Anyone ever learn a language through Duolingo or another app/program?

[Average Joe]

I've been doing Duolingo for a bit to learn Spanish and it is starting to stick since I get to put it into use on a daily basis, but I do kind of wonder how effective it is for the long-term and if maybe I should do something a bit more involved.

 

[StevenK]

I've been doing Duolingo for a bit to learn Spanish and it is starting to stick a bit since I get to put it into use on a daily basis, but I do kind of wonder how effective it is for the long-term and if maybe I should do something a bit more involved.

You could become an ICE agent

 

[Average Joe]

You could become an ICE agent

I almost made my own ICE joke just to head you goobs off at the pass.

 

[SpamYouToDeath]

Move to South Tucson and you'll learn the most important words very quick

 

[BeefJerky]

I dunno about by itself but after taking two semesters of Japanese at a community college some occasional Duolingo use has helped keep me from forgetting everything I learned.

名前はビーフです。よろしくお願いします。

 

[Neo Alec]

I studied Korean on Rosetta Stone in 2009 prior to moving there (before Duolingo existed). It helped that I already knew Japanese, but still confusing as hell for someone who's apparently bad at learning languages. I remember paying a lot for level 1, and quickly graduating and buying level 2 as well, but I gave up somewhere halfway, focusing instead on classes and daily immersion.

 

[Burning Fight!!]

I dunno about by itself but after taking two semesters of Japanese at a community college some occasional Duolingo use has helped keep me from forgetting everything I learned.

名前はビーフです。よろしくお願いします。

彼に牛肉を見せてください

 

[Average Joe]

I studied Korean on Rosetta Stone in 2009 prior to moving there (before Duolingo existed). It helped that I already knew Japanese, but still confusing as hell for someone who's apparently bad at learning languages. I remember paying a lot for level 1, and quickly graduating and buying level 2 as well, but I gave up somewhere halfway, focusing instead on classes and daily immersion.

Duolingo is pretty cheap--I only paid $60 for the year and the variety of lessons is nice.

They even do bits of simulated phone calls and conversations so it starts to feel like a real interaction and not just a lesson to study.

 

[Neo Alec]

Duolingo is pretty cheap--I only paid $60 for the year and the variety of lessons is nice.

They even do bits of simulated phone calls and conversations so it starts to feel like a real interaction and not just a lesson to study.

Rosetta Stone had those too. I want to say it was just over $100 for each box of discs (Korean was divided into 3 levels).

 

[Ralfakick]

I dunno about by itself but after taking two semesters of Japanese at a community college some occasional Duolingo use has helped keep me from forgetting everything I learned.

名前はビーフです。よろしくお願いします

I wish I got the gene my bro has for languages I think he can speak 6-8 fluently now and has a doctorate in foreign languages. I remember being in a taxi cab in France with him and the taxi cab driver thought he was French

I was a b- Spanish student

But he can’t do math so there’s that lol

 

[100proof]

Duolingo will not teach you a foreign language. I've used it to brush up on languages I was rusty on and it's good to help noobs learn words and phrases but it doesn't effectively teach things like sentence structure and verb tenses. Not saying not to do it or anything... by all means, learn. Just don't expect to be able to travel to another country and carry on a conversation with a native speaker by using Duolingo.

Immersion (either with native speakers or through guided classes with others) is generally the only way to actually learn a language.

 

[StevenK]

I wish I got the gene my bro has for languages I think he can speak 6-8 fluently now and has a doctorate in foreign languages. I remember being in a taxi cab in France with him and the taxi cab driver thought he was French

I was a b- Spanish student

But he can’t do math so there’s that lol

That means neither of you know how many languages he speaks

 

[joe8]

Japanese and Korean are two of the hardest languages for a native English speaker to learn.
European languages such as French, Italian & Spanish are easier to learn, because of their similarity to English.

https://blog.rosettastone.com/the-complete-list-of-language-difficulty-rankings/

https://effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty/

 

[Average Joe]

Duolingo will not teach you a foreign language. I've used it to brush up on languages I was rusty on and it's good to help noobs learn words and phrases but it doesn't effectively teach things like sentence structure and verb tenses. Not saying not to do it or anything... by all means, learn. Just don't expect to be able to travel to another country and carry on a conversation with a native speaker by using Duolingo.

Immersion (either with native speakers or through guided classes with others) is generally the only way to actually learn a language.

I have to supervise a bunch of native Spanish speakers with almost no English skills [insert second ICE joke here to placate the goobs] and I mostly want to learn so I can have some kind of personal interaction with them.

Google Translate has been super helpful, but it's so impersonal and I'd prefer to use it as little as possible in the future. I also wanted to learn another language to some extent for a while now, so this seemed like a good reason to finally push myself into it.

 

[Ralfakick]

That means neither of you know how many languages he speaks

I don’t know because he his always learning new ones

 

[neo_mao]

The conductor on my train says “mind the gap” in like 10 languages at every fucking stop. It’s the most annoying thing ever. He just loves the sound of his voice. He sounds like the movie phone guy from Seinfeld.

Someone definitely got him one of these apps or whatever as a gift.

 

[Taiso]

I was using Duolingo for Japanese and it was helping me understand it at the most rudimentary of levels but eventually, it became too difficult to retain anything when conversational shorthand and sentence structure lessons got too difficult for a robot to teach me. I learned a lot of vocabulary from it, though.

Now I have a Fluentalk device that just does all the translating for me. It's not ideal since I would rather know it over having a device do the heavy lifting but I am still picking up a lot from it in terms of conversation.

I just need to take some classes and get into some conversational environments. There really is no teacher like experience.

I've often wanted to learn Latin because of its historical interest to me but it's a dead language and seems a lot harder to learn than most modernly spoken languages.

 

[BeefJerky]

Japanese and Korean are two of the hardest languages for a native English speaker to learn.
European languages such as French, Italian & Spanish are easier to learn, because of their similarity to English.

https://blog.rosettastone.com/the-complete-list-of-language-difficulty-rankings/

https://effectivelanguagelearning.com/language-guide/language-difficulty/

あなたはバカでうるさい

 

[Dr. Jigglin]

I learnt probably about 90% of hiragana before I gave up so the best I can do is really really bad german and german numbers.

 

[Taiso]

I learnt probably about 90% of hiragana before I gave up so the best I can do is really really bad german and german numbers.

I taught myself to read katakana and hiragana from one of those Barcharts quick study guides. Most of that has stuck over the last 30 years.

 

[StevenK]

I haven't learnt anything, but I certainly enjoy reading the BBC pidgin news

Arik Air make emergency landing afta engine develop fault mid-air - BBC News Pidgin

Inside one video wey dey circulate on social media, di passengers wey bin dey inside di plane bin dey pray seriously as di plane dey try to land safely.

www.bbc.com

 

[Dr. Jigglin]

I taught myself to read katakana and hiragana from one of those Barcharts quick study guides. Most of that has stuck over the last 30 years.

Some people must remember squiggly lines more easily than others, ya bloddy squiggla!

 

[Taiso]

To be fair, I was using what I learned to read a lot of manga I was buying from Mitsuwa Marketplace so it was my goobery that helped it stick more than anything.

 

[NeoSneth]

I dont think most of the major apps teach you language well. It teaches you to parrot, but I don't think you learn the rules of the language.
I like the apps to reinforce learned principles, but if you have no background, they aren't going to teach you anything about grammar or structure.

I would use them more as a flash card approach.

You will never learn a language without immersion.

 

[Average Joe]

Me gustan los chicos.