Ask HN: Any alternatives to Duolingo without gamification?
I like Duolingo, but the delays between each session, and the number of buttons I have to push between each learning session, are absolutely killing me. I’m already paying for premium, so no ads, but each time a session ends the number of buttons I have to push just to get out of “rewards”, committing to a streak when I don’t want to, or getting some gems or acknowledging some news feature, are killing my desire to learn new languages. Is there any way to turn off the gamification on Duolingo? Or reduce the number of buttons I need to press to get from one session to the next? Or, alternatively, are there any language learning apps that avoid this gamification? I do like Duolingo’s progress tracking, and gradual buildup of vocabulary. I’ve tried making my own flashcards in Anki, but that’s a ton of work and it’s hard to factor in any language roadmap element on my own. Duolingo is not bad, but the percentage of time doing things other than learning, specifically pushing buttons and waiting for or watching animation, is far too high. I’d love if I could just turn all of this stuff off.
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[ 4005 ms ] story [ 1824 ms ] threadI switched from Duolingo to Busuu for my Japanese learning and it’s so much better. They did add leagues to it too but you can just ignore it.
It's been a few months but I had issues importing csvs of words I was learning, trying to create new decks. I think I couldn't have two cards with the same front
The gamification is less than Duolingo. When I complete a review it praises me for my keeping up my streak, and they also added achievements. However there aren't gems, premium upsell ads (it's a paid app), etc.
The trick for Duolingo is to use the desktop version and disable all the "helpful" bits you can or at least use the browser version if on mobile. Desktop had far fewer gamified bits than the app as of a year ago (sadly the new UI broke my workflow and I dropped Duo altogether). Gems weren't a meaningful thing, etc.
In particular: Use your keyboard for everything. You'll probably want to be able to type in the target language anyway and it helps you avoid the trap of being really good at pattern recognition instead of really learning all the grammar quirks.
You can disable both animations and the leaderboard gamification in the settings (the latter by setting your profile to private). CSS/uBlock can help hide other distractions, add dark mode, etc. as needed.
It takes some extra work now to unbury the learning tool beneath but Duolingo itself, especially if you go in with a general idea of how to go about learning a language, is still really useful.
Super helpful link that I used along the way as well (not mine): https://runwes.com/2020/02/11/howilearnedfrench.html
ask it for a 12-week curriculum and have it go through it with you
It can do languages and you can get google to pronounce things, and ChatGPT again to explain unexpected nuances
when multimodal is rolled out to your profile, you can practice handwriting too
It’s perfect because it doesn’t demand much, you can do other thing a at the same time even, is extremely straightforward but is also incredibly productive.
I will also give recommendations to Language Transfer, Drops, and good old Anki.
—Arthur —dijo con tono cortante, ["Arthur," he said sharply.] y su voz sonó como el chasquido de una ratonera—, [and his voice sounded like the click of a mousetrap.]
There is zero gamification, as it's not needed - you're motivated by the pleasure of reading.
It won't help you to learn to speak (there is an option to read aloud a selected phrase though), but it will help you with vocabulary. I went with it from not being able to read even one page, to being able to understand 70% of a book (intermediate Spanish level) in about a month.
ATM looking for beta users, completely free of charge. Pls leave a contact in a comment if you're interested
https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/ has the guide books. Topics include startups, UI/UX, programming, project management, etc.
Feel free to email me joel@joelparkerhenderson.com. I can give you access to the repos, if you wish to add your translations there too. You're on to a really great idea IMHO.
I'm going to guess the translations are mechanical, rather than professional?
I've tried using LibreTranslate, GoogleTranslate, DeepL, ChatGPT 3.5 and 4 for translations - in my experience ChatGPT is the best for this use case, 3.5 is good enough and economically viable, 4 is superior, especially if you want translation in a language different than English, but expensive compared to 3.5: ~$20 for a book.
gmail: antforce
It's not an app... but rather learning with others.
Advanced-level language learners may want to transition into actual real live conversations-- it's so you can spontaneously learn new concepts, expressions, and vocabulary.
I used to use a good penpal-language learning website called MyHappyPlanet. It was back around 2007-2010-ish, and the site no longer exists.
But looks like there are alternatives here:
https://www.fluentu.com/blog/foreign-language-penpal/
Specifically, Pablo Román's effort to make this viable for Spanish [1]. I started before there was a website or anything, just watching free youtube videos. Now I'm definitely B2 or C1. I subscribe partially just to show my support even though I mostly consume native-level media now.
Similar and helpful along he lines of CI are [2] and [3].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Input_hypothesis [1] https://dreamingspanish.com [2] https://refold.la/ [3] https://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/
Much more focused on vocabulary, and learning things that you will use in daily life. And less gamification as well.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/learning-with-texts/
Apart from that, there are a few good tutos on the internet about how to use it. But, the official documentation on the website is just enough... I wish the owner would open-source it. But, even though it is an amazing free program...
Another program (in reality, a Lisp machine I use to learn Languages is the might Emacs). It has org mode and you can also use bash scripts, GNU/Linux commands for learning and manipulating stuff, including languages, all inside the beast, and so on, and so forth... (neo)vim are also good friends for learning languages and not just programming...