To me, the "fluency moment" with German was when I went to cafe in Stuttgart and asked stuff without thinking. Before that I was translating in my mind what I was going to say and what I was told, but this time I just... went ahead, no mental translations. Felt so good! Specially because German is a language I learnt as an adult. I was very happy with myself (^_^)
165 days into Italian... FYI, Gems are not "useless" if you are on the free version. If I make 5 mistakes in a day, I have to wait hours before being able to continue (or do practice lessons to earn a gem) OR I can "buy" Hearts with gems(if I have enough).
@dees3179 Seemingly, only by doing practice lessons (when I have zero hearts) and occasionally (rare) I get a temporary SuperUser period of a couple of days.
I'm at the point where I'm seriously considering buying the full subscription. I have a lot of down time at work where I could be doing it, but I run out of hearts. I also look up stuff to avoid losing hearts and I think I would learn more if I was prepared to make mistakes,
I lost my first streak around 130 days and have it back up to around 10 days now. I was starting to wonder if it's been worth it to continue with duolingo or not. I'm so glad this video came out when it did because it is excatly what I need to become motivated once again. Thanks!
My duolingo tips: I use Duolingo on desktop, you get more typing exercises this way, where you have to type out everything (sometimes you have to press the "make more difficult" button) I look away from the exercises with audio in order to practice listening without reading I supplement Duolingo with a conversation with a native on italki every now and then, where I would bring questions about stuff I have doubts about on Duolingo, grammar, nuances of meaning, also making sure it isn't Duolingo which is incorrect, it happens. If I encounter similar sentences I usually try to use different structures to test out my mastery of the underlying rules and synonyms I sometimes talk to myself while doing exercices saying in a target language stuff like "I just made a mistake I feel kinda stupid but what can you do that's how you learn..." I can go on and on with monologues like that. Also Duolingo often punishes you for mistakes that don't really matter like typos or misreading the original English sentence or just writing something synonymous but not close enough - don't beat yourself over that.
spent two years learning spanish in high school, then met a spanish friend in uni who recently took me to spain for the first time. speaking spanish there gave me such a confidence boost to continue my two year streak on duo!
I love your Duolingo videos. For me, whenever a new one comes out, it's always sort of like a little event. Like "oh what does he have to say about it now?" And it's always so interesting and motivating. Sometimes people are too harsh on Duo, but I've learned SO MUCH since I started using it about four years ago. It doesn't work for everyone and that is completly fine. It works for me and I really enjoy it. I'm very prou of how far i've come with my english and french leassons. I've had my ups and downs like those weeks you mentioned, but I always come back. And slowly but surely, my dream of becoming a polyglot gets closer. I also listen to music and watch some videos here and there. But the majority of my french comes from Duo. Everyone has their own journey that changes and adapts, I'm enjoying mine so far. Ps: Atomic Habits (15:17) is a great book that changed my life. I highly recomend it.
I really wish there was a British English option on Duolingo (British English to Spain Spanish would be perfect). But still, I'm enjoying learning Spanish on Duolingo!
Dude, you have so many gems!! Too bad you can’t send me any! lol. And thanks for the “discuss the story” tip! I was writing them out but got tired of doing so & have been skipping. My daughter’s using Duolingo in school for Spanish, though she started with Norwegian for fun. I did some Norsk, too, but I haven’t practiced it in a long time. (I was under the delusion that I could juggle 4-5 languages at once but I have since fallen off. I’ve discovered that I don’t remember as much French as I thought I would.) I’m in Unit 25 or 26 in Spanish after 2 years but I got to skip a bunch of the beginner lessons. I needed a refresher since I don’t speak it regularly. My vocabulary has improved & i’m remembering what I learned in high school a millennia ago! I still have trouble understanding the characters like Zari who speak really fast because I’m hard of hearing. Even with hearing aids, I miss things. I still get stage fright when asked to speak in Spanish but I think I could get by.
I've been using Duolingo to learn Italian for almost a year now, and I appreciate Evan sharing his knowledge and opinions as a more experienced Duolingo user.
One thing I feel Duolingo got right in Spanish compared to some of their other language courses was that it starts teaching vocabulary that's relevant for a travel. Being able to say phrases commonly needed by tourists, but actually understanding how the sentences work was very motivating for me.
