She responded to my Duolingo video 

Just out of curiosity, what audiobook app are you using?

Storytel! I've actually asked them about sponsorship and they've declined and I still talk about them so, yeah, good app. Only thing is, SOME people in the USA aren't able to get it to accept their card. Others are fine so we can't figure out what that's about. I'm currently on a Finnish account for €10 a month which gives me 100 hours (which I'll never reach) in 8 languages.

Cheers guys!

😂 Oh man. I've already got a video in editing that mentions Navajo but I make the disclaimer that I've no idea if the course is good. No audio? That's ridiculous.

the engine analogy is genius yeah, i felt the same way about example sentences, like oh i'd like to see more examples of this word or sentence structure being used, but there's no links here and no more places to ask the question when the machine of dimple example sentences does not have enough or the right sentences, why am i even using it at this point?

Navajo used to have audio recorded I guess by some users of the language but it seems they deleted it and didn't bother to prepare the new version of the audio.. strange.

​@@aldareiiYep, it's almost like they don't actually care about language learners. 😂

I remember hearing audio in Navajo too. Boy, that was hard. No cognates or familiar words at all. And tonal to boot. no wonder it was used for war communication. If the audio went away, this would be impossible. Currently I am trying my hand on Haitian Creole. That course has decent audio, but no slowed down ones at all. All these nasal definite articles at the end, and also the penchant for shortening pronouns to just one letter makes it hard to hear at the first time, but you cannot hear it slowly at all. And don't get me started on the guidebooks, they sometimes have no sound. Thanks to the phonetic spelling of Haitian Creole (which is French based) that's not so big of an issue but, nonetheless an issue.

all that background knowledge floating around in your head has its uses :) nice job

LOL. Now watch the DLDLDL actually use this argument for real.

lol this is a great analogy

Hi Fatimah! What do you recommend for getting started reading and listening in Japanese? :)

@@lisa_eeyore Something like the listening exercises from Japanese Pod 101 (on RU-vid). There's clear audio. The subtitles aren't too difficult in the beginning and there are visuals. The grammar is a little difficult but the vocab is easy to pick up.

@@lisa_eeyore Honestly, any combination of audio, text and visuals is great, especially if you're going to repeat it. Vlogs on RU-vid are a good place to start. A lot of Japanese vlogs come with subtitles and if you start with the beginner stuff the audio won't be too fast. You can switch off CC if you want to focus on listening, or, switch off the volume to focus on reading the subtitles only. It's a solid way to pick up vocab and kanji without actually studying them. (You can add podcasts and books if you feel up for the challenge. They give the best results, but, are difficult to start. One easy book and one that you really like is a great combo to study with.) Hope this helps 😅 I know it's a bit much

I'm not sure if you're saying this to make a point about politics, or if you genuinely don't fully understand what "Publicly Traded Company" means, so I'll help. 1. Publicly traded companies are not necessarily more shareholder-controlled than privately traded companies. What you are referring to, probably, is that a public company is under more scrutiny due to the diversification of interest combined with the fact that there are certain metrics a public company legally must report (often called "annual/quarterly reports"), which make the company's value fluctuate more as a factor of actual results, whereas private companies tend to be valued heavily on faith in the team. The way in which shareholders believe in the company affects this, however. 2. Shareholder control does not mean shortsightedness (although it usually does). Many companies do jump straight into shortsightedness, but some famous examples which didn't are Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Uber. These companies nearly faced ruin multiple times by refusing to take profit, instead investing all earnings (revenue and investment dollars) into continued growth with the goal of monopoly. Monopoly, contrary to popular belief, requires unmatched excellence to attain. After everyone else is dead, then you can pull a Microsoft and never build a single good thing ever, but to become the only one, you have to make everyone else so irrelevant that no one remembers they ever existed. This is a way of maximizing shareholder value, but it's method is by building a better product. Therefore, no, Luodingo being bad is not because it's public. All that being said, your framing is fundamentally incorrect. You don't understand what products are. If you think Luodingo is trash, its because you dont unserstand it. Its not a tool to teach you a language, its a videogame that makes you work just hard enough so that you and everyone around you believe you have something to brag about to monolingual people. If you think the entire language learning industry is worth what Luodingo is worth, then you need to think about just how large the market for Americans to feel superior to others is. Most people who are clueless about human nature think we get things because they serve a purpose. This is rational. Humans are not rational. We only pay for things that tell us a story about ourselves that we want to believe. Everything from what you spend your money on, spend your attention on, which ideas you parrot, how you speak, everything is based off our need to have an identity which requires constant attention to maintain.

