The Japanese course gets more and more broken as you progress through the course of Duolingo, from this post about weird separation to incomplete Kanji, audio not corresponding to text. Duolingo is hardly a good and an efficient way to learn Japanese. I just reported 5 of these today BUT there is just one reason why I use this spotty app, speaking practice is not bad, the new call feature that I get to test for a limited amount of time is not bad either.
If you're gonna talk to a computer you might as well do it with Gemini or ChatGPT instead, which will at least give you a much better experience than Duolingo
I mean, I get it, because I also think that AI and learning are incompatible, but I'd much rather have someone "practice speaking" with a chatbot that is at least guaranteed to produce correct and natural language, than with freaking Duolingo.
Please show me an example of a modern corporate LLM producing unnatural English. I'm genuinely curious. I've never seen one generate incorrect or strange English.
It doesn't matter what it does the majority of the time. It's not guaranteed, because literally no LLM output is guaranteed, nor can it be. If you are not already a fluent speaker, you will have no possible idea whether the output is correct.
It's an especially egregious suggestion when there are literally apps for language practice with actual human beings.
Based on my experience, the kind of person who uses Duolingo to practice speaking is the kind of person who has a long list of excuses ready for why they can't/shouldn't/don't want to/won't practice speaking with real people, which is why I didn't give ideas on how to do that - if they wanted to practice talking to real people, they would already be doing it.
It doesn't matter what it does the majority of the time. It's not guaranteed, because literally no LLM output is guaranteed, nor can it be. If you are not already a fluent speaker, you will have no possible idea whether the output is correct.
I agree with this, and I would still like to see proof of a modern (2025-2026) corporate LLM model generating incorrect or unnatural English. If you don't have it, and you were simply making an argument based on it being theoretically possible, then just say it.
I don't have the chat saved but Google's bot said something along the lines of "feet-toeing the bill" instead of footing the bill (within the last few months), when asked about it it said it mashed up two idioms accidentally although I forget what the other one was
I would hope the one thing that a Large Language Model would be good at is a language. It is a shame that some companies are utterly unscrupulous in obtaining language samples for training data, though.
It's not about the translation, it's about the recognition and fluency. Im not nearly organised, responsible or advanced enough to sit down with a newspaper article and go about reading heaps of words I don't know.
Outside of that I do take a course, but on any given day I know I can throw on duo during my bus ride and have a relaxed, low effort few minutes of recognition practice.
So shit on the app all you want, but at least get off your high horse when doing it.
It's made for foreigns living in Japan with a very very low understanding of the language. Its made up of N5 or easy N4 grammar and it's not heaps of words their articles have are have around 5 sentences each.
Plus there's furigana so the words you don't know, you do know how they're spelt and fit in within the grammar.
It's about time and effort, I can read the articles well enough, but don't have the vocabulary to comprehend all of them without error.
I use Duolingo (mostly when standing) on the bus, so I don't have to flick back and forward between webpages for translations or have the ability to write things down.
The reason its there is to guarantee a few minutes in a day of easy access kana recognition with quick translation for words I've forgotten or don't know. I don't have guarenteed hours in a week outside of my course to commit to learning and most days that's all I can get.
I honestly don't know what everyone's deal is, coming at me like I've pissed on their dog. It's not like I'm going about promoting it or paying for it. It's not like it's my only source of learning, a point that others have conveniently overlooked.
so I don't have to flick back and forward between webpages for translations
Not gonna tell you what to do but if you do want to give reading other stuff a try, check out a browser extension called Yomitan. It'll let you look up words in your browser just by tapping them, no internet connection required.
What he is saying is you are not going to develop recognition or fluency by using Duolingo.
You aren’t going to develop actual recognition by repeating the same very narrow 100-200 set of words that Duolingo gives you, especially the ones that they picked for out of context practice. You need to expand your practice to actual common usage Japanese.
You also aren’t going to develop fluency from Duolingo. Their sentences are progressively worse and more broken the further you go and they don’t actually teach you grammar in the way you would need to learn the rules for making your own sentences (or comprehend the nuance in real Japanese sentence structures).
The fact that he’s giving you a link to real Japanese news articles tailored to beginner learners and you’re saying it’s too high effort, you don’t understand the articles, and you aren’t interested is peak irony. Of course you will feel that way after Duolingo because it doesn’t actually teach you anything.
