[cantrevealname]

I'm not criticizing Duolingo, but I'm wondering if language apps are like gym memberships -- people sign up enthusiastically but after the first month, 90% don't or can't continue.

Learning a new language as an adult is an incredibly difficult undertaking; much more so than persevering with the gym. The dropout rate must be huge.

[mattnumbe]

I've been living, working, studying, playing in Japan for the last 8 years. I came here with no knowledge of the language (except "ohayou" because of that Sesame Street where Big Bird goes to Japan). Learning katakana and hiragana took an afternoon of riding the train and reading signs. The first 3 years I didn't really study much, but talking to old men in bars and spending time in the hospital boosted my communication level a ton. By year 6 I had business level spoken Japanese but had never been able to get into kanji, so I was basically illiterate, but stilled managed to get hired by a Japanese company (with no use for my English skills). I've been using WaniKani for the last half year and it has massively improved my kanji level. It's definitely aimed towards native (american) English speakers, but if you want to learn Kanji, I can highly recommend it. It's actually the only online service (other than Netflix) that I've ever paid for ($50/year with a coupon). Most of the other free apps I've used have been like gym memberships, but for some reason this one sticks.

[voidz]

Where are those coupons? :-)

[mattnumbe]

Fair enough. I guess I should have posted it. If you do some google searches you can find a bunch, but a lot of them dont work any more. The one that worked for me was CRAB YORI GATOR

[jim-jim-jim]

I tried Duolingo for French and Russian, and dropped both after a week.

Part of it is that I have nothing invested in either language and was just curious, but I also think Duolingo itself is a bit flawed; it repeats way too much material and makes you jump through too many hoops. I was busy and it was a hassle.

I think if you're going to study a language, a textbook + Anki is the way to go. If you tell Anki you know something, the algorithm believes you and shows it to you less often so you have more time to focus on what matters. It doesn't make you translate "the black cat" five times in one sitting.

[motoboi]

Duolingo uses spaced repetition. It's like Anki, except that Duolingo will give you some time after you successfully remembered a word or expression in an answer.

Don't know if that is your case, but if you get the "the cat is black" sentence and translate it wrongly, it assumes you are having difficulty with this expression and repeats until you get it right.

When you come to the point of commiting some words to you memory, it uses them to incrementally build grammatical concepts over there (like adjectives and verbs).

It's a pretty complex system going on behind that simple interface.

[mfringel]

I tried using Anki, but creating/formatting index cards was a total pain (especially for Mandarin), and I didn't feel like doing a graphic design project for every character I wanted to learn.

If there was an easier way to auto-generate flash cards, I could see Anki being more interesting.

[krrrh]

Gabriel Wyner has some good strategies for speeding up flash card generation in his Fluent Forever book and website. The primary one for me being a simple AppleScript that took a word and opened up several safari tabs with google image search, pronunciation (forvo.com), a few online dictionairies, etc. You could take the scripting further, but manually picking the best image to represent an idea adds a lot. Another big help was a script for Anki that bulk-generated text-to-speech for words (which for German was incredibly reliable using Apple's built-in voice fonts). Adding an audio component to vocabulary cards gives another pathway for memory to become established.

The unfortunate truth is that the mental connections that come from building your own deck is a good portion of the benefit that comes from using Anki.

[stevekemp]

I suspect it depends on why you're learning. As you say learning languages is hard, especially as an adult.

I couldn't imagine learning a language for "fun", but I know others do. I can easily imagine a lot of them dropping-out and giving up, once they've either learned enough to be useful or decided it is not for them.

But me? I've moved from Scotland to Finland. I'm very slowly learning the language. I don't expect I'll ever be fluent, but I need to try. People who move abroad, and avoid learning the language are not so well respected, and rightly so.

Thus far I've managed to have medical treatment, buy a flat, and do lots of complex things in English, but it would still be better for me to learn Finnish. If only so people don't need to switch languages, solely for my benefit, at parties, etc. (That's appreciated, but also a constant reminder of how much I suck!)

[wccrawford]

I've been learning Japanese for fun for like 10 years now.

IMO, you have to have a reason for the language. Mine is that I wanted to read and watch anime/manga/tv/books/games that weren't being translated. Of course, these days they're all being translated faster than I can read them. But it was enough to get started, and I definitely enjoy them more than if I didn't know the original Japanese, too.

But I've tried to learn other languages that I don't have a use for, and I've found it nearly impossible. There just isn't enough motivation.

[qwtel]

I certainly dropped out of learning spanish with duolingo a couple of years ago (after maybe a few months). All that is left is how to order a beer, but with such a horrible german accent that at least one native speaker burst out into laughter when I attempted... Anyway, I went into it with a "let's see this works" attitude and looking back I'm surprised how far I even got. Low barriers to entry mean low barriers to exit. I guess without loss-aversion, say from investing in a private tutor, or some other form of skin in the game (distant relatives at the place, intense affection for the culture of the place, actually living there) it's hard to keep the motivation up. But I guess duolingo works for the later group.

[talkingtab]

I'm sure lots of people drop out, but I stuck with Dutch for 400 days in a row - only 10 to 20 minutes a day. I'm not fluent, but I have a basic vocabulary. Duolingo does a very good job helping you learn. Now I'm working on trying to fix up my high school French, but will be switching to the Japanese.