Duolingo just removed its best feature

[@chantolove]

“The Duolingo community discussions are unsafe for children! Let’s send them to FUCKING REDDIT INSTEAD.” -normal people

[@evan]

HAHAHA

[@objective_psychology]

Every freedom and other good thing in life can easily be taken away on the premise of “protecting the children”

[@tzarg]

'you can always twist things to sound bad' - idk someone probably said this but no this is one IS actually bad, it's not just the words

[@slugintub]

children remove all the fun that adults can have

[@gamermapper]

​@@slugintubabsolutely not. Children are really fun. It's adults who pretend to help children who remove all the fun. Including from the children themselves. There's many situations where children want to have more fun, socialise, go outside, etc, but it's seen as always unsafe and they stay home staring at the screen, since adults don't have free time. As if the Internet was safer for than than outside, which it isn't.

[@watchesfromedges]

Duolingo recently decided they would no longer update their Welsh language course. This has upset lots of adult Welsh learners who are losing the online resource for a difficult language.

[@evan]

I was considering making a video about this but I’d already scripted this behemoth! Maybe next month

[@dees3179]

Please do. I have three friends/relatives separately learning Welsh with duo and all are working very hard. They need support.

[@hellfirepictures]

That's disappointing. After completing my French course (I only did this course first as it was what I failed to learn at school), Welsh and Scots Gaelic were going to be my next choices as I believe we in Britain should all learn all of our native languages in order to appreciate the different nations and keep the languages alive.

[@basilflower420]

i’m welsh myself but don’t speak it, i guess i won’t be using duolingo if i have to learn it then

[@VantaDraws]

What’s there isn’t too accurate either, and it’s only the southern dialect :(

[@tylerdaniell2270]

At this point, Duolingo is adding more animations and cute drawings instead of just... making the app good.

[@sairhug]

Exactly!

[@insylem]

I wish the app would actually explain stuff rather then just giving you translation words ect

[@nikkelitous]

Duolingo's goal has never been about helping you learn language. It's about getting you addicted to the gamification so you pay for streak extensions.

[@insylem]

@@nikkelitous I think you are correct

[@Ph34rNoB33r]

I actually hate the animations/effects next to text, they are so distracting (and have been tuned down a bit, so I guess I'm not alone). I do like the animated characters, no matter how useless they are.

[@superbucko8640]

Honestly, yes places like Babbel don't have sentence discussion, but Babbel actually explains the grammar and when to use what as it's teaching you. It is structured like a real class instead of just giving you sentences to memorize. If Duolingo isn't going to put in any effort to teach, then it needs to let other users do so.

[@TheRoyalsWasTaken]

695 likes and no replies? I'll fix that ‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎

[@Ginger8931]

Duolingo is actually an awful app that’s its problem

[@WiggyWamWam]

it does teach 😅 ich lerne Deutsch

[@danstratyt]

Yeah, Duolingo's "implicit learning" really annoys me sometimes - like if you are showing me a new tense, explain entirely how it works then let me have a go, don't just randomly throw hablaré = I will with no explanation at all. I don't want to have to look in the (way too short) grammar book thing they provide - just show it to me. Luckily I did actual Spanish at school before starting on Duolingo so I at least understand the general idea of things and it is so bad at placing you initially that I've not learnt any new tenses/moods since starting - just more words. The enforced regularity has massively helped me tbh

[@Freegame4.]

​@@WiggyWamWam ok dann lass ein gespräch haben :)

[@kkaze]

This reminds me the community cc subtitle youtube removed for being “not useful”. It was the greatest function in yt. People add subtitle for small youtube channels that unable to add subtitle themselves, and non native speakers benefits a lot from it. And yt was like “nobody is using it so we remove it” Guess big corps really hate content made by the community

[@Asm0d3u5]

THEY REMOVED IT!?

[@ittybittyissy]

Don’t forget the dislike button. Worst move ever. Not even creators can see their OWN dislikes anymore. Smh @ yt

[@ebanl9531]

yeah! youtube becoming more "inclusive" next step is remove handicap spaces in their headquarters becuase only few people uses it.

[@user-xv7wf3bu6y]

@youtube this is about you

[@LivingTheorem]

@@ittybittyissy Content creators can still see their dislikes if they go to KZbin Studio

[@isla2593]

The discussions tab was vital for me, you cant learn a langue with just "youre wrong", you need to understand why . Especially when dulingos accuracy is lacking

[@questrequested9171]

it also gave me a tip once that was just flat out wrong saying that (in french), "documents" is masculine, which means you need to use mon, and then you needed to choose between mon and ma, mon being the correct answer thing is... "documents" is plural, so you need to use "mes" in that case, regardless of gender

[@clerbie]

i got duolingo and babbel at the same time and tried them both and genuinely liked babbel more but did duolingo cause its free? (babbel only lets u do one lesson for free) but i got frustrated by duolingo stopping me when i "ran out of hearts' from making mistakes? so i decided to pay for babel and i dont regret it. they have great grammer explanations and lets you hear ppl have conversations using the words u just learned and has you fill in parts etc. its very similar to duolingo but in my opinion its better.

[@llleiea]

My native language is German and when learning Italien I first used German-Italien. But the comment section is basically non existent there. That's why I switched to English-Italien. The explanations and links provided were so helpful. Actually I don’t use it at the moment, and it feels discouraging to start again when this vital part is missing…

[@archmagusofevil]

Absolutely. It is sometimes frustrating how my translation will be counted wrong when I write a valid translation that simply didn't use the exact words they wanted (worst case that's actually happened: I got something wrong because I chose the word "child" instead of "kid"). I'm very grateful that I know native speakers of the language I'm trying to learn who don't mind answering my questions.

[@slyar]

Also supercommon typos unaccounted before. Finger slipped and you missed the e in _une_ femme? Too bad! I think a system like the voice excrercises should be implemented for all excercises As in: You input an incorrect answer. Instead of the condescending sound effect, the bottom bar goes yellow and says something like "Are you sure that's right?" Upon the second error, it gives you hints as to what the mistake is At the third error, then it marks it incorrect, "We'll get back to this one" or something

[@deltacx1059]

Fun fact: a software feature does not require removal in order to be fixed. You just fix it on a internal dev build and push it to the app when done.

[@franjkav]

Yeah they explanation was totally BS. It might be true that the feature is poorly coded but they are only removing it because it’s not profitable and/or it’s otherwise working against them in some way (probably purely profit based). If it was profitable or even if they actually cared, they would just make plans to improve the code moving forward. I’m not sure I even believe the codebase is the problem at all though. It’s fairly easy to make some incremental changes that very notably improve things. Ultimately I think they removed the feature because it doesn’t directly bring in money and since it’s actually helpful, people might actually learn something and advance beyond what Duo offers if they don’t get too bored first. Subscriptions models work well for companies when they implement measures to imped the users resulting in them subbing for longer

[@deltacx1059]

@@franjkav they could have done something to add value to the subscription rather than removing free features. Maybe something like being able to ask their "experts" questions or get personalized help with a higher tier or something.

[@elbonnieto8929]

elon musk is shaking right now from reading this comment

[@partitionhlep]

youtube did exactly what not to do with the oldest tab

[@eropoke]

Duolingo added sentence discussions powered by AI to Duolingo max i think. That could be why.

[@colbyreader]

For languages like Swahili where context is everything, you learn so much about context and culture with the discussion tab.

[@kittyyoutuber9]

Yeah. I’m learning three different African languages, two different Asian languages and stuff. I feel like the community tab would’ve helped me with my problems.

[@Koko24250]

Tbf thats with every language. All have their own context within the culture

[@marikothecheetah9342]

@@Koko24250 that is true, but for example European languages share more or less the same ancestry or influence. Kiswahili is a totally different language with concepts like noun groups that do not exist in European languages or Asian ones and it is agglutinative language (no big deal there) but it bases its grammar on prefixes rather than suffixes, like many other languages do. Some concepts of thinking are reflected straight by the language, which sometimes in other languages is less obvious. Not saying they don't exist but sharing a common cultural ground makes it easier to learn more widely spoken languages. It is not so easy with languages from a totally different continent to be acquired with the amount of study time as other languages from your cultural background.

[@anna-lenab8343]

Yes! I was really hoping to find some explanations in the comment section until I found out that the button simply isn‘t there…

[@felipevasconcelos6736]

@@Koko24250 that is true, but most users speak Indo-European languages, which are grammatically not too far from other Indo-European languages. If you’re studying a language from a completely separate family, there’ll be a lot of new grammatical concepts to learn, so the discussion was particularly useful there.

[@agneseditsstuff]

To me, the worst thing they've done for learning is removing the audio lessons 😭 It used to help me so much with French... WHY DUOLINGO WHY!!!

[@keagaming9837]

Oh yes those were amazing!

[@grosebud4721]

Really? Do you mean the stories or what because I do the French and have audio/listening prompts still Just curious

[@v1exm]

The audio lessons were most likely moved to super duo (which I have) which again.. pay to use, which is eugh..

[@lilacfields]

what do you mean by audio lessons

[@quuaackyy]

THIS

[@konlecon]

what happened with "Duolingo's mission is to make education accessible and free"

[@cuddlingteddybears]

shareholders, and it is really hard to pay enough people to have the infrastructure to make it free. Still think there's better ways they could go about it for user satisfaction/retention but oh well

[@konlecon]

@@cuddlingteddybears but it was already free and good.. they just took things away instead of adding more..I would've bought premium if they had added something unique, their loss!

