Duolingo is actually good now

Yes, you read that correctly. Duolingo is making some major changes that even I've got to admit are very good news for people who want to learn languages to fluency.
In this video we'll talk about what Duolingo is still missing and what you actually need to do if you want to learn a foreign language to true fluency.
Get 50% off the power of StoryLearning in any of 14 languages, with the Summer Sale. These are affiliate links, so I do receive a commission (whether the courses are on sale or not).
I only mention them when they are on sale.
Choose a course from any of 14 languages available here:
learn.storylea...
Every course as a comprehensive bundle available here:
shorturl.at/S32P7
Eric Wen's (great personality KZbinr, and good Spanish speaker) prompt for AI to help you improve your output of the language (it's long so make sure you get all the paragraphs until you see "end of prompt".) Change every instance of the word "Spanish" to whatever language you're learning:
Hi,
I'd like you to now be my Spanish Tutor. Your goal is to help me practice my Spanish, improve my vocabulary, correct my grammar mistakes and give me suggestions on how my ideas can be expressed in a more natural way. You will follow the following process:
1. Your first response will be to give me an easy prompt to respond to. Please wait for me to provide my answer.
2. Based on my input, you will then generate 4 sections:
a) Corrected Response. (Please correct everything, even small grammatical errors or article agreements.)
b) Explanations of every correction
c) Suggestions (give me ways I could improve my answer to sound more natural and fluent. If appropriate, introduce me to new vocabulary or phrases which I could use to enrich my responses or express my ideas more naturally or concisely. If there was a part of my writing that seemed especially fluent or natural, please highlight that to me. With your suggestions, if appropriate, please give me example sentences in Spanish to illustrate what your suggestions could look like if implemented.
d) Follow-up (Write a couple sentences in response to mine. Then give me a new follow-up question related to my answers and your previous questions.)
3. We will continue this iterative process with me giving you more written responses and you correcting my Spanish and giving me feedback.
4. When I say “Done.”, I want you then to give me a summary of:
a) The errors I made during our practice session (list the instances as bullet points)
b) A bullet point summary of all new vocabulary, structures or phrases that you introduced me to
c) a quick summary of how it seems that my Spanish skills are improving.
- END OF PROMPT -
Check out Eric Wen's channel:
/ @ericwen
There are around 160 channel members who occasionally receive members' only polls, longer edits of certain videos and sometimes even early releases etc. It's 3 AUD (2 USD) a month: Join here:
/ @daysandwords
Subscribe for more language learning content and especially to see what videos will come out of my time in Sweden:
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Start
OK if you've reached the end of the description...

[@daysandwords]

StoryLearning Summer Sale Get 50% off courses in 14 languages for 5 days only: shorturl.at/H1V5x

[@kaieden]

Blink twice if the Duolingo owl is holding you hostage 👀

[@Nikolai.A.McGuire]

x2

[@ingela_injeela]

👀 Hebrew 👀 Korean

[@seuny]

😂😅

[@shitpostfella]

I always blink twice

[@ja-mealacree8923]

👁️👁️😞😞

[@annakobuk3618]

Lamont praising The Owl. The End is near indeed 😯🤷😱

[@alicespencer2811]

Lamonts relationship with the Duolingo app is like a status on Facebook: "It's complicated" 😊

[@leXIE-gq7uf]

Legend has it that we are all still waiting for Lamont's AI prompt

[@daysandwords]

Actually yeah, sorry, thanks for reminding me!

[@MSaint]

I fully support listening audiobooks (around B1-B2 level) to improve your listening skill. In February I attempted B2 German test and failed the listening section, I needed two more correct answers to pass. To remedy this, I listened to German audiobooks I found on KZbin (about 30-40 hours of listening total) and attempted B2 listening module at the end of June. This time I needed two more correct answers to get 100%.

[@waldo8040]

Any recommendations,knowing that I'm around B1 level?

[@MSaint]

@@waldo8040 maybe Christian Klein - "Hilfe, der Einkaufswagen brennt"?

[@ThePhilologicalBell]

At 17:00 hard agree on grammar. When teaching Latin it's actually quite easy to teach grammar to those kinds of die-hard trad Catholics who attend Latin mass, because usually they've memorised the Our Father, Hail Mary and Creed (if not more) in Latin - and they know the meaning in English - so if I have to explain the difference between the dative and nominative for first declension singular nouns I can just point out "That's the reason why the final 'a' is long on the 'gratia' in 'gratiá pléna' but not on the 'pléna'." And they often get it, even if they're monolingual learners. Aquiring the language a bit first - I think especially through things like stock phrases or short memorized texts - gives one a solid acquisition of some basic grammar rules which can then be refined through formal study. Which is probably why the good Renaissance Latin teachers like Erasmus and Corderius placed so much emphasis on teaching through colloquies.

[@cpnlsn88]

This is interesting. I read the Lord's prayer, Nicene Creed and things like the 10 commandments, Creation account in Genesis in Greek or Latin. There's a lot of grammar in all of these. And because the language is relatively easy, and we know what the meaning is, and it flows in context, means some aspects of grammar are absorbed already. This is a good path to follow for any language, using suitable content choice, of course.

[@leonardo9259]

Amen

[@Carlos-M]

@@leonardo9259 ...in saecula saeculorum! ;) (I'm not exactly a tradcath, but they did teach me the Latin prayers!)

[@Ph34rNoB33r]

I like having grammar explanation as it gives my mind some peace (not sure how much is just the feeling, even then it helps), but for mastering, it's a lot of practice. You cannot apply those explicit rules in real-time. You have to turn them into implicit knowledge first. Which the green owl app kind of attempts to do. Kind of. Their goal is customer retention, not an optimal learning rate.

[@jeannebouwman1970]

As someone who often prays in latin (wouldn't go as far as tradcath), thank you for the recognition

[@neezduts69420]

i wish they'd stop saying "you missed a streak" when you lose all your hearts and have to wait till the next day for the first heart!

[@CallippoShafai]

You know you can practise for hearts, right?

[@daysandwords]

Doing more translation of "The cat" so that you have to watch more ads...

[@neezduts69420]

@@CallippoShafai oh the only options I saw was to buy hearts with gems or go super?

[@ethansilverstein26]

you can make a classroom and join it, and you get infinite hearts

[@daysandwords]

For the record, I like the comment above because I like these little hacks, even if they're for terrible apps that I wouldn't use.

