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xandrius12/09/20242 repliesview on HN

Duolingo is a pretty bad tool for learning a language, it's good to make you feel like you're learning though.


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waste_monk12/09/2024

At this point it's more about being scared of the bird.

mettamage12/09/2024

Just to give a nuanced perspective on duolingo.

My wife only did 50 hours of duolingo in total the past 2 years. Combine that with me teasing her in Dutch and she’s actually making progress.

Duolingo is a chill tool to learn some vocab. That vocab then gets acquired by talking to me. We talk 2 minutes Dutch per day at most. So about 11 hours in total per year.

She is 67% done with duolingo. So we bought the first real book to learn Dutch (De Opmaat).

That book is IMO not for pure beginners. But for the level my wife was at, it seems perfect.

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