[@cuddlingteddybears]

@@konlecon I also agree, they need to make better incentives for paying for premium but it's hard when their main marketing and purpose was for free language learning It's a tough spot and I hope they fix it

[@sleepyote]

They got greedy

[@putinisakiller8093]

Artists and animators cost a lot of money. :)

[@AdScarisbrick]

I agree! The Discussions Tab is so Important! Without the Duolingo Discussions Tab you can end up in trouble: In fact when I was learning Dutch on Duolingo it teaches you *"hoi"* as a greeting for 'hi', when I visited the Netherlands and started using *hoi* as a greeting to everyone and anyone. One of my friends pulled me aside and explained that *hoi* is a casual greeting reserved for close-friends and family. Using *"hoi"* towards strangers could be interpreted as a form of _flirting_ which could get me in an altercation. When I checked the discussions tab, there they were. Many, many dutch explaining *when* to use *hoi* rather than accepting Duolingo's "answer"

[@Cursico]

Hoi ;)

[@toyaleejb7714]

SIR😂😂😂

[@gracewildsmith1183]

@@thumpy71please, are you okay? can you physically stop replying to every comment saying that? are you a bot? im so confused it's 4 am and i can't escape you

[@FigureFarter]

@@CursicoHoi :3

[@sleepy.timaeus.arts.]

omg…

[@Mollygregson]

It’s mad that a company that is so good at social media is so bad at communicating actual info on said social media

[@paralytaatylarap9715]

Don’t kid yourself. They know exactly what they are doing. This is all intentional.

[@lumi_hime]

they're terrible at social media, if you remember a certain stupid scandal they had last year lmao

[@marco.nascimento]

@@lumi_hime what scandal?

[@olivianwokolo3254]

​@@lumi_himeI would also like to know the scandal

[@cakes4494]

​@@olivianwokolo3254I think they might mean the scrub daddy "scandal". They did a weird gross over with the mascot costumes and in the end Duolingo gave birth to owl scrub daddy's. It was weird and they ended up deleting the episode for a while then bringing it back. The TikTok account is funny but it's not great for actually sharing information on the brand.

[@2kn111]

Duolingo for capitalism: “We know it’s important” and “we’re doing an experiment” means “we’re going to put this feature behind a paywall”

[@missmia196]

😂😭💀

[@IgnoreMeImWrong]

With an* ESG rating in the mid-20s they are from Capitalist. They're activists.

[@asheep7797]

Mark the correct meaning. We are removing an important feature 1. We are destroying our app. 2. We cannot stand criticism. 3. We are improving your experience.

[@-haclong2366]

I'm from a socialist society, here the government paywalls such things.

[@IgnoreMeImWrong]

Which society?@@-haclong2366

[@foogod4237]

They didn't get rid of it because of the content. They didn't get rid of it because it was embarrassing to anyone. They didn't even do it so that they could then turn around and charge people for it later (I'm pretty sure that was mostly a "lucky coincidence"). That "explanation" from the subreddit actually sorta hints at the real reason, but there's so much spin it's kinda hard to actually see it. Having watched all of this play out slowly over the past few years, I'm pretty sure I know exactly why they made this change: *They just can't even keep the stupid platform running* and they've done so much "economizing" to try to be profitable that they don't actually have the people needed to fix it, so they just keep giving up on features they can't maintain instead. The reason there's no PR around it is because they aren't taking it away to fix it, or even to re-offer it in a different form, they're just chucking it in the bin instead, and they're really just hoping nobody will notice. Once upon a time, back in the old old days, there weren't just sentence discussions, but _full blown language discussion boards_ too. I was an active participant in the Japanese boards, and a heavy contributor to the Japanese sentence discussions as well, at the time. However, over time, those of us using them came to notice more and more technical problems with them. Sometimes, they just wouldn't load. Sometimes, they'd load, but some of the threads were missing, and then you'd reload, and those were back but other ones were gone, etc. Sometimes, you'd make a post, and it would just disappear into the ether, never to be seen again. Eventually it got to the point where whole user accounts (even some moderators, etc) were just unable to post anything at all, for no apparent reason. In response to this, what did Duolingo do? Well, they just made them all read-only, for everyone. Then they went and _got rid of the language forums entirely_ (poof), and only kept the sentence discussions, which clearly used the same underlying code, but those were permanently made read-only, pretty obviously just to make them keep working reliably. "Writes to the database aren't working right? Fixing that sounds hard, let's just make it so nobody can do that anymore." It's really surprising to me it took them this long to get rid of the sentence discussions entirely. It's pretty obvious that the whole underlying infrastructure is basically held together with bailing wire and duck tape, and there's nobody there with the skills or time to actually figure out what's wrong with it and properly fix it. To be honest, the sentence discussions had already been crippled for quite a while, because they've been read-only for so long that many had wrong information still lingering in them that nobody was able to correct anymore, and as they kept changing the courses and adding new sentences, most of the new sentences had no discussion content at all, because nobody could even create any new ones. IMHO the big loss really happened back when they nuked the general forums and made the sentence discussions read-only to begin with, quite some time ago. And that wasn't just a loss for Duolingo users, it was actually a loss for all language learners everywhere, because the Duolingo language forums used to be one of the best places on the whole internet to get all kinds of great information about learning all kinds of languages (whether you were a Duolingo user or not), and connect with other learners in general, and now they're all just _gone..._

[@IgnoreMeImWrong]

A wonderful comment.

[@maddydonuts_]

This is really interesting and well put, as a newer user it's a shame we lost access to so much useful information!

[@sleepy.timaeus.arts.]

this comment, especial the last few sentences, pains my heart :(

[@downtherabbithole8325]

This is so true. As a user on and off since 2012 the way the features are slowly decreasing is crazy. I’d almost say there was more functionality in the version that didn’t have an app yet

[@jayvee1387]

this is honestly kinda sad. Duolingo has helped me quite a bit and apparently the discussion boards have helped a LOT of ppl. So to hear its gone possibly due to lack of maintenance is disappointing...

[@IDontReallyWantAYoutubeHandle]

OH MY GOD!!! I used to use Duo for Japanese, and the ONLY reason I even continued using it was because of sentence discussion explaining some of weirder parts of Japanese. Duo NEVER tells you how the grammar works, and that's pretty essential in a language so fundamentally different from English. I quit when they changed to the path, just because I really liked choosing the way I learnt the language, and the strict direction they forced you on made learning feel like a chore, and the amount of return I was getting out of Duo exponentially dipped after Module 1. I don't think I would've even gotten pass Module 1 if it weren't for the sentence discussion. What a waste.

[@kalliope420]

i never even used sentence discussion but god i hate the path. i also quit when i got that update i just cant stand it. i wish they would just change it back

[@selkrasouza6262]

The path doesn’t even let you redo completed lessons again, meaning there’s no way to practice older lessons. It’s utter garbo.

[@hhvhhvcz]

basically same

[@HeyAHappyHuman]

That happened to me with Russian. The part where they read the sentences to you was always slurred and I thought it was just my ears being untrained in the language. I went to the discussion and found out it wasn't just me and people linked sites where you could type a word and hear it pronounced by a human, with an example sentence using the word. Now I'm sitting here wondering if I'm actually understanding correctly or not

[@punchdrunkassassin]

I started learning Japanese on Duolingo about 3 yrs ago and paused for a bit due to life, after putting a decent amount of time into it. I've picked it back up again a few times over the years - most recently a couple of months ago and what the actual heck is happening now? Nothing makes any sense. There's no rhyme or reason to what I'm being taught - it's all just a disjointed, jumbled mess - and they're quizzing me on things I NEVER LEARNED YET. Meanwhile stuff I HAVE learned hasn't popped back up yet. I'm so confused and I hate it. I miss the old layout and how much more simple it was, and how it was categorised in a way that made sense. I have ADHD and this app is now a total nightmare for me - never mind the sensory overload of all the stupid characters and new animations. It's brutal that the discussion is gone, so we've lost that key link to ACTUAL context. Plus there are things the different characters just straight up pronounce differently, with zero explanation why, and I get really confused by that. It's so fun. My 7 yr old struggles with it because the app's learning structure makes no sense, it's not actually TEACHING anything aside from rote memorization, and the speech recognition is completely borked now - even though he speaks clearly and would say the words correctly. He was stoked to try and learn French, and this app killed that fire pretty quickly. It's just so disappointing all around. But it's all cute and gamified now so I guess that's where their priorities lie

[@yuukireina]

That's wild, i started learning Japanese through Duolingo a few years ago, and the sentence discussion was more helpful than any part of the website. Lesson pages didnt really cover grammar in a meaningful way, but the discussion taught me how a lot of features worked properly and showed me resources to learn more. I'm now 1.5 years into a degree in Japanese and I legitimately can't imagine I would be if not for this feature. Confusing and sad to me that future learners won't be able to have the same experience.