@@GrizikYugno-ku2zs I'm not really sure what you've said that contradicts what I've said. Duolingo is delivering for its shareholders by creating a product that ostensibly is about teaching a language, but in reality is just about capturing attention as long as possible like RU-vid, TikTok or a video game.

Same reason why it's in Tinder's best interest to keep you single.

@@clownonabike exactly this! I think it's totally possible to make a profitable platform that actually does facilitate optimal language acquisition, but doing so is in direct odds with the big tech model. Users are expensive to acquire and when you either need to offer them hundreds and thousands of hours of native content or accept that they will have a short account lifetime before they move onto something that meets their needs, it's much easier to slow down the whole process to keep people engaged as long as possible.

​@@GrizikYugno-ku2zsLike Toby said, nothing you've said contradicts his actual point.

I know you didn't say that I attacked anyone, but I actually never attacked Evan either. He just took it as that rather than admit that Duolingo kind of duped him.

THANK. YOU. ❤

I'm not convinced you can get a 100% off-topic unit, or at least I haven't seen one. There are "SRS" exercises in regular lessons, and there are "personalised practice" lessons completely based on their "magic". The quality of the selection is poor, though, often showing me the same sentences over and over, making me wonder what the process looks like. Not sure what they optimise for in their A/B tests.

Yep. It is insufferably slow now. You can spend one hour everyday and not make much progress.

​@@cmfrtblynmb02 That would explain... Almost a decade ago I used it to learn swedish for about a year of consistent practice. Combined with swedish youtube videos and SRS I actually got somewhere with duolingo. Duolingo gave me a structure and a path. It worked. Ten years later and... yeah it's absolutely not recommended

That's the way to go. I did the same thing with Spanish. Some podcasts that I used to understand less than 30%, today I can understand more than 80% without even thinking too hard. It's a really great feeling.

​@@travisashley2904can you give me suggestions for Spanish podcasts?

SpanishPod101, Dreaming Spanish... after doing enough that literally just google "Podcast espanol de mexico" or something that concerns the dialect you want to learn.

@@daysandwords thanks alot ❤️

Watch the bit about the Paradox. Right on 14:00

I think you need to not have been subscribed recently, and also you being a channel member might mess with it. It does work normally. You should see it in other videos (by other people, I mean).

Maybe it requires a specific phrase? Or it only works when said in an American accent (as most of the training data comes from the US)? I've seen it before on other channels, not sure what exactly they said in which way.

I think the problem was that he did it too early in the video? Or he didn't say the full phrase? Subscribe, like and hit the bell?

​@@francegamble1Hmm, no, you don't have to say that. It's supposed to listen out for the word "subscribe". I'll fiddle with the subtitles later, they might have something to do with it.

@@daysandwords I know it usually does it. Lol. I think it is funny when it happened the first time.

I think there's definitely a sliding scale and it's different for every person. I also like doing a mix of concious study, vocab and listening reps. Having said that I still don't ever use Duolingo as I think even for basic vocab study there are just so many better options out there.

"I don't think starting to immerse knowing absolutely nothing is a great idea for most people." I'm saying that you've got to immerse in order to increase comprehension. I'm saying that waiting until you understand something means you'll be waiting forever. So I'm not saying that if you immerse for 5 hours and understand literally nothing, you should keep going. That's NOT what I'm saying. I'm saying that if you don't start immersing, then no matter what else you do, you'll never understand anything.

