My kids were big into Duolingo, one learning Finnish and the other learning Japanese. So I didn’t mind paying for extra stuff because, hey, it’s educational.
But then I’d ask them to say something in Japanese, or what something says - we watch a lot of anime - and they wouldn’t be able to. So I don’t pay for it anymore because it’s not actually educational.
Interestingly, I’m watching this great video as I type this which compares Duolingo to a casino, and I don’t entirely disagree.
Duolingo is just a tool, I think. You can’t rely on it entirely to learn a language. And especially you have to take an active role in learning when using duolingo. I’m using it to learn Japanese, and I think I’m picking it up somewhat decently.
But what I do is that I don’t look at the word banks when translating, and when there’s a listening activity, I don’t look at the text on the screen. I just try to follow entirely based on what I hear. I always say the Japanese out loud, and I try to form sentences in Japanese by forcing myself to think in Japanese (as opposed to thinking in English and then translating the words into Japanese). And, of course, use other resources to figure out the nuances of the grammar and the vocabulary!
I think if you view duolingo as a way to get more practice with the language, it’s actually a fantastic resource. You just can’t rely on it as an exclusive learning tool
Also, the Japanese that’s spoken in anime isn’t really colloquial Japanese or really even the same Japanese that duolingo covers. Heavily exaggerated example, but it’s a bit like asking someone to translate Shakespeare when someone is learning English. There will be some words that they can pick up, so your children might be able to get the gist of what’s being said, but the tone and wording isn’t really the same.
Not to mention, Japanese is spoken really quickly. Iirc, it’s one of, if not the, fastest languages spoken, when measured in syllables over time. You would find better success with asking your children to translate if you find a Japanese speaking online personality who is known to speak slowly and clearly. Hololive is actually pretty good on this front
You’re absolutely right. If my kids were living in Finland or Japan then practicing the language they experience every day would help to form the connections that make a language “stick.” I’m reminded of the only good scene from The Thirteenth Warrior where Antonio Banderas explains how he learned the Viking language with two words: “I listen.”
That being said, it’s far better than my education in French. I took four years in high school and three semesters in college and can barely understand it. Plus I didn’t have nearly as much fun as them.
I think that’s also how you get to being able to think in another language too. When you’re immersed in it, it seeps into your thought process.
In lots of Canada we have French immersion schools, where English-speaking kids who never encounter French outside of the classroom can become quite fluent in French by giving over half their instruction in French. With age and a few hours of exposure per day, it etches itself into the brain pretty well.
I don’t completely agree that anime Japanese is so different from real life Japanese. There is certainly some grammar used that, while correct Japanese, would very rarely be used in real speech. But for the most part, once you have a solid foundation of the language down, and anime or untranslated manga can become very good tools for learning. However, I would not use anime or manga for learning until you know enough to know what is out-of-place and should not be used in real life speech.
I feel as though using structured learning via textbook and—if possible—class (in person or online) is ideal until about early intermediate level. You can tell that there has been a lot of thought into what is taught when. After that, learning on your own becomes easy as you can easily identity what you don’t know and what exactly you need to look up.
i’ve been doing some 15 minutes of duolingo japanese for almost 10 months now, and i think i know a bit of japanese, and i could vaguely understand lyrics of songs if i stop it and read the text, i think the main issue for some people is that they only do it to “keep the streak”, which is the case for a lot of my irl friends, and they barely learnt anything. One of my friend did do a large number of russian lessons daily, and i think he now knows quite a bit of russian (aka, can speak)
i dont think i’ll be able to speak japanese in a daily convo in quite a while, cuz im too scared to speak, however im starting to understnad what they are speaking, so its not entirely accurate to say duolingo is pointless, cuz it really depend on ur attitude towards it
also, almost none of the anime kids ive met know any amount of japanese, the two topics couldnt be any more different
Duolingo isn’t a way to learn a language, in my opinion. It is really helpful, but I don’t remember new things from duo lessons. It’s only helpful to remember stuff I’ve learnt in actual language lessons. I’ve gotten better at German since I started duolingo but I haven’t learnt anything new.
