Have you tried it? Obviously it won't be as structured as proper teaching, but I suspect that cajoling it into being a helpful language practice partner should be possible even as it is today.

It's language skills are crazy impressive. I've found there's no reason to not interact with it in my native language, it speaks and understands it just as well as English - and that was definitively not the case with earlier incarnations of GPT that I have tried.

I meant a version that had text to speech and speech to text incorporated so that you could actually talk to it.

I hadn’t considered textual conversations. That’s a good idea.

Personally I’m learning a couple of languages with foreign alphabets, so I’m really still in the stages of just learning the alphabets. (And Duolingo makes it possible by being casual and convenient.)

I agree. Plus, I grew to actually like the path. I spend less time strategizing over what should I do next or feeling torn between reparation and progress. Turned out that the only reason I wanted the tree was that I could strategize over 2x bonus better ... which has zero to do with learning too.

I found myself more engaged after change to path.

> Nobody has proffered a better alternative.

Buy a textbook and get a teacher/tutor. Study vocab with an SRS (such as Anki or many others). Watch movies and TV shows, read books (for beginners at first). Listen to dialogues and shadow them for better pronunciation and fluidity. And so on. Even most alternatives in the app space (Babbel, Rosetta Stone, etc.) are arguably better than Duolingo.

Duolingo is successful because there's more people who like the idea of speaking another language than people who actually like the process of learning a language.

This is ridiculous.

Equating a casual/convenient 10 Duolingo minutes a day with studying a textbook and paying for a teacher is absurd.

Your statement of why Duolingo is successful would equally apply to Rosetta Stone and Babbel, thus it doesn’t address the question.

I would never say you could achieve fluency with Duolingo. It’s just a good, fun, way to get the foundation that gives you the confidence to work with a textbook and tutor. Your suggestions are a terrible first step, and nobody has proffered better than Duolingo.

> Equating a casual/convenient 10 Duolingo minutes a day with studying a textbook and paying for a teacher is absurd.

Exactly.

You don't learn a language by doing 10 minutes a day.

> Your statement of why Duolingo is successful would equally apply to Rosetta Stone and Babbel, thus it doesn’t address the question.

Those services have their problem too and will probably not replace a proper textbooks, but at least Babbel offers proper courses created by actual language teachers that include actual instruction in the grammar of the language. It's more of a virtual textbook than the gamified hellhole that is Duolingo which, incidentally, is why the latter is so much more popular.

> Your suggestions are a terrible first step

I guess that's just your opinion then. I don't understand why you need to build "confidence" to work with a textbook and a tutor, and I don't even think that Duolingo gives you "confidence".

I’ve tried your suggestions and they didn’t work where Duolingo did. Maybe “terrible” isn’t the right word in that it would work for someone forced into a language (moving to a different country). In that situation, sure, Duolingo would be a bad approach.

Confidence, fun, easy, whatever you want to call it: casually learning a new language when you have no pressing reason to do so is where Duolingo shines. The gamified part is an annoyance to me, and definitely doesn’t make it a hellhole. I have to click through a few different activity-screens with some gems popping up: so what. I’m grateful that someone has supplied me with a structured and organized order in which to learn the basics. All I have to do is sit on my ass for a short period of time a day to make sure I get the active recall that’s most pertinent to my learning. It’s designed from the ground up for mobile, and that’s a perfect medium for my use case.

You certainly can learn a language in 10 minutes a day, it just may take 5 years to be fluent enough to have a casual conversation. I’m in no rush. Personally I end up spending an hour some days.

I can reflect on the past few months I’ve spent learning Hebrew. It was particularly intimidating for me because the alphabet/script is very different. At this point, I can read and confidently pronounce 80% of the words in the language. This has been effortless where other approaches (like the ones you suggested) completely failed. They failed effectively because I’m too lazy to deal with the logistics, but that highlights the success of Duolingo.

And further, a textbook alone is scientifically a terrible idea. Ingraining poor pronunciation (which will necessarily happen without audio) is crippling in the long term.

Modern textbooks usually have audio. If not, I would agree. But yes - you should also get a conversation partner.

As for the rest of your comment: if Duolingo works for you and your goals, OK. I still would never recommend it to anyone for learning any language and many people in this comment section (as well as on many language forums etc.) agree. People who have been around language learning communities have seen many, many people coming from Duolingo with a totally warped understanding of the language and essentially no progress. Maybe you're an exception or maybe the Hebrew course is particularly good, idk.

And we circle back around to the negativity that spurred my first comment. You proffer poor alternatives I’ve tried that failed, say you’re part of language learning communities, and continue to criticize the only thing that’s worked for me. Get the fuck out of here with your gatekeeping bullshit.