Videos take a while so I didn't have COVID when I actually filmed it. I only spoke to Kate and Nate like a full week after I saw their video.

thanks for this comment i agree use it the same way and i guess the only way it is usefull

You know Steven, it's funny you say that right now. I can't say why, but you'll see.

lamont launches estonian language learning service?

It was developed in Pittsburgh, a rust belt city in the US, by the same guy who invented Captcha.

After learning Finnish with a big help from Speakly, I approve this message

​@@Gabe-no5zy I'll not hold that against Pittsburgh though. Any city with a rookie pitcher throwing 101mph and a bible verse embroidered on his glove gets my approval. 😂

It used to be diminishing returns that started at a reasonable level, and so it was worth using until those diminishing returns kicked in. That's what I did. But now, it STARTS at a level about 1/10th as useful as basically anything else. That's not diminishing returns, that's a bloody waste of time.

I feel like you've perfectly described why it's terrible and then said "So, like, it's a tool that you can use..." - Um, yeah, but it's terribly slow and ineffective, which is exactly what I'm saying... Are you sure YOU didn't write this video? Lamont Durdan... Is that you?

@@daysandwords I did't make this clear in my first post: Yes, I currently use the Duolingo Hindi course. But only a few lessons a day, maybe 10 to 15 minutes max. The intent is not to learn Hindi. (Duolingo is not able to really teach you Hindi.) But to learn reading Devanagari. As a neat side effect I also learn some basic vocabulary. Due to my dyslexia something slow and repetitive like Duolingo works good. In my very particular situation. Others may be better off with something else. Once I can read देवनागरी sufficiently good I have to ditch Duolingo and find better ressources to really learn Hindi. As you said: Even if you could learn a language with Duolingo, it is inefficient due to its slowness. I realized all this only while watching your video. I had all this somewhere in vague fragments in the back of my mind. But it never really manifested as an explicit, coherent insight. Your video surfaced it. There is an other good use of Duolingo: Wasting time with some Duolingo lessons is for sure better then "scrolling through social media". But then your intent is not to learn a language, but to waste your time. Learning some aspects of a language becomes a side effect. Learning anything even slightly useful or relevant is better then social media.

Yes, learning to read different alphabets is one more legitimate use of Duolingo that I have pointed out many times, but it stops there.

I would definitely say that.

What do you mean? There are heaps.... what country do you mean?

Why would he make that up? It makes him look stupid and he never wanted to be included in any video, he was just telling of his experience. My Spanish isn't great but that's cos I've hardly done any. But I learned it for 6 months and I'll say mine's is better than a certain person who's been using Duolingo Spanish for 3 years. 😬

@@daysandwords again, your reasoning is flawless 👏👍

​@@raulgarcia8627Gracias. ❤

That USED to be the case, but these days Duolingo is just SUCH. A. SLOW. INTRO. DUCTION. TO. THE. LANGUAGE. French is mostly English pronounced differently. You don't understand it because of Duolingo, you understand it because it's obvious.

@@daysandwords Ok. But here's the twist. I'm Norwegian...... and I speak a North Germanic language.... I also learn duolingo German (almost done), and that is to me somewhat in the way you say.... but French is left field for me. That is actually why I chose it, because it would be the most challenging West European language for me (except Greek and Finnish). It is actually (theoretically) more challenging than for a Swedish native, because Swedish has adopted many French words (trottoar, affär and so on) of obvious historic reasons.

You obviously have enough English that French isn't truly foreign though. Sorry but there's no "twist" extreme enough to make Duolingo a genuinely good use of time in something like French. Check out Inner French.

@@daysandwords Thanks for the tip.

Come on now, Sign Languages are by definition, an exception. I'm not trying to be ableist but sign languages are obviously not going to work in the same way as vocal languages. Also, are you mistaking what I'm saying for "You ONLY need to immerse" - because I'm not saying that. I'm saying that immersion MUST happen. And I would still think that should be the case with ASL but it's obviously going to be different.