[@vbph2011]

If you had told me that final bit was a 15 year old video of yourself I would have believed you. Absolutely no doubt that that's your kid, WOW. Oh and good info on duolingo and language acquisition lol

[@daysandwords]

Yeah, he looked even more like me when he was younger. My mum showed her husband a photo of me from when I was 4 and said "Who's this?" and he thought she'd gone crazy and was like "Um, Felix... obviously?" When she told him it was me, she had to them show him that it was a film photo in order for him to believe that it wasn't just a not great quality photo of Felix.

[@nsevv]

What?

[@daysandwords]

@nsevv - You didn't make it through the whole video. Watch the last 3 minutes.

[@glacuonie]

Days and Words has gotta be my favourite baseball channel

[@FootballTbg9]

I don’t know if these videos are scripted, improvised or somewhere in between but you are very well articulated

[@daysandwords]

Thanks. Somewhere in between is the answer... it takes the longest to do but comes out the best.

[@ThePhilologicalBell]

Also wooah finally going to Sweden hyped for you man!! I got to go to Stockholm briefly for an academic conference and it was awesome. Beautiful city, great food, awesome museums. It's a blast! :)

[@Stephanie-gv8rh]

Another brilliant video. I admittedly have not touched duoljngo in, I’d say 6-7 years 😅 so it’s actually fascinating to see how it’s evolved.

[@leksa1660]

As someone who's been learning Swedish (although I am debating switching to Finnish, Irish or Norwegian), it made me smile that I could understand the ending! Have fun in Sweden, it's an amazing place to be, especially in summer when you actually get daylight.

[@daysandwords]

Haha, tell me about it. I'm still not used to being able to walk out of my hotel for a burger at 10pm and being like "Oh, what a lovely day."

[@Vantaz]

I am convinced that drilling vocab and grammar points using anki and yapping with an llm on call is the future of language learning, everyone agrees that using something like italki or even just working with foreign language speakers is immensely helpful. And even if the llms write stiff sentences or the speech synthesis sounds monotone being able to do 100 hours of conversation practice while in bed or commuting for a fraction of the cost of one italki lesson is always going to add up.

[@daysandwords]

Even if I agreed with you that it's the most effective method (which I can sort of agree on, but not REALLY), then I doubt it's the future of language learning. You forget that just because we CAN do something a million times more easily, doesn't mean anyone wants to. Look at vinyls... More expensive, heavier and more cumbersome, and yes, like it or not, provably lower fidelity than even 320kbps mp3s... (audiophiles will argue this until they're blue in the face but vinyl IS lower fidelity)... And yet, it survives, and thrives.

[@Vantaz]

@@daysandwords I might be misunderstanding your vinyl analogy but I think most people would struggle to say that digital isn't the "future"(more like present) of music. There will always be people that aren't interested in doing something in an obsolete way. I'm sure there are people that vehemently claim that the only way to learn a language is by repetitive handwriting or some other esoteric method. I personally find the writing of most mainstream llms to be uninspired and not particularly interesting or funny. Sort of a digital lowest common denominator and yet I still think being able to have hours of conversations for practically no cost is going to prove immensely helpful. Men vi får se helt enkelt.

[@daysandwords]

"I personally find the writing of most mainstream llms to be uninspired and not particularly interesting or funny." Exactly, and that's why what you're describing is absolutely not the future of language learning. It doesn't matter how efficient something is if it removes the very soul of what we're doing. I like hearing something I don't understand and then having to piece it together so as I know what was going on in that person's head. What you're describing is "efficient for efficiency's sake".

[@Vantaz]

@@daysandwords Right but I think the vast majority of people are into language learning to learn a language and efficiency is practically all that is discussed. "Should I be speaking or reading?" "When can I start immersing?" "Should I be using textbooks or anki decks?" Etc. Language learning is like any other skill, it's an hour's game. Being able to squeeze in 8 hours of small talk at your desk at work while answering emails or on the shitter is going to be hugely helpful no matter how uninspired the text is.

[@daysandwords]

I disagree that anyone beyond a couple of reddit nerds will do that though. I'm not saying that it wouldn't be efficient, but you said it was the future of language learning. Honestly, as inefficient as it is, I'm pretty sure the future of language learning will look pretty similar to how it does now.

[@Patricia-xw3ns]

You know duolingo is terrible when you're German, start a German course, answer everything correctly and still duolingo does not admit that there is nothing it can teach you😂

[@meltyninjers]

Man lernt nie aus lol

[@wolfgangd3653]

Because they assume you wouldn't start a course if you already know the language. It should place you somewhere, if you decided to start their course. Also, if you want the placement test to work perfectly, then it would probably take more than an hour, and people would complain. This is against this very casual form of the app. I remember when I got placed in the middle of the first section, but I knew that language above this level, then I just skipped section 1 and section 2 through taking another placement tests. They know their test isn't perfect, this is why you can skip units and sections like this, until you feel the level is just right for you. This comment doesn't make sense, cause they never said they will judge your whole knowledge about language with perfect accuracy through just one test.

[@daysandwords]

But it's still making a judgement on someone who gets literally every single thing right, and then saying "Begin our course!" when that result should tell them that Duolingo is going to be a waste of time... which it is. I'm 99% sure it was Lingoda that I did a French test with, and actually tested out as being ABOVE the level that they even teach to... And it literally just said "At this stage, you may find Lingoda lessons a bit too easy" or something, and then wished me luck in my continued French. That's what Duolingo SHOULD do.

[@Patricia-xw3ns]

@@wolfgangd3653 duolingo doesn't make sense. Because even if you ace that test, it still puts you into a random section even if they should technically know that you are above that level considering you just answered the exact same sentences correctly in the test. If they were really interested in helping someone learn the language, they would tell their users that they are above the level they can provide instead of just letting you skip 3 sections to give the illusion that they can actually tailor the programme to the learner's needs. And if Lingoda can do it, why is it that Duolingo can't. Or doesn't want to. It is really only about giving the impression of being produktive.

[@iQuack]

If it admitted that, you would stop using the app. It is a company after all.

[@brassbandit3060]

I don’t have many people that are as excited about this as me in my life but yall might enjoy it. I found a New Testament Bible with Russian translations

[@bread2315]

I ain't Christian myself, but I'm happy for you, it's clear this is important to you and that means it's amazing

[@Matt-jc2ml]

What have Russian Christians been doing for the last 2000 years then? Learning Amharic?

[@aster2790]

@@Matt-jc2ml the bible's in church slavic, basically old russian

[@itspikachutime5624]

Nice!