[@evamarias8896]

I only recently started learning Japanese with the App. I got to experience the question discussion briefly before it was taken away. While I haven’t gotten far into the lessons yet it was still helpful. But I started getting to a point where I felt like I wasn’t learning how to synthesize on my own. I recognize these examples sentence but I can’t construct a sentence on my own because I don’t actually know the rules. I don’t have access to a personal teacher (what would work best for me) and I can’t take traditional classes both because I don’t have the money or time. I got a Genki book to actually teach me grammar and while it does, that it’s hard for me to study at all. I have a concentration problem. It’s been a problem throughout school in my life and it’s why a school environment is the only way I can consistent learn because the teacher threating to give me a bad grade weaponized my anxiety issues to force me to concentrate. But I can’t afford that anymore. Idk if I’ll be able to learn Japanese. I’m using duoling for learning characters because at least that is still decent and it’s hard for them to mess up. But this decision made self teaching for someone with my issues a lot harder.

[@inannamystyrica3762]

i agree. i am taking Japanese through a local college's continuing ed (not for credit) classes and there is so much in Duolingo i would never understand if it wasn't for class since i can no longer ask about sentence structure and usage. i also miss the little grammar "helps" that they used to have for each lesson. During the Duocon i did ask about why they took those away and they said they wanted people to learn as if learning as a child, without all the grammar points, just from usage.

[@demiladeijimakinwa]

​@@evamarias8896you might want to try another app. Lingodeer. While I felt like Duo was just translating Spanish to English for me, Lingodeer focuses on starting with the sounds and grammar and you really learn the language and understand the basics.

[@RatifiedWeirdo]

I'm currently learning Jappenese and I never got this:( I never knew, I always felt Duolingo felt more like homework then an actual lesson. I'm gonna figure out another way to learn jappenese

[@yuukireina]

@@RatifiedWeirdo My advice to anyone moving away from traditional language learning is to learn through translation. It's definitely more work, but if you can find a good resource it's not so bad (I use a Japanese-English grammar dictionary outside of classes). Tanoshii Japanese is also a good resource for beginners and has a good Kanji search that allows romaji input. Tofugu has good early grammar guides. There's two important lessons instilled in me by my first Japanese teacher in community college: 1) it's okay to use translators as long as your aim is to understand. You won't learn just from putting something into Google translate, but it can be helpful to translate small fragments or words if you want to better understand the structure. 2) Remember what makes you want to learn the language. It's okay if you're learning Japanese because you like Nintendo games or anime or Jpop (or all 3). Hold on to the things that make you want to learn. Stick with it, Japanese can be a hard language to learn alone. But remember beyond anything else that you can do this. I believe in you 💜

[@ariartsy9220]

I remember being so confused whenever I did my Norwegian courses, because the language has some different words you have to use for "the" depending on the object's gender. The problem is, Duolingo never taught you this part. So, you'd have to take a guess at 1 of 3 ways to say the, and it would just mark you as wrong. To this day, it hasn't told me the gender of a single object

[@valolafson6035]

Yes!!!!!

[@isaiahr3368]

When I was using the Norwegian course in 2016, I didn't even know that the language had gender and couldn't figure out why I kept getting everything wrong

[@p1tbullzzz]

im learning norwegian as well and im struglling with saying "its alright" "im alright" "are you alright" "how are you" because duolingo isnt saying what går, det, med, meg, and bra mean individually and why the placement matters. Ive started using google translation to try and figure out. these words when placed different or added in an extra (like hvordan) always mean something different and its confusing me because duolingo hasnt really told me why.

[@enkor9591]

That's why Duolingo should never be used as a primary method of learning. It can be a good supplement to learn new vocabulary or practise making sequences, but it'll never teach you a language by itself.

[@misspriss2482]

@@enkor9591 This. Their intuitive learning approach is bullcrap. There are some things that you can't pick up without explanation. All it does is teach you to memorize certain sentences. It doesn't explain why it's right or why you got it wrong. I'm learning Korean through them and I supplement it with other sites.

[@Toksyuryel]

Duolingo went public 2 years ago. Don't expect things to get better. It's just going to keep getting worse. They have no choice but to ensure shareholder profits keep rising.

[@sairhug]

Yep, that was about when it started to go down-hill :(

[@DaxRaider]

what else to expect how on earth would do that when u rly like ur product ...

[@mystixa]

They do have a choice. They're just not going to take it.

[@SpeedyJuiceMan]

Ah now it makes sense. Didn't know that they went public, now I understand why it has been going downhill for their apps quality recently.

[@Twinzje]

They also somehow managed to raise 183 million dollars of venture capital since 2011, and venture capitalists expect a 100 times return, so you do the math....

[@TuesdaysArt]

To address the children thing-if they're using it as a student, then maybe they could have a tab for class discussion instead of the forum thing, to ensure that they're only talking to their teacher and classmates. You can do something similar with the Duo Family Plan thing. Idk how easy it'd be to implement, but it would be useful.

[@RaineInChaos]

What you're suggesting would be way more useful, but if it's hard to implement it, they could still make it safe by disabling discussion just for kids, which would be pretty much no effort Kids already have supervised accounts. You can just allow parents/teachers to turn off the discussions tab just for kids (more likely, have it disabled by default like they do for friends). That might even have been how it already worked before this change.

[@downtherabbithole8325]

If I remember correctly, there used to be a classroom chat feature. I was in one in 2012 for extra credit or something in my 7th grade Spanish class to this day I am so sad that function doesn’t exist to message friends without going outside the app our even the ability to join the old clubs for language and experience level

[@mattrose99]

A lot of language learning apps have separate things for teachers, it could be something where signing up with an educator account gives you a private classroom. Wouldnt be too out there if they just charged for that account type, especially since removing ads and not selling student information costs money.

[@e3po828]

That’s such a good idea

[@HeyAHappyHuman]

​@@RaineInChaosother worse apps do this, I'm sure it wouldn't be impossible

[@Maomaomahu]

I’m nowhere near a native Korean speaker and somehow within a month of self teaching myself outside of Duolingo I’ve had to correct so many basic things… I also completely agree with the DLC analogy. It reminds me of the sims4, they took the previous sims games and stripped them down and sold the features that were base game as DLC for the same price as a whole new game of the sims4.

[@jayvee1387]

Omg dont even get me started on the sims 4..... Did you see what they did to the console version? so sad to see so many base game items that were given when the game came out being sold in little bullshit "kits" and "packs".... EA can suck a thousand dicks. they really dropped the ball.... When paralives comes out, they can have all my money LMFAO

[@lizz-the-dragon2727]

TRUE! I love playing the Sims because it's the only game like it, but I absolutely despise the way they make DLC. That's why I'm supporting a different life sim game that's in development that has a lot of great features like having weather in the base game, color wheels for everything, and having a lot of pets in the base game. There's more, but those are things the Sims doesn't have and put into dlc. It's really sad honestly that that's where the bar is, but oh well. There's a lot more great stuff in there and I highly recommend it if you're looking for an alternative to EA's crap, it's called Paralives. They're incredibly connected to their community :) Sorry for the tangent I'm just a bit passionate about this topic I guess😅

[@NelsonStJames]

The great thing about the discussion app was that occasionally ( in fact most of the time ) native speakers of a language would chime in and explain the nuances of a sentence that cleared everything up. I don't know why but other language apps like, Iknow for instance, also got rid of any type of social interaction abilities with it's software.

[@emilwandel]

yes Memrise, too. Seems to me managing people is s lot harder then running software in the cloud.

[@red.aries1444]

In many contries you are responsible for controlling and removing all comments that include hate speech or other inappropriate comments very quickly. That's labour intensive work, because AIs often don't get the difference between insulting and ironic comments, so you have to pay real people for it. If there isn't a discussion, then you don't need employees for looking over it. Less money for running the app, more profit for the owners... until people don't use is anymore, because it becomes useless...

[@Rajin90]

@@red.aries1444 That's one of the reasons why the concept of "hate speech" is garbage. Babysitting millions of people is impossible, so let's just erase speech altogether. The cattle shall be quiet and accept its fate of getting milked and slaughtered.

[@lokysutherland5022]

I am over 500 days in and I had zero clue there was a discussion tab tbh

[@Paulxl]

​@@emilwandelModeration costs a lot of money.

[@GeorgeMaier]

I’d argue the best feature they got rid of was the collective translation feature that was originally one of the big selling points. You’d do the lessons to learn the basics, then get to collectively, with other learners, translate pages of information from your target language into your native language. I loved it! I would focus on topics I enjoyed - so I’d be translating pages about mountains and cities. They killed this off a long time ago and it’s the number one feature I miss.

[@Ph34rNoB33r]

Oh, I joined in 2014 and don't remember such feature. So I guess it was before then? Or did I just miss it?

[@GeorgeMaier]

@@Ph34rNoB33r it was cut very early on, so may have already been gone by then. Might also depend what languages you were learning - it was available for me as an English speaker learning Spanish.

[@Ph34rNoB33r]

@@GeorgeMaier Back then I tried De->Fr, not exactly their flagship course. Switched to En->Fr since, as the course from English has way more features (I like the stories), and also is longer.

[@pollyparrot8759]

So true and we fought so hard to keep it. Duolingo has just gone further and further downhill until it's now just a game that might teach you a bit of phrasebook language if you're lucky. Useless now for actually learning languages.

[@roadrunnercrazy]

That was one of my favorite features. In fact, I learned more from the translations and the discussions about the translations because it included context.

