The BEST and WORST Languages on Duolingo (w graphs!)

I investigated every single course, and I know their secrets. Is this the definitive guide?
Start your journey with Lingoda today, with my exclusive link: try.lingoda.com/JonesJuly
Since I didn’t mention them explicitly:
Haitian Creole: audio was pretty good, and the course content was decent. I found the language a ton of fun, so I’m a little biased. It’s a short course, but this is a decent start and good supplement. 68 units is not massively long but it’s more than a lot of their other languages.
Finnish: I was not impressed with the audio but it wasn’t offensive. At 35 lessons, for a DLIFLC Category 3 language, at best it’s a start (“a taste”) but I wouldn’t treat it as anything other than a supplement to actual study.
Latin Textbook I mentioned (amazon affiliate link): amzn.to/3Y1OQ2n
Edited with Gling AI: bit.ly/46bGeYv
#languagelearning #duolingo #polyglot #linguistics

[@fleurymarc]

"made up languages ...like Latin" LOL

[@languagejones6784]

I went back and forth on whether to include that, since there are people who very seriously believe that Rome didn’t (doesn’t?) exist, and it’s all an elaborate hoax

[@M4TCH3SM4L0N3]

​@@languagejones6784 given the pseudo-mythological meme status of Rome online, I suppose it shouldn't be that surprising to me, but damn.

[@kingbolo4579]

@@languagejones6784 If you consider that the Latin that Caesar wrote and that 99% of people learning Latin will study, is not a language that people will have been speaking on the streets of Rome, then yes, it's true that it's invented.

[@Gobear1]

@@languagejones6784 The "Rome didn't exist" claim has to be a hoax itself. There's no way anyone can dispute its existence when you can fly to Rome and go see the Forum, the Pantheon, and the Colosseum, not to mention Pompeii, Herculaneum and other ancient Roman remnants across Europe and North Africa.

[@insertnicknamehere]

@@languagejones6784 Really, rome is a hoax according to some ? omg, people are so much fun !

[@sovietbear1917]

What kills me about Duolingo Spanish is that every time there's an update, they shuffle things around and I get weird vocab words I've never seen before pop up like I should know them, and concepts i covered months ago show up as new content. I have no idea what I've missed because there's no real patch notes for me to go back and see. I do really like it because although I'm motivated to learn Spanish, my wife isn't as much so, and it's easy to turn it into a game between us to keep her motivated to learn every day. Note: I'm not some monster forcing this poor woman to learn Spanish, we have plans to visit Central America in a couple years and want to be prepared.

[@user-if1gj2wh5c]

leave duolingo plushies around the house if she misses a day

[@firstpersonwinner7404]

I am a monster forcing my wife to learn Spanish

[@SurfTheSkyline]

I actually just spoke to my friend about my issue with the Spanish course yesterday and how it got jumbled after they left behind the tree design and then again a few times so I actually don't have certain vocab that one wouldn't be wrong to assume I'd know based on my accent and grammar. Spanishdict has been a godsend for a lot of aspects luckily, but it is annoying that so much basic vocabulary that WAS being given to me by duolingo is now not there at all or somewhere in the old lessons with poor labeling or coming in very spaced out then not reinforced nearly enough.

[@phreyah]

Same thing with other languages. Made me quit Czech actually.

[@jtoland2333]

I've encountered that.

[@myriampro4973]

"Toilet time language learning market", I'm dying!

[@Ph34rNoB33r]

Somewhat accurate, though. Most other apps' lessons are way too long.

[@brauljo]

@@Ph34rNoB33r fækts

[@barbarusbloodshed6347]

@@Ph34rNoB33r then you're eating too healthy!

[@ZeroBusiness-jf9sn]

Haha as I’m watching on the toilet.

[@PumpkinMozie]

Can I just say as a language learning content consumer that I HATE ai generated voices?! Just hire a voice actor; it’s not even that expensive.

[@DanielleBaylor]

I'm a voice actor. I agree, hire a voice actor, but it's not cheap.

[@adrianamendesporcellato]

Exactly! I've been doing the Japanese course and the AI audio is just ok. Considering Japanese is the 3rd most demanded course, I think some investment is in order

[@temp_user_id]

@@adrianamendesporcellato I quit Japanese because of the AI voices.

[@seclilc]

I refuse to pay for Duolingo anymore bc of it. I keep my streak, but I study Russian on Memrise now which is far more enjoyable for me

[@Badbooo123]

Thank you this soooooo stupid

[@khpa3665]

Apparently the quality of the Norwegian course is a legacy of a very involved and knowledgeable volunteer group back when Duolingo relied on that.

[@ElMona]

I'm a Norwegian who is doing the Norwegian course for extra gems, and there are quite a few errors and things that are just straight up wrong. for instance there was a word where the "correct" translation was a name, not a translation, and several mispronounications that change the entire meaning of some words (for instance the world "stolte" which can mean both to be proud and having trusted someone, depending on pronounciation)

[@kmacgregor6361]

@@ElMona Interesting to know, as a Canadian learning Norwegian on Duolingo. I do wish there was some native speaker/natural conversation content in there like other languages have. When they had the sentence discussions I found those very helpful because there were native speakers who moderated and provided feedback, and it's really too bad that they're gone.

[@zapperpaddy7072]

Sounds like typical Norwegian fans, motivated & strong willed

[@B-Meister]

​@ElMona I'm not Norwegian myself, but when I heard Duolingo's pronunciation of "krydres," I knew it couldn't be right. It sounded like a Norwegian saying creed-race xD I really liked learning Norwegian, though, since it's very similar (especially in word order) to Dutch, my native language. Knowing Frisian, (some) German and English definitely helps too.

[@eurovicious]

I'm a Duolingo veteran and completed 11 courses between 2014-2018, mostly Germanic and Slavic, in many cases not long after the courses first went live. The Dutch and Danish courses were good enough to get me near-fluent, and I sat A-level Dutch in 2016 and got the highest grade. The Polish course is also excellent, really rigorous and comprehensive. All the courses were volunteer-made which is why the quality and length varies a lot - the only reason the Norwegian course is like that is because the volunteers were really passionate and added so much content. The Hungarian course is notorious for being broken and was stuck in beta for years (I don't know if it still is) - learners would reach a point about two-thirds of the way through that was basically impassable. The main complaint long-time users like myself have is the "enshittification" of Duolingo. So many good features have been gotten rid of or made pay-only. The whole thing is way more cartoonish, ad-infested and dumbed-down than it was a decade ago.

[@PhinClio]

@@eurovicious I completed the Duolingo trees (as they were then) for Spanish, Turkish, Hungarian, and Finnish prior to entshittification. I thought that the Turkish course was pretty excellent. The Finnish course taught what it tried to teach very clearly, but seemed to only scratch the surface of a wonderful, but difficult, language. The Hungarian course was, as you say, a bit of a mess. It taught a huge amount of material in too few lessons and got worse as you went along. It felt like trying to drink from a firehose.

[@unexpected2475]

I remember back in I think 2016-17 Duolingo didn't have their current shitty heart system, but had a three strikes thing in all lessons that you find currently only in the level skip things. I feel like that three strikes may have been a bit too harsh, but I think I'd prefer it to the current one which is basically just a scheme to get you to get Super Duolingo.

[@SO-ym3zs]

The enshittification is all too real. Forums/discussions were eliminated: the money guys apparently didn't like users actually banding together and discussing things--or, gasp, complaining. Hearts and gems were added, so there's no longer free and unlimited use and you're afraid to make mistakes, which is the worst case scenario for any learning process. Cartoony voices were added to "kiddify" the whole thing--someone smack that Oscar character with a fish, please. Courses are constantly altered on a seeming whim, to where I have no idea where I stand in one and what I'll be learning in the future.

[@blockyneko6143]

I was doing Korean but non of the suffixes or verb conjugations were treated separately ;-; maybe they did later in course but at that point I've moved to better sources

[@yrtepgold]

I don't miss the forums. It could get toxic and demotivating.

