From 2015 to 2022, I spent hundreds of hours on Duolingo, translating articles, answering language questions on the forums, and helping to improve the smaller courses by reporting mistakes.
There are thousands of volunteers who donated their labour to Duo: the course creators who wrote their courses, the volunteers who created grammar guides (some smaller languages had an entire second course in the forums), the wiki contributors, the native speakers who answered questions in the sentence discussions.
All of their work made Duolingo the powerhouse it is today. Duo was built by a community who believed in its original mission: language learning should be free and accessible.
Bit by bit all of our work was hidden from us as Duolingo became a publicly-traded company. And now that work is being fed into their AI as training data.
Well, I've learned the true lesson of Duolingo: never give a corporation your labour for free. Don't ever trust them, no matter what they say. Eventually greed will consume any good intentions.
#duolingo #languagelearning #enshittification #capitalism
I’ve been having better luck with Babbel lately since it actually teaches ya stuff rather than throwing vocabulary at ya. I’ve learned more grammar in 2 weeks of Babbel than an entire 10 months learning Dutch on duo
Prolly better apps out there (I’m naturally weary of anything like this that’s advertised so heavily by sponsored YouTube channels), but so far I’m quite enjoying Babbel. I wish it had the option for like a kinda soft competitive thing like Duolingo had. Trying to work enough to stay at least in my current bracket, and rewarding the player for doing lessons in the morning and before bed, absolutely helped my autistic ADHD ass with sticking to the routine. Gotta maintain that streak, right?
I did look at that and I wanted to try it out, but they don’t even have a free trial, which is unfortunate. Part of the reason I used duolingo was because I am hoping to get the basics for free so I can see if I’m actually learning.
I likes busuu a lot, felt a lot like old Duolingo, but with more relevant lessons. Duo can introduce potentially unhelpful vocabulary and grammar very early on, and now with the crown system every lesson just feels like pedantic repetition, busuu is fun, properly leveled, and has native speakers, with the Chinese course at least.
I’d be curious to hear which language you try and how it turns out for you since I’ve only done Chinese so far.
Never heard of busuu before, but tried it now and am enjoying it a lot. Thank you!
It’s also worth giving a shout-out to LibreLingo, which aims to be an open source version of Duolingo. For now it’s only Spanish though, and as I’m not interested in learning Spanish at the moment I haven’t gotten any real use out of it.
I can’t stand the new layout with the crowns and hearts. Like you haven’t learned something unless you’ve repeated it multiple times, it’s disheartening to spend ten minutes in a lesson and get a nearly in discernible bump in a progress indicator.
And then the heart system is crazy, like you’re only allowed to study if you don’t make mistakes. That’s negative reinforcement and makes the process of learning much less fun.
I can’t really progress at the pace I want to anymore, it feels more like a mandated curriculum that only allows me to learn the way someone else thinks I should at the speed someone else thinks I should, which I don’t think helps the learning process either.
Also, they’ve removed all of the fun shop outfits and items I can buy with those crystals, so you get the crystals for no reason, where you used to be able to dress up duo or, I can’t even remember anymore, but there were tons of uses for those crystals. So now I have like 10,000 crystals and I can buy streak freezes exclusively with them?
I don’t have fun learning with duo anymore, and there are plenty of apps that allow me to enjoy studying and learning at my own pace, regardless of how many mistakes I make in the process.
I hear all of that. I also miss the champagne tracksuit :) and the ability to do my weird waterfall practice method to force spaced repetition out of my lessons. I’m not sure that I’m learning any less with the way they’ve set it up, though.
As to the hearts, I subscribed about a year ago for that reason. It’s always been an issue on the app, but I don’t think it’s gotten better or worse. AFAIK, hearts are still unlimited on the website (though that definitely doesn’t work for me. I practice twice a day, and I’m usually not at my computer when I do.)
The one thing that is driving my bonkers right now is that they just asked if I want to sync my contacts. NO! I do NOT want to friend my cousin. Leave me in peace – I only do anonymous social media for a reason. If this goes further down the social media pieline, I’ll have to reconsider and find something else.
In the meantime, I love it, and my ability to communicate in my chosen language is exhilarating.
I still love learning languages, and I used to recommend duolingo to every single person who asked me how I learned new languages, but the social media thing you mentioned is a brazen symbol of a company trying to over capitalize and over expand the system that already worked so well.
