How hard is it to build an open source alternative to Duolinguo?
Speaking as a total ignorant from a coding perspective. But I guess that wouldn't be the hard part, considering that most of Duolinguo is just boxes and text inputs. How difficult it is to create a database of competent linguists with an efficient training who can progressively enhance your understanding of languages?
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I'm not convinced that model of learning is really effective anyway. At best, it's a fun-ish time killer where you learn a bit about language.
As someone who is at around a high B2/low C1 level in Dutch now and moved to Belgium and used dualingo in the beginning I have a bit of insight into it.
It doesn't do shit for grammar and sentence structure, but it builds vocabulary. If you learn only with dualingo, you will probably make a lot of mistakes, flipped adverbs, verbs in the wrong place, sentence structure errors, etc...
It definitely made me feel like I could speak Dutch because I could read it MUCH better after 1/2 of the dualingo course, but then when I moved, speaking was pretty bad and I had only moved up to an A2 level with the vocab of maybe B1. You definitely cannot become semi-fluent or fluent with dualingo. It doesn't teach, it only helps practice what you have already been taught.
Conversely, I'm at a similar level in Dutch and I'd attribute a lot of my grammatical knowledge to Duolingo, especially modal verbs. However I have scoured dutchgrammar.com many a time because I learn well from reading textbooks. It hasn't helped me at all with output though; I was quite bad at that until I moved to NL.
Thanks for the insight. I can see that, maybe a vocabulary builder.
Though I'd bet your time would be better spent doing other things like Anki or consuming media in the language instead, though some people just need/want the gamification.
I've been learning French on there for awhile now and it's been extremely effective por moi. They teach you as much French as you would get in a 4 year university program. Plus having an AI powered practice set is like having a teacher who knows exactly what you know and what you need to learn more.
I wouldn't normally comment on a spelling issue, however, in this case...
Try taking a break for a month and see how much you actually remember. In my experience it was depressingly little, and I'm not generally bad with languages at all.
According to some guy on Youtube, that's less of a learning method thing and more of a getting over a basic threshold of competency thing. I forget exactly which level he said it was, but the claim was that if you reach at least B2(?) you won't forget it anymore.
I think that would go for most learning methods. When you don't practice a skill you're always going to get worse with it over time, especially if it is a language.
After a certain point you should be able to retain a language for more than a month - after you've attained B2ish level I've heard.
What I am saying is, I don't think people who use duolingo are any better/worse off than most other methods.
I think this heavily depends on your learning type. For some it may work for others not. What is important that it actually helps some people and these people have no foss alternative around.