Reading between the lines of your asshat criticism, it’s obvious that Duolingo functions well for my intended use case. I’ve never once implied that it will give you fluency.

> Get the fuck out of here with your gatekeeping bullshit.

I object to the rude tone that you have displayed toward me and toward another commenter here. You seem awfully defensive, I've never written that you shouldn't be allowed to use whatever you prefer, just that I don't recommend doing so. If that's reason enough for you to tell somebody to "fuck off", then I don't see any further reason to engage with you.

Bullshit. You’ve plainly discouraged my undertaking without offering viable alternatives. Repeatedly.

You’re a typical fuckwad gatekeeper, and I have a problem with that. If you don’t want people being rude to you on the internet, try not being a little shit.

Fuck you.

You deserve a ban for this offensive display of aggression

Seeing as the first comment-guideline is to be kind, and the other commenter has disregarded this, I felt no qualm disregarding the spirit of the site.

Language learning is extremely difficult, and repeatedly discouraging someone else in a fun pastime is worse than anonymous rudeness on the internet. Grow up.

This entire comment section is filled with people preaching from a hilltop. Gatekeeping a fun hobby; having found something that works themselves, shooting down what others do to enjoy themselves.

I was argumentative/defensive from the start. My first comment literally has the word “defend” in it. I did not progress to insult this twat until I was condescended to from their high horse for the third time. There’s a backhanded “OK, it works for you, but Duolingo still sucks” in their comments, but that’s the closest thing there is to acknowledging an alternative to this echo chamber.

Considering you’ve delved this far into the chain, I expect you align with the same ivory tower of folks that have managed to make language learning work with something else. If so, kindly proffer something helpful or get the fuck out with your condescending patronization.

Yikes. You can't break HN's guidelines like this, regardless of how wrong other people are or you feel they are. We ban accounts that do.

I'm not going to ban you for this because everyone goes on tilt sometimes and I didn't see other cases of it in your comment history—at least not the recent history which I skimmed. But if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Alternative: watch native content. Start with easy short content, build up to vlogs, series, movies.

The idea of 'convenient 10 minutes a day' will get you nowhere. People who seriously want to learn a language know it takes 1-2-3 hours of daily immersion. The only way '10 minutes a day' would work is if you lived in a country, were surrounded by the language and only counted 10 minutes you spend reviewing a grammar book.

What all those tools want are users who pay regularly. So if they taught you a language well you'd be gone in a year or two. Duolingo can is great at teaching you a language if you then had to use that language in Duolingo.

Are you joking? Starting to learn a language by watching native content? Get out of here with your bullshit. And fuck you for implying I don’t actually want to learn a language on a thread defending a language learning app.

Getting to the point that you can consume media and actually learn a language is the hard part. That’s where Duolingo excels. Obviously fluency takes additional work.

Duolingo’s lessons for foreign alphabets are perfect examples. Some are better than others, but they all teach you how to read the script in a fun and time-manageable way. This aspect of Duolingo is free, fun, and it works.

I’ve made multiple attempts to learn languages with foreign alphabets before, and they’ve failed because of the logistics of studying the basics. Practicing and consuming content once you can function in the language is different, and it requires a different kind of motivation. I’ve never struggled with picking up additional vocab or grammar once the initial hurdles were overcome.

First of - rude. Why would you post something like this on a comment that was actually trying to share some tips with you? I kind of want to ignore it now and say 'well good luck then' but at the same time I want to ignore it and actually give you some advice.

That's how I started with language learning. There are channels that are dedicated to native content that's easy to understand. For example: Dreaming Spanish. You listen to content in you target language and learn sentence structure and vocabulary.

You asked 'is there alternative to Duolingo' and I gave you one. In return I got abuse. Not sure this was worth it.

There is huge big difference between what you wrote "Start with easy short content, build up to vlogs, series, movies." and "dreaming spanish".

Dreaming Spanish is literally alternative structured course. It is not nearly the same as starting by consuming media outside of structured course.

I don't see Dreaming Spanish as a structured course. If you do, ok, my recommendation might not make as much sense.

The way I see Dreaming Spanish is an adult version of kids shows where they point at things and explain things in simple terms. If kids shows were more interesting to adults I'd happily watch them over Dreaming Spanish. And there are shows like Bingo that are easy to understand, short and engaging enough for adults (or at least engaging enough for me).

How is it NOT structured course? It was literally designed as a structured course teaching you the language step by step. It was made by teachers for students with the intention to teach the language. I am inclined to believe you that it is effective. If I ever get serious about Spanish, I might try it out.