[@polymobile]

Duolingo isn't gonna get me to learn languages on it's own but it optimises the 5-20 minute downtime I have on public transport and keeps me productive . It's a great bonus to my language learning experience . I compare it to Tajin . I can't live off of Tajin but a little bit goes nicely with a lot of different foods . That being said I'm always happy to check out new language learning resources and love your content

[@straybeastden]

Agreed! I think it's really helpful on the first stages of learning a language, when consuming content in target language is still too challenging. But later I would rather just watch a youtube video or read something short in that language

[@flanks333]

Old people at home who are just having fun may be like me. Duolingo is fun. Rosetta Stone is free from my library. Babbel is also fun. You tube is awesome. Netflix usually has either the audio or subtitles of the language I want to study. There are free tv apps of the language I am studying. Pot is legal. X lets me vent. Poor me in this world.

[@ElliotShayle]

What's Tajin?

[@NebulaHatesWatchdog]

@@ElliotShayleIt’s just a popular seasoning

[@crybananas]

You mean on the toilet :)

[@amrojjeh]

"pardon my French" "pardon my Yiddish" I feel that you have a goal to be pardoned in as many languages as possible. Can't wait for the F bomb followed by "pardon my English"

[@possibly_maybe]

As an Irish speaker, the audio for Irish is actually horrendous, the AI voice is really really bad and mispronounces even the most common of words

[@TadeuszCantwell]

Plus short words sound truncated and are hard to understand.

[@the_newt_nest]

This is what strikes me - AI even has trouble pronouncing English correctly sometimes. Why would you trust it with a language that has a smaller dataset, given that the data comes from the Internet and the majority of content on the Internet isn't in Irish.

[@kathrynturnbull990]

@@the_newt_nest right?! You'd expect the AI in English to be close to the best available, given the amount of data they have for it. If there are errors in the English AI there are bound to be even more in less common (on the internet) languages!

[@Risky_Santucci]

Where would you suggest learning Irish then, I'd love to learn it!

[@possibly_maybe]

@@Risky_Santucci Duolingo might still be an okay option for learning some grammar? Just definitely put it on mute when using it. There are plenty of great textbooks you can use to learn also. When it comes to listening to native speakers speak, "TG4" is the Irish-language tv station in Ireland so that should be a good place to listen to the language correctly pronounced

[@13tuyuti]

It is my understanding that the US military did not simply use Navajo as a code. They used a "normal" code but instead putting English into code they put Navajo into code.

[@Mac_an_Mheiriceanaigh]

"Navajo speakers who had not been trained in the code work would have no idea what the code talkers' messages meant; they would hear only truncated and disjointed strings of individual, unrelated nouns and verbs."

[@user-xj8wy4uu1q]

Cool

[@nineteenfortyeight6762]

True

[@TheFranchiseCA]

There was a light coding process, where the first letter of something in English would be switched to a different word and then translated, so it would seem like nonsense on its face, but it really wouldn't take long to figure out what words were being used for specific kinds of planes, tanks, artillery pieces, etc... As long as you had someone who could translate the Navajo into English, and others who could work on the translated messages.

[@MM-jm6do]

An example I read in a book was that the Navajo words for “sheep pain” stood for “Spain”.

[@rain8311]

Great video! For anyone looking for a specific language: 10:38 Scandinavian languages 11:00 German 11:08 Yiddish 12:45 Dutch 13:04 Hebrew 14:27 Arabic 14:47 Russian 15:11 Czech 15:49 Ukrainian 15:57 Polish 16:07 Romance languages 16:21 Romanian 16:34 Latin 17:44 Celtic languages 18:20 Mandarin 18:56 Japanese 20:24 Korean & Vietnamese 21:19 Greek, Hungarian & Turkish 21:30 Indonesian 21:40 Hawaiian 21:53 Hindi 22:15 Swahili & Zulu 23:06 Navajo 23:46 Valyrian 23:53 Klingon 24:26 Esperanto

[@nusi4043]

oh thank you SO much

[@svantlas6034]

Cries in Finnish...

[@MsBestPilotEver]

Finnish? @languagejones6784

[@Friedeggonheadchan]

yeah i guess there was no mention of Finnish in there at all…?

[@i0nce]

fInns always left out :'D

[@emmadrew50]

Something I’d like to add is that for some reason, the duo Japanese course doesn’t start consistently teaching you the kanji form of words until like 50 hours in, which means that until you get there, you won’t be able to read almost any Japanese outside of duo, even extremely simple sentences.

[@munzutai]

I attended an actual in-person Japanese course in university (1.5h once a week) and it was the same there. Didn't really start with Kanji until the next semester. I still don't think that's a good idea.

[@volvoxbazooka]

Kanji is not important to simply understand the language, and honestly I don't even recommend learning it to everyone. I find it incredibly useful personally, but to some who just want to speak as fast as possible, it's a lot of time that can be saved. And, you can get plugins and whatnot to throw up furigana which can help you read from most online sources. This is coming from someone who's studies are mainly kanji right now.

[@Walsh2571]

@@munzutaiwhat? I did a uni course too and the introductory course had us learn 100 kanji (which isn’t much but it’s useful) in the first unit.

[@NiteSaiya]

Duo started showing me Kanji like 5-10 hours in with little to no context and it confused the hell out of me, but I started a few years back so it sounds like they've since pushed the kanji back.

[@emmadrew50]

@@NiteSaiya The weird thing is that they do introduce kanji early on, but they only for like ~1% of the words.

[@andyarken7906]

The reason Norwegian is an outlier is that it has been done by a group of very dedicated, skilled contributors. As such, it is much better than other, centralised, courses I did (Italian). They did not only add pieces of actual Norwegian culture in there, they also did it in a fun way. Now, Norwegian is a simple language for me because I know both German and English. But I went straight from doing the course to reading books. That's how good the course is (thank you, Lynn, if you ever wander in here). If you are doing more than one of the centralised courses, you will get bored by the stories quickly because they are the same everywhere, so even if you don't understand a lot of Spanish, you just know it's the same story you already listened to in the Italian course.

[@LeelooBastet]

Same here, from Duolingo directly to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and I didnt struggle with the vocabulary a lot :) Great great course, the best one

[@ElMona]

That's funny because I am Norwegian and I find the Norwegian course to be really bad. It also has some blatant errors and mispronounciations

[@andyarken7906]

@@ElMona You shouldn't try to learn pronunciation in Duolingo, these are Google AI voices. What other errors did you find? How is it bad if one can read books after completing it?

[@Agrizz1ybear]

Was also an early adopter of the Norwegian course. Only has a hobby, but it helped me get to B1! Lynn and the team did a great job and I do miss them. Although there were some errors, it jump started you in a really good way. And the comment sections were super useful with the team always replying. Once Duolingo got rid of the comments I knew it was going downhill.

[@XtecHubble]

I have to admit that I indulged in the "shock locals" kind of video for a little bit. The best thing that I got from that is that I eventually landed in this channel. So, I guess it wasn't a complete waste of time haha

[@doctorbones941]

I hate to say it but this is totally a "shock locals" kind of video - the idea that a single person who, admittedly, has a good grasp of linguistics can comprehensively review every duolingo language for quality is still asinine. He's guessing at the lengths and final proficiencies, and doesn't really go into the factors that define "learning difficulty" or quality for different languages from an anglophone perspective. He mentions having a leg up when new grammar concepts are introduced, but what about unintuitable logographic scripts like Hanzi and Kanji? Kind of feels like your friend who has something to say about any and every wine - you're pretty sure he has zero authority or insight on some, but because he's a "wine guy" he makes redundant non-statements with absolute confidence.

[@thenextworstone9050]

@@doctorbones941 you're right but at the same time i'm not sure there's anyone else who HAS done this, so we might as well take his word for it lol. i for one am not going to play through every duo course so this is a useful resource

[@duggersdugers65]

@@doctorbones941 "Admittedly, has a good grasp of linguistics"? He has a PhD in linguistics, if you are going to imply smug over-confidence you might want to look in the mirror one day.