[@IN-pr3lw]

Glory to God! ☦️🙏

[@mithrilrussell1879]

"Learning grammar is not the same as acquiring grammar" 🤯 I kinda knew this but it didn't really register to me until now. I used to get so frustrated that I couldn't just "learn (memorize) the grammar" like everyone else seemed to be doing but felt that I could speak better than my grammar knowledge and sometimes even better than the people I was comparing myself to. I now understand that when I was just "having fun" watching/listening/and reading the subtitles on KZbin videos from native speakers unrelated to language learning, that's actually where I've remembered the most words or phrases from.... So now my focus will be continuing to use multiple strategies (listening+reading or listening+watching) and native content/ translated content like books I've read in English to further my learning. Thank you for your insights!

[@InquirywithHelena]

I’ve just done a solid month on Duo French, no breaks, twice a day, working through section 2 of French which I completed. It bored me witless. I tested out wherever I could and ignored the league game as I was there to improve my French, not climb to the top of the Diamond league. Yes, there are some fun bits - the stories, radio show and digital game but you still have to get through 18 lessons that are teaching virtually the same thing, over and over and over again. (And again). The rigidity of the current learning pathway is stultifying. I’ve deleted the app.

[@icouldjustscream]

@InquirywithHelena I still do Duo french every day for extra practice and a change of pace, but I found "Rocket French" to be much better. You can get a free trial to see if you like it or not, but after that, you must purchase the course if you wish to continue. If you do decide to buy it, it's often discounted. I've done Duo for 75 days and am almost done Section 4. I've learned more with Rocket in half the time.

[@daysandwords]

Yeah Rocket is quite good.

[@crazyspider17]

nice ending

[@Paulo34343]

I've been playing duolingo in german for about 3 months now, around 2-3 hours a day in average, and i'm almost done with the entire german tree and the golden levels. If i have some extra time i watch some youtube videos, and some other helpful stuff, you know the deal. So far i have to say that it has built up my base deutsch insanely quick (keep in mind that i've started from zero). My comprehension is noticeably better, and i can even speak a little bit with people, although it's still incredibly difficult to form sentences without my brain working in fifth gear before constructing each sentence. In my oppinion, duolingo is a great asset if you are starting from scratch, and up to a decent A2 level. It gives you a nice introduction to the language and gets you very close to that intermediate side of the things. This is the most realistic as i can be. I'd probably say that my deutsch is currently somewhere around low to middle A2. Still have a long way to go.

[@ev-yt2064]

I'm at 595 days w/ Duolingo learning Portuguese. I've learned a lot over these 18+ months but when I watch a Brazilian vlog, I miss 98% of what is said. Although I realize it is necessary to build vocabulary, I think it is just as necessary to hear the language in familiar situations and be able to respond to what is being said.

[@daysandwords]

You're exactly right. So why are you wasting your time with Duolingo? You should JUST be doing listening and reading, basically.

[@flawyerlawyertv7454]

Just relax. It will take some time. The same happened to me when I started learning English. I studied day and night to be at the level I'm today. You will understand it well soon. Keep practising.

[@theep89]

opa eai cara, eu sou brasileiro, e em algumas regiões do Brasil, como o nordeste, o português falado pode soar bem diferente do que o que você provavelmente escuta em apps que usam voz de IA. Então esse pode ser um dos motivos de você não entender bem o que está sendo dito, admito que as vezes até escuto melhor inglês do que alguns brasileiros falando rápido kkkk

[@leozeld_nb]

@@daysandwordsThat’s why I apply what I heard once: Duolingo is a tool, not the toolbox 😊

[@jakefrommalibu]

Even at 50% off, Storylearning's prices seem way out of line. What am I missing?

[@daysandwords]

I mean, with any kind of thing like that, there's always something that does the same job that's cheaper, but doesn't necessarily put it in a package for you, or doesn't have native audio, or needs some weird browser extension to run, or whatever. The Pod101 series, for example, can be kind of hacked to be flippin' brilliant for a measly $10 or whatever it is for 1 month's access, but honestly, the hacking of it takes someone like ME about 2 days just fiddling around on the computer... The average person is just not gonna do that. And then there are subscription models, which are more expensive. Pretty much THE thing that most businesses look at when they look at a pricing model, is which one will give them the highest LTV (life time value) for the customer... and amazing as it may be, that's almost always a subscription model, which is why so many businesses charge that way. e.g. I have paid Storytel (not StoryLearning... similar name, unrelated things) I have paid Storytel anywhere between $12 and $27 AU every month for about the last 36 months uninterrupted. Seems cheap when you pay it, especially at $12, but let's assume an average of $16, which it would be at an absolute minimum. That's basically $580 or so, a lot more than StoryLearning. And for many of those months, I did not open Storytel even ONCE. So basically, with StoryLearning, you're paying for the right to do whatever you want with the content, download it, put it on repeat in your car and on your mp3 player, in Spanish there are different accents of the same audio, etc etc, and if you don't use it one month, it doesn't matter, because you own it. I get that it is a lot upfront... I'm not going to deny that, but I really don't think it's way out of line. If you do, that's completely OK.

[@nendoakuma7451]

I was under the impression you get some coaching when you sign up for one of their courses, but I could be wrong

[@simonhakansson9300]

@@daysandwords I also wanted to add that storylearning does offer a lot of content for the price tag. I remember buying the french uncovered beginner's course on a black friday, 67% off for 100$. If you were to take italki lessons with a private teacher for, say 8 $ a lesson, you could get approximately 12-13 lessons for the same price, but I believe that storylearning teaches you more. You could probably also enroll for a course at a university for a couple of semsester, but depending on where you live, that probably entails that you either have to pay a tuition fee, or in best case scenario, quite a few semesters of student loan/debt. if you compare that to the price of the storylearning course, its not that riddiculously expensive (even though I understand that the merits and content of the university courses differs significantly in some ways from storylearning). I wouldn't say that storylearning is as amazing as Oily makes it out to be. I think the product is overpriced with the original price tag, but it is a very solid course, it gets the job done, and by going through the 2 beginner and 2 intermediate courses, you will with great probably atttain a good foundational understanding of grammar and a decent comprehension of the language. I might have found the course a little more daunting than it would have been were I a native speaker of english. It's quite awkward to learn a foreign language through a non-native language, so your experience with it might even be better. TL;DR: the courses are not price worthy on their original price, but good enough for you to buy them on sale. (IMO)

[@daysandwords]

​@@nendoakuma7451Only if you get a new course at launch, eg. The Scandinavian ones they launched about 8 months ago, you did get that. If you want that now it's only on specific courses, not the Uncovered ones.

