[culebron21]

I learned 5 foreign languages different ways, and the one I'm most proficient in, Italian, I learned the hardest way, doing grammar excercises, where for every of 31 paragraphs of the manual (each paragraph containing 2-3 grammatical phoenomena), I had to articulate ~200 sentences, each from scratch. I abandoned flashcards on the 2nd or 3rd month of learning. I also attended a discussion club, which gave that tiny bit of "coffeeshop" language the author speaks about. 1,5 years into learning, I passed CILS exam for level C (it would be C1 nowadays).

My worst language in is German, where every manual is well elaborated in terms of graphical design, but every exercise askss you to insert a word or two into a sentence. Or pick an answer from a set. Basically, Duolinguo sent to printer. So after couple of years of working with teachers and taking intensive courses, my level is B1..2. I can listen to radio and understand something, I can read something. I actually can speak in a shop -- they'll understand my level and speak accordingly -- but I can't do a normal conversation. I couldn't find a teacher that doesn't just drill you through these same fancy books.

"A friend who had been learning some language in Duolinguo and then couldn't say a sentence to a native", should be proverbial nowadays.

So, despite the app idea being interesting and compelling, this teaching approach, picking correct options from lists, are good for testing (if the subject is given little enough time), but futile at teaching.

[dgfl]

For once, the Italian fascination with grammar and sentence analysis comes useful.

For some context, when moving abroad I felt that most other countries don’t really teach grammar and language analysis to the point that we do in Italy. I did attend a language-focused school, which obviously leaned even more towards this tendency; but I get the impression that most competent teens graduating italian schools have a more extensive grammar-related vocabulary than other cultures.

It makes sense then that Italian learning books would be more focused on grammar compared to other languages. I felt it extended to how we were taught English as well (i.e. the opposite direction). I don’t think it is the absolute best tactic for language learning, but perhaps it is the best one when restricted to purely written exercises.

I’d be curious to know whether you had a similar impression. My evidence is all anecdotal, mostly from talking to various people around Europe.

[darkwater]

> For some context, when moving abroad I felt that most other countries don’t really teach grammar and language analysis to the point that we do in Italy.

Yep, I have to agree, as an Italian living abroad. In my case, I now have kids on the verge of finishing primary school and - maybe they will start next year who knows - I haven't seen grammar taught that much. Ironically they have more grammar exercises when studying English than the native tongues. But maybe it's just a "modern school" thing...

[voidmain0001]

I'm a native English speaker and taught myself Spanish. I focused heavily on grammar and verb conjugation such that I can explain verb tenses and their uses to someone else learning Spanish, yet I struggle to explain the same to an English learner. Either I didn't care enough to pay attention during my English courses or it's not taught.

[telesilla]

To be fair, verb tenses in English are so easy compared to Spanish, it's not really the same required effort. As a native English speaker I found learning other languages a shock for how verbs change so dramatically according to context.

[voidmain0001]

That’s the opposite of my experience with Spanish as I found verb conjugation super formulaic and easy. Regardless, what I meant is that I can explain when and why subjunctive is used in Spanish but struggle with this in English.

[wink]

Maybe an unpopular opinion but I especially find verb tenses to be the least important part of learning and having a conversation. People will get the meaning if it was in the past or the future if you know words like yesterday/last week/tomorrow/next week.

Of course this is just a stepping stone, but why try to duplicate (or more) everything when what you most need is proper sentence structure in the present tense and vocabulary.

Although maybe there are some languages where this is not true, not the ones I studied (briefly or not). But in my experience it is also true for people speaking bad German (talking mostly self-taught or from basic courses, not for white collar jobs with large amounts of written text) - perfectly understandable, just no tenses.

[culebron21]

The Italian textbook was actually written by a Russian, Yulia Dobrovoskaya, in 1960s (with refrences to Rodari, Togliatti, and partigiani). But I guess she learnt from the native speakers and the literate culture. (After learning Spanish and Portuguese, the sophistication of Italian speech and writing outshines every other language to me.)

[thedanbob]

> "A friend who had been learning some language in Duolinguo and then couldn't say a sentence to a native", should be proverbial nowadays.

I tried picking up some German via Duolingo once. I thought it was going great, pretty soon I was up to full sentences. Then one day I realized (because my voice teacher sometimes makes me translate the foreign language songs) that I wasn't learning German sentences, I was learning English sentences substituted with German words. German grammar is completely different. I haven't touched Duolingo since.

[stronglikedan]

At least with Duolingo's Spanish course, the differences in grammar are among the first things they teach. Weird that it would be different with German.

[thedanbob]

It's been almost 10 years so maybe they do it differently now. I just remember they made a big deal about the gendered nouns but nothing about the fact that sentences weren't even close to correctly structured. And too be fair, maybe that was coming later and they didn't want to overwhelm people, but a quick explanation would have been nice.