[@doctorbones941]

@@duggersdugers65When I make a video reviewing 30 people's reviews of every duolingo course with no data to substantiate it, I'll be sure to look in the mirror in horror. Until then, feel free to read the rest of the comment and address any of the actual points made.

[@four1629]

@@doctorbones941 those things are different. i understand you're making a comparison, but it's a poor one.

[@jokerzyo]

Oh great algorithm please shine favorably on this content creator he's dope

[@Braddowski]

Duolingo Norwegian has so much content because, when it was user-driven, the administrator-volunteers put a LOT of energy into creating (what was then) the best course on the platform with more content than the courses Duilingo thenselves produced.

[@joshuasims5421]

I enjoy Duolingo less as a language study tool, more as a language mobile game. With that in mind, I enjoy it quite a bit. I think your conclusion is on point. It's a great way to try out a language, and learn a few hundred words for a foundation, and give you a boost toward more serious study.

[@libraryoflilylol199]

I stopped not learning a language with Duolingo ages ago but my friend got me to start not learning a language with Lingo Legend instead. Neither option really does it for me - I don't retain much from either, but Lingo Legend has gameplay that I like so I stick with it. Honestly if Duolingo had a little virtual pet that I had to keep alive with my streak I'd probably still use it. Like they leaned way too hard into the owl being scary and threatening you. But they should have threatened the owl and told me how hungry it was and that the only way I can afford food for it is to do my Spanish lessons.

[@theorderofthebees7308]

😂

[@internetual7350]

And then send you emails with the owl slowly withering away as it parishes from its lack of nourishment.

[@heleddflower8082]

The Welsh course is entirely made by volunteers, hence why no speaking practice etc, but was supported by the Welsh Government to align with government standard taught courses in Wales. However, there is no explanation of mutations or even the difference between chi and ti, unless you go digging on the internet- the volunteers put such effort into the course and DuoLingo just shat on them from a great height. Now the Welsh course has been mothballed, meaning no more updates.

[@annas3059]

I've been on Duolingo for a over a decade and have used it to brush up my French, Italian and German and learn Welsh, Dutch and Arabic from almost scratch. I also tried Turkish but gave up after a couple of weeks. In the Welsh learning community there is an enormous amount of debate about the value of Duolingo. The course used to be a lot better when the comments were included, ie before enshittification, and the Welsh government have supported the course and ensured it links well with the government supported and subsidised live courses. For me, it got me to A2 when combined with watching TV (especially kids TV) during lockdown, so that I could skip the first couple of years of classes. The main competition in Welsh is Say Something in Welsh, which some love but which was too audio based for me. For Arabic I felt it was never going to teach me to speak, only to understand the script. After months of using it daily I hadn't learned any real verbs! Great analysis anyway.

[@ShinyStarfire]

Can you recommend any kids series in Welsh which are also available online? Since there are no Welsh courses where I live, I try to use as many sources as possible in addition to Duolingo.

[@RichardB1983]

@@ShinyStarfire It's only going to get you so far, but search out "Now You're Talking: Welsh", an early 1990s video series, which I think is mostly available on KZbin. There are over 30 short videos. Focuses mostly on conversations and features both North and South Wales dialects, with common situations you might encounter, whilst acting out a mini-soap, with some questionable fashion choices. Also visits lots of towns and cities all over Wales and so you find out about places round the country too.

[@hilarysklar4640]

The Turkish course is, in my opinion really bad. I've learned Turkish at evening classes and with private tutors. I have semi-conversational Turkish but Duolingo teaches tenses by starting with a tense which is rarely used.

[@Yes-gu2wn]

​@@ShinyStarfireIdk any of the tv shows. But a lot of the offical courses are done virtually over zoom. If you google learn welsh or dysgy cymraeg, you'll see the main site as the link. If your under 25 you'll get the courses for free

[@chickpeapeace]

ah the enshittification. i've been on duolingo for over a decade and i hardly want to keep up my streak any more it's so crap now

[@wurstkocher842]

It is kinda fun how the beginner language learner just kinda uses duolingo because they don't know any better but the more advanced language learner starts to dislike duolingo because they experienced more useful ressources but then suddenly the acadamic linguist says that duolingo can actually work really well if used optimally

[@HalfgildWynac]

It is so odd that has now become the common thinking. The way I see it, all kinds of resources work well when you are a complete beginner. Duolingo is even lacking as a phrasebook or a very nice friedly app for newbies. Eventually you get past the point you can say "hello", "banana" or "A boy is in the room" but still have much to go, and that is where losing motivation can be a factor. Duolingo works in that situation, mostly using your toilet time, and keeps moving you forward. Building sentences is important, and Duolingo is not that much different from a book of exercises in that sense. Over the years, I've used some extremely frustrating textbooks that try to teach you over 50 new words before a lesson or do not track their vocabulary much. Duolingo's average course is USUALLY a bit more predictable, even if it does not reach the polish and the length of ES

[@sunmethods]

holy crap it’s the IQ bell curve meme

[@wurstkocher842]

@@sunmethods exactly

[@wasserruebenvergilbungsvirus]

Like that IQ distribution meme with the hooded wojak :D

[@czyko]

"dogwater" - language simp mentioned 😎

[@languagejones6784]

Learned it from him. It’s objectively a great word. Probably my nomination for WOTY this year

[@13tuyuti]

​@@languagejones6784is there any other attested use of the word outside the youtube polyglot community and the Ren & Stimpy Show (which is where I first heard it)?

[@uamsnof]

Love it when my favorite lingophiles reference each other

[@jabur81]

Well, he is a hyper-polyglot gigachad alpha male

[@dgpi504]

Hearing your rendition of Tennessee-accented Shakespeare in the midst of a discussion of Yiddish gave me flashbacks to my own high school production of Fiddler on the Roof. Our Yente sounded exactly like Minnie Pearl, bless her heart. And, well, the less said about my take on Tevye, the better.

[@TheFranchiseCA]

Southern US English is often closer to Shakespeare than Received Pronunciation is, so I support this reading.

[@MaoRatto]

And why I get irrirated at RP due to lacking the complexity or the OO is weird in here in TN.

[@millenniumtree]

I had a HORRIBLE experience with Duolingo Japanese. How many times can the lessons repeat "She's a cool lawyer"? Something I will NEVER say on a trip to Japan? The _FIRST_ Japanese lesson in Pimsleur taught me more useful travel terms than THREE MONTHS of daily Duolingo junk. It was decent for learning hiragana and katakana, but there were massive frustrations with that as well, because you can't easily review what you've learned if you put it down for a while, without completing the entire thing.

[@autoimmunedefficiencysyndrome]

I've never had a Japanese teacher mention duolingo unless it's to warn me away from using it

[@sugar5374]

Disregarding how good Duolingo Japanese is; You shouldn‘t be concerned with phrase-learning if you want to learn a language properly. It‘s not about learning phrases you will use, it‘s about internalizing (important) words and using them in POSSIBLE sentences. Using your brain to think about the words you learned and creating your own sentences is a fundamental part of the learning process. If you are learning for a trip you can just write down your 50 needed sentences and learn them that way - There‘s no need for (a good) duolingo course to achieve that. Now, as to whether or not their Japanese course is good: It‘s okay. It should never be a primary learning resource for the language. It‘s a way to be in contact with the language outside of your usual learning spaces. Genki is what should dictate most of your learning journey.

[@autoimmunedefficiencysyndrome]

@sugar5374 naw fam their Japanese course isn't even good. It actually teaches you bad Japanese manners and actively degrades native nuances of the language and pragmatism

[@madeliner1682]

@sugar5374 yeah I agree language learning isn't about parroting phrases. So why does the Duolingo course barely even acknowledge the concept of grammar??? You know, the thing you gotta use if you want to slap your own concepts into a sentence? Not even a hint of how to tell words from particles in spoken Japanese? It's designed to keep you on the treadmill for as long as possible with as little useful knowledge gained as they can get away with (at least the Japanese course)

[@LovelyAngel.]

