I really like Duolingo’s approach to language learning (even though I know it’s not actually that effective) but considering the privacy nightmare that Duolingo is, plus the continuous enshittificafion of the app, I’d love to use a more privacy friendly and less ad ridden alternative.
Any suggestions would be appreciated :)
I would recommend using Language Transfer.
It has courses for about 10 languages. All of them are sets of MP3 files, about 10 minutes each. You can download them from soundcloud, listen via YouTube, or install the simple but very effective app.
I think you would be shocked at how natural and effective this system is. I have been using it to learn Spanish as my fifth language, and it is easily the best language acquisition system I have ever used short of living in the target country. It explicitly avoids and discourages memorization.
It’s completely free, but the creator asks for donations to cover his expenses. Believe it or not, one man has created courses for French, Spanish, German, Italian, Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Swahili, and recently Japanese.
I’m learning Greek on Duolingo and am amazed at how slowly I’m progressing and I’m already a year in. I’ll give this one a shot tonight and report back at least first impressions.
Wow, didn’t even know Greek is the creator’s first language. It seems like it all started with Greek. First few lessons are good, but a vastly different experience to Duolingo and such. Ill have to keep at it to see if it is effective.
There is a group that does studies on different apps. They look at how much time people spend using a language-learning app and how much each minute of studying adds to a standardized language test. Turns out, Rosetta Stone and LingQ are the most efficient per minute spent in those apps. If I remember correctly, both are privately held companies, which I see as a better sign than Duolingo’s public listing. I don’t know about their privacy policies, though.
Didn’t know that is was a privacy nightmare, would like to know more
It’s all AI now, and apparently terrible at its primary function, from what I have heard
They did seem to go all in on genAI, but I think the claims that they’re ineffective are fairly weak.
Duolingo is a fantastic companion app to additional learning, it provides a great way to build in repetition.
I’m loathe to admit it, but the genAI voice calls actually are pretty good, especially if you don’t have any native speakers to work with. All it really does is force you to come up with the words to use rather than parroting words on the screen, which is what Duolingo has always been missing.
I use Lingodeer. It’s pretty good.
There is Qlango which is neat because it is available on Accrescent. Haven’t tried it though.
Removed by mod
It works as a webapp
Old wiped android. VPN. Any old AI.
Start the conversation:
Quiero hablar español.
Or whatever language interests you.