Great vid - super useful to see those more advanced lessons (I'm in early A1) Hit day 300 in German yesterday. I've been through periods of feeling like it's a waste of time but then realised (like you said) days where you only maintain your streak aren't really helping. I spent a few days in Berlin around day 90 and honestly being able to ask for stuff in a bakery then understand and answer a couple simple questions made it all worthwhile and hugely motivating. I'm in this for real now! I keep reminding myself years ago I tried to get a haircut in Göttingen, got inside the door realising I had no clue and all I could say was ich möchte der bzzzzz with appropriate mime ;)
I studied Spanish in high school (which is several decades ago), and have found Duolingo to be a great way to practice at my A2-B1 level, and you seem pretty solid at B2. Similarly, I just finished another course in it (Scottish Gaelic) and found that it's not really sufficient to have a conversation about anything other than the basics, or even read mass-media news (BBC Alba, though I can usually muddle through an article with the help of Am Faclair Beag, the online Gaelic-English dictionary), so I'm probably an A1 after about 2 years. So Duolingo's effectiveness is variable, depending on what language you are trying to learn. Major ones -- Spanish, German, Italian, French -- all seem to be pretty good. Minor ones -- Gaelic, Welsh, Irish, Romanian --- are more of a taster, to get you into the idea of learning more independently.
Evan, your story reminded me and my mum of the time we were on holiday in Italy and they gave us a French menu at dinner by mistake. My parents worked most of it out with what they could remember from GCSE (I hadn't learned any French by that point) and when the waiter came, he confirmed our orders in German! It all worked out in the end though :)
Now that the Japanese Duolingo course finally has the speaking option, I think I'll get back to using it again! I'd been so jealous of the options European language courses have 😅
I started using Duolingo in 2014 and between 2014 and 2019 I've studied english, then even in 2019 I've started learning German, and since last year i started with japonese, Chinese, Korean and dutch, and some years i have been gifted by the app with the Plus Subscription, and i Hear many podcasts, in english, german, Dutch and Italian , and also read newspapers, books and News, And also watch Videos and series in these languages, I am Brazilian and while iwas writing this comment i was thinking in german
Hi Evan, I started using Duolingo after watching one of your videos during lockdown. I've managed to keep a good streak going (apart from losing a year's worth when my phone died in Denmark 😢) I'm persevering with Spanish although go back to refreshing my French from time to time. My main motivation is keeping my brain active after reaching 65 which came as quite a shock!
You could try learning a language with a different script for additional brain exercise. I think Greek or Russian are easier, because they write vowels, unlike Arabic. I picked up Greek for that purpose and found it hard enough (at 60) even though it is a European language.
Thank you for your video, de verdad me insipiras un montón ich kann auch Deutsch, Spanisch, Englisch und Franzosisch sprechen, soy mexicana y me apasionan los idiomas. Tu video me hizo querer descargar duolingo y ver a donde me lleva. Mis mejores deseos para ti. :D
a language learner is the only person in the world who would get excited over losing their clothes surrounded by only people who speak spanish and german so they can ask them for help
I learned Spanish by dating a Spanish girl, moving to Spain and buying a bar in her village. I even married her (in Spanish) in the church opposite the bar. Now I only speak Spanish to my cat "Hola Gatita!"
Hi a Native Spanish speaker here and long time subscriber your Spanish is good enough you could actually speak with a Venezuelan or colombian or spaniard
I started Japanese on duolingo earlier this year, I am studying Japanese for years already and I also have classes, but I thought it would be a good little practice to add to my japanese learning journey
It’s not really about the number of days though, it’s about the number of hours. 15 minutes a day for 2000 days is only 500 total hours. Cambridge (the publisher) estimate 100 to 200 hours of dedicated study with a teacher to go up a level. So 500 hours should have you in the B1 class.
@@joepiekl One thing worth a note, I'll say their hour estimates for C1 and C2 are really, really optimistic. If you get to a C2 in 1000 hours in a non-closely related language, you're a very, VERY talented language learner. But yeah, hours of study are a better measure than chronological time.
i already speak spanish fluently. since i'm portuguese, it made it pretty easy imo, but my issue is writing. i can fully understand when someone else writes in spanish, but if i have to write in spanish, i need to use google translate to make sure, because the issue with speaking another romance language is that you're gonna get things mixed up. i don't have that much of an issue with english because they're not related languages, but spanish and portuguese are, so i find myself writing the portuguese word that's very similar to the spanish word, instead of the spanish word. luckily even if i don't use google translate to double check, the spanish speakers i speak to tend to understand what i mean. but that was why i went on duolingo, hoping it'd improve my writing, but after like a month, i gave up on it. i think it definitely helped with my pronunciation and learning a few new words, but not really for writing, so i quit
They've recently made it so you can only do a lesson to earn hearts when you've completely run out of hearts and I absolutely hate it. Sometimes I just want an easier lesson to recap knowledge I already have, especially when I'm not feeling focused enough to learn a ton of new words. The only way I can do that now is to purposely make five mistakes??