I'm a teacher of Japanese language and when I was researching possible sources for my students I decided to check Duolingo - it has an option to solve a test to skip to the highest level and I spent unnecessary 2 HOURS trying to finish the final level and the only reason was not Japanese at all but ENGLISH - almost all the tasks were based on putting an English sentence as a translation of a Japanese sentence and I was constantly not passing for not putting EXACTLY the ENGLISH sentence that there was supposed to be. That was so exhausting and at the end I just had to Google those English sentences to finally get them right because additionally putting a British spelling or a synonym of a word was giving a fail. And not only this type of exercise is absolutely useless on advanced level (why heavily rely on a different language when you're supposed to be already fluent in another one) but also the Japanese sentences the user was asked to translate had many mistakes. Many many mistakes. Can't imagine anyone can get anything out of Duolingo when it comes to Japanese, even the video creator sounds rather confused about the language why there shouldn't be a reason if the source is good.

[@FirstLast-gm9nu]

Oh THATS why its called rosetta stone.

[@Mac_an_Mheiriceanaigh]

hahahaha wow yeah clever

[@frechjo]

lol, it all makes sense now

[@jack2453]

Can't wait for the 'why I don't like Esperanto' video.

[@liquensrollant]

I do like opinionated videos made by linguists, I'm hanging out for that too.

[@Matzu-Music]

@@liquensrollant They're great because linguists aren't really meant to say a language is good or bad so seeing them do that is very entertaining

[@liquensrollant]

@@Matzu-Music Haha, too right!

[@JimCullen]

I agree! I've seen plenty of people reviewing Esperanto before but I'm always happy to see one more. I'd also love to see him talk more about Valyrian. "Annoyed" is such an interesting word to use to describe your opinion on something. Like, is it that it gets close to doing something good but misses in a small but profound way? Or just generally poor/lazy?

[@drago939393]

Same here, now I'm very curious. Valyrian too lol.

[@baileynicole1824]

Living in Texas on the gulf, I run into tons of people who only speak Spanish. I'm not sure about other places in the US, but regionally It always made sense to me why Spanish was the main language to learn because I'm going to interact with a lot of people who speak it.

[@elytaku5029]

It would be great if you made a mini follow-up for the languages learnable using other languages but not available for English users on the duolingo app. These languages are Guarani and Catalan for Spanish speakers and Cantonese for Mandarin speakers.

[@languagejones6784]

That’s a great idea!

[@Didntwanttomakeauser]

Oh no, did you just give me a reason to try and learn Mandarin again? How good does your Mandarin need to be to do the Cantonese course?

[@dogcatdogable]

@@Didntwanttomakeauser i imagine you just have to set your language to mandarin. i checked out the english course that way.

[@Didntwanttomakeauser]

@@dogcatdogable I mean my mandarin right now is shit tier. I'd have to put a lot of work in to be able to use it to ladder to Cantonese. But good Cantonese content is so hard to find there's a non zero chance it'd be worth the effort.

[@mihan5660]

​​@@Didntwanttomakeauser i did a few lessons. A lot of it was just changing traditional characters to simplified and vice versa. Since duolingo is more focused on writing and the biggest differences are in speaking, it's not as hard as you would first think

[@arm_613]

"Maybe you can order in a restaurant and SHOCK locals" 😂

[@Gabe-no5zy]

Thank you for producing a video about Duolingo that isn't just a rant. I really benefited from your other video about how to make Duolingo work for you. The information about each of the modules was invaluable since I've been doing the Ukrainian module on repeat for at least 6 months. Now I am refreshing my high school French. It was also helpful to hear your opinions about the modules, specifically the Yiddish and Hebrew. I was infuriated when I realized the Yiddish wouldn't help me speak with my neighbors and the poor audio quality of the Hebrew just made me cry, although I didn't have as much trouble with "no vowels" as I thought I would. It's so important to get that real-life experience! I predict you will have 1000s of comments... gotta go... and do my daily practice session. ;-)

[@generikadeyo]

I speak Japanese decently well and I got my foundation in the writing system and basic vocab on Duolingo but quickly found myself needing to go look for actual study resources to make real improvement. My actual Japanese Duolingo experience now a few years later is slogging through some extremely simplistic grammar while occasionally finding unique words I haven't encountered before. I'm glad Duolingo exists but I'm pretty sure I've exhausted it's potentially at this point. Fully agree with your assessment.

[@victoryeager7715]

I've been pretty impressed with the effort they've put into Scottish Gaelic, and it's been fun watching it improve. Thanks as always for great content.

[@h-Qalziel]

Yes, I was surprised to see it was the 8th largest course on Duolingo, considering it's one of the least learned on the platform and especially how recently it was made compared to the other languages. I was also surprised to see it was a level 3 language as it's been one of the easiest languages I've learnt out of the 20 or so languages I've tried. I guess that shows how well they've made the course. Especially compared to BBC Alba's Speak Gaelic where I don't think I would really be able to learn anything from.

[@letusplay2296]

PSA: the audio on the Japanese course is often incorrect and I would highly discourage anyone from using the Japanese course on Duolingo because you won't know how it's incorrect unless you already speak Japanese

[@ChebuChebu]

I have a problem with the Polish course - on polish subreddit we constantly get people, who are confused by the case system. Questions like "Why in this sentence is it 'pies' but in this one it's 'psem'?". It seems that there isn't like a mandatory intro to the language or at least grammar explanation that is easily findable/accessible. I myself tried learning Korean, but it was so unstructured then, that I gave up and just used TTMIK and other resources.

[@amorupatieee]

TTMIK is the best korean learning resource around the internet me thinks

[@ChebuChebu]

@@amorupatieee It seems like it. I love TTMIK. I was able to learn some Korean even when my English wasn't very good. I also managed to learn more English thanks to them. haha

[@etaosin]

I'm finish polish course and I say it has less mistake that I suppose to approach. Les then 5 in whole course. I also read comments and see that the sentences are changed continuously to be better and better. Now when they use AI I notice that the sentences also has more meaning. My crab is fastre then your turtle maybe teach you how to build sentences. But this sentence was useless :D

[@earthbit.]

One thing I do really like using Duolingo for: when it gives you the matching exercise where it wants you to pair 5 words to their English equivalent, I like to take all of the words it gives me and build sentences out of them. Even if it doesn’t make sense for those words to be used together, I MAKE them make sense. It’s a fun exercise, and it forces you to really think in your target language, because you’ll probably have to invent your own sentences; the prompts Duo has been giving you probably won’t cut it if your sentences are going to make sense. I’d recommend trying it.

[@yuvalne]

about the Yiddish course: I studied it and finished it while it was in beta, moved to other languages, and recently came back to see what changed since. to my amazement, it seems that the course got WORSE when it came out of beta. longer for sure, but lower quality, with a lot of pointless padding. also, one thing that automatically makes this version worse is there not being a comment section. if they don't teach me grammar rules and I don't have the comments to consult, I will literally never learn that some nouns behave like other grammatical genders in different cases.

[@whukriede]

They're constantly making things worse. They are awful.

[@NerfHerder909]

I don't know what the Yiddish word for "enshittification" is, but I'm sure there is one. As someone who had taken some YIVO Yiddish classes, the Duolingo Yiddish course was just... odd, at least at first. I get that it was a compromise, but it was jarring if you had any background in the language from either side of that disagreement. Though as a compromise, I did kind of love what they decided to do? But the abolition of the comments section is really, seemingly deliberately unhelpful on Duolingo's part.

[@shainachana]

Iirc, the comments section was constantly getting locked because everyone was complaining about the pronunciation 😂

[@yuvalne]

@@shainachana I don't mind it being locked, I mind it being deleted.