Nothing was broke, and they tried to “fix” it, and in addition to that, got rid of fun things like yeah the champagne tracksuit or other little bibs and bobs for no discernible reason.
And the product now is traaaash.
I used to use duolingo to learn every language whenever I visited a country, and I can’t use it at all anymore.
As someone who is a current user and unaware of superior options but is curious, what would you recommend?
I’ve been having better luck with Babbel lately since it actually teaches ya stuff rather than throwing vocabulary at ya. I’ve learned more grammar in 2 weeks of Babbel than an entire 10 months learning Dutch on duo
Good to know, also been learning Dutch and was hoping to make a switch
Just come over and visit us instead, we have stroopwafels and hagelslag!
I have some gaming friends over there that I want to visit, so I might this year!
Prolly better apps out there (I’m naturally weary of anything like this that’s advertised so heavily by sponsored YouTube channels), but so far I’m quite enjoying Babbel. I wish it had the option for like a kinda soft competitive thing like Duolingo had. Trying to work enough to stay at least in my current bracket, and rewarding the player for doing lessons in the morning and before bed, absolutely helped my autistic ADHD ass with sticking to the routine. Gotta maintain that streak, right?
I resist app addiction in all forms except Duo. Amen to that.
I did look at that and I wanted to try it out, but they don’t even have a free trial, which is unfortunate. Part of the reason I used duolingo was because I am hoping to get the basics for free so I can see if I’m actually learning.
I likes busuu a lot, felt a lot like old Duolingo, but with more relevant lessons. Duo can introduce potentially unhelpful vocabulary and grammar very early on, and now with the crown system every lesson just feels like pedantic repetition, busuu is fun, properly leveled, and has native speakers, with the Chinese course at least.
I’d be curious to hear which language you try and how it turns out for you since I’ve only done Chinese so far.
Never heard of busuu before, but tried it now and am enjoying it a lot. Thank you!
It’s also worth giving a shout-out to LibreLingo, which aims to be an open source version of Duolingo. For now it’s only Spanish though, and as I’m not interested in learning Spanish at the moment I haven’t gotten any real use out of it.
Oh awesome, I appreciate the rec, I’ll check it out. Thanks!
I still use it, and it works great for me. Why do say the program is trash?
I can’t stand the new layout with the crowns and hearts. Like you haven’t learned something unless you’ve repeated it multiple times, it’s disheartening to spend ten minutes in a lesson and get a nearly in discernible bump in a progress indicator.
And then the heart system is crazy, like you’re only allowed to study if you don’t make mistakes. That’s negative reinforcement and makes the process of learning much less fun.
I can’t really progress at the pace I want to anymore, it feels more like a mandated curriculum that only allows me to learn the way someone else thinks I should at the speed someone else thinks I should, which I don’t think helps the learning process either.
Also, they’ve removed all of the fun shop outfits and items I can buy with those crystals, so you get the crystals for no reason, where you used to be able to dress up duo or, I can’t even remember anymore, but there were tons of uses for those crystals. So now I have like 10,000 crystals and I can buy streak freezes exclusively with them?
I don’t have fun learning with duo anymore, and there are plenty of apps that allow me to enjoy studying and learning at my own pace, regardless of how many mistakes I make in the process.
I hear all of that. I also miss the champagne tracksuit :) and the ability to do my weird waterfall practice method to force spaced repetition out of my lessons. I’m not sure that I’m learning any less with the way they’ve set it up, though.
As to the hearts, I subscribed about a year ago for that reason. It’s always been an issue on the app, but I don’t think it’s gotten better or worse. AFAIK, hearts are still unlimited on the website (though that definitely doesn’t work for me. I practice twice a day, and I’m usually not at my computer when I do.)
The one thing that is driving my bonkers right now is that they just asked if I want to sync my contacts. NO! I do NOT want to friend my cousin. Leave me in peace – I only do anonymous social media for a reason. If this goes further down the social media pieline, I’ll have to reconsider and find something else.
In the meantime, I love it, and my ability to communicate in my chosen language is exhilarating.
I still love learning languages, and I used to recommend duolingo to every single person who asked me how I learned new languages, but the social media thing you mentioned is a brazen symbol of a company trying to over capitalize and over expand the system that already worked so well.
Nothing was broke, and they tried to “fix” it, and in addition to that, got rid of fun things like yeah the champagne tracksuit or other little bibs and bobs for no discernible reason.
I also practice exclusively on my phone.
I am glad it’s still working for you, though.