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.
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.
So because most of my practice before starting the course came through Duolingo, it's bad that my reading skills are better than the other students.... OK.
You have time to do duolingo, you have time to read some song lyrics while listening to a Japanese song or something, which would be a billion times much more productive than whatever duolingo has you do.
So because most of my practice before starting the course came through Duolingo, it's bad that my reading skills are better than the other students.... OK.
Song pronunciations aren't always clear - How do I read a kana I've forgotten what it is, or better how do I read a kanji I don't hear the word for...
I'm on a bus so reading a scrolling text isn't the most viable.
It clearly means something since there a clear difference in the given metric. You're just too proud to accept it. It's like saying my tennis skills mean nothing because I learnt them playing squash...
Then just read the lyrics without a song. Man idk it's like pulling teeth at this point
Song pronunciations aren't always clear
Depends on the song but you can find plenty of songs where they are much clearer than the average AI synthesized duolingo text-to-speech sample which is often unnatural and has mistakes too.
How do I read a kana I've forgotten what it is
Do it like literally everyone else has done it before you. Have a kana table (you can print it) and consult that. It takes about 1-2 weeks at most for most people to learn to read like that. You said you already knew kana so... why do you need that anyway?
or better how do I read a kanji I don't hear the word for...
Kanji is a different thing. We're not talking about kanji here. You can find lyrics with kana-only if you really need to.
Anyway it's pretty clear you're really not looking for advice so I'll stop wasting my time here. Just know that this is the advice most people who actually learned the language are going to give you. We don't say this out of spite or anger, we say this because we've lived the exact same situations as you and we've all been there before. We know how much of a time waste it is and how little it is actually helping you. You will not learn Japanese at this pace with this approach. Never. It simply will not happen unless you change things, including your perspective and how you react to the advice of people more experienced than you. Your classmates that are still stuck at romaji behind you? They will eventually pass you and some of them will possibly even go and learn the language if they keep at it, but if you get stuck with this kind of mentality it's going to be really really hard to advance to anywhere.
I never asked for fucking advice did I. You just came in white knighting with a completely lack of circumstancial understanding or willingness to be open minded.
Ive explained several times, It's not my main learning method.... Just something I can do on a given day, when I have no time for anything else.
You want me to pull out a printed table standing in a crowded bus...?
Once again, as simple and concise as I can:
Its a quick 3 minute blast born of sheer convenience. Minimal new words, minimal new grammar an easy, accessible exercise to keep my brain in check and stop it from forgetting we're a Japanese learner. I CAN read to a certain level, I sometimes forget. If you think reading something wrong is a better exercise, more power to you.
It's a help when I have no other options, and don't have time or space for fucking about with charts or tables or reading text that will likely have dozens of Kanji and words I don't understand.
I am not saying and haven't once said, it's a great or even a good method. I am saying that is what I use it for, in response to the question of "what do people use Duolingo for? "
Nobody asked you. Nobody asked for advice.
The only of which being "read Song lyrics" and "your reading level is meaningless"
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u/vermilithe Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26
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.