[@fleur7472]

The comments were always better at really educating you about it. I think Duolingo was embarrassed that newbies had to correct them.

[@franjkav]

Tech is full of pathetic people who can’t stand being corrected. It’s incredibly dumb….it’s shouldn’t be such a big deal

[@orn1x346]

LMAO facts

[@Julia-lk8jn]

I hope not - with a website that large, with that many languages, it is nothing but normal that there are mistakes. Doubly so with languages, because there's always an exception to the rule, or some expression that ignores all rules. Also, mistakes in language learning/speaking are vital because they show which rule you haven't quite gotten, and need to revise. Which you _can_ know if you have a healthy community with people helping out others. Having something like that is something Duolingo should be proud of.

[@MegaT486i]

Agreed 100%, the removal of discussions tab removes the inherent sense of community and is a huge factor as to why I feel so alone learning a language now.

[@zigzagintrusion]

I think I’m a dumbass because I’ve been using the app on and off for about five years and I didn’t even know the discussion tab was a thing. Now I’m sad that I missed out on it. :,)

[@a.person1805]

I remember making a joke in sentence discussion once, and some people liked it. 100% positive experience!

[@defne499]

whoa i found the awesome person!!!

[@a.person1805]

@@defne499 yooo DEFNE?? Haiii!!! It's been a bit! Did you ever play Talos Principle 2?

[@maskedmallard537]

About a fifth of my contributions to sentence discussions were jokes. Really jazzed when people liked them, particularly bigs in that particular language. Most of the rest were detailed discussions helping fellow learners with their questions that I gleaned from similar sentence discussions I read before. Sometimes, I actually had a question. I only asked after I read every other comment to make sure no one else has asked the question before. I'm gonna miss the jokes, the indepth explanations on case/lrnition/whatevs and especially that one dude in each language who gives detailed etymology lessons. Oh who am I kidding? I quit using Duo when they broke Japanese last year.

[@Arnica_Burdock]

The Scots Gaelic course content has many amusing sentences, and an odd hatred for Iain (he’s always the one doing bad things and going to jail), so there were many jokes in the comments as well. It was fabulous.

[@notllikethat]

The one true thing I've learnt about arguments is that whenever children and their safety are brought up, you need to run away from this discussion because your opponent has just run out of arguments

[@bretton_woods]

indeed. child safety is the parent's responsibility. Don't give your kids a phone. Oh but your kid won't be popular? But I thought you wanted them to be safe!!

[@poetrait941]

but think of the children! think of the discussions they will be having.. about learning languages nonetheless! truly disgusting

[@bellenesatan]

Modern reinvention of blood libel

[@augustmindcs]

And also, duolingo for schools is a different interface with access to different capabilities of the app. So this idea of discussions being available for children is really a farce because the interface kids are experiencing is already filtered.

[@miscwork-qb7pd]

I feel sad for the lower Duolingo PR employees that get all the flack from decisions made by much higher up greedy business people

[@derpz_]

probably true

[@MadameSomnambule]

Also my thoughts on Devsisters’s PR people, they often get hate for bad or unpopular decisions the higher ups make to the Cookie Run games. Even lead to one of their social media managers leaving and being replaced. So, this problem ain’t exclusive to Duolingo, sadly.

[@lifaen]

yeah, same

[@st2udent_650]

To be faaaaaair It literally is their job, soooo I don't feel too bad for em

[@llamapalooza]

I’m still really sad because they stopped the duolingo meetup groups. It was really helpful to meet up and have a real life learning community.

[@MochiFam]

Ye unfortunately, makes sense why tho. Be pretty hard to manage that

[@jan_v_ier]

i had no idea this even existed.

[@cauldronmoon]

I had no idea meetup groups existed? I wonder if there were any meetup groups in the northern Utah area?

[@TempestPhaedra]

Aside from all the important points already made, the discussion section was the only way other users ever felt real on Duolingo. When commenting was disabled the other users became abstractions to me. I'd rather there be no social aspect to Duolingo than this weird social liminal space it's in. I might just put my profile back in private mode. The app makes more sense like that.

[@rivvix]

I began learning Italian using Duolingo early this year. I was beyond livid when the discussion tab was removed because of how helpful it was to have fluent speakers explaining contexts for certain words and why some verbs are conjugated in unusual ways. Since it's been removed, it has been more frustrating to try to understand the grammar structures, among other things. Additionally, the text-to-speech audio exercises seem to have become more difficult to understand, but that is a different problem.

[@giuliamaceroni1002]

Im italian and willing to help out a fellow aspirant polyglot! What’s your mother tongue?

[@justsomenightowl7220]

Please bring the sentence discussions back, Duolingo. It was my favourite thing about your app! Native speakers explaining in their own words why a sentence is the way it is, is irreplacably useful.

[@cunningham-code]

I used to be one of their most active users. I am a huge linguistics nerd. When they switched from the tree to the path UI, they lost me. It is so frustrating having Duolingo tell you what to learn when.

[@abarette_]

it's really embarassing.

[@evabailey6068]

I couldn't agree more! I study French at University and have been topping up general French knowledge with Duolingo for 6+ years now, and the shift away from the tree was utterly infuriating☹️

[@OddlyElly]

Completely agree. The tree was great because you could jump around as needed. I miss the tree so much.

[@TCGrey]

The path is one thing, but I really miss the "cracking" of already learned stuff. It really helped me with repeating lessons I didn’t particular like. Because I wanted to fix the cracks. Now I just repeat stuff I like - sure that’s a me problem, I could change something about my work ethic. But it’s just works better for me being "forced". More motivation = more effectiveness.

[@BulborbStan]

Agree. The cracking lessons were useful. I've forgotten a good amount of stuff since they removed that since there's no real incentive to scroll back up that huge pathway and do old content.

[@richardmorley9851]

Yes, you're so right. I have realised Duolingo doesn't actually teach any more. It just gives you a quiz and marks you right or wrong, and if you have made an error, doesn't explain the mistake. So many times I am left wondering "why?" I haven't learned a rule - because the Owl hasn't taught it to me. Lazy Owl! I will continue to use it daily as it is useful, but it could help more.

[@CatCaffeine]

this! Even if I don't know the correct answer I can almost always puzzle it out because I'm good at tests/quizzes. But I don't learn much like that.

[@JuanDavidOrjuela]

To play the devil's advocate, that's how children learn: they're corrected and move on. The parent doesn't really have to know the reasoning behind the mistake, just that it was a mistake and what is the correct way of saying something. And the child just needs to be exposed/corrected enough times to understand. But we're adults here. That is an incredibly unproductive way of learning, takes infinitely more time. I can only imagine DL wants us to spend a lot more time on the app OR wants to cater to the people who might find "boring" grammar lessons like a nuisance and gamify the experience even more.

[@JuanDavidOrjuela]

@@JohnDoe-zl4pg I meant really young children (toddlers? Sorry, English isn't my first language), like when they're learning their native language for the very first time from their parents/caregivers. I agree with you but then again I very much enjoy/value grammar. From their POV, the idea is that with *enough* exposure/correction you can find the pattern consciously or unconsciously by yourself and thus it sticks. But I wholeheartedly believe this is really inefficient for teens/adults.

[@SpaceCase1701]

Exactly this! The fact that they took away the actual guidebook tips as well, leaving only some example sentences and no grammar explanations as well makes it so much harder to get substantial learning other than drilling the same few sentences and structures. The problem I have is that without an actual, detailed explanation of the grammar points in a sentence it’d be easy to either get completely lost or come to a logical but incorrect conclusion about how a grammar element works. Especially with a language very different to your native one (I’m an English speaker currently learning Korean)

[@abarette_]

It really is stupid. I've been trying to learn Dutch (aka the worst language ever) and when I use the wrong thing, like Je instead of Jij, Hun instead of Hen etc, it just doesn't tell me why adjectives also seem to randomly take an 'e' at the end (langzaam vs langzame) Did I mention that I'm natively French but still have to learn it in English because SOMEHOW there's no course for it despite Belgium like, existing? clown app

[@mattstyles4283]

As someone whose day job is a software engineer, but also learns languages... this isn't about code being out-of-date. Even if it's the biggest "code smell" ever, if it's bringing value to the business they will invest developer time in making it better and addressing tech debt. As you say, this is a question of money.

[@IgnoreMeImWrong]

I'd bet my money on it being an ESG rating issue rather than a "how to make efficient money" issue.

[@mememememememememe]

Not only did they remove the discussion tab but also the vocabulary list in the web version, which really broke me? For those who never used it or knew it, when you used Duolingo on a computer you were able to look at a vocab list, with ALL the words you had already learned, and you could also see how well you had already learned it, with a scale that was either red or green. Very cool feature :(

[@MugiHours]

Losing that vocabulary list was why I quit Duolingo x.x; If I remember right, clicking on the word took you to a dictionary entry with sample sentences to show how the word was used. I used that feature ALL the time.

[@0bscur3rose]

I know I didn’t do it on the computer a lot but that was such a handy feature for when I was on there. I’m so upset to hear that they removed that.

[@margoxathegamer9371]

WAIT, THEY REMOVED IT? NOOOOO

[@Red81849]

i would like to say, as a dyslexic, Duolingo has also gotten rid of audio lessons(french) which was very helpful to learn words and sentences in french, a language where letters dont make sense.