Does it let you do multiple lessons to get back up to five, or just one lesson, which is basically useless? Mine has stopped letting me earn hearts recently too and I’m at a loss about what is going on.
After 690 days on Duolingo my understanding of spanish is aprx B1, but I also listen to podcasts on youtube, watch films etc. Struggle to speak though.
I have been learning Russian for 967 days, I have weeks where I really struggle but then it clicks and I am flying again. I try and listen to as much Russian as possible and feel pleased if I can understand a lot of what is being said. I don't think that Duolingo helps with writing in the language though. I have no idea what level I am currently at because I keep having to do the Tournaments in the Diamond Level. In my updates I am told that I am in the top 3% of learners. Russian is interesting because some of their words sound like English or Italian. I think that next year, I will go to the Brasshouse Language School here in Birmingham and learn to write in Russian.
The tournaments just make you do more lessons. I'm lazy, so if I get into the tournament, it means i don't have to try too hard, as I will just get kicked back into the Diamond league. My strategy is to start playing as late in the day as possible on Monday. Then, I get placed with an the other slackers. It helps being in the US, with few time zones past Hawaii.
I’m about to hit 365 days of learning French on Duolingo, just started Spanish/Italian in the last 6 weeks or so. Learning 3 languages at once is probably a lot but my goal is not fluency, my goal is just to keep my mind active, same reason I do either 30 minutes walking or jump rope each day. I’m currently on section 3 of French so still only A1 but I was pretty proud of myself that I’m getting to the stage where I can read a sentence in French and get the gist of it
I had to interpret a parent phone call in Spanish once as a substitute teacher. They wanted to know when parent-teacher conferences were, but I thought they were trying to set up a private meeting with their child's teacher. English has a LOT of vocabulary compared to some other languages, and Mexican Spanish uses quite different vocabulary than Spaniards use.
I started learning German two years ago and got bored and switched to Spanish because it was more practical for where I live and then a couple weeks ago, I got bored again and started learning Italian and at some point I started learning French so I have four languages that I hop around between And I really enjoy it. I’m a little bit competitive so that keeps me on the platform.
Nice to see this in my feed. Been in a DuoLingo funk. I'm at 1624 days. Spanish is my main language, but I'm signed up for twenty languages (new language = some easy wins). I've been sticking to Spanish for a couple weeks. Second DL language is French, interesting because it's one of my most recent additions. Went on a real tear for a while. Next are Arabic, German, Latin, and Korean. Making decent progress with the German and Latin; the others I'm pretty much just constantly reviewing instead of progressing.
Im on 51 days on Spanish. I could probably get by asking for basic directions & ordering food on our trip to Mexico in March. I swear Ive learned more in 51 days than my entire grade 11 year.
33 days into Norwegian! Yeah, it's a weird one to pick, but my Mom came from there and I grew up hearing the language around my grandparents and visiting Norwegian relatives. I've always wanted to try it, and now I have the time.
@@CD3MC Oh, I'm going to -- I'm on Section 2 Unit 5, and I figure I'm going to get through the 40 units in this section and then start with online tutoring/conversation, or maybe a full course with a live teacher. I'm pretty sure my pronounciation is crap. One thing I really don't like about Duolingo is the scattergun way they present grammar and rules -- you're supposed to 'pick it up'. but I'd really like to have a clear explanation of the differences between prepositional pronouns, for example.
I have had a very similar experience with English. I'm German and I have learned English in School and mainly UA-cam and the Internet generally. I read wrote and heard English regularly. My problem was, that I never really spoke it. Even the two times I was in the UK, I never had a real conversation. But a week ago, I tried a social platform called VRChat, where you can have face to face conversations with people from all over the world. I was so excited when I realized, that I actually could talk. Of course it was far from perfect and another German complained, that I had the thickest German accent imaginable, but that wasn't important anymore. I really recommend VR Chat. There are a lot of weird people there, but for practicing a language, it can be great.
13:30 That's me. I'm on a 900+ day streak on Duolingo Spanish, but most of the time I just do one of the listen or speak lessons at like 10:30PM because I forgot to do a lesson earlier.
I am not learning Spanish but Japanese and I've begun to find discrepancies in common language I appreciate that it's an app . But those discrepancies make a big difference in conversation. Plus I suck at trying to say Brazilian lol😂😂
314 days in and I definitely know a lot more spanish than when I started! Having had classroom lessons (either in full time education or evening classes) in French, German, Italian and BSL I can say it is much slower progress, but given that I'm doing 10-20 minutes a day rather that a couple of hours a day, I'm still pretty pleased with my progress. It's free, it's fun and fits into my life around my ridiculous work schedule and other commitments.