And also, undestading shows like bingo or kids shows requires already existing knowledge of words. You will not figure out meaning of words purely based on watching them.

Maybe we just have different definitions of a structured course? To me a structured course is: *Here's a video, here's exercise, that's homework, this is a little fragment to read.

The videos are not connected in any way, I can watch them in any order. Most of the creators aren't teachers, they don't talk in a way that a usual structured course would: 'here's a list of 10 animals: dog, cat, fox' asking you to repeat after them.

A lot of the videos are pretty much 'day in life', 'my thoughts on', 'something interesting about..' - I could see them as early 2000s youtube videos where everyone had a vlog.

I wouldn't call it a structured course. I see it as a great contributor to a learning system that's comprehensible input - but there are many other creators that contribute to it. But if you see it as structured course, ok :)

Ironically, I’m realizing now that you may just be good in English as a non-first language. I assumed you were a native English speaker; your comment comes across as intentionally snarky and antagonistic. If I interpreted your comment as intentionally offensive, where you didn’t mean it as such, sorry. I only returned what I thought I was given. You implied my approach is ill-informed, and you gave absurd alternatives for my use case. I’m still pissed off thinking about it.

I’m not talking about Duolingo’s Spanish course. I have no experience with that. I actually speak decent Spanish learned from much more traditional means including textbooks, teachers, and then native speakers who enjoyed conversing with me once I was good enough.

I’m having great experience with Duolingo as the very first step of a much different language. (It’s the first thing that’s ever worked for me in this space, and at least my third try.) Your original comment suggested native content as a way to learn a language. This is ridiculous if you don’t even understand the alphabet. A children’s show specifically made for native children doesn’t work if you don’t have the very bare foundation. I can’t say I’ve tried your suggestions for these first steps because they are absurd.

Duolingo, on the other hand, makes these first steps particularly easy. It’s a free, structured, mobile-first, SRS-aware, active recall for alphabets and basic grammar where no decent comparable alternative exists.

Moving beyond the alphabets, basic grammar, and basic vocab: sure, consume native content. Personally I’m planning Pimsluer as my next step with my current undertaking as it’s SRS-aware and focuses on native media.

No, English is not my first language. "You implied my approach is ill-informed, and you gave absurd alternatives for my use case. I’m still pissed off thinking about it." - that was not my intention at all. Because there isn't a right approach to learning a language. Your original comment asked for an alternative to Duolingo so I provided you with one.

I believe there's been more research done to the method I recommend than to Duolingo - that's why I thought it's worth mentioning it. But if it doesn't work for you, don't use it. If you want to study 5min a day - do it. My comment was recommending a specific approach that I (and the community I'm a part of) use and believe it works.

But if you look at 'content' kids experience first it's words and sentences used in specific situations. Only later having this knowledge they learn the alphabet, numbers, grammar. I know more English grammar than I do of my own native language - I'm pretty sure I know more English grammar rules than an average native English speaker (at least looking at my group of friends). It makes me better at taking a test or writing a very detailed and technical article (which currently I do none of) but won't help much in normal conversations.

Sure, learn the alphabet, learn the most common words but that can also be achieved with free online content. I wasn't saying you shouldn't be doing it. I was only answering your first comment where you said everyone complains on Duolingo but no one has an alternative. I provided you with one that I know others (like myself) use.

I have tried Duolingo in the past and the only dangerous thing is that it was a great experience. Did it teach me anything other than hello/bye/boy eats bread? Not really. I also can compare my experience of focusing on consuming content to Duolingo because one of my mates did Duolingo for a long time. After about 6 months he looked at content I watch - in this case it was Dreaming Spanish. I was at a point of watching Intermediate videos (short ones because they required a lot of focus), he couldn't understand any of it. I'm not saying that's the case for all users, this is just me comparing 2 users of different systems.

"Moving beyond the alphabets, basic grammar, and basic vocab: sure, consume native content." - that's my worry with Duolingo. People get so used to the little level ups and 'X day streak' that they continue doing it feeling like they're progressing. Which they probably are but very slowly as it doesn't teach conversational language. The only part of Duolingo I felt like I enjoyed were the stories (the old version of them) or the conversations. But all the animations and videos around them made it so difficult to focus on learning that I gave up.

If you read my first comment, you’ll see that I have had my sights towards moving away from Duolingo (and towards conversational material) from the beginning.

Dreaming Spanish sounds nice. Now that I see this is what you were talking about when you said “native content”, I see the breakdown in our conversation. Typical wisdom for enhancing fluency is to find random/varied media to consume. This is what I was calling absurd for building a foundation. Dreaming Spanish, on the other hand, is literally advertised as a language learning tool. And it does seem like a very modern evidence-based approach.