[@Serenity_yt]

You have to specifically enable it but for me it still does audio

[@simonupton-millard]

I am also dyslexic but learning Welsh don't think we had those to start with

[@LauraAnimalgirl]

So true, French "parles" "parlez" "parler" all sound the same and are spelled differently 😵‍💫

[@Red81849]

@@Serenity_yt If you mean audio in lessons I still have that, but I'm referring to audio lessons, which were separate from normal lessons and had two hosts that taught you how to say stuff in French. But if you still have audio lessons where do i enable it.

[@Serenity_yt]

@@Red81849 Im actually not sure we mean the same thing then I get some listening to writing and writing to speaking but as Im just using it as a reminder for my school spanish I skipped a whole bunch of stuff at the beginning probably also the pronaunciation things.

[@clerica5787]

Can we start a petition to make Evan the voice of the DuoLingo community?

[@Jack-fh3wm]

Like the comment above me if you wanna sign

[@sandiblack5072]

I think he unofficially already is. The average user could make a reddit post, tweet at them, or write to them but your odds of getting any response at all aren't great and your odds of making a change are basically none. But Evan has changed the app before and if there's anybody that has duolingos best interests at heart. I think it's him, so I'm glad they're watching him

[@keadrincain]

Yes bump lol

[@Ghs6]

yes

[@rorysparshott4223]

Just leave. Duolingo specifically don't give a shit about you or any other user.

[@WeeLin]

I really miss the discussions on the Irish course. Not only were they incredibly helpful in learning the Irish language while also providing some fascinating insights into Hiberno English, the comments were often just hilarious! Sometimes I'd click them when I got the answer right on a funny sentence just to see what they'd come out with. And seriously, how are you expected to learn Irish without the craic?

[@violet7773]

I remember one translation was for "giving out" and it didn't occur to me until looking in the discussion that "giving out" was hiberno english lol Some people were giving out about being "forced to learn a second language" (hiberno english and irish). But honestly a lot of the way that we speak English is influenced by Irish (idioms, weird grammar quirks etc) and likewise some aspects of English have changed Irish from the way it used to be. Hiberno English and Irish have a kind of symbiotic relationship And sure, they could have used "shouting at" instead of "giving out to" as the english translation for "ag tabhairt amach" but not only is "giving out" a direct translation, it also makes Irish more accessible to hiberno english speakers But yeah people who don't speak hiberno english are going to be screwed without sentence discussions

[@peppermint1358]

I just wrote a comment about this! I really miss the speculating about Póls life.

[@WeeLin]

@@peppermint1358 Ah, Pól - the man, the myth, the legend.

[@WeeLin]

@@violet7773 Definitely! I can say this as someone who's learning Irish but isn't from Ireland. Hiberno English has some great turns of phrase too.

[@Riboshom]

Oh yeah, Irish has so many "quirks" I wouldn't have figured out if the comment section hadn't pointed it out, like "cailin" being masculine, "sa" being a contraction of "ins an", the language having no words for "yes" and "no" and all the other things I wasn't mind blown enough when I read about it that I actually wrote it down. Like the video says, Duolingo mostly trains you the way one would train an AI model, and figuring out those details when the app gives you no explaination of why your answer was wrong (and when you often lack the context to look it up on your own) is basically not possible without the help of user discussions.

[@MUJJICOOL]

Completely agree. Duolingo has stopped caring about our language learning. Now they only want our money. The discussion tab was so darn useful, I so so hate them for this.

[@scene2much]

That feeling when you used the app for 1 year a great feature you never discovered has just removed from the app....weird bummer

[@abyssal_phoenix]

"Duo isn't winging it" - Duolingo I sometimes doubt it. They are winging everything that's not about money

[@Inzje]

I started Duolingo in April to brush up my French and I don’t think I ever saw a sentence discussion option in the app. Maybe they just didn’t “advertise” them to new learners

[@its_just_seb]

I think they removed the option a while ago. Maybe just some people retained it, or maybe it was still active in the web version, idk.

[@Inzje]

@@its_just_seb could be. I guess it also doesn’t help that I’m not learning with English as the first language, I assume these options are more readily available for native English speakers

[@mitchystuff]

@@its_just_seb It was still used in the desktop version.

[@marpheus1]

I'm at almost 700 days and I don't recall seeing it. If it was there, it was very hidden

[@tymondabrowski12]

​@@marpheus1 It was there around when you started. Removed it like a year later maybe. It was at the same time forum was removed.

[@lucyGamer-ci5jy]

I started duolingo when I was 12 and because of my age until turned 13 I was automatically given a child version of duolingo - unlimited lives, no leaderboards, no social aspect, no friends, just the tree, some costumes for Duo I could purchase with gems and achievements

[@evan]

Wow

[@Ph34rNoB33r]

School accounts don't have lives, and anyone can create a classroom, so some people do those (the courses are frozen in time, so it would not have the latest additions)

[@DishonorableMentions452]

Omg same

[@empty-voiid]

Not like leaderboards are really useful anyway, in my humble opinion...

[@gavinthecrafter]

Duolingo is no longer an app to learn language, it's an app to practice languages

[@fathimathnabeela6247]

Explained perfectly

[@mcomeslast]

Exactly! Which negates any need for me to pay for it. I am having to buy a grammar book and Rosetta Stone so why would I pay Duolingo when I can’t do more than review?

[@ghenulo]

s/app/website/g

[@LARKXHIN]

I use Busuu and then go to Duolingo to supplement learning actual Chinese.

[@davidbrisbane7206]

I agree with this. I already knew German and used Duolingo to practice my writing, listening and speaking skills. It helped a lot. I cut my errors out by about 70%. One thing I was disappointed about was that the vocabulary isn't very extensive. Sure, it's enough to get by, but not enough if you want to read a novel in the target language.

[@BriDoesAI]

The funniest part of this is way back when I watched a podcast episode with the dude who created Duolingo. In it he mentioned how he wanted a language learning app that was accessible to all, and mentioned he was resistance to monetizing the app at all. But people told him he needed to make money so he did. Now look at it.

[@buckmoonmedia5113]

Tracee's response definitely feels like the sort of trained responses I had to give as a CSR. The owl having a gun to their head was definitely apt

[@gfatreak2]

I understood so much of Spanish only through the discussions tab. Sometimes Duolingo just introduced grammar or new words and didn’t explain how to use them so it was vital to check the discussions :(

[@atriyakoller136]

Same with Italian. Easily got to A2+ simply by reading as many discussions as humanly possible.

[@dismaldunc]

yeah the user "kenhigh" was a god amongst men. he helped me out so many times

[@toyaleejb7714]

I use Duo mostly for extra pratice. I now use either Rosetta or Speak

[@iamasmokedchicken]

Yeah, I quit Spanish for a few years because of that since it was too stressing for me to keep up with all the random stuff they'd throw at me without explanation. Came back a few years later, they still do it. It's really annoying

[@CyberMachine]

@@atriyakoller136 I use chatgpt. It does an incredible job with explaining russian grammar to me

[@billkammermeier]

100% made it worse. I've learned so much from those discussions. They also won't let you upload your own photo any more and are trying to force everyone to make a virtual avatar. I feel like being a corporation they are trying to get rid of all user submitted content.

[@PrometheanRising]

Noticed this too. Sadly, people who climb the corporate ladder are often poor approximations of people.

[@downtherabbithole8325]

That’s because it costs more money to have the ram storage for user uploaded media

[@P4RTY_4NIM4L]

Hi! I think I may have found a way to upload a regular profile picture instead of using those hideous avatars. All you need is to log into Duolingo with a computer, it doesn’t matter what kind, as long as it’s a computer. I can’t remember exactly how I did it, but it still let me choose a file and let me use it as my profile picture, but it still shows the avatar as well. Hopefully it works for you guys! :)

[@arcanefilms1]

This is so disappointing to hear. While learning Japanese through Doulingo, I always had issues with the specific rules of particles (Duo never did a good job explaining it lol). Without fail, I could ALWAYS find someone explaining what I needed in the discussion page. It is 90% of the reason I even understand Japanese to the level I do. It also brought such a nice feeling of community, knowing others were struggling in the same spots and seeing others help them get past the struggles, it was so motivating. Very disappointed in the removal of it.

[@poetrait941]

For me, the Clubs feature back in the day was also a favourite, when we could respond to prompts and tell jokes and encourage eachother. I remember it to be a lot of fun. I hate how they're killing off any of the interactivity and community it makes it feel very soulless and corporate now. I also really do prefer the old way where you could choose between two lessons instead of being on a set path. That made it a lot more fresh and interesting, rather than daunting and boring, like it is now.

[@FullaEels]

the discussions were so useful for scottish gaelic, a language that has few speakers available to ask for advice already, so having a wee place to get context on the quirks of the language was a nice thing to have. shame they've removed it

[@nicokelly6453]

Yeah, the changes have been an extra hard blow to lesser known / less popular languages. Not many other places have Scottish Gaelic at all so Duo was a rare gem.

[@r21167]

Yep. I'm doing the same course and it's very difficult sometimes combined with the sheer lack of any like explained or written out grammar rules. I'm bad at learning grammar 'intuitively' and this does not help.

[@softwaifu]

Hawaiian and other native languages are going to suffer hugely from this 😢

[@realglutenfree]

There was literally no justifyable reason for them to delete the discussions, they didnt even need to moderate them since they were locked anyway.