Tiny nerdy detail: I’m still in section 3 and do have these lesson types. But one difference I noticed is for me the “podcast” host speaks in English and only the callers are in the language I’m learning. So that’s one way it’ll get more difficult on later sections.
It sounds like Duolingo is really working for you. I used it a few years ago when I started learning German, but I dropped it as soon as I found something that worked better for me. It actually got to the point where as much as I enjoyed learning German, I hated Duolingo. That’s when I decided it was time to find something else.
Today, when I went to my mom's assisted living center. One of the other residents was bilingual in English and Spanish, but with dementia, she is losing her English. I was only able to pick up about 1/3 of the eyes. I'm at level 53 in Duolingo, with a 600 day streak in Spanish. Sometimes, it's difficult to pick up all the male/female/we/they for different verb tenses. Being older doesn't help, and sometimes a bit of alcohol before taking a lesson doesn't help the lesson stick. The worst part is my small short-term memory, so if I miss a few. I will only concentrate on one question and skip the other wrong questions until I get back to the question I'm working on. Amazingly, I am learning some stuff, while forgetting others.
Just heading towards 1000 days in Swedish, I've been at the daily refresh end of the course for a couple of months now and really hoping they might add some of those podcast or story lessons in somewhere. I feel like I'm at a much lower conversational level than I should be after 2+ years of consistent practise; I can understand pretty much any text or speech at this point but I really have issues with complex sentences when talking myself. I've been watching a number of swedish speaking youtubers and watching shows and movies to take my understanding that extra step towards slang usage and cultural understanding but I'm really finding it hard to practise my speech. Guess its time to bite the bullet and just go spend some time in Sweden, I really want to try living there for a while to see if it clicks with me but don't want to take that plunge without feeling confident in my ability to communicate clearly.
If you’re on the refresh then yeah it might be better to move on to a resource that continues you on your journey (with some immersion for good measure)
Is it just me or is something weird with this video framerate? Like I feel like it's sped up more? (mic throughout sounded great!) I know Evan likes to test different settings so just curious if anyone else thought it was a bit off at any point during video? :) also only 2 minutes in but excited to see where this goes video wise!
I studied German throughout college. Duolingo is fine for staying sharp on vocabulary, but it doesn't really help with complex sentences. I found Pimsleur to be more effective in that regard
I got on really well with German on duolingo, but in the last couple of months it suddenly broke. First it stopped listening to me, forcing me to skip all speaking exercises, then it stopped letting me earn hearts by doing lessons. Now it won’t let me report either problem because the help page will me fill it in but just returns an error message, I’ve repeatedly reported it via the feedback page but that’s not the correct location. Has anyone else had this problem? It’s driving me nuts. Like any resource, I think Duo is what you make of it and it happens to suit me well. I’m just desperately frustrated to get halfway through B1 and be thwarted. I had set my self a time goal to beat to get to the end of the course and as B2 isn’t in that course I’m nearly there, and now I can’t make it because I can’t earn hearts and I have to wait for them to respawn. 🤬
I dont really know about this, might be incompatibility with your device, you can try any or all of these steps. Uninstall the app, clear any caches and residual files, do a complete restart of the system, update your apps, redownload it, try again.
1442 days on Spanish, have finished the entire course. I am at about C1 level but of course I also use other Spanish resources. I can easily communicate with Spanish people on any virtually any subject. If I don't know a word I need I have enough vocsbulary that I can pick another or describe what I mean.
i finished the entire spanish tree forever ago. so then i did spanish for speakers of french, for speakers of italian, for speakers of german. and i finished all of those. now i'm doing french for speakers of spanish. and according to my mom who has a phd in spanish i'm still at the B2 level maaaaybe C1.
There's no substitution for being immersed in the language and culture. Head to Spain for three months and engage in lots of conversations and what you have learned so far will be turbocharged 👍
I found duolingo didn't help much with Korean. Object markers, Subject markers, Topic markers, and leaving out pronouns, and that 'you' is rarely used. Politeness levels is not really dealt with. Like that you should end most of your sentences with 요 and why ending with 니다 can sometimes be too formal.
@ I use Duolingo as refreshing practice. I learn all the other stuff from “Talk to Me in Korean” 10/10 reccomend. If you combine both of these things together and consume Korean media it can help a lot.
