I had a streak of over 1200 days, and after years of reduction in quality and them constantly making the ad based version harder and harder to use, I finally left. AI was the last straw.
I have my eyes on Lingonaut, an app still in beta, and being created by volunteers for free to recreate the early days of Duolingo.
I paid for Lingodeer Lifetime, which was $120 at the time. I thought that was pretty hefty already, but it was like 8 months of monthly subscription, and I figured I would need that much time to get through the course anyway. “Regular” price for lifetime is apparently $300, but they constantly run sales that take it down to more reasonable amounts.
On the other hand, I have to admit that the quality of the course is worth the $300 and I too learned more from a few months of Lingodeer than 2 years of Duolingo. They’re also honest in that they teach you all the grammar fairly quickly with a minimal vocabulary and then just end the course with the advice to start reading books. They’re not trapping you in language purgatory like Duolingo does.
1200 days of language learning? Different languages or the same one? If it’s the same one you probably don’t need an app anymore. Try talking to natives in your chosen second language. You might be surprised how much you know. I used duo for about a year when i moved to a different language country. After that year i found it was holding me back more than helping.
The same language, but I only did about 15 minutes a day. I am more the “pick away at it a little bit” than an “immerse your entire life in it” kind of learner. I learned a lot, and can have basic conversations at this point, but I still have a long way to go and will continue using some kind of language app going forward. I watch media too which helps. Apps are just one tool of many.
I live in colombia so it’d be pretty difficult to find someone who doesn’t speak spanish. Why would i feel guilty for talking to someone? I don’t force anyone to talk i just talk to them normally. I find a lot of times if they know a little english they like to practice that as much as i like to practice spanish.
I don’t force anyone to talk i just talk to them normally.
That’s the same thing - you interrupt their day and insert yourself into it by barging in to talk at them, forcing them to have an interaction with you.
Why would i feel guilty for talking to someone?
The fact that you’re asking this is amazing to me. You can’t even imagine it!
To, what? Convince me that being talked at by a stranger when I have my own stuff going on isn’t rude and annoying? I certainly don’t like it when people do that to me!
There are some spaces where being talked to by strangers is acceptable, but just doing it to everyone wherever in another country is alien behavior to me. I honestly don’t get it.
Like, do they just sit next to strangers on the bus and talk at them? I think I’d die!
Dude you got issues if you can’t talk to people. How do you accomplish any task without interacting with people? And why learn a second language if you arent going to talk to others in said language?
Everyone has different comfort levels when interacting with people. Try and find situations where you feel it would be less of a bother. For example, if Spanish is a language you are learning, you can go to a Spanish or Latin American restaurant, and mention you want to practice. It is worth asking if the server speaks the language, so as not to assume.
Posts like this are a psy op to keep English language speakers (especially in North America) lonely and atomized. There are numerous state and nonstate actors who benefit from this
If you are in public, you should expect to be spoken to. Conversations between strangers are an inherent part of existing in public in human society. Doing away with this causes loneliness on the level of a public health crisis
This feeling of the rudeness of interrupting other people in public spaces arises from our material conditions. There are limited hours in a day and we have to give up at least eight (or more) of those hours for wages/commuting. Then the other eight (or fewer) hours cram in as many chores, hobbies, chores, entertainment, and chores as we can before we have to sleep and go back to work.
This produces hyper-alienated hyper-individuals that don’t talk to anyone and only work. It’s unhealthy and lonely.
But you aren’t going to fix this by just forcing your way into other people’s lives and making them talk to you! That doesn’t change the material base. You’re just wasting whatever limited time they have between shifts and probably just ruining their day.
Doing away with this requires restructuring society and production, not brute forcing the issue by talking at people.
To say that trying to talk to someone in public is “just superstructural” and therefore pointless misunderstands Marx’s dialectical method. The superstructure—culture, ideas, social practices—does indeed arise from the base, but it also plays an active role in reproducing the base. Marx writes in The German Ideology that the ruling ideas of any epoch are the ideas of the ruling class—but this doesn’t mean culture is irrelevant. It means that challenging the dominant cultural norms (such as social atomization or emotional withdrawal) can be part of building class consciousness.
Casual human interaction and social warmth—even in public—are not distractions from revolution; they are preconditions for solidarity.
Alienation is a problem to be fought in daily life, not just after the revolution.
Yes, workers are alienated—precisely why we should reject behaviors that normalize atomization. Waiting for material conditions to change before trying to relate to one another humanely is mechanistic and non-dialectical. Marxists don’t just observe alienation—we oppose it.
You complain that people are “hyper-alienated hyper-individuals that don’t talk to anyone and only work”—but then say we must preserve that isolation in the name of respecting their time. That’s a perfect example of how ideology defends the status quo: by making alienation feel like politeness.