[@makanivalur]

What annoys me is that my entire wider family is on Duo now and we’re all quite competitive so there’s no way I’ll stop using it but all these changes annoy me so much. 😅

[@necrodeus6811]

I know the feeling, keeping up my precious precious streak is the one reasons i haven't moved on yet

[@abimaze4308]

i'm learning Hebrew on Duolingo- Hebrew does not have vowel markings, and since the course is so new there are rarely vocalizations to go along with the sentences. The discussions tab was VITAL to learning Hebrew as a beginner, I used it for every single question, every single new word, because otherwise I would just have no idea how a word was pronounced. Having people spell out the phonetics in the discussion was so helpful, without it, it's going to be near impossible to make sure my pronunciation is correct.

[@jzsuzsi]

"since the course is so new"? The Hebrew course was released 7 years ago :)

[@abimaze4308]

@@jzsuzsioof- my mistake but I feel like that just highlights how badly developed it is even more

[@MB-hh2dh]

@@abimaze4308 To be realistic, many of their recent courses are short and underdeveloped (Finnish, Zulu, Haitian Creole, Navajo)

[@Algae555]

This is unfortunately a common development in many brands and products. In the beginning, they’re extremely well designed and accessible for little to no cost. No other language learning app gives you as many features as Duolingo does, especially not for free/ low cost. It starts off with small features being removed that no one really cares about apart from a few (sorry man, most people couldn’t care less about a community section, especially since Duolingo is designed for you to learn alone) but overtime, these small changes build up until it’s a completely different product that costs 10x more. The only thing that stops this is videos like this which express dislike for these changes and call out the obvious money grabs

[@IgnoreMeImWrong]

What about Memrise?

[@tzatzikiv812]

I made a close friend in the Duolingo community section. It's so sad that many potential friendships will now be lost. 😞

[@mariafromgermany]

I am learning Italian on duolingo. It was very nice to open up the discussion tab and see that everyone thought of the same thing when being asked to translate "Mario and Luigi are plumbers".

[@jack2453]

Totally agree. Duolingo is full of Americanisms that I don't understand....e.g. it is no help to discover that some French or German term means "middle school" which is meaningless to me. The discussion forum was useful to explain things like this.

[@croscott]

this decision of theirs was the final straw for me :( apart from finding explanations for possible grammatical mistakes, the comments section was actually where the native speakers or more advanced learners could share some cultural or colloquial tidbits as well. like, i remember from the Finnish course that there were a few sentences that sounded kinda weird, but people in the comments explained that it was a line from a popular Finnish kids' song, and here's a link to the full version, check it out, or that something was a reference to Finnish folklore - basically saying that yes, out of context the sentence sounds kinda useless, but HERE'S THE CONTEXT so you could actually learn a bit more about the country whose language you're learning! now sentences like these seem to bring "hee hee ha ha duo is so quirky!" value, that is fun to make memes of, but actually doesn't do much to me as a learner :(

[@xemirahobbyless]

Agreed! The Dutch course had such an amazing comment section that I found myself reading the facts and tidbits on sentences even if they were already clear to me. You could always learn something from the native speakers and other learners. I feel there was a lot of love put into the lessons as well. Idk if it is the same now, since I haven't done Dutch since finishing the old tree.

[@Tobi-ci3ns]

Sucks to see the premier language learning software being destroyed by corporate America. I'd love to see a larger community build around open software like Anki which has a ton of potential.

[@rorysparshott4223]

It's been shit for a decade now

[@marcelberes469]

LingQ is also pretty good, in my experience.

[@vfauni5764]

What would be good for russian?

[@kuba4ful]

@@vfauni5764 Also want to know some good alternative for russian. I have ADHD, so I'd really love something that also has exp/points and small-scale competition (like duolingo's leagues, that really boosted my desire to do more lessons)

[@theoreticalphysics3644]

​@@vfauni5764use the website между нами, I used it for three semesters back in college as an online textbook

[@alligatorscrublord]

The sentence discussion was very useful for Russian, since Russian depends highly on context and what letter words end with to form sentences. I've learned a fair amount of vocabulary through Duolingo, but I have no idea when a ye might be changed to a yo, or a soft sign to a ya.

[@daveshep]

Thank you for this, Evan. I noticed this several months ago. I’m a retired German teacher who’s been using Duolingo for teaching (and learning other languages) for about 10 years. I couldn’t believe they took it away. Not only is it no longer available, but also years of valuable discussion have just disappeared into the ether.

[@holsfisher]

I miss that tab so much already. As a British English speaker, the Americanisms in the German translations can be really confusing and the sentence discussions usually really helped with the process of figuring out why I was being asked what I was doing "on" the weekend, why "check" was confusing me in wordbanks, when Duolingo wanted holiday or vacation, the American words for diffetent courses in meals, why totally normal British grammar is unexpectedly rejected (never mind Scottish phrasing....).

[@tymondabrowski12]

Damn, and I thought that punishing me, a non-native English speaker, for wrong order of words in English phrases when learning German ("bring X along" was my nightmare) and missing The or including it unnecessarily (thanks Die Schweiz/Not-The Switzerland), was bad (there is no course from my language to German, for some reason).

[@holsfisher]

@tymondabrowski12 ha, I find those confusing to! A lot of redundant (to me) words all the time, I wish there was more explanation of the German extra words (and an option to choose your English dialect).

[@hellfirepictures]

They blocked me from discussions for commenting that Americans need to stop claiming they speak English when what they speak is American - they use different vocab, have different grammar rules, and can't translate for squat. I was so fed up with being marked incorrectly for translating something into correct English - but incorrect American. But, for all their anti-colonial ways, they seem to want to still be British 😂

[@SingingWithMyself-Frozen]

I found it really annoying when Duolingo wouldn't let me say 'having friends round' because it would only accept 'having friends over'. They mean exactly the same thing!

[@PinkishPlant]

Even as an American English speaker I often encountered this issue as well. There is multiple ways to word the same sentence. I found that grammar that is more like natural speech was much more likely to be “incorrect”

[@nil2k]

The discussion tab has always been "locked" in my chosen language, but the history there was amazingly useful for understanding parts of French that aren't logical. It seems that you don't have to moderate locked discussions further and they still could continue to help people in the same way.

[@DanielDitte]

Yes!!! This exactly for me!

[@MaltheAndMe]

There are so many wrong sentences in Duolingo that I stopped using it with my husband, who is learning my language Danish. I get frustrated when I time and time again have to tell him that Duolingo is wrong. I even wrote them an email once and I got nothing back.

[@ditto9068]

For me, I used to have a lot of fun using duolingo, learning Japanese. I'm now conversational and took the JLPT N3 using mostly duolingo as vocabulary. Duolingo straight up made me pick my college major as a linguist. But I have to say, ever since the addition of hearts that limit how much you can use the app at a time, or punishing you for going through mistakes repeatedly, its not as fun or effective. And the discussion feature being gone is really showing the downward turn they're making.

[@Midoriel]

THANK YOU for talking about this! I hate that they removed it! I would often spend more time reading the discussions and learning there than in the actual Duolingo lessons. The comments were SO USEFUL and very rarely I saw any comments that were wrong info or other bad stuff. I've now gotten to more challenging lessons and I really miss the discussions to actually explain how the language and grammar works because Duolingo does NOT teach you that really.

[@Arnica_Burdock]

Exactly! Often I would spend so much time reading the detailed discussions that my double XP would have expired by the time I finished the lesson, 😂

[@Midoriel]

@@Arnica_Burdock same 😂

[@joyeuseamal]

The community features that Duolingo does contain are paltry at best. I think the strangest feature is showing you where your friends are at in their own language by placing a benchmark in your path. No, my friend Steven is not learning Japanese but he’s at the same place in his Spanish path as I am in Japanese right now!

[@evan]

I like that update but I never see any friends :(

[@0x2A_]

@@OldQueer Why does that matter?

[@trinitybernhardt9944]

I like seeing that, even though my friends aren't learning the same language. It still encourages me to keep going and to want to support them.

[@davidwood5884]

I've never seen this and scrolled back through my path. Would be cool actually, where abouts does it show?

[@OldQueer]

@0x2A_ I always think it's quite cool that people do that to enjoy another cultures entertainment. I've never watched any of the Japanese cartoons (not really into watching TV too much at all) but it always amazes me how good of an export they must be for people to actively learn a language to understand them. Reading my previous comment back it seems like I was being accusatory or harsh - not my intention at all! I was just curious why they were learning it.

[@catherinemosey4255]

That's not the only thing that's gone, A WHOLE language that is the most commonly spoken celtic language Welsh is being "mothballed" I've learnt more Welsh in the last year using Duolingo than I did in school. Many of the Welsh learners are obviously very upset about this.

[@catherinemosey4255]

Also ages ago they got rid of the zoom lessons with Richard which were very useful.

[@jjabbott7249]

I'm an American learning Welsh for a book I'm writing, and I'm disappointed that such a beautiful language was essentially getting the middle finger. Dw i ddim yn hapus iawn...

[@jahanas22]

I have a love/hate relationship with Duolingo. A lot is helpful but docking you points instead of explaining why something is wrong isn't helpful. I also don't like that there's no way to say something like Their pronunciation was making two words sound the same. There just needs to be more ways to get and give actual feedback.