Were there a Hebrew version of Dreaming Spanish, I would likely supplement my learning with it after finishing some basic courses in Duolingo. Mostly, in the case of Duolingo Hebrew, I’ve been greatly enjoying how well their alphabet course is made the last few months. Currently my next plan is Pimsleur because they have a nice mobile app.

> People who seriously want to learn a language know it takes 1-2-3 hours of daily immersion.

That is considerable amount of effort that will definitely get you far. However, I know many people who did learned foreign language and the amount of concentrated effort you write about would be unusual for them. Sure, it took years, but no, full hour of daily immersion on regular would be exceptional.

It really depends on the language, Japanese takes much longer than Spanish for English speakers for example.

And yeah, you don't need to invest several hours each day - that's unrealistic for most people. But I also think you get nowhere by doing just 10 minutes a day, even if you do it every day for years. You need to set aside time for conscious learning, e.g. on weekends. Then you could e.g. do the 10 minutes a day during the weeks for reviewing vocab, or reading short texts, or whatever.

I don't think you can do it without the occasional "crunch time".

(There's also the fact, of course, that the better you get at your target language the less will consuming content feel like a chore to you and so you can tolerate more of it, and even enjoy it.)

I actually think that 10 minutes a day can get you pretty far, especially for beginner. Namely, to slowly get you to a stage when you are able to read those short texts over weekend. Ability to read a short text is fairly large step in learning language. And even then, reading 10 minutes day is going to be more effective then reading for 70 minutes once a week.

10 minutes a day, whether duolingo or not, will get you further then 70 minutes once a week in a crunch mode. That holds for language, playing musical instrument, sport, whatever. The hardest part in those is to keep interest and touch with activity over the long time it requires. And the big enemy are months when you pause the activity entirely.

Obviously you have to mix the learning modes. And obviously the more time you put into it the better.

---------------

I also think that people get naive about amount of time people actually spend learning when going to classes in school or after school club. Typically, get 1-2 lessons a week plus some homework. Sometimes you get 3, but any more then that is unusually intensive. The typical expectation when going to in-person classes is that yes, it will take years till you are anywhere near good command of the language. That a year after, you can survive your way, but still cant consume most of normal media without subtitles. Those are reasonable expectations.

> 10 minutes a day, whether duolingo or not, will get you further then 70 minutes once a week in a crunch mode. That holds for language, playing musical instrument, sport, whatever. The hardest part in those is to keep interest and touch with activity over the long time it requires. And the big enemy are months when you pause the activity entirely.

My point is that you need both. Reviewing vocab etc. can be done as part of the "daily 10 minutes" (although it usually takes me longer). But learning about new grammar etc. usually takes longer than just 10 minutes. And once in a while you just have to sit down and read a more complicated text, looking up vocab, etc.

Again, it pretty much also depends on the language. For Japanese, I think it's impossible to get anywhere with just 10 minutes a day, I think.

It is a lot of time. But at some point, when you start understanding more, something as simple as watching 20 minutes of The Simpsons in language you're learning instead of English is an immersion. You listen to a podcast or a radio and when you feel like watching random YouTube videos you do it in that language. All of this adds up.

I'm currently averaging 1.5h of video/audio a day and sure, some days it feels like a lot - work is busy, I have to go to the office, gym, and all.

But I'm trying to cross the line of 'I can understand without having to focus really hard' as quickly as I can because then immersion is so much easier. TV, books, podcasts - what I do on a daily basis will all count towards my immersion.

Watching The Simpsons is not simple. If you watch movies and shows, you are pretty far along. Podcasts and radio are even further, they are super far. You get no subtitles with these, you get no context clues from visuals. Just the sheer size of vocabulary you need and ability to parse spoken sentence. I was able to converse with Americans (have actual discussion) long before I was able to understand English in shows.

I am not native English speaker. I did learned 2 foreign languages. One of them was through very intensive program, the other one without that. It consistently seem to be that these advices are skipping the beginning and also do not conform to either my personal experience or what I observed in others.

Like, obviously you learn faster if you go in super intensive. No question about that. And your interest will fluctuate.

What I said is "But at some point, when you start understanding more, something as simple as watching 20 minutes of The Simpsons in language you're learning instead of English is an immersion. "

I don't suggest watching shows from day 1. It did take me some time to build up to being able to sit through a 20/30/40 minute TV show and actually be able to follow the story. I wouldn't recommend it to people who are just starting out though. It's best they start with very short and very simple content that's fully in their target language but is created by people who know their audience is learning.