Human beings are social animals—sociality is part of our species-being.
Marx understood that our species-being is realized through conscious, cooperative activity—work, communication, creativity, and mutual recognition. In Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, he describes how under capitalism, “man (the worker) only feels himself freely active in his animal functions… and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal.”
Avoiding spontaneous social interaction is not “neutral”—it is part of the internalization of capitalist discipline. Public silence is not a natural baseline—it is a social norm formed under capitalism’s conditions of isolation, commodification of time, and mistrust between individuals.
We don’t need to “brute force” anything—but we do need to resist social death.
This isn’t about “forcing” conversations. It’s about reclaiming public life from capital. Small acts of human engagement push back against the logic of commodified time and estranged relationships. They are not revolutionary in themselves, but they are practices of de-alienation that matter for prefigurative politics: living as if the world were already more humane.
Just as Marxists support mutual aid, workers’ discussion groups, and community gardens—not because they overthrow capitalism directly, but because they prefigure new forms of life—so too should we support small acts of human connection.
Rejecting all unsolicited conversation in public on the grounds that capitalism has left us too tired to be human is the kind of defeatist logic Marx called “crude communism”—a desire to equalize misery rather than abolish it.
Instead of bowing to alienation, we should treat every opportunity for warmth, connection, and solidarity as a small but real blow against the isolating logic of capitalist society.
If we want a world where people can be free, we should practice being free—even in line at the grocery store.
In my opinion duolingo type apps should never beeused more than about 90 days. Those first few months when you know nothing they are a good way to get something but as time goes on your time is better spent in native content.
I think it depends on your learning style. Duolingo was fantastic for me and taught me enough that for the first time in my life I was able to dip my toe in native content and actually understand what was going on.
Depends on how intense you use it in those 90 days, burning general yes - it helps you with the first steps, but then you’ll learn much more by e.g. watching videos, reading, joining a discord community in that language for a game you play,… in the language
I had a streak of over 1200 days, and after years of reduction in quality and them constantly making the ad based version harder and harder to use, I finally left. AI was the last straw.
I have my eyes on Lingonaut, an app still in beta, and being created by volunteers for free to recreate the early days of Duolingo.
I’m a fan of lingodeer a lot so far. Already learned more in 40 days than I did with 5 months of Duolingo
I paid for Lingodeer Lifetime, which was $120 at the time. I thought that was pretty hefty already, but it was like 8 months of monthly subscription, and I figured I would need that much time to get through the course anyway. “Regular” price for lifetime is apparently $300, but they constantly run sales that take it down to more reasonable amounts.
On the other hand, I have to admit that the quality of the course is worth the $300 and I too learned more from a few months of Lingodeer than 2 years of Duolingo. They’re also honest in that they teach you all the grammar fairly quickly with a minimal vocabulary and then just end the course with the advice to start reading books. They’re not trapping you in language purgatory like Duolingo does.
Awesome. Just installed, looks good.
I’ll check it out!
1200 days of language learning? Different languages or the same one? If it’s the same one you probably don’t need an app anymore. Try talking to natives in your chosen second language. You might be surprised how much you know. I used duo for about a year when i moved to a different language country. After that year i found it was holding me back more than helping.
The same language, but I only did about 15 minutes a day. I am more the “pick away at it a little bit” than an “immerse your entire life in it” kind of learner. I learned a lot, and can have basic conversations at this point, but I still have a long way to go and will continue using some kind of language app going forward. I watch media too which helps. Apps are just one tool of many.
Do you just force yourself into their day and start talking at them? And you don’t feel guilty for forcing them to talk to you?
Extroverts are wild lol
I live in colombia so it’d be pretty difficult to find someone who doesn’t speak spanish. Why would i feel guilty for talking to someone? I don’t force anyone to talk i just talk to them normally. I find a lot of times if they know a little english they like to practice that as much as i like to practice spanish.
That’s the same thing - you interrupt their day and insert yourself into it by barging in to talk at them, forcing them to have an interaction with you.
The fact that you’re asking this is amazing to me. You can’t even imagine it!
No joke, you should go to therapy for that.
Average .ml user
wow it’s like I never left reddit 🥲
Remember the phrase “if everywhere you go smells like shit…”
To, what? Convince me that being talked at by a stranger when I have my own stuff going on isn’t rude and annoying? I certainly don’t like it when people do that to me!
There are some spaces where being talked to by strangers is acceptable, but just doing it to everyone wherever in another country is alien behavior to me. I honestly don’t get it.
Like, do they just sit next to strangers on the bus and talk at them? I think I’d die!
You’re getting mad about imaginary situations. It’s kind of pathetic.