[kot_manul]

I experienced the same thing with both German and Dutch while trying to learn them via Duolingo over a period of 6 months or so. After all the drilling and gamified lessons I never even started to feel like I was actually _learning_ these languages. With German I figured was just me being stupid or not grokking it properly; it's different enough from English to "feel" very foreign. But Dutch isn't that different.

I remember only two sentences from the Dutch Duolingo, maybe because they were constantly repeated:

"Ik ben een appel." (I am an apple.)

and: "Nee, je bent geen appel!" (No, you are not an apple!)

For comparison, I did self-study with Japanese in my teens and learned enough to ace the first 1.5 years of college Japanese instruction without much effort. And I remember taking Spanish classes in high school and to this day can at least fumble my way through a basic conversation.

In contrast the only use I would have for what I learned of Dutch via Duolingo would be if I came across someone having a psychotic break. You're _not_ an apple, dude.

Granted, I spent more time with both Spanish and Japanese than with any language I tried with Duolingo, but my point is simply that Duolingo just doesn't make languages "click", at least not for me and apparently not for a bunch of others either.

[ponector]

What is your approach to learn German?

[thedanbob]

I haven't tried since that one attempt. I've picked up a few words from learning German songs as part of my voice training, but otherwise it's not useful enough to me to take the time and effort.

[Mikhail_Edoshin]

When I was an adolescent boy, my teacher gave me a beautifully looking "scientific" encyclopedia, translated into Russian from a British original. Graphically it was a masterpiece; I think it was used as one of samples in in Alan Hurlburt's "The Grid". Yet as I tried to read it I was somewhat puzzled and disappointed. Normally as I read a scientific book for my age I could form a coherent big picture. If I could not, then the material was hard, so I had to re-read, write things down, explain to myself and I would finally get it. Yet with this encyclopedia I could not get even a glimpse of the big picture. A factoid here, a factoid there, all very well illustrated, the whole book in full color, which was rare those days, but without any links between those factoids. As a Russian saying goes, it all flew into one ear and flew out from another. Nothing stayed. I've got much more from a modest physics schoolbook where I re-read every topic and derived every formula.

[neutronicus]

Hmm.

I learned Hebrew in Duolingo and I've in fact spoken many sentences to natives. All the Israeli women we know are always negatively comparing their American Jewish husbands to me, the goy who learned Hebrew from Duolingo.

Granted, those natives are either married to me or related to someone who is. So maybe that component is essential.

[culebron21]

Ok, it may work if you're in the language ambient, IDK. The situation of most learners is different: we live in our countries, there are very few if any speakers of target language, or they're too busy.

[awesome_dude]

> A friend who had been learning some language in Duolinguo and then couldn't say a sentence to a native, should be proverbial nowadays.

I tried to learn Mandarin via Duolingo, and whilst I agree that the "multi choice" style isn't great for learning a language I did notice that I was picking up fragments of what native speakers were saying around me.

[actionfromafar]

You could try the opposite angle with German - watch movies and shows in German, no subtitles. Maybe start with something aimed at children. Sprinkle in some Dutch to mix it up. It can be useful in real-world situations, depending on region.

[culebron21]

These passive approaches don't work at all. I tried this with Portuguese, French (which I don't consider learnt at all), and German as well.

Before I took a good teacher's classes, I had been listening German radio for 2 years, learned nothing of substance.

Portuguese, which I do speak, probably even at B2, is the language that I learned through radio, thanks to similarities to Italian and Spanish, and in which I feel the least confident. All my progress with it was when I was actually using it -- spoken or written, looking up dictionaries.

[actionfromafar]

I think YMMV here. If you watch a movie without subtitles, you are sort of forced to pick up understanding, or you won't get anything out of it. This is maybe not the best way to get started, but it helped me getting to a fluent level when talking to people, specifically the "listening and understanding" part. Before, I could read and write (horribly, but legibly, mostly), but would very often draw a blank when it came to understanding what people said.

[Gravityloss]

or have subtitles in German at first. Also helps if you repeat some catch phrases aloud. Especially fun if you're watching together with someone.

One cool effect is that your vocabulary can be heavily concentrated on what you're watching. Like police procedures. (in Alte they speak very clear German, can recommend.)

[culebron21]

The only case for me, when subtitles helped, was watching British TV series, first without subtitles, then with them, and improving listening. But only after all the grammatical heavy lifting.

[andrepd]

I've had excellent results for French with a series of books called Grammaire Progressive du Français. Self-contained lessons of grammar. Vocabulary is easier because I already spoke a language with significant cross-pollination with French vocabulary.

It's not an "app" and doesn't have a "streak" or an "HP bar", so...

[fransje26]

And if you really like to suffer, you can do it like the locals and try working through a copy of le "Bescherelle"..