Duolingo is better than nothing.
But watching movies with subs will help u much more. Writing anything using language u want to learn is also a good way to get better at writing and probably reading.
Watching movies is certainly a good way to help your foreign language skills, but it’s practicing comprehension more than anything.
Being forced to formulate sentences on your own is a different skill that requires practice as well if you actually want to be able to speak a language. If Duolingo is too mechanical for you, there are other apps that let you find and chat with people who are interested in language exchange.
You can try any online app (like lemmy) where you can chat with native speakers.
You can join Discord servers for practicing your speaking (I would like to know a good open source alternative, but I don’t) or some chat roulette. But first you need to have good comprehension, if you have it you probably can put few sentences together.
I’ve found that when I watch something in another language with subtitles, I find myself going by what I heard, and using the subtitles to support or reinforce sections or words I didn’t understand. I often end up disagreeing with how things are translated, or there is something said in the foreign language that can’t simply be translated. In other words, I think using subtitles as reinforcement can be useful, whereas just reading every line and not thinking in the other language for yourself might not really be helping you much.
Right, I’m not saying it’s useless, just a different type of learning. As you said, it’s more of a reinforcement activity — repeating the words you may have already learned and putting them into a variety of real life contexts helps you remember them better.
However, at least personally, I do find it rather difficult to learn new words that way unless I constantly pause and rewind, which breaks the flow of the story and ends up not being super enjoyable.
When you learn new words, you need to actively repeat them a bunch of times until they stick, and Duolingo seems better suited for that.
I find duolingo works fine for learning new words or just practicing the language. Starting to learn is just hard because the lessons are not structured well and concepts really are not explained at all sometimes. Bit it might just be my experience because I am learning a less popular language.
My kids were big into Duolingo, one learning Finnish and the other learning Japanese. So I didn’t mind paying for extra stuff because, hey, it’s educational.
But then I’d ask them to say something in Japanese, or what something says - we watch a lot of anime - and they wouldn’t be able to. So I don’t pay for it anymore because it’s not actually educational.
Interestingly, I’m watching this great video as I type this which compares Duolingo to a casino, and I don’t entirely disagree.
Duolingo is just a tool, I think. You can’t rely on it entirely to learn a language. And especially you have to take an active role in learning when using duolingo. I’m using it to learn Japanese, and I think I’m picking it up somewhat decently.
But what I do is that I don’t look at the word banks when translating, and when there’s a listening activity, I don’t look at the text on the screen. I just try to follow entirely based on what I hear. I always say the Japanese out loud, and I try to form sentences in Japanese by forcing myself to think in Japanese (as opposed to thinking in English and then translating the words into Japanese). And, of course, use other resources to figure out the nuances of the grammar and the vocabulary!
I think if you view duolingo as a way to get more practice with the language, it’s actually a fantastic resource. You just can’t rely on it as an exclusive learning tool
Also, the Japanese that’s spoken in anime isn’t really colloquial Japanese or really even the same Japanese that duolingo covers. Heavily exaggerated example, but it’s a bit like asking someone to translate Shakespeare when someone is learning English. There will be some words that they can pick up, so your children might be able to get the gist of what’s being said, but the tone and wording isn’t really the same.
Not to mention, Japanese is spoken really quickly. Iirc, it’s one of, if not the, fastest languages spoken, when measured in syllables over time. You would find better success with asking your children to translate if you find a Japanese speaking online personality who is known to speak slowly and clearly. Hololive is actually pretty good on this front
You’re absolutely right. If my kids were living in Finland or Japan then practicing the language they experience every day would help to form the connections that make a language “stick.” I’m reminded of the only good scene from The Thirteenth Warrior where Antonio Banderas explains how he learned the Viking language with two words: “I listen.”
That being said, it’s far better than my education in French. I took four years in high school and three semesters in college and can barely understand it. Plus I didn’t have nearly as much fun as them.