[@nerdpiphany7257]

I'm using duolingo to supplement my Chinese learning, and the best thing they have done for Chinese in the past year is to add a section where you draw characters. Yes, obviously I could be practicising my writing with pen and paper, but since I'm self-studying and no one checks my homework, I tend to skip the tedium of writing the same character fifteen times over. The gamification of duolingo really helps with that.

[@jamie5092]

i like the letter drawing part of the korean duolingo for the same reason :)

[@LovelyAngel.]

I'm a teacher of Japanese language and when I was researching possible sources for my students I decided to check Duolingo - it has an option to solve a test to skip to the highest level and I spent unnecessary 2 HOURS trying to finish the final level and the only reason was not Japanese at all but ENGLISH - almost all the tasks were based on putting an English sentence as a translation of a Japanese sentence and I was constantly not passing for not putting EXACTLY the ENGLISH sentence that there was supposed to be. That was so exhausting and at the end I just had to Google those English sentences to finally get them right because additionally putting a British spelling or a synonym of a word was giving a fail. And not only this type of exercise is absolutely useless on advanced level (why heavily rely on a different language when you're supposed to be already fluent in another one) but also the Japanese sentences the user was asked to translate had many mistakes. Many many mistakes. Can't imagine anyone can get anything out of Duolingo when it comes to Japanese, even the video creator sounds rather confused about the language why there shouldn't be a reason if the source is good.

[@Arnica_Burdock]

I have been studying Scottish Gaelic on Duolingo for a year and a half and I love the course. There are so few resources for this language, and even fewer with audio, that I am delighted to see how long it is. The audio, while missing occasionally, is all real recordings (one of them even sings a bit from the kid's show Dòtaman), expressing the appropriate emotion for the content, and representing a variety of dialects, which can be confusing but also provides a broader sense of how the spelling relates to pronunciation. From the posts which we used to have access to in the former discussions, people compared the Scottish Gaelic course very favorably over both the Irish and Welsh courses, which they found severly lacking in accuracy and overall quality.

[@seanmurphree4716]

From a chat I had with an Irish man who was also learning Irish (or re-learning it? He has connections to Irish speakers in the home country, and of course they learn a solid chunk of it in school) he was really disappointed in the course's AI voices. Their pronunciation was frequently all over the place, and didn't really have a 'home accent'. The main problem I had was that they seemed to cut off the first half-second of each word? For example, I had one listening exercise where you had to hit the button to listen to a word, and then press the corresponding written word. Both "te" (hot) and "im" (butter) were options, but each of their audios sounded like a grunt, despite these words sounding completely differently when properly sounded out. And if you guess the wrong one? That's one less life for you! This happened more than once a day on average, sometimes twice or thrice in a single section, and when the app is constantly shoving "spend money to get unlimited hearts" ads in your face, it feels a little more than scummy. It was like if I were to ask someone whether I was saying "Castellano" or "Está bien" by going "tae". Not fun. It got to the point where I dropped Duolingo entirely, because why try to learn a principally-spoken language through an app when the pronunciations are dreadful and the audio cuts out half the time?

[@evanagoldsby2467]

I've been slowly going thru the Yiddish course on Duolingo and didn't know the subtleties. Your description of it was quite amusing as being like Shakespeare speeches in a Tennessee accent..

[@stevencarr4002]

'If you've been under a rock....' Duolingo will still find you! Professor Jones puts correlation coefficients into language learning videos. Excellent! I expected nothing less....

[@sigmaoctantis1892]

I started using Duolingo to learn German, about two years ago. As my German improved, I started to notice that some of the English translations were quite peculiar. There were minor irritations like, why do I need to translate "Cafe (G)" to "coffee shop", instead of "cafe (E)", like I would normally say? I started to think the English had been written by non-native speakers, due to some confusion with the use of prepositions. Most notably with the misuse of "in" and "at". Finally, while trying to master the somewhat convoluted sentence structures of the English answers, I started thinking, maybe the German is as bad as the English. That was when I stopped using Duolingo.

[@legatrix]

I think the café thing is fair, at least from a UK perspective. We say 'shall we go to a coffee shop' if we mean Starbucks, Nero, Costa, etc., while 'let's find a café', I would associate more with eating something like an English breakfast, a roll, etc. Can also depend for some whether it's pronounced 'caff' (more basic premises with sausages, eggs, beans, etc) or 'café' (fancier place where I might expect a French-style brunch).

[@sigmaoctantis1892]

@@legatrix I go to a coffee shop. I buy coffee beans and get them to grind the beans. They sell a huge range of beans plus percolators and coffee machines etc. I go to a cafe with the café pronunciation. Caff is just plain weird, although I've heard it in UK based shows/movies. I might have breakfast, get a coffee and cake, sit down for lunch. They may or may not have table service. Starbucks failed dismally here, they made lousy coffee. There are still some of the around but not anywhere local to me. I was in Germany last year and what the Germans call a cafe looks like a cafe to me. So I feel justified! With Duolingo, what bothered me was that sense that some of the people who wrote the English translations were not 100% fluent in English and nobody had bothered to check their work.

[@Myrune1]

And there is no longer a way to suggest real changes or read what others thought. Also, the gender obfuscation thing drove me crazy.

[@Frou-hsr]

​@@Myrune1 agree 100%. In German, you have to learn the gender religiously. But in Duolingo, they rarely teach you the gender of the nouns

[@dreamervanroom]

@@legatrix I found in stydying Dutch (around the turn of the century, lol) the pronunciations were based on British english, so I had to imaging saying the English work with a British accent to say the Dutch correctly. Example the word "pot" Not the America pAHt, but the British pAWt.

[@kuromimmi]

ik heb zo veel respect voor u! ik wil ook meerdere talen spreken ik spreek nu nederlands en engels en ik wil japans leren maar het is zo moeilijk, het feit dat u zoveel talen kunt spreken is zo indrukwekkend

[@paulbailey2515]

I'm ready to listen to a livestream where you recite all of Shakespeare's Hamlet using a Tennessee accent.

[@hijackbyejack1729]

Cool, I am spoiled as the only user of Duolingo Norwegian 😊

[@shirl6135]

Nope it’s my second highest score language. jeg snakker det litt lol

[@aidanb.c.2325]

Er du sikker på det?

[@hijackbyejack1729]

@@aidanb.c.2325 Ja selvfølgelig

[@ArthurCAraujo]

The Norwegian course is the best on Duolingo! They put a lot of effort into it. I've finished the whole course. Jeg elsker dette kurset! ☺

[@ArthurCAraujo]

Hello, @@LangXplorer ! 😃 Firstly, it seems there was a mix-up here, haha. 😄 When I wrote that comment, I was referring to @hijackbyejack1729 's comment. I was replying to him. I haven't seen your comment. 😅 But that's all right! Anyway, I'm very happy that you gave me an answer too! Thank you very much! Regarding the course audio, I understand that you feel this way because, indeed, it's not perfect. But honestly, I like it a lot too! I think both the female and male audios are nice. I usually supplement my learning with other resources so that I know the correct pronunciation. So that's it. Thanks again for your reply! 😊

[@ericab3919]

Duolingo also not only doesn't have traditional Chinese, but also marks you incorrect if you type a traditional character into their prompts. It teaches pinyin decently, but also teaches words people don't say extremely early on (things like 哪兒）it fails to tell you that 你最近怎麼樣 means how have you been recently, but drop the time word and you just asked "what's wrong with you? " as a greeting. With all that said, I still recommend Duolingo but you can you'll basically pull all you can from it (if you're trying to learn traditional characters) within the first month.

[@Cocachin123]

From what I have seen of it the vocabulary actually seems to follow the HSK list pretty closely though.

[@Jotun184]

I find HelloChinese quite a good free app. The veery sloooow pronunciation of the tones honestly sounds a bit obnoxious (and not like how I hear natives say it) but they frequently have you listen to actual natives saying the same sentences so that levels out. And it's not AI, AFAIK. It'll never get close to as good as brute forcing good ol' Anki with sentence cards with native audio though in my opinion (Spoonfed Chinese for example). But they serve different purposes.

