simpletailor [he/him]

Hi, I am a linguist who studies how people learn languages. Duolingo isn’t terrible, but there are better uses for your time.

Here are some reasons:

• it’s basically just flash cards + gamification. Not terrible for rote memorization, but it’s not the whole picture of learning a language.
• the sentences are decontextualized. Language is meant to be used in context, so ideally you want your language practice to happen within a conversation (or story–this is why I recommend the Duolingo Stories)
• the computer scientists who founded it didn’t know that language acquisition was a field of research, despite there being world-class scholars at the same institution.
• Duolingo employs some linguists now. Some launder the reputation of the company by publishing research (mostly A/B design UX research on how to retain users).
• Many Duo linguists work on the Duolingo English Test (meant to replace the exams universities use for international students), which means their research is centered around assessment practices. Not on its face a bad thing, but this influences the kind of research done.
• other Duo linguists oversee the revolving door of underpaid contractors who produce content for their lessons. The company is currently working on AI to replace these workers.
• Alphabet owns them

As others in this thread have pointed out, it’s also much better for Western languages with the Latin alphabet. Duo started with Spanish and French, and I’ve heard through contacts that work there, French is their archetypal/flagship course. The computer scientist-oriented solution for expanding to other languages is to assume typological similarity between languages, which means languages that are farther from French in grammar, writing system, etc. will all be contorted to fit the shape of their system.

My suggestions for anyone looking to learn a new language:

• practice rote memorization on your own, and prioritize communicating with others in authentic contexts.
• find a community of language learners to practice with. This can be formal classes or informal meetups, but keep each other accountable to using the language. You will all help each other improve.
• find a community of people who already speak the language. Practice with them as much as possible.
• focus as equally as possible on reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills. These are all different skills that synergize with each other but don’t correlate 1:1 (i.e., being good at reading helps you get better at writing, but if you only practice reading, you aren’t automatically improving your writing)
• do not be afraid to make mistakes. It’s okay to use the wrong word, pronounce something weirdly, or use incorrect grammar. People make mistakes in their native languages all the time. You’ll learn from the mistakes and get better in the future. The most important thing is putting the time in. Automaticity comes from practicing.

I could literally go on for days. Happy to answer specific questions anyone has.

LLMs are okay if you already know the answer, because they don’t have a basis for truth or a bias for source; they prioritize frequency of co-occurrence of words in the training data. They can produce very convincing and completely made-up text, or propagate “common wisdom” that isn’t actually correct.

Using ChatGPT is pretty much the same as trusting one of the random AI-generated blogs poisoning the search results–which other people in this thread are complaining about the uselessness of.