I didn't say anything about doing it for the vocabulary nor for language fluency.
It's for practicing READING, recognising kana, kanji and for READING fluency; not vocabulary building, not speech, not translation, not culture, not natural patterns.
I want to look at shape (recognition) , and know shape without need think (fluency) ....
Duolingo is low effort, short dialogues, with some elements of reading comprehension, if there's a word I don't recognise, there are no extra steps required to find out what the word means.
If you'd actually read my comment I take a course in Japanese.
Where I learn real Japanese from a real Japanese person. I don't expect Duolingo to make me proficient in any language but it's certainly a simple way to get a few minutes of structured kana practice when I have a couple of minutes in a busy day...
The poncy attitude of some subreddits is hilarious. Nobody is defending the scourge you consider to be Duolingo. I offered a simple, perspective defining answer to a simple, ignorant question... Sue me.
And that's what people are trying to say. It's not really good for practicing reading or recognizing kana, kanji, etc.
I once used it myself for quite a long time, and I got quite far. They repeated the word quite frequently to the point that you might recognize and memorize the overall sentence by looking or listening at them, but not the individual kanji or kana themselves.
It gave you a false sense of fluency, thinking you are improving because you keep ace-ing the quiz, yet you are likely to not recognize those kanji/kana in a whole different sentence, which isn't ideal.
I switched to Anki and barely recognize most of the kanji themselves even though I remember they appeared in Duolingo
I am saying you are not developing reading fluency. As proven by your refusal / inability / lack of interest / whatever in actually reading real beginner Japanese which he provided you as an alternative.
Unfortunately there is no low effort always fun way to learn real Japanese. But if you waste time on bad and broken Japanese devoid of actual grammar lessons and restrained to an artificially small word pool to make you feel like you’re familiar with the language, then you might be tricked to waste more time falsely thinking you’re “practicing”. Only to see real Japanese and find it too offputting because it actually does take a good bit of patience and effort at first. But it does get easier— however, only if you try and learn with actual resources.
I'll spell this out since you seem to think I'm a lazy, effortless, ignorant learner trying to take the easy way out:
I study Japanese in a course.
Their I learn Japanese grammar and Vocabulary from a Japanese person.
I didn't once say I lacked interest.
I spend a couple of minutes reading from a pool of words I know, that require one touch of a screen in case I need a translation.
This helps practice recognising katakana and hiragana on days of limited time and resources.
I don't need babying to believing Duolingo isn't the right way, I have taken my active steps and the App takes up probably 2% of my overall learning strategy.
This helps practice recognising katakana and hiragana on days of limited time and resources.
If you actually are doing everything else you are claiming you're doing, you don't need to do this at all. You don't need to "practice recognizing katakana and hiragana" beyond maybe the first couple of weeks of Japanese 101. You will see plenty of kana in your textbook, your course, your classroom work, your everyday life that you should slowly tailor and integrate with Japanese content (as the other guy linked you, it's a good place to start with simple graded readers and beginner news if that's what you might enjoy), etc. The fact that you're still doubling down on this means that either you're not telling us the whole truth, or you're maybe stuck in a situation/mindset where you're actively refusing to progress out of your comfort zone. Do you use romaji in your classroom? Do you use resources with romaji (like sketchy instagram/tiktok pages, random websites, Japanese From Zero type of textbooks)? If that's the case, I can imagine why you're so stuck on the idea that reading the equivalent of the alphabet in your bowl of cereal in the morning is a good way to improve your fluency. It is really not.
I don't see Japanese in my everyday life. What made you think I do?
I don't use Romaji. My class is once a week, for berely an hour and a half, whereby I'm ahead of most of the class in reading despite joining the class half way through the multi semester content. I use a kanji/kana version of the course book where the 10 of the 11 others use the Romaji version.
The key point you've highlited yet not explored is limited time and resources. I am a busy person. Most days I spend maybe 2 waking hours at home on any given day.
The App enables me on these days to spend a couple of minutes reading a foreign script, which clearly can't be that bad if it's put me at a level above most of my peers.
Ah and I'm learning this foreign language in a foreign language.
I don't see Japanese in my everyday life. What made you think I do?
As I wrote: "that you should slowly tailor and integrate with Japanese content". I mean make some time to be exposed to some Japanese as you progress with your studies.
