Duolingo is very much on the Enshittification path, seems like they fired a number of translators and have the rest just proofreading AI.
For the interested, here’s the place where you can request your personal data and delete your account
This time last year, I could still see the forum posts to related lessons when I’d get something wrong. Now, when I’m told my answer is incorrect, I have nothing to go off.
I’m trying to learn the baby steps of Korean. Being able to quickly read what I did incorrectly (and why, because usually people eould explain the grammar) was great. I hate that it’s gone, and I’m considering making Busuu my main app
Duolingo isn’t a good resource for learning a language, it’s focus is user retention
Innovative Language and Lingodeer are better
Duolingo isn’t a good resource for learning a language, it’s focus is user retention
These two statements contradict each other. To learn a language you must practice it every day, week after week, month after month. It’s an appropriate application of addictive game mechanics, because our motivation doesn’t last long: 1-3 months for most people.
Duolingo might not be the best place to learn some languages (e.g. German), but it can be a very helpful tool for everyday practice. And stuff like streaks, leagues, and other things are rather helpful.
An advent calendar has user retention but it’s hardly a tool for learning languages
Mate, just learn how to admit when you’re wrong. That’s a useful skill in life.
Does that not disprove your claim that user retention and learning contradict?
What makes these two better?
More lesson focused than game
lingodeer explains the grammar and innovative does a classroom approach with video lessons
My experience is that duolingo is a good component of language learning but is bad as a whole package. I have that, a flash card app, daily word games, and a YouTube channel for a children’s TV network in my language. None of them individually would teach me the language, but collectively they reinforce each other and fill in many gaps. Alas, neither innovative language nor lingodeer have the language I want at the moment.
What are the flash card and word game apps?
I use DuoCards for flash cards. The word games are FOCLACH (basically wordle in Irish), litreach (guess words from people saying them in 3 Irish dialects) and seafóid (basically Waffle in Irish). The games are all browser based apps so not in app stores, but DuoCards is.
ETA while DuoCards has built in flash cards, I usually make my own based on the words I learn from all the other sources, and get the translation and grammar details from teanglann.ie, tearma.ie, or nualeargais.ie
Neat thank you
I’ve learned more with Duolingo than any other resource to be fair.
But, retention means repetition, so you learn more, right? Not trying to defend Duolingo but I’ve been enjoying it for the last 3 years or so. Almost got 1000 day streak and my Spanish is getting better.
It is fair to say it helps people stick with it but it ends up avoiding harder facets and puts more focus on memorizing rather than learning
Well, proper language learning is more about memorization than understanding. People learn language as a child through repetition, and the understanding comes later.
it’s not really memorization, children don’t learn languages by sitting there desperately burning every word into their memory, they hear it repeated over and over and the brain just passively soaks it up and eventually starts making sense of it.
And i’m pretty sure this is why people who learn to speak languages in school are generally terrible at them, it’s shoved down their throat and the brain is given no time to process understanding the language before trying to speak it.
I’ve found that my ability to speak languages i learnt in school has become significantly better a couple years after the fact, presumably from my brain having had time to process the information.Just because people learn that way as a child, that doesn’t mean that it’s the best way to learn.
duolingo is a textbook example of a nice small startup, with great ideas that is then completely overtaken my MBAs who run it into the ground as soon as there is enough of a client base to Sell. you fucking fucks all suck.
Similar to Memrise, which was really fun when you could make your own mems using imagesearch and customise everything… And now is a rubbish duolingo clone.
Enshittification
I wasn’t quite sure what to think about this, so I’ve asked my local LLM. Seems it is fine.
Holy shit it’s on the money
It generally doesn’t have a high opinion of translators (note that the emojis here are inserted as path markers to help with prompt debugging - but everyting else is from the LLM):
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…soon to come to your favorite corporation’s C suite’s Windows 11 desktop’s Copilot assistant for empowering the synergies of staying relevant in a high stakes market environment.
I think a lot about writing a story about some sort of Enshittification Avenger. So when a reasonably good service decides to enshittify, the avenger breaks into their board’s house and beats the living shit out of them.
I use Duolingo for German but I’d happily switch to something else if they’re going to pull this shit. I’ll often times take things from Duolingo and run them through the Translate app on iOS to see if there are differences. It’s not ideal, but I also have no allegiance to companies.
Clozemaster!
Coming from Duolingo I found it a bit overwhelming. I tried one collection, but as I already know Spanish a bit, it was too easy. Any tips?
Scroll down to the bottom and do the random collection.
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I just said to someone yesterday on Mastodon that it seems as though they’re not using humans any more, because WTF is this shit?
Interesting, I usually question my English skills if something like this happens!
It’s because a good translation is not (always) literal.
In the German version it says taglich in hamburg. In English you would indeed put an adverb (like daily) at the end. It works the other way around but it’s not really what a native English speaker would say.
Not true at all. OP’s construction is perfectly valid english.