[integralid]

That's a nice story, but I think restricting yourself to exactly one teaching methods is needlessly limited.

Yes, you probably need a proper textbook and (ideally) a teacher to learn grammar and the language rules. This is hard work, but IMO gamified apps make users a huge disservice by handwaving this and hoping the user magically figures it all out. But, like the author found out, grammar alone won't make you fluent.

I'm personally very fond of flashcards (Anki). Yes, memorizing words is just a part of language learning, but it's important and FSRS is extremely good at it. Way better than repeatedly reading a textbook.

I personally hate duolingo for many reasons (it doesn't work for me), but some of my friends use it. This touches another important thing: regularity. Gamified apps and flashcards make it easy to form a habit. You can complete your daily lesson in a bus. And they are (more) fun. Even ineffective learning method is better than nothing.

Finally, ymmv and there's no one size fits all. I got pretty good (fluent and communicative) by in Russian by initially just studying flashcards (followed by reading and listening - another very important component) - because grammar is similar to my native (Slavic) language and I could, actually, figure out most of it. Textbooks came much later. It was not as easy with German...

PS. worth noting that the author explicitly says that this app is meant to teach you just the very basics and numerals, not for language learning

[burkaman]

What was "the manual" that you used for Italian?

[mzhaase]

Italian is also very easy to learn while German makes absolutely no sense.

A turnip is female, the fishmongers wife is neutral, a boy is male, a girl is neutral, the wife is female. Plural of Tür is Türen plural of Öffnung is Öffnungen, plural of Vogel is Vögel plural of Fenster is.. Fenster.

Hundreds of unspoken rules regarding word order, some verbs that can be separated and others cannot.. Completely random.

And good luck even being able to hear the difference between spucken and spuken if your language doesn't have long vs. short vowels.

[Joker_vD]

To this very day I can't hear the difference between e.g. "sit" and "seat", or "eat" and "it". I can pronounce them no problem, but hearing it? Nope, those two are the same sounds. Well, whatever, the context is always disambiguating enough.

But I can hear the difference between short/long (as in, differing in actual temporal duration) vowels just fine, e.g. in Finnish/Latvian ― although those languages kinda overextend it IMHO.

[ema]

The reason you're not hearing any difference between the words in those pairs is because they are pronounced the same. At least according to Wiktionary and my own subjective judgement as a German native speaker.

[Joker_vD]

I've actually messed with Audacity once, extracting the vowels, lengthening them and overlaying, and there is definitely a difference in quality (the length is pretty much the same), it's just that it's very minor to my ear. But native English speakers apparently can pick them up with little trouble.

The difference is much easier to spot in pairs like "bead"/"bid", but that's mainly because before the voiced consonants the long vowel is actually longer than the short one, and the speakers usually add a small glide of "y" at the end of it, so it's more like "beeyd".

[wink]

I had a native English coworker who used to pronounce it Ü-Bahn and when corrected he insisted that it sounded exactly the same then when I said U-Bahn.

He was perfectly capable of making the same (German) u sound when saying other English words. Apparently it is very subtle, sometimes even for specific things like start of the word and length of the vowel. I just don't know.

[culebron21]

I had a teacher of German with whom we learned the rules and drilled just articulating sentences, and in that half year my progress was enormous. Then me and he got busy, he didn't teach anymore. And I see you indeed can learn and improve German to level C if you're lucky to have a good teacher.

I can compare that to Goethe institut's intensive courses: 6 weeks by these fancy colorful textbooks. Waste of time.

[miroljub]

> Italian is also very easy to learn

If your native language is similar, for example, Romanian or Spanish, sure it is. For the others, not really.

> while German makes absolutely no sense.

Mark Twain also complained about it.

> A turnip is female, the fishmongers wife is neutral, a boy is male, a girl is neutral, the wife is female. Plural of Tür is Türen plural of Öffnung is Öffnungen, plural of Vogel is Vögel plural of Fenster is.. Fenster.

So as in basically every language that has a grammatical gender. If it's not the same as in your native language, it won't make sense, and you'll need to learn it. After some time, you'll notice the pattern and will be able to guess accurately.

> Hundreds of unspoken rules regarding word order, some verbs that can be separated and others cannot.. Completely random.

The rules are well understood and clearly written. You just need to learn them.

> And good luck even being able to hear the difference between spucken and spuken if your language doesn't have long vs. short vowels.

Isn't that the case about every foreign language? I was never able to distinguish or pronounce correctly French diphthongs. I'm pretty sure half of the people here wouldn't be able to pronounce a couple of sounds from my native language even if their lives depended on it.

[jiehong]

French shares those, and add the fact that many letters aren’t pronounced, but must be known to correctly make the "liaison".

[bmacho]

The same is true for English in addition that written and spoken English are mostly 2 different languages with very little connection