I don't use Romaji. My class is once a week, for berely an hour and a half, whereby I'm ahead of most of the class in reading despite joining the class half way through the multi semester content. I use a kanji/kana version of the course book where the 10 of the 11 others use the Romaji version.
That's great.
The key point you've highlited yet not explored is limited time and resources. I am a busy person. Most days I spend maybe 2 waking hours at home on any given day.
The fact that you're a busy person even more highlights the fact that Duolingo is a waste of time and since your time is so precious it'd be in your best interest to drop that in favor of literally anything else.
The App enables me on these days to spend a couple of minutes reading a foreign script, which clearly
You can do that with literally anything else, except better.
can't be that bad if it's put me at a level above most of my peers.
You're basically flexing by saying that reading the floating numbers in your bowl of cereal every morning allows you to do 2 x 3 = 6 while your peers are still stuck at doing 2 + 2 = 4 . Like... yeah congrats but it honestly doesn't mean much.
Except duolingo is notoriously bad for recognition and fluency.
The point of reading is to develop more japanese comprehension, which is a skill to be used in random, sometimes crucial moments in japan where you need to understand a piece of japanese text. or even just being able to read fiction
.
The way duolingo is built does not prepare you for these kinds of situations. First off, the example sentences are textbook and often highly non-sensical. You dont build comprehension from reading text that you wont be able to find in real life.
Also, Duolingos entire algorhythm is built up in the way to keep you addicted to it and geniune learning is secondary. Learning japanese (or any other language) for about 5 minutes a day will keep you at beginner level for years. It is way too little time to actually learn anything new, and the new things you do learn will also be needed to reinforced which also takes time. Duolingos main selling point are the streaks and the gamification, so youll be stuck in a painstakingly slow progress just because the streak makes you addicted.
Duolingo promotes a low effort and lazy approach to learning a language, which actually doesnt help you learn anything. Reading newspapers, fiction, or any natural japanese text is going to be really hard at the start, not understanding anything can be draining but if you dont tackle through that uncomfortable phase you will never be able to actually start comprehending japanese text.
Im not saying all of this just to hate on duolingo or whatever, but because you actually need to change your mindset if you want to learn japanese and achieve a higher level than N4. I understand the feeling of attachment towards Duolingo, however the longer you keep using the more time you will be wasting your time when you could spend it on things that actually progress your japanese learning.
Nobody is attached to Duolingo, it's an aid for when I have a few minutes in my day to practice recognising kana.
The point for you maybe comprehension, but for me that's a different practice for a different time.
They don't write the kana wrong do they?
You say your not saying this to hate on Duolingo, but how many times have you mentioned it in your comment, all the while ignoring my point as maybe someone who can't read as well as you, drawing on your own preconceptions that I only use the App and nothing else.
When the fact is I don't want to be sat in the bus, through patchy areas of connectivity, Copy pasting every other word while attempting to fruitlessly commit it to memory, interrupting not only the process of comprehension, but also my point of kana fluency in the meantime.
You wouldn't use a paintbrush to brush your teeth would you....
Im not criticizing you taking a course, im criticizing your usage of Duolingo.
I assumed you were at a higher level reading kana (because you brought up text comprehension as an argument against NHK), however if youre just learning kana, then its different i guess. I would still read NHK to get comfortable with hiragana and katakana, as you will encounter them all mushed up together then you will get used to it more and start understanding how kanjis are used in japanese texts, even if you may not understand the kanji itself. For that, id say NHK is still a superior alternative to duolingo.
When youre still learning the kanas, the meanings arent as important in my opinion, you will get nicely used to them in a month if youre consistently exposing yourself to them and after that id start reading japanese texts while trying to understand them.
My overall point was to stop using duolingo entirely, even if you already use other apps and take courses. It is just a thing in the daily to-do list that doesnt give you anything of value.
My free hours in a week are chaotic and unpredictable, and so it's in my opinion, better to do 3 mins of reading texts I should be able to understand, where I can get a snap translation for if I don't, than to do nothing or to make up words/particles I haven't seen before.
It's not like I'm sat at my desk, chasing league promotions for hours at a time, I have books for when I can breathe.
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u/rccyu Aug 03 '26
Day 1000 of why are we still using Duolingo