They do say that the best way to learn a language is to live in a country where they speak it. Unfortunately not everyone is able to do that so duo lingo it is :)
@AlexJacobs0507Living in a country and expecting to pick it up naturally does not work for everyone. Also, if you have a job like mine where I spend 10 hours a day speaking only English then coming home and spending the evening alone, I might as well be back in England! It's not like I would have many opportunities speaking with the natives on weekends either. If I go out for a coffee the waiters all speak good English and have no time to waste on chatting with a customer, or they just want to practice English with me.
Very interesting. How much would you say little bits you might remember from school are helping with your grammar? I've been doing Duolingo Kiswahili for three weeks now, and without any grammar information, I'm just floundering (I've got a beginner book that I'm going to have to resort to). So far, I've learned that 'of the' can be la, ya, za or wa, and 'my' can be langu, wangu, yangu, zangu ... but I have NO idea when to use which, or if there are any more alternatives I haven't been introduced to yet. I think the fact that they have 18 noun classes (think 'genders') has something to do with it, but of course Duo hasn't told me that. I really doubt I could learn even very basic Kiswahili from Duolingo alone, but I admit I struggle with learning languages.
The really exciting time for me in high school was when I went from (concept English Spanish) to (concept Spanish), i.e., skipping the "translation layer."
When i waa using duolingo i was a bit annoyed that when u translate a sentence from, for example japanese to english, it says im wrong if i use the japanese grammer when translating to english. I mean yes it makes sense, but i feel like it would help me understand japanese better that way. But i guess it gets more complex with more difficult sentances.
Sounds like you're at about my level. I don't consider myself fluent at all, just conversational. Learned mine by going to Mexico for six month 25 years ago. Have you tried watching movies or reading novels in Spanish? Do you catch all the words listening to songs?
Hola Evan, quiero estudiar espanol con duolingo tambien. The main thing I struggle with is motivation. I often think "I want to"... but then just cba... What are you opinions on the superduolingo? Especially the new features that have been added there. I love that it's the only advert in duo 😂
Its just amazing seeing all the stuff that the spanish course has thats just missing in the dutch version. I can see the spanish one being quite effective. As its basically everything I have to practice in dutch school. Yes duolingo is just very lacking in comparison. So I guess ymmv.
I will never use Spanish for anything and I'm not the most keen learner, still in at the beginning of A2 (first exercises in past tense). But I'm surprised how much I already understand, or have a feeling that I get the gist of what's going on when I watch UA-cam and someone speaks Spanish in otherwise English video. Occasionally I listen to simple stories designed for beginner language learners and then I often feel I would understand most of it if only I had larger vocabulary: in my experience, in most everyday conversations people don't use that complex grammar anyway, not at least something that would prevent comprehension 100%
The only time I find for using the app is 5 minutes in the evening. It also is using much more of my concentration learning polish via English as it is not available for German. I often feel like I barely make any progress with new vocabulary but over time suddenly I know a word I struggled with for a long time. These small things keep me going. I have no intent to use my polish "in the wild" any time soon although my best buddy is originally from Poland and we could have conversations in polish.
400 days into Spanish on Duo myself. Interestingly I understood about 95% of your example lessons, but still can't communicate with another Spanish person to save my life.
Evan (Not meant as a personal critique) That was NOT B2 Spanish. I know a bit of Italian and French(~B2) and I was able to understand nearly every word and therefore accurately semi “guess” the meaning of the sentence . This was even true for the listening exercises. If you haven’t figured out where I’m going with this: You Shouldn’t be able to understand B2 of a related language. And yes this is true for the Romance languages as well. They are closely related but not this close. Honestly this is concerning because I have spent a lot of time on Duolingo as well and I am supposedly N3 (~B1) in Japanese.
Romance languages are very similar and if you know one of them, you'll be able to partially understand others. Yes, they are this close. That has nothing to do with the language level. Speaking as a conference interpreter: Switching between two foreign languages while getting a massage is next-level (N2?🤔)
@@Nova-w2i Japanese isn’t usually measured in the CEFR instead it’s N1(worst) to N6(best) so My N3 level is about lower intermediate. And no they are not that similar. Someone who is (was has been 4 years lol) B2 in Italian and B1 in French should in fact not completely understand B2 level Spanish. It’s like The germanic languages of English German and Norwegian . I grew up bilingual (English and German) and learnt Norwegian. These languages are very similar like the Romance languages but one is still not able to understand B2 Norwegian.
The biggest issue I have had while learning Italian, for free, on Duolingo is the lack of an explanation as to how the answer is wrong. Italian uses both 'a' and 'in' for the English word 'in' and I have no idea when I'm supposed to use which version. At least with il, la, le, l', lo, gli and i you get good examples of when they should be used, although still no real explanation. I hate being penalised for having a very slight mispelling of the word I've typed (e.g. typing scoula instead of scuola, or missing a letter from what should be a double letter, yes I realise that changes the pronunciation for Italian but its still annoying), it makes it so frustrating to try and continue, especially when running low on hearts.