Absolutely this. I’d have argued that ‘every day’ is a more idiomatic translation than ‘daily’, and what native speakers would say, but that’s irrelevant. English tends to emphasise the end of sentences as the most important part, so all these translations are correct depending on the nuance that you intend:
- Daily in Hamburg, many ships arrive (as opposed to eg. cars, or few ships)
- Daily, many ships arrive in Hamburg / Many ships arrive daily in Hamburg (as opposed to eg. Bremen)
- Many ships arrive in Hamburg daily (as opposed to eg. weekly)
Wouldn’t question any of those constructions as a native speaker. In fact, original responders’ example was why I gave up on Duolingo myself originally, some years ago. Translating ‘future tense’ sentences from Spanish into English or back again is always going to be a matter of opinion, since English doesn’t have the verb conjugations that Spanish does. Guessing the ‘sanctified answer’ is tedious, when a lot of the time it’s not even the most natural form of a sentence.
Isn’t English able to disambiguate by using helper words like “will” or “would”?
What tenses can’t be translated completely?
That’s almost exactly the problem. English uses helper words exclusively for future tense, and indeed, helper words like ‘to’ to form an infinitive. ‘Will’ is the helper word to show that something is a fact, that it is definite - grammatically, it is indicative. (The sun will rise tomorrow.) ‘Would’ is the helper word to show that something is an opinion, or dependent on something else - grammatically, it is subjunctive. (If you push that, it would fall; if it was cheaper, I would buy it.)
Spanish has both helper words for future tense (conjugations of ‘ir’, analogous to ‘going to’, often used in speech) and straight-up conjugations for future tense (doesn’t exist in English; often used in writing). It also conjugates verbs differently if they’re indicative, subjunctive, or imperative (asking or telling someone to do something). This is how Spanish manages to have fifty-odd ways to conjugate every verb, which is very confusing to English speakers who make do with three ways and helper words.
Translating a ‘future tense sentence’ for Duolingo requires you to have psychic powers about whether something is fact or opinion, which helper words are wanted, and so on, and it usually comes down to guessing between multiple ‘correct’ answers, which Duo will reject all but one of.
This is frustrating, but it has always been an issue; and usually the more you advance in a language tree the more it happens, because fewer people have found the problem and reported it. It’s a human problem that comes with not considering every possibility when creating an exercise. I’d imagine that using AI (in addition to humans) would actually help reduce cases like this, since they could be detected before users run into them.
Yeah, this is frustrating.
I can handle absurd sentences like “The dog is cooking the dinner”, and actually finds them beneficial because it prevents me from guessing the whole sentence.
But this is a sign that not enough human efforts are poured into create permutation of the answers.
I actually see a learning purpose in those ridicilous sentences.
I’ll far more likely remember the cat that works at the small hospital than if Juan does it.
Let me guess, the full sentence was: “Last night we ate the dog cooked for dinner”… /s
nope, “The dog is cooking a dinner” is that kind of absurdist sentence that works. So that I just don’t guess a human on the subject position. Or ‘eating’ for the verb
Disappointing, but not surprising. I know I’m not going to “learn” a language with Duolingo, but it’s been nice recognizing a few words and phrases when I hear them. But I don’t really trust that a bunch of overworked and underpaid contractors are going to catch every error using AI is going to introduce. At least there are already alternatives in this thread for me to look through.
I’ve seen quality drops of Duolingo, ever since their … IPO, sadly.
Anyway, here’s some ways you can milk the rest of the Duolingo before completely abandoning it.
- Use the web version, and type in all the answers if it’s possible. Selecting words are good for introducing new words (and reminder in case you forgot), but by typing it on your own, it’s faster to commit into memory.
- Use classroom mode to get unlimited hearts, create your own classroom and invite yourself in. I assume that Duolnigo will probably eventually stop this loophole
- Use search engine to search for the sentences you’re unsure of. No, don’t use machine translation, but search on the internet, and see if the sentence ever being used by the sites (news, academic, or personal homepage) using the target language.
I sadly still don’t know what other comparable free alternatives to Duolingo. Anki is great, but it’s largely flashcard for words, not sentences (unless you want to create your own deck). The others require subscription fee.
Other methods? Search for pdf of language grammar files, there are a lot out there. Some are godawful to read, especially those ‘Comprehensive Grammar Guide’ books. Some are amazing, e.g. Tae Kim’s Guide to Japanese.
To add to the list of resources:
Todaku Books offer leveled difficulty, so even if you are starting out with Japanese there is something for you to read. The books are Creative Commons licensed, so don’t pay for them if you don’t want to.
Another option is rocket language. It seems to be a lot focused on developing conversational skills. It’s is paid but not subscription which I’m a fan of. You just buy the language you want. The first few lessons of a language are free if you want to try it. I’m test running it right now to start my switch away from Duolingo
“Enshitification”…
Yes I seem to remember how enshitified everything became after the firing of weavers do to the invention of the Loom.
