How badly they want to show me ads, it’s impressive. Desperate ain’t sexy guys

  • flango@lemmy.eco.br
    0·
    3 days ago

    Duolingo is not about learning a language. It’s about giving you the illusion of learning a language.

    • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      3 days ago

      Generating excercises. Not only is it a way to cut staffing, but now you don’t know if the thing you just learned is a real word or phrase or if AI hallucinated it up.

      • bennypr0fane@discuss.tchncs.de
        0·
        2 days ago

        The word “hallucinating” for AI spewing falsehoods should be replaced by “bullshitting”. Because, in all seriousness, that’s what it is - as has been convincingly argued in “ChatGPT is bullshit”

  • Nelots@lemmy.zip
    0·
    3 days ago

    I remember a while back, I was too busy for a little while to use Duo and came back to the widget trying to guilt trip me into using it. Because I missed like half a week. It’s so toxic and honestly isn’t even that useful for learning. So I uninstalled that shit immediately.

    • Sporkbomber@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      3 days ago

      Define soon. Their progress per language is around 10%, with the highest completion percentage being Czech at 20%.

      • ghen@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        3 days ago

        There’s no way it’ll have the language I’m learning any time soon lol. Duolingo is literally it besides traveling there and talking to locals

          • Sporkbomber@lemm.eeEnglish
            0·
            2 days ago

            Babel is my Duolingo replacement. The lessons are better, not AI, with more actual teaching than Duolingo. I’m learning things Duolingo glazed over or didn’t fully explain most lessons. Definitely recommend. Keep and eye on stack social too, I got my lifetime subscription to all languages for $140.

            My wife is fluent in the language I’m learning and noted my improvement in 2 weeks of using babel. Granted I’m still an A1 but that’s a complement I’ll gladly accept.

          • alyth@lemmy.world
            0·
            2 days ago

            I used Babel for a bit. The quality seems good. There’s little to no gamification, it feels like a digital version of a classic language learning textbook. They offer around 12-13 languages up to level B2. If you decide to purchase a lifetime subscription, it’s on sale every couple of months for 130-180 USD.

  • Rolivers@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    0·
    3 days ago

    Duolingo is so stupidly annoying these days. It has gotten so much worse compared to a few years ago.

    Constant bugging, too many popups that are almost as bad as Microsoft products. I want to learn a goddamn language not jump through a hundred hoops every single time.

    Not to mention that it all boils down to a guessing game. Some questions have multiple answers and unless you choose that specific one that DuoLingo had in mind it counts as wrong. It also won’t tell you why you guessed wrong.

    Are there better apps these days?

    • SirQuack@feddit.nl
      0·
      3 days ago

      Duolingo isn’t in the business to teach you a a language, that would mean you won’t need the app anymore.

      I’ve used Babbel, it seems more to learn a language, but it requires a paid plan to use. It does work more like an actual language course though, with more emphasis on longer sessions instead of 5 min per day.

  • hark@lemmy.world
    0·
    4 days ago

    I stopped using duolingo a couple years ago because I noticed I was just doing the bare minimum to maintain my streak instead of actually learning something new.

    • shneancy@lemmy.world
      0·
      3 days ago

      that actually helped me remember that my target language exists, it was good for me to at least have a brush with some learning on the days that i just didn’t feel like doing much.

      what was the final nail on the coffin for me was duolingo neutering the japanese course, they delayed introducing kanji so hard i was seeing the most basic basics like 母, 父, 語, even 何 in hiragana, which made the course deeply counterproductive as reading japanese in hiragana only, when you know the kanji already slows you down considerably. consider: ははははなをもっています vs 母は花を持っています, both mean “my mum has a flower” but one of them has a string of は you need to decipher the meaning of first before you can understand the sentence, the other’s meaning can be understood instantly

      • hark@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 days ago

        That’s a shame. Duolingo was never great for learning kana, so I guess they thought to use it more in lessons, but they should’ve just improved the dedicated kana lessons instead. I had learned kana before using duolingo so it was a smooth transition to take on sentences introducing more and more kanji. It sucks that they’re just making things worse since there were some nice things about the app before.

    • ledge@sopuli.xyz
      0·
      3 days ago

      Same thing happened to me. Also when trying something new, failing took something like gems or hearts. That made it so I only grinded the very easy lessons to get the gems and never actually using them.

      • hark@lemmy.world
        0·
        3 days ago

        Oh yeah, that’s another thing! They made it tedious to make progress, probably in an attempt to squeeze out more money, but I ended up just losing motivation for actually learning because it became a drag.

    • quoll@lemmy.sdf.org
      0·
      3 days ago

      if a non shit app would add an “import streak” feature (just make me upload a screenshot or type in the number) id switch in a heart beat.

  • Sho@lemmy.world
    0·
    4 days ago

    I had a streak in the triple digits, just un-installed it. I’ll be damned if I’m going to use that AI slop anymore.