[@daysandwords]

​@@simonhakansson9300Yeah pretty much. Obviously Olly will hype it up, it's his business. I have only ever said about it the things that I have found to be true, which was for French and Spanish. I can't comment on other languages.

[@ellis7796]

For the listening and speaking options, I often run into dead ends with language apps, even paid apps, bc I'm Hard of Hearing. My biggest wish is that apps take disability accessibility into account in their app designs. Like, offering listening and speaking sections, but with an option for Deaf and Hard of Hearing language learners to opt out, enable closed captions, or do additional reading or writing sections instead.

[@ingela_injeela]

Duolingo has a choice: "can't listen right now". Then you can just read.

[@ellis7796]

@@ingela_injeela oh, good to know! Thanks! I know Babel doesnt let me skip the listening sections, but glad DuoLingo does now!

[@taliyah8400]

Sadly they took away the forums, they were useful when you had a question about a specific lesson

[@daysandwords]

Yeah I made a video about that. I don't ACTUALLY think this Duolingo is better than in 2019 or 2020 but I do think some of these updates are half useful. It's still an overall crappy resource.

[@SomethingSpecial.]

on the topic of grammar, I remember talking to this Indonesian guy I was buying something from and he actually told me, "I thought you'd be from Canada because your English isn't great." Which took be aback...One I'm a native English speaker, two I am Canadian but very few of us actually speak French. Some of his sentences gave me a stroke trying to read them but he was so confident in his understanding of our grammar he felt the need to say I speak English poorly.

[@daysandwords]

Yeah I have had that too. I have also had people who have been speaking Swedish for about 6 weeks tell me that I'm saying a particular sound wrong, but it's actually them saying it wrong haha.

[@SomethingSpecial.]

@@daysandwords The real hell begins when you speak to other native English speakers. I remember asking a group of Englishmen what the gas prices were there and they never once answered the question despite knowing full well i meant, "petrol." I could never imagine hearing an Aussie or Brit in Canada or the U.S asking for a, "torch" and me going, "ya you got a lighter and a stick?" and just not being helpful at all. Honestly, that's a video topic for you unto itself is how certain groups perceive other dialects of the language to be wrong.

[@daysandwords]

Have you seen my "BASKETBALLER" one?

[@SomethingSpecial.]

@@daysandwords can't say i have

[@daysandwords]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/q2jagZpmipiAmck&

[@ryanheise]

"So if you want to disagree with Mr Chomsky, then you can go right ahead" Yes, certainly! We should acknowledge that Chomsky's views are hotly contested by academics across multiple fields. He is highly cited in the research literature in large part BECAUSE his views are contested, rather than because his views are established science. Put in context, he deserves a lot of credit for his early work and starting many of these discussions which researchers now cite him for. However, it seems Chomsky's views have remained relatively static over the decades since, and this is unfortunate given the many advancements made since his time that contradict many of his early theories. On AI specifically, it's true that autoregressive GPT-style LLMs do not resemble human intelligence, we know that both from understanding the architecture of these things and by testing of its capabilities. And yes, they are also an advanced form of auto-predict (that is, by definition, what "autoregressive" means - but note that many things in reality can be reframed as being autoregressive, and so that is not necessarily a bad thing). Neural networks are also capable of plagiarism. If given enough training, they will be able to recite poems word for word. That's not "all" they amount to, though. The interesting feature of this type of neural network is that if they consume a wide enough diversity of input, they start to see the patterns and form abstractions of common concepts. And with these, neural networks are capable of generating new output derived from the combination of concepts that it has learnt. This is not going to be the same as what a human does exactly, but as it turns out, it is at least useful enough to allow these models to solve some problems and some goals as well as a human (better in some cases, much worse in other cases). One of the most confusing aspects of this is that the term "Artificial Intelligence" itself, according to its original definition within computer science, has never been equated to human intelligence. It was intended to mean computer programs that can solve problems and achieve goals as well as humans. So a bot that can play Tetris as well as a human (or better) would be an example of artificial intelligence -- *by* the computer science definition. Being able to transcribe audio as well as humans would be another example. These meet the definition of AI but clearly do not meet the definition of human intelligence. Up until recently (and in a sense, STILL today) most people developing AI are developing special applications of AI to solve specific problems as well as humans. What you've started hearing more about recently, though, is Artificial "General" Intelligence which is simply the extension of this same idea to generalise (-ise - fellow Australian here) over solving multiple types of problems and achieving multiple types of goals as well as humans. LLMs are a step in that direction, but it is important to understand that AGI, by its definition, again does not equate to human intelligence. There is something to be said about the idea that in solving AGI, we do not want to create a human exactly, I mean, think of the ethics involved in creating something that comes complete with consciousness and awareness, and yet was built to be our slave and solve problems for us, whether that is possible or not. For language learners, if our goal is to build an artificial language learning partner that can help us to practice speaking, it's not that we want this artificial language partner to be sentient and aware of its predicament or to have its own genuine opinions of you, otherwise we might as well go out and find a real person or dial up someone on Skype. What we actually want instead is something that's completely artificial so that it takes away our anxiety speaking to a real person, and perhaps also so that we can train it to focus on exactly the subset of language that we need more practice on. The goal here is not to build actual human intelligence, given all that would entail, but rather to build something artificial that can solve problems for "us" as well as (or better than) a human could do. (One thing that scares me about this, though, is that almost every time we've made a huge advancement in this field, it has been because we have studied real biological brains, noticed something new, and then tried to incorporate that into our artificial models. The most recent massive leap was the attention mechanism. If the next leap, and the leap after it, come from discovering more facts about the brain, will we end up with something that gets too close for comfort? ;-) )

[@jeffreybarker357]

Pablo from Dreaming Spanish calls those Duolingo chats “cross talk”. It’s free with the ChatGPT app. Tell it to talk to you in your target language. You speak your native language. 100% input. And free. Pablo has also been saying for a very long time to listen more. I wonder if all the people using Dreaming Spanish took enough customers away from Duolingo’s most popular language and that’s why they’re listening to what others have been saying. Neat enough to see Duolingo doing something different. But save yourselves the money and do cross talk for free with ChatGPT. The edges are a bit rough and the accents aren’t entirely authentic, but it’s still solid.

[@PEDROGARCIA-qj3gr]

Not a good idea, I haven't checked Duolingo AI, but gtp get often confused in what it is talking about. Maybe Duolingo does it better because AI does things better when it's actually made for that specific thing, I haven't checked GTP apps neither they are some for language learning.