[@zeusthunder6674]

isn't 哪兒 pretty common though?

[@RCake]

I think "what's wrong with you" is actually a much more profound greeting than it appears 😂

[@alexm4611]

@@zeusthunder6674I think that’s another issue with teaching “standard Mandarin” in app form with little explanation of regional differences. There are so many different types of Mandarin speakers. Not everyone is learning Mandarin for the Beijing dialect. If I want to take a trip to say Malaysia or Taiwan and I proceed to learn to speak Mandarin like a Beijinger I’m going to sound real funny to my target audience and potentially run into issues understanding what these native speakers are trying to communicate back. IMHO it’s better to focus on your goal in learning Chinese. If you just need to take HSK tests, then sure 哪儿/哪兒 is fine, but if you want to speak to people of a specific region finding something like a local tutor on italki will avoid having to unlearn weird sayings, pronunciations and general bad language habits. To more directly answer your question, (lol sorry for the rant) it depends on the region. In Taiwan for example 哪裡 (pronounced nálǐ sometimes) is way more common and 哪兒 is essentially never used.

[@krisinsaigon]

I live in Vietnam, the pronouns aren't that difficult, there's basically one for a ,man younger than you, one for a man older, one for a woman younger than you, one for a woman older than you, one for a very old woman, you can pick them up in ten minutes, where it's different is that the pronoun remains the same whether it's the subject or the object. It's not that tricky, the hard part is the lack of cognates.

[@woodfur00]

And the fact that Duolingo doesn't actually explain much of anything. If you can't pick up the logic from seeing it in a few sentences absent of context, you're not going to pick it up.

[@JohnnyLynnLee]

@JohnnyLynnLee It's way harder than that. About Vietnamese: Yep! The pronouns depend on sex, age and social standing. You have to keep track of the age of people all the time and that's pretty hard since Asians look YOUNGER to people from the West. That's hard enough but that's NOT NLY THAT. Younger people don't adhere strictly to that so that may also change depending on the level of intimacy you have with the person. But that itself also depends on the person. SO the level of variation is WILD. Let's put it this way, you are an older man and she is a younger woman. You have to say one thing, she has to say another thing. But if she wants to date you she may DROP it. In which case you may have to drop it too (or not, because it may be too early for you to accept the invitation- yeah... it's complicated). BUT you may find that she meant to drop it ONLY between the two of you and that dropping it in front of other people may make her lose face. Good look! Exposure it's the only way o get it. It's highly contextual.

[@JohnnyLynnLee]

PS: it only looks easier probably because they are treating as a foreigner, meaning as an outsider. Same with Japanese (in which I'm fluent, I'm four years into Vietnamese and still there's a long way to go to be where I'm in Japanese in Vietnamese). The EXPECTATIONS put on you will drastically change along with your perceived level of Japanese. Same for Vietnamese. The better you get the less you can get away with things. Always have that in mind.

[@JohnnyLynnLee]

There`s a drastic difference in nuance between それがいい and それでいい as an answer in Japanese. The person can be very pleased or very upset, or sad, depending on which one you chose in a given situation. But if they see you just as a gaijin it doesn`t matter. But if one day you pick it wrong and there are consequences that means you are really good at Japanese now. So much that they expect you to UNDERSTAND the difference and, therefore, they assume you did it on purpose. Trust me! That cnan be a lot of drama.

[@SusanaXpeace2u]

oooh that sounds fraught with difficulty with people five years more or less.. if you see a man who's a overweight balding but he's five years younger than.

[@zevelgamer.]

I've been on Duolingo Italian for 33 days, it's been pretty okay. They give me a premium for free so I'm happy. Now I can say I'm from Philadelphia.

[@magvs_mæstro216]

Ha. Congrats 👍. I'm about to play right now......hope that I get one more free day

[@Strawbclock0]

PHILLY MENTIONED 🎉🥪

[@user-lr2en2cq9q]

Come il pugile Rocky Balboa???

[@zevelgamer.]

@@user-lr2en2cq9q non lo so

[@Monocultured01]

I'm a little ahead of you at 53 days. Il mio vicino è di Filadelfia.

[@ElguirideCalafell-sb1yz]

Thanks for this review, really appreciated. I'll continue my learning journey of Italian and Russian. My brother moved to Lisbon, and in the passed I considered using Duolingo for Portuguese, but the app only offers the Brasilian variant, which is very different (apparently the difference is bigger than between European Spanish and "latin" Spanish or European english and American english). That's something you forgot to point out. Keep up the good work!

[@chippatullo2824]

Oh, my, goodness! Your commitment to data and research is top notch. Thanks for the analysis. Plus, you humor always gets me laughing out loud.

[@skunk-kr6mi]

hey im one of those 8 people learning dutch, thank you for the well wishes!

[@foogod4237]

One of the things you didn't really mention about Duolingo is also that the whole design of their software is very obviously based on the way European languages work, and many of the other languages have just been shoehorned into that system, instead of developing activities that are actually tailored to the sorts of things you need to learn for some of the more different languages (such as East Asian ones). For example, with Japanese, some of the types of exercises that come up would make sense with a Latin alphabet, but they don't actually make sense (or don't actually teach you anything) in Japanese because they're dealing with a different way of writing things that doesn't work the same way, etc. IMHO, it's not a deal breaker, but it does make the course feel a lot less efficient, and sometimes more tedious. On the other hand, some things that would be really useful to learn more in depth (such as kanji composition and pronunciations) just aren't really covered at all, because they only have one predefined set of exercise types that they use for everything, and none of those predefined types are designed to handle that sort of problem (because it's just not an issue with European languages, which is what all the software was obviously based on). Oh, and they basically don't teach you the Japanese kana at all anymore. Sure, they've got a weird little add-on thing which isn't actually part of the main course which runs through them quickly, but it's laughably brief, does not have any of the variety of exercise types or fun of the main course, and that's only if you know you should be going and looking for it anyway, since that is not where the course actually starts. It is so clearly an afterthought it's actually kinda insulting, IMHO. Because of this, I would not recommend Duolingo for Japanese to anyone who hasn't already at least spent time getting familiar with Hiragana and Katakana on their own using some other method first. And they keep rearranging the course, so it feels like I'm stuck in some sort of sysiphusian language limbo, where every time I make progress toward finishing the course, I find myself suddenly many lessons, or even whole sections back from where I used to be with no warning, and I don't even have any idea what's actually changed. (I'm not usually this cynical, but at this point I'm kinda legitimately suspecting that the constant reorganizations are actually a deliberate tactic to keep people from ever actually finishing the language, so they can make them keep using the app longer and try to extract more revenue out of them...) But that having been said, it is still a useful tool for me anyway. I would never recommend that anybody use it just by itself, but in combination with some other learning materials, I do find that Duolingo is useful for giving me a good variety of sentences to work with, introducing me to occasional new vocabulary words and grammar that supplement what I'm getting elsewhere, and most importantly, keeping me motivated to do at least some language study every day, which IMHO is very important to actually make real progress. That aspect alone is probably worth keeping it in many people's language learning toolbox, in my opinion.

[@diogeneslamp8004]

Sysiphean?

[@jijitters]

Eh, I disagree with your Japanese course criticism. No one needs to learn to write kanji, only recognize them. And gradually integrating characters into lessons is a more effective way of getting users to learn them, rather than just having lessons dedicated to writing characters. You'll never need to write characters irl unless you're trying to genuinely form a life in Japan as if you were Japanese, and someone like that wouldn't be on Duolingo. Recognizing the characters and being able to pronounce and understand them is all you need. Everything is electronic these days. I do the writing / stroke order lessons when I didn't feel like turning on my brain enough for full lessons but still wanna hit my streak, but they're pretty much a waste of time.

[@brianahoffman9622]

I did all the DuoLingo content for Ukrainian. It was a good starting point and it was very helpful for learning the Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet. It was time well spent, but as you said you won't get to fluency. A good grammar course is needed and I used Lingq to stuff vocabulary into my brain.