@@daysandwords nah I am not saying immersion is the only way, I just wanted to hear your opinion on the sign languages :)

Immersing means spending time with your eyes or ears in the language, so yes, listening to a podcast while running is immersion, although that is PASSIVE immersion which is different to active immersion. What language is this for? It makes a big difference whether we're talking about Japanese or German.

You either didn't watch the whole video or you didn't understand any of it. Neither would surprise me.

I think "a better grasp" would be very difficult to measure and that's half the problem here. People don't realise that when you're subconsciously acquiring it, you don't feel like you're learning it but then one day suddenly all this stuff comes bubbling out. So I think the Duolingo person would do better on a test but the toddlers' shows person would be poised to leave them in the dust.

​@@daysandwords I think it would be an interesting experiment. 😂

Try watching before commenting on videos. It'll change your life.

So, you might be missing a few things. 1: The "big languages" are HUGE trees compared to the languages like Swedish. Like 5 or 6 times the length. 2. WHEN did you do the Swedish tree? I also did the Swedish tree and I did a fair bit (like 45 minutes a day) and it took about 8 months, but this was years and years ago. As this video points out, Duolingo now ENFORCES a slower pace that is just horrendously slow. Guessing from what you've written, you're talking about old Duolingo when it was the TREE not the path. Basically, language learning is my job, and I check these things routinely, and get feedback from hundreds of comments. It's very unlikely that I'm making an error that you just happened not to make and more likely that you're comparing old Duolingo with new Duolingo.

My position is that it wouldn't do very much even in 700 days. Anything it did do in that time would be able to be done in about 2 months of most other things.

@@daysandwords it got me to a conversational level in Swedish when I first got into language learning, it just took a long time. I've achieved much more in korean in less time using other methods.

​@@michaelshort2388Yeah but you do realise I'm saying that it's now forcing people to do it at literally 1/10th the speed right? It sounds like you're saying "It's ok but not great" but that's what it USED TO be, now it's actively terrible. It's not the same thing as what you learned your Swedish with.

Although I'll accept that as a better use Duolingo than pretty much any other use, I'm also becoming more and more convinced of the need for us to spend time just waiting for stuff, not doing anything and just kind of... soaking in the atmosphere. I think depending where you are (physically), as a language learner, this can actually be hugely beneficial.

I do that on all my thumbnails. I've gotta put it in manually anyway so I just make up something I like. Their video will probably end up with that many views anyway.

Yes, I agree.

So, I can confirm that you have to have NOT been subscribed, at least recently. It only does that for new viewers.

@@daysandwords Truly a shame, Us folks who been watching for years don't get the nice colours.

Yeah it's like showing up early to the airport... All they do is de-prioritise you, whereas if you show up 30 minutes before take off, you get rushed through like you're a celebrity.

maybe watch the video one more time...

Yeah it's been nerfed beyond belief now

I'm saying that you've got to immerse in order to increase comprehension. I'm saying that waiting until you understand something means you'll be waiting forever. So I'm NOT saying that if you immerse for 5 hours and understand literally nothing, you should keep going. That's NOT what I'm saying. I'm saying that if you don't start immersing, then no matter what else you do, you'll never understand anything. I'm saying that immersion is VITAL, CRUCIAL, NECESSARY, NÖDVÄNDIGT... Whatever you want to call it, you HAVE TO DO IT. I'm not saying that if you don't do it from day 1 you will suck, I'm saying that it's gotta happen anyway.