The "habit" and "streak" part was the downfall for me. The day I lost my streak I also lost every bits of motivation and it wasn't long before the app was uninstalled.
Trilingual massages. Textilfrei. Equally impressive and hilarious. 😂 Thanks for showing advanced Duolingo. I never managed to make it that far, but it looks worthwhile. For English, my favourite method was to pick one book chapter, one newspaper article or one season of a series and look up absolutely EVERYTHING I did not understand. I did that with Prison Break once and I am now fluent in American prison slang. For whatever it's worth.
Instead of saying to you should explain the story in Spanish the point is learning not earning. Those bare minimum days are good for making sure you get practice use so you can maintain what you already know without necessarily learning more.
I've been doing Spanish with DuoLingo for over 1000 days. I can BARELY understand some Spanish. After 3 years, I would have hoped to be be futher along.
My goodness. I had no idea how much I needed this right now. I've been realizing over the past couple of weeks that I didn't waste 3 years on Duolingo learning Dutch and have been struggling with the criticism that Duolingo receives. This really helped and inspired me, which is what I needed. Thank you Evan. New subscriber.
2:00 as a native spanish speaker, I am very impressed. You'd be surprised how prevalent spanish ebonics is across the America's, your spanish was better than theirs
What area of math were you interested in? I’m 268 days in my Duolingo journey in French. I’ve definitely made progress, but I’ve got a lot more marathon to go
I am learning Vietnamese using Duolingo, I was having lessons before. My objections to Duolingo are that their English is appalling. Try thís sentence: What did the engineer talk to the poet? Also I live in Central Vietnam and they only teach Nỏthern.
Am I doing something wrong? Ive been casually trying to learn Scottish Gaelic on Duolingo for years and im currently on day 75 of a dedicated streak. One of the issues im running into is that i seem to be really good at "doing Duolingo" but i dont feel like im actually retaining all that much. Like i can do the exercises in under 5 minutes with minimal mistakes, but if you asked me to repeat any of the phrases i did in the lesson i would struggle to recall them, let alone tell you what they meant. Also, and this just might be due to Gaelic spelling being wildly foreign to an English speaker but i couldnt even begin to explain how the spelling works except for one rule: some names have an H added after the first letter if you are addressing that person. But i couldnt tell you which names change and which ones dont.
i've been learning japanese for like 50 days and i just wish there were more mnemonics? tofugu has some really good resources for japanese and as someone who's a kinaesthetic and visual learner, having a mnemonic for hiragana/katakana or even for words (e.g. knowing what 'friend' is because of tomodachi life lol) i think would help a lot of people learn a lot quicker
You're possibly already familiar with it if you're using tofugu, but I've found Wani Kani really good as a learning tool utilising mnemonics for Kanji & vocab. It's probably not worth jumping onto that though until you're comfortable with Kana.
I'm guessing you learnt Latin Spanish and not Castilian Spanish (Spanish spoken in Spain) so if you ever visit on holiday and use Latin words, be prepared to be judged and told "¿qué/cómo?". Juice = Zumo, never jugo in Spain 😅
I did 500 days of Norwegian on Duolingo. Went to Norway and realised I wasn't able to understand what people were saying. I can watch Norwegian shows subtitled and understand but conversational is useless from Duolingo. You need face to face.
@evan btw, Norwegian is an epic language for English speakers to learn because of the amount of oh wow surprises. I loved it. Just slightly pointless for me because most Norwegians speak better English than me anyway.
A few years ago, I was learning Swedish with Duolingo (and a Native speaker at work). I actually learned more about the history of English than Swedish. So MANY words sounds the same as English, even if they are spelled different. Then I tried Norwegian and it was even closer to English. I knew they were similar but 🤯.
Also, whoever was doing the Norwegian sentences had a great sense of humor. One was a quote from the Princess Bride, another about Princess Leia having hair that looked like cinnamon buns. 😂
@@Jamienewt27 kjøp - to buy - "well this is different". Pronounced 'shop' 🤯 Hygge - a nice warm feeling. Pronounced 'hug' Exactly right, it's an English etymology lesson
Omg you're friends with Dodie!? I love her. Her voice is so good, I've been listening to "would you be so kind" and "absolutely smitten" pretty much every couple days for years. ❤
Hi! I am a Spanish native speaker. I would like to know if I could learn Italian but using Spanish instead of English. (I am from Latin America, and we don't use vosotros)
I'm in the US but if I scroll through the languages on my phone it has certain languages to others if you press the 3 dots. I don't know if they have Spanish to Italian though. @@Rebster
1000 days is 3 years give or take right; so more than 5 years to only get to b2 sounds kinda... remarkably inefficient, or am i wrong? I think when i had to study german i had achieved that within like 4 months, half a year, not sure.