I think that’s also how you get to being able to think in another language too. When you’re immersed in it, it seeps into your thought process.
In lots of Canada we have French immersion schools, where English-speaking kids who never encounter French outside of the classroom can become quite fluent in French by giving over half their instruction in French. With age and a few hours of exposure per day, it etches itself into the brain pretty well.
I don’t completely agree that anime Japanese is so different from real life Japanese. There is certainly some grammar used that, while correct Japanese, would very rarely be used in real speech. But for the most part, once you have a solid foundation of the language down, and anime or untranslated manga can become very good tools for learning. However, I would not use anime or manga for learning until you know enough to know what is out-of-place and should not be used in real life speech.
I feel as though using structured learning via textbook and—if possible—class (in person or online) is ideal until about early intermediate level. You can tell that there has been a lot of thought into what is taught when. After that, learning on your own becomes easy as you can easily identity what you don’t know and what exactly you need to look up.
i’ve been doing some 15 minutes of duolingo japanese for almost 10 months now, and i think i know a bit of japanese, and i could vaguely understand lyrics of songs if i stop it and read the text, i think the main issue for some people is that they only do it to “keep the streak”, which is the case for a lot of my irl friends, and they barely learnt anything. One of my friend did do a large number of russian lessons daily, and i think he now knows quite a bit of russian (aka, can speak)
i dont think i’ll be able to speak japanese in a daily convo in quite a while, cuz im too scared to speak, however im starting to understnad what they are speaking, so its not entirely accurate to say duolingo is pointless, cuz it really depend on ur attitude towards it
also, almost none of the anime kids ive met know any amount of japanese, the two topics couldnt be any more different
Duolingo isn’t a way to learn a language, in my opinion. It is really helpful, but I don’t remember new things from duo lessons. It’s only helpful to remember stuff I’ve learnt in actual language lessons. I’ve gotten better at German since I started duolingo but I haven’t learnt anything new.
Duolingo is better than nothing. But watching movies with subs will help u much more. Writing anything using language u want to learn is also a good way to get better at writing and probably reading.
Watching movies is certainly a good way to help your foreign language skills, but it’s practicing comprehension more than anything.
Being forced to formulate sentences on your own is a different skill that requires practice as well if you actually want to be able to speak a language. If Duolingo is too mechanical for you, there are other apps that let you find and chat with people who are interested in language exchange.
You can try any online app (like lemmy) where you can chat with native speakers.
You can join Discord servers for practicing your speaking (I would like to know a good open source alternative, but I don’t) or some chat roulette. But first you need to have good comprehension, if you have it you probably can put few sentences together.
I’ve found that when I watch something in another language with subtitles, I find myself going by what I heard, and using the subtitles to support or reinforce sections or words I didn’t understand. I often end up disagreeing with how things are translated, or there is something said in the foreign language that can’t simply be translated. In other words, I think using subtitles as reinforcement can be useful, whereas just reading every line and not thinking in the other language for yourself might not really be helping you much.
Right, I’m not saying it’s useless, just a different type of learning. As you said, it’s more of a reinforcement activity — repeating the words you may have already learned and putting them into a variety of real life contexts helps you remember them better.
However, at least personally, I do find it rather difficult to learn new words that way unless I constantly pause and rewind, which breaks the flow of the story and ends up not being super enjoyable.
When you learn new words, you need to actively repeat them a bunch of times until they stick, and Duolingo seems better suited for that.
Duo is at best a supplementary tool. If you’re doing nothing except Duo, of course you can’t speak the language. Fucking owl.
I believe there’s a way to get around the paid stuff if you set up the account to be in a classroom or something, if you’d still wanna block the ads.
Or if you have an android you can just get an unlocked apk and use that.
I find duolingo works fine for learning new words or just practicing the language. Starting to learn is just hard because the lessons are not structured well and concepts really are not explained at all sometimes. Bit it might just be my experience because I am learning a less popular language.