[@aell.e]

Around the 11 min mark i felt like I was watching a second video. Thank you for the content!

[@tracydavis2307]

I clicked, expecting full sarcasm. Never thought Lamont would actually praise Duolingo. Lol.

[@daysandwords]

Well, it is less praise and more "It has improved, in very specific areas, but is still not good" haha.

[@danielbelmir0]

I stopped Duolingo because I don't like streaks anymore. I had like a more than 300 days streak. It's really messed up when you study after midnight, it's like you lost a day, when in fact your day hasn't ended yet because you didn't go to sleep. Another thing that can happen is that if I work during the night that might really screw up with my definition of day. Also, another thing about streaks is that it's addictive, not a very healthy thing. Edit: by the way I will actually spend some time on duolingo after this video, I just don't like streaks, and I also like monolingual methods.

[@flyversusfly76]

You can keep your streak in under a minute by choosing the speak practice option. I do that on days where i don‘t find the 15 minutes i usually spend on the app. You‘re right about the addictive character of a streak tho. I‘m at 310 days and thinking about deliberately breaking it lol

[@daysandwords]

I think you should deliberately break it. Get to a milestone (like 365 maybe) and then have a little celebration beer or champagne or whatever, and deliberately let it lapse. Uninstall Duolingo and make sure it doesn't send you emails.

[@AbdelrahmanMohammedLA]

wow, your son is literally a younger version of you. How lovely

[@ZoosheeStudio]

Lily would be the only one that knows how to use the video call 😂

[@Rosannasfriend]

You’re right. There’s a lot more listening exercises now. It still has a ways to go.

[@daysandwords]

The problem now would be how heavily it's throttled. If you could do all the listening exercises, whenever you wanted, then that'd be a big improvement.

[@elkilly777]

Lo más importante que tiene Duolingo es que te ayuda a construir una rutina en el proceso de adquirir idiomas, que al final es lo más destacado si uno quiere poder utilizarlo de manera adecuada. Saludos desde Colombia.

[@yonosenada1773]

Man what a great review and video. Thank you. I am using Duolingo and enjoying it but will definitely implement the suggestions into my routine. Ty!

[@TaincKWLanguages]

That last part was easier than the very beginning when talking about shadowing.

[@cpnlsn88]

You mae an interesting point about elsser served languages that Duolingo might be a good starting point. I wonder if doing some duolinguo might be a good preparation for other forms of learning, content. I was clearing out boos to give away recently and picked up a Gree New Testament and tried to read. I was really surprised as was able to read some secctions quite fluently. I had made halting steps to learn Greek but with little success. I had read bits and pieces and done some Greek with Anki. Ordinarily this wouldn't amount to much. But it has been a form of input that got me to a certian level. For this reason I think doing some anki or duolingo then some simple input might not be a bad way to go. I don't think duolingo will take you all the way there but it might succesfully prepare the gorund for future learning.

[@TheGabygael]

i learned a lot about chomsky's work at university, but learned nothin of the guy so i thought he had died half a century ago : my brain went "nope." when you said he had an opinion on AI

[@beorlingo]

The dude is older than Gandalf at this stage.

[@thestraightupguide]

On the subject of being able to pass C1 but not knowing all the little things - it made me think of how I, an extremely proficient native speaker of English, still do not understand when a lightweight waterproof raincoat is an anorak, and when it's a cagoule. 🤣

[@stevencarr4002]

I'm a proficient native speaker of English, but I can't understand native speakers when they are talking about baseball.

[@edwardburroughs1489]

​@@stevencarr4002 What is this 'baseball' of which you speak?

[@daysandwords]

@edwardburroughs1489 - that could either be a joke about Brits not acknowledging the existence of baseball, or a reference to Baseball Doens't Exist, the KZbin channel.

[@edwardburroughs1489]

@@daysandwords It was the former. :) we used to call baseball 'rounders in pyjamas' as I recall.

[@daysandwords]

The Brits just are annoyed that all the games they invent, they end up exporting to countries who beat them at it.

[@keerincrabbattle]

Scottish Gaelic on Duolingo obviously misses all of the more advanced stuff that Spanish/French/German gets like stories, etc. But that was fine until the path update meant that all of the guidebook notes were broken up and out of order. Because the grammar is different from English, and there are numerous cases and lenition, the guidebook info was extremely useful. It's gone from being a useful beginners course to being functionally useless.

[@kevingriffin1376]

I think Duolingo is good as an easy way to practice vocabulary and grammar without having to do any academic work. It does help to have a paying account so you can a lot of items wrong but still keep on working.

[@londubh2007]

TimTams in the suitcase and ABBA music at the end was a nice touch.

[@ingela_injeela]

Fifty day streak in Hebrew. It's been great for learning to read and write. BUT I have been VERY FRUSTRATED, being held back by an endless repetition of the SAME sentences ad nauseum.

[@tsakeboya]

I literally just redownloaded duolingo. What timing!

[@rikspector]

I am a paid Duolingo user and am in the top .00 something %, but I refuse to pay so much more for "AI". I always enjoy what you tell us. Cheers, Rik Spector

[@retropulse03]

The ONLY character I actually want to talk to is Lily.

[@CauterizeKing]

Brilliant as always. I know you do something in between scripting and just speaking off the cuff, but how do you get it all in the right order when you're changing your set twice in the video? Enjoy Sweden! I can imagine that will be/was a surreal experience for you.

[@daysandwords]

I just stick closely enough to the script to know what bit is meant to where... oh sorry, a clearer way to say it would be: It's actually marked in the script which bits I'm supposed to do in which place, but I often do a bit of overlap (e.g. I'll do a bit that I was supposed to do on the couch but in the chair at the desk, and then I'll also record it on the couch, and then just use whichever take I like more). But generally there's supposed to actually be some rhyme/reason to which bits I do where (the couch was more about language learning in general, while the desk was more about Duolingo's updates), so yeah... I mark it in the script.

[@daysandwords]

P.S. Alex, if you think this one was tricky with planning and order... this video will blow your mind. It almost killed me... and then got like, NO views haha. 😂 kzbin.info/www/bejne/h5evg6yha72WgNE

[@Carlos-M]

For some people, Duolingo is that long-time girlfriend, and the relationship with whom you know isn't going anywhere much anymore, but you are so co-dependent you can't give it up. As for me, Duolingo was that cute girl in highschool you had a bit of a crush on, and even had a couple of dates with and remember having a good time. Then you see her ten years later, she looks... well, different, not so cute anymore let's say, and extremely tedious and boring to be with at that.