My xp was duo was good at first, then it became repetitive and i stopped learning. Just memorized the answers. Didn't really teach the grammar. Haven't used it in years tho. So if they put this level of effort into smaller languages then maybe ill look into it again
To me, the "fluency moment" with German was when I went to cafe in Stuttgart and asked stuff without thinking. Before that I was translating in my mind what I was going to say and what I was told, but this time I just... went ahead, no mental translations. Felt so good! Specially because German is a language I learnt as an adult. I was very happy with myself (^_^)
i got 100 percent in my spanish finals last year. not that anyone asked just felt like sharing
Congratulations 👍
Congratulations!🎉
Damn 100, congrats mate 🎉
Bien Hecho.
congratulations!!
165 days into Italian...
FYI, Gems are not "useless" if you are on the free version. If I make 5 mistakes in a day, I have to wait hours before being able to continue (or do practice lessons to earn a gem) OR I can "buy" Hearts with gems(if I have enough).
Does yours let you earn hearts?
@dees3179 Seemingly, only by doing practice lessons (when I have zero hearts) and occasionally (rare) I get a temporary SuperUser period of a couple of days.
For me yes @@dees3179
I'm at the point where I'm seriously considering buying the full subscription. I have a lot of down time at work where I could be doing it, but I run out of hearts. I also look up stuff to avoid losing hearts and I think I would learn more if I was prepared to make mistakes,
also they help with getting XP if you use them to legendary levels!! i go back and legendary everything just for the extra xp
I lost my first streak around 130 days and have it back up to around 10 days now. I was starting to wonder if it's been worth it to continue with duolingo or not. I'm so glad this video came out when it did because it is excatly what I need to become motivated once again. Thanks!
My duolingo tips:
I use Duolingo on desktop, you get more typing exercises this way, where you have to type out everything (sometimes you have to press the "make more difficult" button)
I look away from the exercises with audio in order to practice listening without reading
I supplement Duolingo with a conversation with a native on italki every now and then, where I would bring questions about stuff I have doubts about on Duolingo, grammar, nuances of meaning, also making sure it isn't Duolingo which is incorrect, it happens.
If I encounter similar sentences I usually try to use different structures to test out my mastery of the underlying rules and synonyms
I sometimes talk to myself while doing exercices saying in a target language stuff like "I just made a mistake I feel kinda stupid but what can you do that's how you learn..." I can go on and on with monologues like that.
Also Duolingo often punishes you for mistakes that don't really matter like typos or misreading the original English sentence or just writing something synonymous but not close enough - don't beat yourself over that.
spent two years learning spanish in high school, then met a spanish friend in uni who recently took me to spain for the first time. speaking spanish there gave me such a confidence boost to continue my two year streak on duo!
I love your Duolingo videos. For me, whenever a new one comes out, it's always sort of like a little event. Like "oh what does he have to say about it now?" And it's always so interesting and motivating. Sometimes people are too harsh on Duo, but I've learned SO MUCH since I started using it about four years ago. It doesn't work for everyone and that is completly fine. It works for me and I really enjoy it. I'm very prou of how far i've come with my english and french leassons. I've had my ups and downs like those weeks you mentioned, but I always come back.
And slowly but surely, my dream of becoming a polyglot gets closer. I also listen to music and watch some videos here and there. But the majority of my french comes from Duo. Everyone has their own journey that changes and adapts, I'm enjoying mine so far.
Ps: Atomic Habits (15:17) is a great book that changed my life. I highly recomend it.
I really wish there was a British English option on Duolingo (British English to Spain Spanish would be perfect). But still, I'm enjoying learning Spanish on Duolingo!
Oh man, the amount of times when the French (for me) is closer to my British English phrasing than the English translation.
@@michaelb1716 🤣 me too.. too many "math", "on the weekend" and "the Holidays"🤦♀️
@@ambrosenuk whenever I see restroom I feel like I'm translating American to British 😂
You now learn 2 languages at once!
@evan This is a great point 😂
Dude, you have so many gems!! Too bad you can’t send me any! lol.
And thanks for the “discuss the story” tip! I was writing them out but got tired of doing so & have been skipping.