[@whitewolffearly0013]

As a Ukrainian learner who is trying to become fluent, do you know of any other apps or sources I could use to get closer to fluency? I fully grasp the grammar and alphabet, but I am looking to expand my vocabulary.

[@brianahoffman9622]

@@whitewolffearly0013 I am a language junkie and I've tried a lot of different apps and methods to learn vocabulary. Flashcards don't work for me. The two best ways I find to learn vocabulary are learning the words to songs in that language and the Lingq app which is both web based and it has a mobile app. The free version of the app has a LOT of great material. For EXTRA fun, I have a paid subscription to Lingq and import recordings and transcripts that my Ukrainian friends make for me. I am literally learning the words that my friends use. It makes it easier to understand each person who helps me. I have learned thousands of words on Lingq.

[@ChrisBadges]

​@@whitewolffearly0013LingQ is even free for Ukrainian, in support of the country's plight. You can import texts/KZbin videos of your interest to use as resources.

[@marianavytvytska6998]

@@whitewolffearly0013 I would say, reading is really helpful for both vocabulary and grammar. Thanks God the Ukrainian alphabet is read the way it is written. LingQ is a nice source. Reading from e-readers with pop-up dictionaries, reading in browser with pop-up dictionaries- reading everything helps a lot. Maybe primarily something easy, like comments on KZbin, after that some stories, songs.

[@StarChild1109]

I LOVE the instant feedback of the characters after you submit your answers. Keeps things fun!

[@willful759]

It had been a while since I needed to take a shot Also just want to mention, this is one of my favorite channels currently

[@nickbailey9552]

Tried their Navajo, you aren't kidding, it really isn't enough. I would say its basically enough to get a taste if someone is interested. Really, I'd say the best way to learn Dine bizaad is to make Navajo friends and learn from their parents, that's how I learned it growing up.

[@SaeSaeyoungyoung]

Just so it is a fun fact: Duolingo was created by the same person who created the Recaptcha: Luis Von Ahn. A guatemalan, who's now living in the United States.

[@niahniah123]

I was looking for the Haitian Creole mention and am happy to know you found the language fun! :)

[@M0ONCommander]

Duolingo used to be a very competent language learning platform. There was a lesson section, even in some of its less popular languages, like Romanian. And the forums were a great way to get input from native speakers into vernacular phrases and to clarify misconceptions. But when I downloaded it again last year, it was changed entirely for the worst. Not only are the lessons no longer available, now there's a life system that prevents you from progressing if you make the typical mistakes that are bound to happen when learning a language. And even more so, when you are deprived of the lesson primer that was meant to give you a minuscule idea of the grammar behind the sentences you're filling in. It's pretty much candy crush, but less slay.

[@henrys3138]

You're doing what people have intuitively known for years, at least those more concerned with depth on its failings and benefits. You've put it rather succinctly in this video and gave the best quantitative approach I've seen yet. I used Duolingo for German and found it intensely frustrating the more skilled I became. It did however provide a great testing ground as a supplement and one indispensable for my pursuits to use the language in Germany. It has its place, but needs improvement like anything else.

[@liquensrollant]

I am just going to be frank - I LOVED the Shakespeare in that accent. The more time passes, the only accent in which Shakespeare appears absurd to me is RP, not because it sounds bad per se, but it does sound affected. Ben Crystal did a marvellous version of the Hamlet soliloquy in a reconstructed Shakespearean accent.

[@BrooksMoses]

I think part of it is not just the accent, but that it's hard to do something emotionally-flat in that accent, and this version certainly wasn't emotionally flat but it also wasn't overly-affected emotion either. I loved it too.

[@liquensrollant]

@@BrooksMoses Interesting observation. In my head, though, southern US accents, with their languid drawl, are perfectly suited to expressing a resigned melancholy. Is that what you mean by flat? I'm not great with these terms, and I guess everyone feels them differently.

[@Miglow]

Not the first time I've seen Shakespeare in a Southern accent. I think it was even a meme on some circles of tiktok

[@davespriter]

wow, you’re really great at presenting information in an interesting way! i HAVE to subscribe

[@johnmackenreillytag]

Duolingo was an excellent way for me to dip my toe back into Irish after not speaking a word since school. It was great for dusting off the cobwebs but I moved onto other (better) learning materials fairly quickly.

[@Daoist_Oak]

Bro's courting death 💀 That green bird is gonna have a field day 🐦

[@somsnosa5576]

Thanks, that was very interesting and useful!

[@OneWordataTime1]

do work son! This is fascinating and I'm jealous you got to analyzing this first. Curious for a deep dive on the effectiveness vs. other types of study (but I realize the amount of work that went into this 26 minute video)

[@popando]

I had fun with it with a year streak, until I decided it wasn't as helpful as it should have been. Using other resources has been much better, but Duo will always be good for beginners.

[@FranG1214]

I agree. I've been using Duolingo Spanish for 6 months now, starting as a complete beginner. I'm in their B1 section, and I feel like I have a pretty good base, in grammar and vocabulary specifically. I've also been using supplemental content in addition to Duolingo, so that has helped also. I'm now at the point where I feel I need to demote Duolingo as the primary learning tool and switch to more intense comprehensible input. I'm now listening to podcasts on LinQ and doing more reading (more than just the isolated sentences on Duolingo).

[@memesgaeilge]

The Irish course doesn't use real people for the audio. It's AI voices. Has been for a while unfortunately. It's such a shame! It used to be an actual native speaker! :(

[@ajfizzlesticks5423]

I've been needing a video like this for a while! I want to start learning German and I like to build a solid foundation in a language before switching to comprehensible input, so I needed to know if the course was any good. Thank you for putting so much work into this video, it was a really good watch!

[@whitehorsept]

16:07 "Most have Portuguese.. of either flavor: spicy or original. "😂😂😂😂 This bursted me into loud laughter. 😂😂 Thank you. Original here.

[@mikaelshainkman8818]

What about Finnish? I didn't catch your review of the Finnish course. (Personally I found it too short and not even close to giving you real skills, but what did you think?)

[@xitvono]

I think it's very incomplete. I think the only past tense word they teach is oli.

[@zacharycollins3757]

My partner has been using the Finnish course for a while now (I am a native speaker), and it’s nearly useless - nothing but memorization of vocabulary.

[@elvwood]

I found it useful right at the start when I was a total beginner, now I pretty much just use it as a daily reminder so I don't forget about it altogether. If I'm not concentrating I often pick the right words just from the endings without thinking about what they actually mean, so it doesn't even do much to improve my vocab. I'm looking for alternatives that work better - but I only have a short amount of time daily.

[@Anton-wk8lv]

I did the whole course and didn't learn how to say a single body part, which feels like basic ground that *should* be covered. I go back every now and then just to not forget all the vocabulary, but if you want to actually learn Finnish, Duolingo is not nearly enough.

[@jijitters]

Duolingo is the only/app site that offers Finnish, so I'm stuck with it, but it's not intuitive at all. Finnish is already extremely difficult and confusing as a language because the conjugation is so complex and overly layered compared to most other languages and it's not "natural" for an English speaker to pick it up, and the app does a terrible job of integrating it into the lessons.

[@InnerProp]

I started on Duolingo because it was the only free app with Modern Greek at the time. You didn't say your analysis of Greek. I actually watched this on the toilet.

[@cpizz99]

Greek is OK. Two main gripes are that 1) it teaches you tons of vocab you don't need/won't ever use and drills you on it endlessly instead of introducing new words you'd actually use, and 2) it's intonation for questions is all wrong - its questions sound like statements. Helpful in conjunction with Pimsleur, but could be way more efficient IMO.

[@InnerProp]

@@cpizz99 I do use it with Pimsleur and I have to say it works very well as a tandem. That is to say I feel like I learned the most that way, not that I've accomplished it.

