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"There are thousands of volunteers who donated their labour to Duo... Bit by bit all of our work was hidden from us as Duolingo became a publicly-traded company." (aus.social)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 21 points 2 years ago (2 children)

As someone who is a current user and unaware of superior options but is curious, what would you recommend?

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I've been having better luck with Babbel lately since it actually teaches ya stuff rather than throwing vocabulary at ya. I've learned more grammar in 2 weeks of Babbel than an entire 10 months learning Dutch on duo

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Good to know, also been learning Dutch and was hoping to make a switch

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Prolly better apps out there (I'm naturally weary of anything like this that's advertised so heavily by sponsored YouTube channels), but so far I'm quite enjoying Babbel. I wish it had the option for like a kinda soft competitive thing like Duolingo had. Trying to work enough to stay at least in my current bracket, and rewarding the player for doing lessons in the morning and before bed, absolutely helped my autistic ADHD ass with sticking to the routine. Gotta maintain that streak, right?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    I did look at that and I wanted to try it out, but they don't even have a free trial, which is unfortunate. Part of the reason I used duolingo was because I am hoping to get the basics for free so I can see if I'm actually learning.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I likes busuu a lot, felt a lot like old Duolingo, but with more relevant lessons. Duo can introduce potentially unhelpful vocabulary and grammar very early on, and now with the crown system every lesson just feels like pedantic repetition, busuu is fun, properly leveled, and has native speakers, with the Chinese course at least.

    I'd be curious to hear which language you try and how it turns out for you since I've only done Chinese so far.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Never heard of busuu before, but tried it now and am enjoying it a lot. Thank you!

    It's also worth giving a shout-out to LibreLingo, which aims to be an open source version of Duolingo. For now it's only Spanish though, and as I'm not interested in learning Spanish at the moment I haven't gotten any real use out of it.

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