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Comment by googlemike | Hacker News Reader

I have only used Duolingo for languages I am fluent in. There is a mode somewhere where you can take a set of exams to see where you place on the fluency spectrum in any given language they offer. I do this for pure curiosity to see how far I get up on their "track". I find it to be a super shallow and lacking system - the words encountered have little to do in the way of everyday conversation, things you see on TV, the grocery store, or even most professional settings. I don't have too many examples off the top of my head, but one that really kept coming up in the French test was "the little spider is red" - When does someone need this? Whys is this any mark of proficiency?

I always leave feeling as though this app/product is a giant waste of time.

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Hmm. Those all seem like fairly basic words to know; OK, maybe "spider" isn't as common a word to need, but it is something that comes up in conversation sometimes. That particular phrase isn't one you're going to have to say very often, but I'd say it would be pretty hard to say you're fluent in a language if you don't know those words.

I've been doing Duolingo for French for the past few months, trying to dust off the couple of semesters of French I took in college and get a bit beyond that to maybe get to the point where I can get by. Yes, there is a bit skewed towards things like family relationships, clothes, the house at the beginning; things that might be important if you're living somewhere but possibly less important if you're just visiting. But they are always adding new content, and as the original article points out they just did a revamp to give access to a lot of newer content they hadn't provided access to before.

I don't know; a language generally has a huge amount of vocabulary, as well as grammar to learn, and you need to learn it in some order.

The main thing I do find lacking is that it's pretty much all translation or transcription of simple sentences, or word matching. I do find these helpful for learning vocabulary and grammar, but they aren't going to lead to fluency. The article does mention that something that they are working on is longer listening comprehension exercises, which I think would help out with that a lot.

Isn't the point of phrases like "the little spider is red" that you can substitute to say many phrases, so you can - vocab willing - then say that 'the big dog is scary' or 'the small pizza is hot' or whatever. You're supposed to be learning a model sentence [definite article][adj][n][v][adj] to enable you to make statements about things in the present tense.

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