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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.