@@daysandwords Ah. I follow. Here is a better way of expressing my pushback, not to you in particular but to the overvaluing immersion as a method. Immersion is useful _only_ _after_ one knows or has a working knowledge of the vocabulary used. If one knew and understood 90% of every word they hear or read but one word and that word is critical to the sentence, then all meaning is lost. It is all just babel until one learns the meaning of that or those words. I acknowledge current research shows natural ("immersive") language acquisition happens with the person connecting sound with meaning then followed with visual i.e. seeing the word as written. Ah, the difference is through immersion one associates some meaning to sounds then those sounds are separated by discovering the individual words used versus the vocabulary based approach wherein one builds their vocabulary and then hears the words they learned used. I think I rail against the inefficiency of the immersion method; plus, the approach has the least guarantee of successful development of fluency. The vocabulary building approach does guarantee and effective but is the most daunting which discourages many people from learning a new language. I prefer a hybrid which is how English is taught in the United States: pupils reciting what the hear and see of simple sentences, "See Dick and Jane," "See Dick and Jane run" that grow in complexity with gradual increase introduction of vocabulary. Day 1-3 learning alphabet and practicing tongue grapple with forming the sounds Day 4 start with "Here is John." "John is tall." "John is not small." Then at each lesson end, ask questions in that language where the learner answers back because they have facts to use in answering, in the target language e.g. "Who is here?" "Is John small?" To my awareness, there does not exist a language program on the available market that teaches this way, at least in either German, French, or Italian.

Have you tried Speakly? But your thesis makes some assumptions that aren't really true.

I gotta try this

I think it depends a lot. In a perfect world, like 80%, but there's no way to reach that unless the language is super similar, without some time spent at a lower percentage. If you learn the most common 500 words and you understand 5%, after about 50 hours I think it should go up a lot. But this is also why I advocate for repeated watching and listening. If you start with something you've read before and listen to the first 40 minutes of the audiobook like 50 times, it's impossible to not understand almost all of it.

So... you don't speak Swedish then? In all seriousness, you need close to 10,000 words to be mostly fluent (numbers and ideas of fluency may vary). Even if you learned a word a day with duolingo, you'll never reach fluency. You've dunning kruger'ed yourself.

​@@athenagreen5390I think that was their joke. I don't think they mean this comment seriously.

I didn't use Duolingo and Lamont had to teach me "andvändbar". See, the green bird is necessary!

Thanks for the tip! I can't change it just now but I'll take a look.

Update: Actually I can change it haha.

@@daysandwords most welcome. new one looks great. love your vids btw.

It's the Chicago Cubs but it's their "City Connect" hat, which will only make sense if you know what that even means. In case you don't: It's basically Nike and New Era coming up with a way to make more uniforms to sell more merch. But as someone who lives in the country that they send all merch to be cleared at below-cost price, that doesn't bother me.

This B roll was filmed about 5 years ago but I think I was just trying to write down 3000 French phrases or idioms basically.

@@daysandwords Gotcha! I do something similar from the Italian content I consume but yours look so much neater and organized that I figured I'd ask :)

​@@viridianiteHaha normally mine isn't. I had this idea that if I did more "organised" study I'd be better. These days I just let the subconscious do its thing.

Get to 1200, have a little celebration party and then say an active goodbye to it. It'll feel better than just "giving up" or letting it lapse. Think of it as a celebration of what you've done and now a moving on to better things.

@@daysandwords ok thanks

"It's not useless" is very true. But when that's the best thing you can say about it, maybe it's just pretty crap.

You can obtain the same basics with videos on the net for beginners, and much quicker as you can skip the parts or whole videos that are not interesting or relevant. Basic grammar points like pronouns, as well as vocabulary occur so often that you learn them automatically from input, and progressively which is also better for memory.

@@AlinefromToulouse Heck, even a grammar book in your native language (or the language you're learning from) would be better: You're introduced to some grammar, and immediately followed by exercises with the solution on the back. Some people are allergic doing some work unless they've an owl dancing left and right, and making a 30-minute lesson into 10 side quests lasting hours, to the benefit of Duolingo, Inc.

Yeah the alphabet courses are actually ok. But I mean it's pretty basic to teach someone "This sound = this symbol" kind of thing. Duolingo tries to extend that to all of LL which has the results of... well, Duolingo.

You don't really need Duolingo for that, though it might be fine. The Korean alphabet is pretty easy overall. I mostly learned it by checking a website called "learn hangeul" to check some Korean words I was exposed to while doing my normal online things.