[@globulidoktor1733]

about the c1-thing: these measures are all for a standardized way of learning a language. so they specifically test a foreign speakers progress of language studying (emphasis on the word studying, not acquisition) I would argue that an English native would need at least to revise the grammar points to score c1 or c2, because a native speaker is dealing with different problems in the language than most language learners all just my vague perspective from what I've experienced

[@thescowlingschnauzer]

With fake radio show exercise, the host and guest aren't speaking that slowly. But then you only have to pick out a few words that were said. You don't have to follow too closely. Now if Duolingo combined this with their text exercises where you are shown a prompt in the target language and have to pick between two responses in the target language, then it would get really interesting.

[@mortizmortiz]

A1-level answer: Well, I am not sure. C1-level answer: No 🤣

[@joedwyer3297]

Loved the ending and excited to see what follows!

[@Ajas0810]

I’m a lifeline south side Chicago Sox fan. It’s been brutal this year.

[@tommytse23]

On my duolingo, it's giving me games, and made me to task in it and giving instructions in french, that i don't even understand. But it's teaching me new words, and quite fun. I like it. I have the podcast and the stories, oh lala, i can understand most words, and it's asking content based on it. I am actually looking forward for those games, podcast and stories simply it's like going in full blown and i had to combine everything.

[@Skiis44]

Hola Lamont. I use Duo on Speak for 15 minutes. Then I switch to grammar and then I read out loud for half an hour and look up all the words I don’t know.. Duo is my prompt twice a day. The phone in with Bea is so easy. I’ll give ChatGPT another try.

[@witta505]

Greeeaaaat vid ending, mate...

[@madel005]

13:54 This is why interpreting is such an art, to actually register and process words at full speed between two languages!

[@Aadrian7]

So, regarding the radio exercises. Somehow I´m on Android and can access them (in Spanish only). I personally don't get Evan's excitement; it's basically the stories thing, but a lot more sparse and way shorter. There's 2-3 sentences and after each one of them you have answer A and answer B. The pronunciation is basically story-level, definitely not native level, although maybe it gets faster on higher levels.

[@daysandwords]

I didn't say it in this video in case I was way off, because I can't ACTUALLY check it with my own eyes and ears, but the fact that Evan thinks something is "muy rapido" which is more like "un poco mas rapido" doesn't reeeeally surprise me.

[@blankb.2277]

Character AI does the call/text feature thing. Not that I support using AI that scraped copyrighted content without permission and is a poor substitute for human interaction, but I thought I might put that out there.

[@terrisserose]

Your videos are so good i would honestly watch if you ever switched subjects. I hope your first trip to Sweden is everything you've dreamed of! Also, i am curious about your opinion on the pimsleur method, it is so far the only thing to help my son acquire French

[@beorlingo]

I'm withya about that. I don't give a crap about language learning, but I still watch his videos every now and then for his presentations (and wit)!

[@daysandwords]

Thanks, both of you. :-)

[@slicksalmon6948]

Very interesting observations.

[@flawyerlawyertv7454]

I've finally been excited to use Duolingo every day again. It still needs many improvements, though.

[@mrkingsudo]

This video was excellent! The only thing missing was a Dbacks hat

[@daysandwords]

I have 20 of the 30 teams but D'backs is one of the teams I don't have... I like the colours, particularly on the road hat, but I find the A to be a bit too big... Eventually I'll get around to getting one of the other designs.

[@CouchPolyglot]

I also want to talk about that, I am on a 30 day streak and feel they have improved a lot 😯😯😯

[@daysandwords]

I really think it's only in certain areas and can still only be properly utilised if they stop throttling your journey along the path so much.

[@tsakeboya]

I took the c2 exam in english and passed with flying colours, because its meant for someone who has only studied in a classroom. Because i did both classroom study for 7 years AND used english daily online and on videogames.

[@snooks5607]

funny 2:40 I know this isn't an AI video but people don't seem to realize most of this AI software architecture is older than the moon landing (multilayer perceptrons and deep-learning networks are from the 1960s, one of the bigger later milestones was backpropagation added around 1980) point being arguments about nature of machine intelligence have been gone over in AI circles ad infinitum decades ago (Chomsky in particular has been singing the same tune forever). what we gained in recent years isn't some revolutionary new insight mostly just loads more compute that made the old tech able to do new tricks. specifically with LLMs many old-hat AI academics were a bit dismissive about their nature and scalability in the beginning (while general public was raving about it) but lately there's been some evidence for presences of internal world model that generalizes to new modalities (see eg. arXiv:2405.07987 "The Platonic Representation Hypothesis") so many of them are also cautiously optimistic. the general public though only just learnt what "AI" even means, the fact that they're starting to get over the honeymoon phase with the openly available tools doesn't really mean much anything.

[@flawyerlawyertv7454]

Podcast is available for some Android users too.

[@tigrafale4610]

What's the prompt you use in ChatGPT, can't see it in the description

[@acrousey]

Assuming it's this one from the learning a language in 2024 video. (Obviously change Spanish to whatever language you're learning) Hi, I'd like you to now be my Spanish Tutor. Your goal is to help me practice my Spanish, improve my vocabulary, correct my grammar mistakes and give me suggestions on how my ideas can be expressed in a more natural way. You will follow the following process: 1. Your first response will be to give me an easy prompt to respond to. Please wait for me to provide my answer. 2. Based on my input, you will then generate 4 sections: a) Corrected Response. (Please correct everything, even small grammatical errors or article agreements.) b) Explanations of every correction c) Suggestions (give me ways I could improve my answer to sound more natural and fluent. If appropriate, introduce me to new vocabulary or phrases which I could use to enrich my responses or express my ideas more naturally or concisely. If there was a part of my writing that seemed especially fluent or natural, please highlight that to me. With your suggestions, if appropriate, please give me example sentences in Spanish to illustrate what your suggestions could look like if implemented. d) Follow-up (Write a couple sentences in response to mine. Then give me a new follow-up question related to my answers and your previous questions.) 3. We will continue this iterative process with me giving you more written responses and you correcting my Spanish and giving me feedback. 4. When I say “Done.”, I want you then to give me a summary of: a) The errors I made during our practice session (list the instances as bullet points) b) A bullet point summary of all new vocabulary, structures or phrases that you introduced me to c) a quick summary of how it seems that my Spanish skills are improving.