[@OsirusHandle]

i found the lessons really repetitive and it was too hard to slog through them

[@cantufekci23]

Knowing duo’s secret is very dangerous. If duo suspects that you might give its secret, you’re in danger… Unless you do it in different languages

[@lioness_of_Judah]

I just recently found this channel (I’m a language nerd currently studying in Germany) and I’m SO glad I did!

[@irgendwieanders2121]

D'Ehre

[@headstanding_Penguin]

Personally I liked the old tree structure better, because it allowed me to progress much quicker and decide the ammount of intake by myself, I used to do 2-3 units then going back and do the older ones to gold and then switch again to new stuff... (Then again, I had had half a year of torture with an absolutely dry and boring learningpsychology class and had learnt 2.5 languages during school) ... For me the path currently has way too many repetitions, but that's a me issue...

[@larsporsena9529]

Since you’re in New York and a linguist I encourage you to look at the absolutely batshit insane, yet hugely effective, Latin-Greek Institute at Brooklyn college. Moreland and Fleischer was written for that course. Rita F. is quite old now, but still makes an occasional appearance to give out (single) m&ms to students.

[@ofkhod3638]

Banger video, very entertaining and I do love me some graphed data

[@tommynaclerio]

Liked for all the work you put into the video. Respect bro.

[@PumpkinMozie]

I am offended that they have Klingon and High Valyrian but not Quenya, Sindarin, or any of Tolkien’s other conlangs😒

[@IkarusKommt]

Tolkien is a long-dead fascist. There is no money in him.

[@unapatton1978]

You got me at "I have graphs" ^^

[@memkiii]

Duolingo lost 50% of it's value when they got rid of the comments. I am also immensely frustrated that it assumes I speak Californian American, rather than Standard English. In the German course, it translates German words that have obvious English translations into some American vernacular. Serviette is translated for no obvious reason into Napkin. Others Such as KäseSpätzle into Cheese (obvious), Spatzle... WHUT? Rucksack into Backpack, I know that is "literally" correct, but who doesn't use the word rucksack? A backpack is something you put your kids books in. Those are trivial ones I can remember, but it goes deeper, I often find myself having to translate from German into into English, then into 'Murcan to get a correct answer.

[@arrunzo]

I love your unique data-driven analysis to substantiate your claims! Few bother to do anything similar. I really like seeing which languages "punch above their weight" (as you put it) in regards to content. This video was like kind of like seeing a science experiment or study carried out. Your graphs about these languages reminds me a little of the "Power Language Index" (PLI) by Dr. Kai L. Chan, where Bengali is more spoken than Japanese, but yet, Japanese remains one of the most powerful languages in the world despite having fewer speakers. Great stuff!

[@twinkles222]

I think you skipped Finnish! Its unrelated to the other Scandinavian languages so I don't know if youre counting it under that category in terms of course quality

[@mendamend]

Moi. Ootko suomesta ?

[@alguient1298]

Duolingo needs a Farsi course.

[@BinroWasRight]

Well said! I'd noticed the huge and seemingly random variety in the amount of material too, and not always in ways you'd expect. I'm learning Scottish Gaelic on Duolingo as both a fun mental exercise and a heritage journey, and I can tell you they used to have a lot less at first, but it is impressive how much material there is now. Also, I really like the way the place names, food items, cultural references and such highlighted are actually common where it's currently spoken like the Hebrides, Shetlands and Nova Scotia, obviously preparing people for either visiting or living there. Very practical! And an excellent way to treat the Celtic languages as living media rather than museum pieces. I am also taking the Hawaiian course, and I'm glad they're supporting a language that is fighting for survival, but yes, it's limited. At this point anything to keep it alive, though. And their Asian languages truly need some work, as you said.

[@isabelmartin-lyons2342]

For Welsh I would highly recommend taking actual classes which are heavily subsidised and can be attended on line. This is especially true if you want to learn the dialect of the north, duolingo occasionally tells you specific nouns that are different but it doesn't do a good job of the more fundamental stuff in my opinion (including a whole vowel sound that isn't made in the south).

[@sophomorphia]

As a Norwegian and Spanish learner I see this as an absolute win :)

[@fernandoteitelbaum]

delighted to see my grandpa's ס'איז שווער צו זיין א ייד really used in a video in a simply PERFECT context. I'm shocked. Greetings from Brazil

[@suzanneemry5770]

Thank you for reviewing Hebrew. I have been plodding through for years and often feel confused. I feel like I often can guess a verb but can't tell you what conjugation is which. I don't really have time to supplement it with anything but I am glad to know that it's not just my lack of talent for learning language that makes trying to figure out what rules of conjugation they are teaching me.

[@Alex-pdx]

Great stuff! I had only used Duolingo for Spanish and I definitely assumed every language had an identical course. I also didn't think they were very clear about what the benefits to the giant updates to the programs were.

[@artbyahj]

Still waiting for Duolingo to teach Elvish😄

[@kevinrobbau]

Colloquial Zulu is a train-wreck - so full of proofreading errors that I had to find my copy of Teach Yourself Complete Zulu to figure out what I'm supposed to learn. I quit after Unit 8 - I should have quit sooner.

[@languagejones6784]

OH NO!!! Why is Routledge like this???

[@alexgospodinov2588]

Great video! I am shocked and love the references to Language Simp (you know, the man who hates linguistics and IPA)

[@zerklang]

This is a great video, but it needs to be a blog post, too. Would be great to have those graphs to share!

[@zerklang]

You didn't say anything about Swedish specifically, and I find the audio for that one to be real crap. Maybe I should be learning Norwegian instead?

[@JCtheMusicMan_]

Thank you for sharing your passion for language learning! ❤ Dulingo is the perfect app for me due to the gamification of language learning. I had previously stayed away from it due to the limitations of the free version. However, I paid for the membership after watching your video on it a year ago. I started learning Ukrainian two years ago but made the most progress on Duolingo. I also watch a lot of Ukrainian news and also now have several friends from Ukraine. Ukrainian’s I speak to can understand me and are very friendly and helpful with correcting me on proper word cases.

[@whitewolffearly0013]

Can you recommend any other sources to try and get better at Ukrainian?

[@Nathouuuutheone]

Dulingo has given me too many "wait but why is that even wrong?" moments for me to consider it helpful. And I recently found communities of french learners and quickly saw that their lessons were major crap and leading them into similar frustrations. I wouldn't ever recommend it in good faith unless someone has some kind of teacher or conversation partner who already knows things.

[@kamikitazawa]

Appreciate the dedication you put into this. In a venn diagram comparing language nerds and people who like comprehensive data, I imagine the overlapping part is pretty large

[@AmandainGeorgia]

Thanks for all this work! I live in Georgia (the country) but grew up in Indiana (the state), so I’ve needed to learn Georgian. I can’t imagine how it would work on Duolingo, which is probably why (along with the number of speakers) that it isn’t there. But I was a university level Russian instructor in a previous life, and I really enjoy Duolingo for helping me remember my Spanish, learn some French, brush up my very rusty Hungarian, and play around with Hawaiian and Polish. Everything you said rings true to my experience. When I think back to how limited resources were when I was learning Russian, I’m so impressed at the availability of such a breadth of resources.

[@june.w.1288]

Hi Amanda, greetings from Hungary! I'm happy you are interested in learning our language.

[@zekester2097]

I am officially one of the eight Dutch learners on Duolingo. I've been kiiinda slowly learning it off-and-on for about three years, and honestly, whenever I'd take breaks with the app, I find I'm amazed at how much I've successfully retained. (For the record, I'm currently halfway through Section 2)

[@languagejones6784]

Ja, hoor! Succes!

[@jack2453]

I've been doing German longer than I can remember and it loops me around some pretty easy content rather than training me in the hard stuff like relative clauses, subjunctive etc.

[@ChrisBadges]

​@@jack2453 agreed on the relative clauses, but subjunctive is something even native speakers have trouble with...

[@irgendwieanders2121]

@@jack2453 Learn German, then come to Austria ;-)

[@InnerProp]

I'm one of the other 8. I don't remember seeing you.