[@NavaSDMB]

One "feature" I hated was the lack of ability to deal with synonyms or ambiguity. For example, the Spanish possessive article means "his, hers, theirs, polite-singular-yours"; if you're working between Spanish and another language, you get single sentences without the context that would tell an actual speaker which one to use. Which one will the program expect is completely random.

[@piiinkDeluxe]

You can always report questions though.

[@MSKofAlexandria]

"Daily reminder that Duolingo is a game, not a language learning app" - a chad

[@ApinofArc]

I mean, they made their choice. And I made mine. I got rid of my payment, and am now using an...alternative, version. Hope that bottom line was worth it for them. Sentence discussion was the main value of the app to ke, and the one thing that helped me stop being confused when I ran into an issue, now I have to stumble through. And im not paying extra to take longer to learn.

[@aikotitilai3820]

What is the alternative? Is it free ?

[@ApinofArc]

@@aikotitilai3820 think, yar har matey.

[@Ophiophagus]

I'm at over 900 days of learning German with Duolingo, but I've made virtually no progress since the ramp up/match madness challenges started easily getting you way more XP than actually doing the lessons. I get that my motivation should be learning the language, but they made it a game which primarily incentivizes XP and leaderboards, not progress.

[@RaineInChaos]

I was talking to someone the other day who is around the same length of time and was frustrated that she still has so much difficulty with verbal communication. She went on to talk about how she gets so much XP from doing stories over and over, but she turns off the sound so she can multitask (which allows her to spend more time on Duolingo and get more XP) - so isn't getting the verbal/listening component at all. I'm learning Japanese, and I really don't GAF about leaderboards or XP and even though I'm an extreme beginner, I feel like I really am actually learning a lot as far as sentence structure and things that are added/left out compared to English - when I am ready to put the time into it. On days I just want to keep up my streak I just review characters. I try to do lessons when I have time to actually commit and do it right. It's a lot slower and I'm waaaay down on the leaderboards but that's how I like it. The competitive aspect is literally my least favorite thing about the app.

[@sleepy.timaeus.arts.]

man, im in the same boat…i feel like im not truly learning. theres a handful of words i know now, sure, but that’s mostly cause i was grinding out the ramp up and match madness (mostly the match madness) and the repetition helped, but… i cant speak the language and don’t understand vital grammar or spelling rules 😔 i might just go over to some other site at this point

[@justincho3647]

I was in a similar situation. topping the leagues and all the courses for Chinese but 0 progress. I switched over to AutoLang recently and has been working really great for me. It seems like the app is still in its early stages but it's been looking very promising.

[@karlitatv]

Yeah I stopped caring about badges and leaderboards and now I feel like I am learning.

[@mojosbigsticks]

I agree totally. You can't protect people from bad advice by sending them to Reddit!

[@Julia-lk8jn]

It's kind of the same logic as "some teachers are bad, let's close all schools" . From what I remember - haven't used Duolingo since they changed the tree to a railroad - if somebody got something wrong in the discussions, there'd be a correction very quickly. And sometimes languages just aren't straightforward.

[@user-de7yt2vb2d]

This reminds me of the time they removed the choice to type out or use their bubbles to create a response. I feel like I've struggled to learn anything since they removed that choice and I feel so unengaged with lessons now. Really made my motivation for learning German on the app plumet.

[@chunye215]

It's even more bollocks with Chinese. I tried that a while ago for fun. When you're asked to translate from Chinese to English, you only get the bubbles, so you can mostly just ignore the Chinese prompt and look at the English bubbles and put them in the right order, because well it's a language you already speak and you can guess, because it's a very simple sentence. But if you have to translate from English to Chinese, they give you the bubbles in Chinese but offer you to switch to keyboard input. Like, if you just dip your toes into Chinese, you probably don't even have Chinese keyboard input installed on your phone/computer, so .. why? I just think it would make more sense the other way round, but ideally you could use keyboard input for both...

[@ccaagg]

Let's not forget how they completely removed the lessons and instead replaced it with the 'guidebook' which is just a list of correct translations for some sentences. Yes, this kind of learning through osmosis definitely works better than, y'know, _teaching the language._ I only use Duolingo nowadays because I am feeble-minded and like it when the number goes up. Not learned a thing from it since lessons were removed; have been using other resources for that, as should anyone else who actually wants to learn a language. Duolingo used to be a good choice, now it's abysmal.

[@user-de7yt2vb2d]

@@ccaagg You're so real for only using it because u like it when number goes up.

[@ccaagg]

@@user-de7yt2vb2d I mean there used to be the reward of actually making good progress in learning a language, but now I just don't want to part with my years-long streak.

[@dysmissme7343]

Oh I did notice that those lessons just…. Disappeared into the ether

[@romainsings746]

You're definitely right. It does feel empty when learning gets difficult. Plus, there would be so many fun comments or explanations of people researching the answer of their problems. It was such a nice community

[@vampiresquid2635]

i recently started a norwegian course and genuinely didn't know gender was important in this language until I had to look up the difference between et and en

[@earthchild75]

I have a 465 day streak in Irish. It used to be fun and interesting but now it's more of a chore and I only stay long enough to get another day on my streak. Even without the ability to ask questions I found the old discussions helpful for understanding why I was wrong. Don't know how much longer I'll do it.

[@Hlvla]

I’m on a 750+ streak in Irish and it got so much harder once the discussions were removed. I learned so much about eclipses and lenition from the speakers who posted on the old discussion boards; they taught me more than Duo actually did. Now I’m just redoing old lessons bc number go up, I’ve sort of given up on trying to learn anything else

[@plus6099]

The discussion for "Die Kinder mögen unser Gras" was comedy gold.

[@Calico.tomcat]

Glad to see other people talking about this, I recently started using the app to learn Spanish as pretty much a beginner, and found myself doing ok but getting frustrated at not being able to understand some of the more nuanced rules of Spanish that duolingo didn’t elaborate on. Then I recently discovered the sentence discussion tab and LOVED it! It helped so much with intuitively explaining some small grammar rules that I had been consistently tripping up on, and I felt that I was learning so much easier than before. Then just a couple weeks later, I noticed the tab had disappeared, and I sent an email to their feedback email expressing how much I missed the feature, and that I hoped they would change their mind :( So sad to see it gone.. I still hope that they bring it back

[@chvreuse]

I'm sure that you'll find better ways to learn! I'm latino and I was relying on Duo for an extra help on learning english.. it's sad that they're making this more about money.

[@kalypso9256]

Also when they removed the “podcast” feature where you had to speak the language. That option was available when I learned french and honestly that was the one feature that actually made the language stick. I also need more reputations then there are now. I have a streak on 449 days and just kinda switch languages bc I don’t feel like i’m learning. I’m doing math now hahahahah

[@PrincessNinja007]

The discussions tab is SUPER important for Irish. It was full of native speakers telling you what this sentence would be or in other dialects. Or, distressingly, native speakers telling you "this is 900 kinds of grammatically incorrect, misspelled, and mispronounced; here's the correct way" So they never fixed the Irish lessons, but now you can't go to the page to find out why it's wrong

[@mykisummerhayes3081]

duolingo used to be my favourite place to learn languages..... now not so much

[@peterpain6625]

Same. It's getting worse by the hour though :/

[@tylerbeaumont]

Absolutely. I used to love Duolingo - now, it’s just something I use out of habit whilst finding most of my actually useful resources elsewhere

[@jamesthompson7282]

I'll bite. What IS your favourite language learning app now?

[@wpbn5613]

​@@jamesthompson7282i want to know also so i can find substitutes

[@Tigerman303]

​@@jamesthompson7282Busuu

[@spammalina]

307 day streak learning French for me, the discussion feature was so useful in helping to understand errors, or nuances of the language that I was having difficulty grasping. I found the insights shared by native speakers and the context they added to be invaluable.

[@hellfirepictures]

740 days for me. And I feel like I simply don't understand anything anymore. They disabled and turned off my comments section earlier than most so I've been struggling for a long time now. And it's impacting on things that I know I knew because that confusion is now spilling over into areas that once seemed secure.

[@dianagreene4257]

I'm coming up on a 1200 day streak in Japanese and I'm really not sure I want to keep up with it. I'm not sure if understand anything if it weren't for the comments section, and Duolingo keeps making changes that reverse all my progress.

[@empty-voiid]

Native French speaker here: It's absolutely bonkers that such a feature gets removed. French is, like a lot of languages, hard as hell. Tons of completely arbitrary rules and a lot of them don't make any sense to even some native speakers!

[@nordlyselsker]

That's a bloody shame. The discussions connected to sentences were absolutely essential when I used Duolingo to learn Polish. I even recommended Duolingo to someone else largely because of this feature not long ago. I won't recommend it again (unless they reconsider).

[@heidi5942]

I started Polish after they locked threads. At least I could get useful hints. Now with no forums, it's been getting increasingly confusing. It feels like time to look for a new resource.

[@marikothecheetah9342]

Hey, a native here, If you want any free help - don't hesitate to ask. :)

[@marikothecheetah9342]

@@heidi5942 If you need any help - bring the questions to me. I will be glad to help you however I can. :)

[@ShaquantaR]

I feel the same, I started Polish last year and the discussions were super helpful when I was mixing up words and tenses.