The fuck you think was gonna happen?
Seriously all this whinging online about AI is getting ridiculous.
Get a fucking hobby.A loom is a precision machine. You know exactly what you’re going to get when you use one. It’s output was identical to manual work, only a lot more efficient and less error prone.
There is no “AI”. What we have is LLMs, which are probabilistic generators. It’s anybody’s guess what you’re going to get when you use a LLM and they’re more likely to introduce mistakes rather than eliminate them.
The comparison to looms is incorrect. LLMs can be useful but I’m a completely different way. They shine when used to augment the work of a human expert but they can’t be trusted to perform alone.
So yeah, right now attempting to use a LLM exclusively leads to a drop in quality.
“They shine when used to augment the work of a human expert but they can’t be trusted to perform…”.
I’m sure someone wrote the same about the first looms.
In a capitalistic world where your right to stay alive is determined by the money you make, replacing himan jobs by machine ones is a real problem.
If what was happening was “ok so the machines are gonna do that so you’re gonna have a lot more free time but you still get your wages”, I for one would be happy.
But what’s happening is more along the lines of “well I hope you didn’t just get a mortgage because here’s the door hahaha don’t be sad think lf the extra money the shareholders are going to make” and it’s a real problem.
Just because it’s logical that shitty bosses take shitty decisions which impact negatively other person’s lives doesn’t mean we can’t be upset and vocal about it.
Then y’all Luddites can make a new luddite sub and post your complaints over there.
This is a technology sub.
In any world, you just can’t stop progress, so complaints will be filed under “G”, for garbage.
And the world will keep on spinning.Hi skeptomatic, Beehaw Technology mod here. To be clear, this community is not only for the uncritical admiration technological development or the tech sector. It is a community for discussion of Technology in general, which will likely include discussion of the effects of technology on society. Those topics very well may include discussions of how and when those technologies, the environment they are developed in, or the systems they enable are harmful to human flourishing.
You are absolutely welcome to defend generative AI as a useful or positive development - I personally think it’s a really interesting technology with some major potential (although I think we’re probably in a hype cycle and it’s being applied in all kinds of ways that don’t really make sense), but I also recognize that there are potential social pitfalls in it’s development and deployment. Those ideas are worth discussing in a kind, civil manner.
Lastly, when you comment here on Beehaw, please remember our rule: Be(e) Nice.
You make a good point, like how when CGI first came out and everyone had to have it in their movies. Some good movies were made laughable or absolutely worse when practical effects could have done the job.
Sayonara, Duolingo.
As a writer on the internet with no power to stop these companies from scraping my work, you now want to teach me using someone else’s stolen words and teach someone English using mine. Go fuck yourself.
The circle of life continues, and literacy goes down. AI cannot proofread, it merely says “these letters usually go with these”. AI screws up, people get taught shit language, they use it, it gets used as training data, rinse and repeat.
Well language is a fluid thing. If more and more people get taught shit language, the language will change to match. We have far worse problems on this planet :)
I do think these AI companies grabbing what they can without giving anything back is a problem though. In my view content creators are a bit hypocritical too though. When Google scraped the internet verbatim (viewable in google cache) they didn’t mind because it gave them discoverability. Now they suddenly do care because they don’t benefit directly. Really, the stance should have been made earlier. But I do agree it should be stopped. Or content creators compensated.
The Extinction level meteor can’t come soon enough.
Time to pack it in and give some other microorganism a shot at the evolutionary big-leagues. Maybe they’ll do better.
Assuming we take the Halo lore as a matter of fact and are not projecting human faults to the Covenant: I guess not really.
As soon as monarchs or religious leaders emerge it’s game over.
And I’d guess there will always be someone more rich than the other one and be in charge of something more resulting in something like a capitalist system.Sadly true.
Absolutely the large language models are over glorified word predictors that get it wrong. I’d go so far as to say, they get it wrong nearly all the time.
Expect a lot more “white collar workers laid off due to AI” posts coming. I wonder how long it will take for a (very well resourced, those are status-y jobs) movement to form in response.
The movement of hating rich people, and pretending like they’re not part of our society? I think it already exists.
Well, that’s a bit of a salty tangent, but yeah, I guess they could take a class warfare sort of line on it. The other classical options are going full luddite, or just blaming a minority. Maybe they’ll come up with something new, because I have trouble picturing laid off creatives spouting any of these.
Right now, I think people are firmly in the denial stage. For whatever reason the thread isn’t federating properly for me, but on beehaw I can see others in here saying human exceptionalism stuff, which is kind of not in accordance with science.
I need some more copium. Not Again :'(
The CEOs face the day he realizes all it takes to automate his company is a personal computer: 😃
The CEOs face the day after he realizes all it takes to automate his company is a personal computer: 🫠
i wish workers would realize they can just work without CEOs, i know of at least one factory that was set to close down and workers just… kept working, eventually gaining the right to buy the factory and run it as a co-operative
