got pretty decent German through using it and conversing with German and Swiss German (mad language those Swiss Germans have, but their high German is spot on).

I found it great.

That's impressive, did you go from nothing to being able to converse?

It's the discussions explaining various grammatical idiosyncrasies that go with each lesson that make it valuable, though. And that depends on some very committed and knowledgeable volunteers, some of whom have delicate egos but most of whom actually do it for the love of the language.

Last time I glanced at a lesson, however, from the feedback in those discussions there was an awful lot of corrections needed from Duolingo to the sentences/accents/translations needed and that was frustrating many users.

Also, the vacuous chat and silly jokes in the middle of informative discussions is annoying.