[@mistyisacat8012]

as a native, I'm happy that the way you worded this implies you know polish now, because I myself had needed certain things explained in a specific way, that the app would not provide (like the whole rz - r, ż-g and other stuff like that), without them it would be a considerably hard time learning, especially since the language is already hard and foreign

[@CoranceLChandler]

It's hard to learn a language with as much cultural context needed as Japanese without the discussion tab

[@marco.nascimento]

That's quite sad, honestly. The discussion tab was VITAL to the learning experience of the app, one of the best things, really. The exercises would give you the base, but it was at the discussion tab that you would truly comprehend the sentence, with native speakers explaining the nuance and use cases of it. It's absurd that they just took it away. One of the few social features of the app, the only one where we could directly interact with other users and made us really feel part of a community.

[@dudeman3606]

I've been learning Norwegian on Duolingo for a bit over 2 years now. When I started, just about each and every topic had a comprehensive community provided explanation of the grammar and tips I needed to know. I could comfortably make mistakes and learn from them. Also I could jump between 2-4 topics at most points and still progress even if my ADHD brain gets bored of doing the same topic too long. Needless to say, none of this is the case now, at least to the extent it was before. I feel Duo has added nothing but removed a lot since I started and that has made it harder and harder to stay motivated to do it every day.

[@Beany-bean]

I’m still trying to learn Norwegian on Duolingo I had a streak of just over a year a few years ago now and I lost it cause I had a cold and it annoyed me so I didn’t pick it back up till the beginning of this year and now it feels that the sentences that it gives sometimes just don’t seem to make grammatical sense when trying to translate them to. Like they are so American and that it doesn’t make logical sense in any other version of English.

[@hellfirepictures]

@@Beany-bean Most of the time they don't make sense in American either. I recently had, in French, 'My brother is tanner than me' and 'my brother tan on holiday'. Which, in both English AND American, should read 'My brother is more tanned than me (I am)' and 'my brother tanned (got tanned) on holiday'. The thing is, I messaged an American friend to ask if he ever used either of the incorrect ways of expressing the ideas that Duo had proposed - and he said he couldn't see anything wrong with either of them 🤣

[@sachaman8967]

Literally. Im using duolingo to improve my german, i've had classes on the grammar so i can practice it but it doesnt mix up some topics like dative/accusative so it gets soo reptitive

[@StudioHannah]

Im having such a hard time with Korean for this reason. They taught me how to say goodbye as both 안녕히 계세요 and 안녕히 가세요 when you use the first to say goodbye to someone who’s leaving and you say the second if you’re the one leaving. There was no distinction on Duolingo. I’m running into more words like this as well. I have only known the differences so far because I took Korean a few years ago and kind of remembered. It’s really frustrating because the Duolingo gamification method keeps me learning a little every day, but I’m worried about learning something incorrectly.

[@AmalaFrequents]

Trying to learn Korean made me look elsewhere because of a similar reason. Duo was handy for learning the letters but beyond that I had 0 grammar context to work with. I've been using Lingodeer which is a paid app but specialises in more east asian languages and I've found it very good. But I'm disappointed because before duo changed the path and removed tips it was really good for learning Italian for me. Now my Italian has stalled. But yeah, you definitely need to understand grammar for Korean I've found. There are some good youtube resources about now though, or textbook series like Talk To Me In Korean that aren't too expensive. I'm sad because I used to be confident about learning with duo but now it's just a random vocab quiz I slowly learn a few words from via repetition.

[@SpaceCase1701]

This, I’m also learning Korean and the lack of actual grammar explanations is increasingly unhelpful. Korean grammar is so different to English and I need to know what’s going on. Especially with things like the many many particles, or important things like speech levels. Or the difference between the two number systems. No explanations. You can learn some things through repetition, but the number of times I’ve had to go off and find an actual explanation on another site or resource is high. Honestly just gonna find something else as a primary resource, and only use Duo as a quick daily sentence driller. Be a shame to waste the 500+ day streak…

[@abarette_]

English is just so ambiguous, it's really shitty as a base to learn other languages. Duo doesn't even do the bare minimum like You (singular) vs You (plural), the state of it is so so bad. It's also really bad at phonetic, the other day I was speedrunning the hiragana thing because like... I already know hiragana, and told me stuff like kana:ri being just like the "tty" in kitty bruh no make it stop

[@SpaceCase1701]

@@abarette_ Yeah, Duo's Hangul exercises (as far as I've used them) still rely heavily on matching to the Romanised equivalents, which is less and less helpful the better you know Hangul (Pretty much every Korean resource says learn Hangul properly and ignore romanisation as much as you can). Plus the robot voice isn't great and some letter combinations sound too indistinguishable leading to getting a wrong answer even though I do know what sound that character actually makes.

[@taylorgoodenough3872]

I am also learning Korean and this is a big problem for me too. I’m having a hard time distinguishing when I’m supposed to use certain versions of a word. Like there seem to be a million different ways to say wearing clothing and I have no idea why they are different. Discussions helped me figure stuff like that out and now I have to get off the app and look it up which is pretty difficult.

[@emilwandel]

why would I pay AI to learn a language. I rather pay a human to teach me. and the AI to translate for me or for some casual conservation. chat gpt was quite good.

[@Picla_Peremohy]

This!!

[@mscrabson]

I highly doubt chat gpt ability to do everything correct. It can spit out total bullshit but make it so believable you wouldn’t be able to tell when you don’t know target language well enough.

[@emilwandel]

@@mscrabson I had no problem chatting in German. I rarely had weird translations artefacts like I had with other translation Apps. I don't ask chat gpt translate me this. I meant chatting in the new language. you can take all your time and ask it to use easier words or another word or describe a word or explain the sentence structure. I think it is an easy to use tool to start talking / writing in your target language. People are often embarrassed making mistakes in the beginning and when chatting with chatgpt. They might not be and it would improve grammar understanding if your try to apply the rules yourself early on.

[@Violetstar42]

Honestly, a recent change that alienated me was removing unlimited hearts on the free version, I use Duolingo on the computer and I enjoyed the ability to keep learning even if I made mistakes, you know a natural part of learning a language.

[@nikitapower947]

Duolingo used to be a community. It is NOT one anymore

[@HyraxAttax]

I use Duo on my phone. You'd think that, since user retention is important for an app, keeping people on the app to get answers would be preferred over having them constantly switching over to the web browser to get outside help, especially since it exposes them to their competition and increases the amount of time between in-app ad impressions.

[@lizbutler2256]

A while ago they removed the language tips from the lessons themselves, too. It made everything SO much worse, especially for a really hard to learn language like Korean! I feel like I might as well give up at this point.

[@franjkav]

My mom pointed that out specifically a few days ago and it bums me out for her. She’s not fully invested into language learning but I’m proud of her streak nonetheless. Never seen her stick with anything as consistently

[@shoelaced]

I didn't actually know about the discussion tab, but the biggest frustration I've had with learning Russian, which is a big enough gripe that I'm earnestly looking at other language apps, is exactly what this would have solved -- the same situation you described in German. Duolingo doesn't explain ANYTHING about the grammar, it just makes you guess and *hopefully* absorb along the way. I barely try at this point and basically just do my one lesson a day to keep my streak, because it feels pointless -- like I'm just expected to guess and memorize the word for each context. Not an effective way to learn a language. If I had known about the discussion tab, that would have been EXTREMELY helpful. Now I'm sad I can't use it, and I'm beginning care less and less about my stupid streak anyway. I'd rather *actually* learn a language.

[@admiraloverdone]

Yeah, you really have to explain grammar to get anywhere in Russian- Duolingo really missteped here. Also, if you managed to find a good duo alternative for Russian, I’m very much looking ;-;

[@franjkav]

If you learn something you’ll stop using the app/subbing sooner and they can’t have that

[@timalexander1811]

Yeah the reason to use the Russian duolingo course is to supplement a real course you take and use duolingo for exercise. That‘s why I love the tree because you just had Genitive in class? You can spend your next days focusing on that? You just learned the numbers? Time to practice that lesson. With the path - not possible. Conclusion: Once Duolingo forces me on the path I will delete the App as it will become useless to me. Anki is free anyways. Update: I just checked and the lessons are gone. Time to delete the app

[@scene2much]

The oily language of their subreddit messages says "please leave this discussion" as removing the sentence discussions from the app.

[@nocx4592]

Every Esperanto sentence (learning from English) has been locked for like a year and a half, so this really wasn't that surprising.

[@willowwinkle]

Completely agree with this!! The comments from native speakers clarifying a complicated rule, or seeing why something is the way it is was SO helpful.

[@nadia3824]

Still think removing the duo costumes is their worst change. Honestly have no idea the discussion tab existed but it sounds like it was so useful

[@TRDPaul]

Duolingo saw the meltdown at reddit a while ago and thought how can we get some of that user hatred for ourselves

[@socialistrepublicofvietnam1500]

I deleted Duolingo when they changed the tree, and now I am extremely glad I did The discussions tab was one of the most important features in the entire thing

[@chibbersthesquirrel6189]

The discussions tab was honestly where I did the most actual learning. If I ever didn't understand why I got an answer wrong, I could go there and almost always find someone who asked the same question. But that's the problem - They don't want you learning from other people. They can't earn money that way.