Just confused. Where does someone in another country go to just talk to people without being annoying or rude? I can’t imagine it.
Dude you got issues if you can’t talk to people. How do you accomplish any task without interacting with people? And why learn a second language if you arent going to talk to others in said language?
I just don’t want to bother anyone.
I can still listen.
Everyone has different comfort levels when interacting with people. Try and find situations where you feel it would be less of a bother. For example, if Spanish is a language you are learning, you can go to a Spanish or Latin American restaurant, and mention you want to practice. It is worth asking if the server speaks the language, so as not to assume.
I feel like servers’ jobs are hard enough without me heaping more work on them.
deleted by creator
Posts like this are a psy op to keep English language speakers (especially in North America) lonely and atomized. There are numerous state and nonstate actors who benefit from this
If you are in public, you should expect to be spoken to. Conversations between strangers are an inherent part of existing in public in human society. Doing away with this causes loneliness on the level of a public health crisis
You’re getting base and superstructure reversed.
This feeling of the rudeness of interrupting other people in public spaces arises from our material conditions. There are limited hours in a day and we have to give up at least eight (or more) of those hours for wages/commuting. Then the other eight (or fewer) hours cram in as many chores, hobbies, chores, entertainment, and chores as we can before we have to sleep and go back to work.
This produces hyper-alienated hyper-individuals that don’t talk to anyone and only work. It’s unhealthy and lonely.
But you aren’t going to fix this by just forcing your way into other people’s lives and making them talk to you! That doesn’t change the material base. You’re just wasting whatever limited time they have between shifts and probably just ruining their day.
Doing away with this requires restructuring society and production, not brute forcing the issue by talking at people.
To say that trying to talk to someone in public is “just superstructural” and therefore pointless misunderstands Marx’s dialectical method. The superstructure—culture, ideas, social practices—does indeed arise from the base, but it also plays an active role in reproducing the base. Marx writes in The German Ideology that the ruling ideas of any epoch are the ideas of the ruling class—but this doesn’t mean culture is irrelevant. It means that challenging the dominant cultural norms (such as social atomization or emotional withdrawal) can be part of building class consciousness.
Casual human interaction and social warmth—even in public—are not distractions from revolution; they are preconditions for solidarity.
Yes, workers are alienated—precisely why we should reject behaviors that normalize atomization. Waiting for material conditions to change before trying to relate to one another humanely is mechanistic and non-dialectical. Marxists don’t just observe alienation—we oppose it.
You complain that people are “hyper-alienated hyper-individuals that don’t talk to anyone and only work”—but then say we must preserve that isolation in the name of respecting their time. That’s a perfect example of how ideology defends the status quo: by making alienation feel like politeness.
Marx understood that our species-being is realized through conscious, cooperative activity—work, communication, creativity, and mutual recognition. In Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, he describes how under capitalism, “man (the worker) only feels himself freely active in his animal functions… and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal.”
Avoiding spontaneous social interaction is not “neutral”—it is part of the internalization of capitalist discipline. Public silence is not a natural baseline—it is a social norm formed under capitalism’s conditions of isolation, commodification of time, and mistrust between individuals.
This isn’t about “forcing” conversations. It’s about reclaiming public life from capital. Small acts of human engagement push back against the logic of commodified time and estranged relationships. They are not revolutionary in themselves, but they are practices of de-alienation that matter for prefigurative politics: living as if the world were already more humane.
Just as Marxists support mutual aid, workers’ discussion groups, and community gardens—not because they overthrow capitalism directly, but because they prefigure new forms of life—so too should we support small acts of human connection.
Rejecting all unsolicited conversation in public on the grounds that capitalism has left us too tired to be human is the kind of defeatist logic Marx called “crude communism”—a desire to equalize misery rather than abolish it.
Instead of bowing to alienation, we should treat every opportunity for warmth, connection, and solidarity as a small but real blow against the isolating logic of capitalist society.
If we want a world where people can be free, we should practice being free—even in line at the grocery store.
Same, I was a couple weeks shy of 1500, I think. Can’t say I really miss it, I wasn’t getting anything out of it except big number.
In my opinion duolingo type apps should never beeused more than about 90 days. Those first few months when you know nothing they are a good way to get something but as time goes on your time is better spent in native content.
I think it depends on your learning style. Duolingo was fantastic for me and taught me enough that for the first time in my life I was able to dip my toe in native content and actually understand what was going on.
Depends on how intense you use it in those 90 days, burning general yes - it helps you with the first steps, but then you’ll learn much more by e.g. watching videos, reading, joining a discord community in that language for a game you play,… in the language
If you are not studying very intensely then you will never learn a language so quit trying to fool yourself.