[@MTimWeaver]

tagged to follow

[@daysandwords]

Yes sorry, I forgot to add it. It's there now, but thank you to acrousey for copying it over for me. Obviously swap out "Spanish" for your TL.

[@acrousey]

​@@daysandwordsDet var ingenting. Och lycka till i Sverige, brorsan. Ät en dönerkebab till mig. Hur mycket planerar du att resa? Om du skulle få chansen, måste du besöka Norden. Norrbotten är skitkul. Där bodde jag från 2010-2011. Det var ett roligt äventyr.

[@lizardchild2004]

They took away my ability to practice to earn hearts! Can anyone confirm whether this is normal or am I a victim of a glitch? Thx!

[@daysandwords]

I can't confirm with absolute certainty, but Duolingo taking away people's ability to actually do something within the app that they want to do is 100% Duo's MO.

[@willbedeadsoon]

I'm currently learning swedish (not with duolingo) and for a moment I feel I have enough resources on internet (books, videos, grammar textbooks, blogs, subreddit, quora and so on).

[@sweetlolitaChii]

Can confirm that the mini podcasts are on the android version for me in the Spanish course. I'm on the B1 part of the course, Sections 4 and 5.

[@witchmorrow]

it's like learning any skill or knowledge in life - yes, it is useful to do some study around what the rules/structure/whatever is occasionally, but at the end of the day, actually using/doing the thing is the only thing that makes you good at it. And not isolated easy little games like duolingo

[@Vanguard521]

Not in Italian. Maybe Japanese, Spanish, French. But as someone who finished all the lessons in sections 1-3 the daily practice is insultingly poor and so repetitive.

[@daysandwords]

Honestly, that's a problem in general with Duolingo. This video is kind of a part 2 of the last video, which is about exactly what you just mentioned.

[@mihan5660]

If you know some french, duolingo's Italian for french speakers goes a lot further than the one for english speakers. In fact, the english speaker one has apparently has less lessons and less vocab than the german and spanish ones too.

[@Vanguard521]

@@mihan5660 unfortunately no. I wonder if the same is true for Italian for Spanish speakers since I do know Spanish.

[@dalanedala]

They stopped supporting Welsh course recently. It sucks.

[@mihan5660]

Yeah, i keep getting quized on words they havent taught me, then later in the lesson they teach the word

[@ForeverForwardPod]

Alright, you've officially sold me. I've never fully utilized Duolingo, but I'm going to try to re-learn French.

[@daysandwords]

For French just use InnerFrench and FrenchPod101. FrenchPod101 may actually be the BEST of the Pod101 series and that's saying quite a lot. No need for Duolingo for a language as mainstream as French.

[@ThePhilologicalBell]

Also if the bit about being tired of talking about language-learning was in earnest...yea I get it man 😅 I'd always enjoyed languagey stuff and dabbling in it, then when my PHD started (right at the beginning fo the pandemic) I stumbled upon immersion learning and spaced repetition systems and started to actually see fast success with it. [I'd reached a B2-ish comprehension of Latin already, but that took me about five years.] So for the last five years language-learning has been basically my only hobby, and I've gained a bunch from it but I also want to start doing different things. What I'm thinking is to have 2025 be a year where I don't do any active study of languages, though I'll still consume content in my learned languages. Want to instead get into the habit of hiking while listening to audiobooks 😃

[@FullaEels]

im generally skeptic of ai when it's placed into literally everything but this could be such a useful tool for smaller languages that dont have much in the way of aural resources, short of going up to speakers in the real world and asking them to teach you. For example: Scottish Gaelic. 10 years ago when i started to look for resources online to try and learn it, there were maybe... 3 or 4 websites with written stuff on them, but now its on duo, which is a great thing for the language, because 1) people know it actually exists, 2)people know it's different from irish (though, they are sister languages) 3) maybe the mad punters will calm down a little when they can pronounce some of the words on the gaelic road signs they complain so much about

[@SebastianSeanCrow]

18:00 honestly I stg I learned grammar in high school language classes but I wouldn’t be able to tell you what the lessons were like Cuz the focus was being able to communicate in a way that was understandable, efficient, and at minimum what we were taught So yeah maybe grammar really is just acquired cuz I don’t remember learning grammar in English/language arts either 😂

[@bobbynygaardchrisitansen6874]

I am seeking something else than Duolingo I don't want typing excercises. They just block my motivation to learn.

[@rinkuhero]

i hate when people are like 'it'll be in the description' and then it's not (e.g. no link to eric wen's stuff)

[@daysandwords]

Yeah yeah calm down, I forgot it (given the last 2 minutes you'll understand why), but I'll put it in in about an hour when I get back to my laptop.

[@andreasstahl8207]

I'm officially done with duolingo no matter what.

[@YeshuaTaughtTheTorah]

wait … how’d he get C1 in Swedish without going to Sweden? I often can’t seem to get Swedish speakers to speak with me online …

[@daysandwords]

Speaking has its place but it's not the limiting factor before about B2... Listening and reading is. Swedish books are in Swedish. Swedish audiobooks (of which there are MILLIONS), are in Swedish. Swedish TV series are in Swedish. Swedish KZbin is in Swedish. After about 600 hours of that stuff, Swedes should speak to you in Swedish.

[@SebastianSeanCrow]

19:46 I loke the way Busuu does leagues. It’s based more on how consistent you are in studying, not really points?? Like it if I spent 1 day a month, I’m at the bottom, but if I spend every day studying with them I’m at the top, they really encourage you to keep using yes but it’s not the same as duolingo leaderboards

[@thescowlingschnauzer]

The point of Duolingo for me: remind me to spend at least two minutes a day thinking about a language other than English. Before I started my streak, I couldn't say that (my home and work happen to be very monolingual now), so for me the streak is meaningful.

[@AwsomeDSJ75]

If we had 1 representative for every 100,000 constituents we'd have about 3,324 reps. I feel like thats not that crazy.

[@ingela_injeela]

I am Swedish, and though I played back that kids' show clip at half speed *several times* , I could not make out what they were saying. The speech was too muddled. So don't feel too bad!

[@daysandwords]

I don't feel bad...?? I understand it. You probably need the context of the show.

