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Comment by segasaturn | Hacker News Reader

Duolingo has the same incentives problem as dating apps - once someone is sufficiently fluent in the language they want to learn, they stop using the app. So instead of efficiently teaching the language, Duolingo makes the process as slow as possible while tricking the user into feeling that they're quickly learning.

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Eh, I don't think that's accurate since there's no "monogamy" equivalent to language. It takes a long time to learn a language deeply, and if that were made easier, many people would just want to learn more of them. The nature of (the vast majority of) relationships is that when you find one you're done looking for more, that is not the nature of any type of knowledge.

And as a plot twist using actual dating apps to learn a new language while abroad can be very effective

It does take a long time, and also "real life" immersion, to learn a language deeply. It's the immersion part that Duolingo doesn't do well if at all. So it has to artificially slow down those things it does do in order to keep subscribers.

Learning even one new language when you are already an adult is hard (or even almost impossible if complete fluency is the goal) for an average person. It's not just acquiring some knowledge, it's hard, and I'd say in general people are much more likely to f up their relationships just for the thrills than to learn new languages just for the thrills.

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