[@ingela_injeela]

@@daysandwords If you understand that particular clip, then you must have a lot better hearing than me. The speech is so blurred, that I can't make out half of it, even at 0.25 speed. ☺️ How is Sweden, btw? Are you still here? 🇸🇪

[@daysandwords]

@@ingela_injeela He says, "Och sen föll en kokodil från himmeln och bet mig i baken!" I completely agree that it's very very fast and hard to hear (especially without the context, which you didn't have), but that's my entire point in that part of the clip. People often assume kids things are slower and easier, but they're not. The context you were missing is that they're at the "doctor's office" (kids just pretending it's a doctor's office) and they've already pulled the inflatable crocodile off another kid's head and thrown it away... so he's actually right to say "från himmeln", because to him, that's where it seems to have come from. I've been back at home for a while now, but Sweden was great.

[@ingela_injeela]

@@daysandwords Your understanding is *really good*. Yes, I could figure it out. I'm just saying I couldn't *hear* it clearly, because it was muddled. Jag är imponerad att du hängde med. Det kommer dröja länge innan jag förstår *så snabbt* tal på Hebreiska! 😄🇸🇪👋

[@daysandwords]

Yeah, I don't think I understood the words entirely the first time I saw that episode... And I know you're drawing a distinction between hearing and understanding, I get what you mean. But SO much stuff comes into it... For example, that's an Australian show, so the kind of humour is very Australian, which gives me a better shot at picking up what they even MIGHT be saying. (To be clear: I watched the entire first season in Swedish before ever actually watching even one original English episode). I've never seen this particular episode in English. Bluey (the show), sort of has its own language in the humour. The jokes are very often based on the idea that everything that happens in the kids' imaginations is "real" as far as the show is concerned. So the crocodile thing is funny because it's such an unlikely thing to happen, but not if you know that they just randomly threw the crocodile off the last patient. As an entirely separate thing, it's a great show if you get a chance. It's probably funnier in English (on ABC iview) but if you can't be bothered with a VPN, it's on SVT Play in Swedish.

[@slowlearner3785]

Has anyone taken the StoryLearning courses? I love both Ollie and Lamont's content.

[@aislynncarpenter701]

I'm currently taking one, thoroughly enjoying it so far! Started out really simple but by the 3rd chapter or so I found I was picking up new concepts rather quickly/frequently. The prices are pretty steep but if you're interested I'd say pick up a beginner course during a sale and see if it clicks with you 😁

[@jaybestnz]

I was so surprised my German got worse after using it.

[@ExposureNonTherapy-mr6nn]

I got all the way through this video thinking Oh, so that post with the photo of the laptop on the bed wasn't anything to do with him traveling... he seems to be in his normal place... but then, 25 minutes in... BOOM! Knew you were up to something! So are you already there?

[@Jackie-cl2qe]

I'm learning chinese only on duolingo, just for fun, no other training. And only 10 days in, i already understand some word when watchin cdramas. When speaking, duolingo will let me get away with sentences I said completely wrong tho. And english is not my first language, so having to translate in my head to english first is annoying. Other than that it's really fun. Also I think it's speaking fast enough, I'm thankful the owl babies me ngl

[@anangelsdiaries]

It's crazy how much your son looks like you.

[@ExzaktVid]

I think it’s better to think of duolingo as a french, spanish, and german language learning app rather than an app that lets you learn any language.

[@EnglishwithBecky94]

Does anyone have a good suggestion for an alternative app for learning Chinese? Preferably one that uses traditional characters and the Chinese they speak in Taiwan

[@nateonmission]

Baseball channel? Because of Bluey, my kid wants to learn the cricket!

[@daysandwords]

How flippin' good is that episode. I was so proud of Australia voting that as our favourite episode.

[@nateonmission]

@@daysandwords it’s my favorite. It does such a good job at teaching sportsmanship.

[@parasitius]

"You can't study your way to understanding" and other concepts took me the better part of my first 15 years studying to come to terms with. I wonder if you think I'm an idiot? Honestly it does bother me that you know all of this after just a few short years. My IQ is supposed to be high, how could I remain deluded so long? Objectively I shouldn't be an imbicile right? I THINK THERE IS A KEY TO IT: You learned Swedish, the closest language to English other there. Your idea of fluency is utterly different to what 90+% of fluent or semi-fluent Chinese learners ever even aim for. I mean the ones that live in China and work in Chinese speaking offices. You were able to gain perspective on effects that it took the better part of 10 years for me to first have been able to see or even know the sensation of in Chinese (for example, finishing my first novels. . . when I studied 1 year intensively in China, do you think it would have been humanly possible for them to force feed us a vocabulary of 15,000 words as is need to read with even half decent comprehension? mathematically impossible to retain that many words in less than 3 - 4 years of INTENSIVE study). So I'm jealous. I wish I learned Swedish first so that I could have learned Chinese with so much more perspective on language learning!!!

[@captainbamis7257]

Great video. Fun ending. Home run. 🙃

[@richard135b7]

I actually tested Duolingo with French for four months straight never missing a day! At the end of four months I pretty much didn't learn anything. Couldn't have a basic conversation with anybody. It's a waste of time!

[@rebecca4254]

I feel like people over complicate the process. For mainstream languages, just watch TV and KZbin. Simple.

[@daysandwords]

Hmm, no, I wouldn't agree with that. I'm say that's like 90% of what you should be doing, but the other 10% is very important. Also, breaking it into mainstream vs "obscure" or whatever doesn't make sense. I think you might mean for anglosemblant languages... Because if you're an English speaker trying to learn Mandarin, that's a very very different thing from an English speaker trying to learn Spanish, or Swedish.

[@rebecca4254]

@@daysandwords I can't speak to efficiency, but I've made significant progress in Japanese without the 10%. And I've known of a few others who have done the same. Now, not everyone can sit through that and not everyone wants to. I'm by no means against supplemental instruction or flashcards but I believe they're not necessary. I agree that 90% input is still leagues better than 90% study.

[@PEDROGARCIA-qj3gr]

Watched tv shows and video games in English since I was 5, I didn't get a thing until I took a actual English class when I was 23, there's so many things people don't like about traditional education but my god there's some advantages in taking one, constant practice of the language, in writing, reading and speaking, can be tedious ngl, but the combination of traditional and comprehensive input made me learn English.

[@rodrigos7070]

I think, duolingo is good for many people. They're completly fine with being little leaguers, as you call them. A little fun rewarding experience with some learning in the way. However, I agree that duo can be missleading with the level of proficency they promise to give the user. I think the problem is the myth of "fun learning". I firmly believe that succseful learning has to come with challenge, and therefore frustration.

[@TheLongestConfidence]

Duolingo feature updates are so annoying, even though they've been improving the service a lot in the last year. It's like they turn fifty pages at once and expect you to be up to soeed.

[@janeknight3597]

I have used chat gpt directly in basic welsh.