My daughter’s using Duolingo in school for Spanish, though she started with Norwegian for fun. I did some Norsk, too, but I haven’t practiced it in a long time. (I was under the delusion that I could juggle 4-5 languages at once but I have since fallen off. I’ve discovered that I don’t remember as much French as I thought I would.)
I’m in Unit 25 or 26 in Spanish after 2 years but I got to skip a bunch of the beginner lessons. I needed a refresher since I don’t speak it regularly. My vocabulary has improved & i’m remembering what I learned in high school a millennia ago! I still have trouble understanding the characters like Zari who speak really fast because I’m hard of hearing. Even with hearing aids, I miss things. I still get stage fright when asked to speak in Spanish but I think I could get by.
I've been using Duolingo to learn Italian for almost a year now, and I appreciate Evan sharing his knowledge and opinions as a more experienced Duolingo user.
One thing I feel Duolingo got right in Spanish compared to some of their other language courses was that it starts teaching vocabulary that's relevant for a travel. Being able to say phrases commonly needed by tourists, but actually understanding how the sentences work was very motivating for me.
Great vid - super useful to see those more advanced lessons (I'm in early A1)
Hit day 300 in German yesterday. I've been through periods of feeling like it's a waste of time but then realised (like you said) days where you only maintain your streak aren't really helping. I spent a few days in Berlin around day 90 and honestly being able to ask for stuff in a bakery then understand and answer a couple simple questions made it all worthwhile and hugely motivating. I'm in this for real now!
I keep reminding myself years ago I tried to get a haircut in Göttingen, got inside the door realising I had no clue and all I could say was ich möchte der bzzzzz with appropriate mime ;)
Great to hear the breakdown of your Spanish conversation.
I like to think that even those "Save the Streak" days aren't a waste. Anything that keeps the language in active use in the brain is useful.
I studied Spanish in high school (which is several decades ago), and have found Duolingo to be a great way to practice at my A2-B1 level, and you seem pretty solid at B2. Similarly, I just finished another course in it (Scottish Gaelic) and found that it's not really sufficient to have a conversation about anything other than the basics, or even read mass-media news (BBC Alba, though I can usually muddle through an article with the help of Am Faclair Beag, the online Gaelic-English dictionary), so I'm probably an A1 after about 2 years. So Duolingo's effectiveness is variable, depending on what language you are trying to learn. Major ones -- Spanish, German, Italian, French -- all seem to be pretty good. Minor ones -- Gaelic, Welsh, Irish, Romanian --- are more of a taster, to get you into the idea of learning more independently.
Evan, your story reminded me and my mum of the time we were on holiday in Italy and they gave us a French menu at dinner by mistake. My parents worked most of it out with what they could remember from GCSE (I hadn't learned any French by that point) and when the waiter came, he confirmed our orders in German! It all worked out in the end though :)
This video is great. I love how you made the bear yell at you LOL
Now that the Japanese Duolingo course finally has the speaking option, I think I'll get back to using it again! I'd been so jealous of the options European language courses have 😅
I started using Duolingo in 2014 and between 2014 and 2019 I've studied english, then even in 2019 I've started learning German, and since last year i started with japonese, Chinese, Korean and dutch, and some years i have been gifted by the app with the Plus Subscription, and i Hear many podcasts, in english, german, Dutch and Italian , and also read newspapers, books and News, And also watch Videos and series in these languages, I am Brazilian and while iwas writing this comment i was thinking in german
I love these videos! Thx
Hi Evan, I started using Duolingo after watching one of your videos during lockdown. I've managed to keep a good streak going (apart from losing a year's worth when my phone died in Denmark 😢) I'm persevering with Spanish although go back to refreshing my French from time to time.
My main motivation is keeping my brain active after reaching 65 which came as quite a shock!
You could try learning a language with a different script for additional brain exercise. I think Greek or Russian are easier, because they write vowels, unlike Arabic. I picked up Greek for that purpose and found it hard enough (at 60) even though it is a European language.
Thank you for your video, de verdad me insipiras un montón ich kann auch Deutsch, Spanisch, Englisch und Franzosisch sprechen, soy mexicana y me apasionan los idiomas. Tu video me hizo querer descargar duolingo y ver a donde me lleva. Mis mejores deseos para ti. :D
a language learner is the only person in the world who would get excited over losing their clothes surrounded by only people who speak spanish and german so they can ask them for help
I learned Spanish by dating a Spanish girl, moving to Spain and buying a bar in her village. I even married her (in Spanish) in the church opposite the bar. Now I only speak Spanish to my cat "Hola Gatita!"
Wait, so did you get divorced or did you move back and she learned English?
@@lizoliver6193also wanna know the story :D
You on home arrest or something, what???
I'm _so_ impressed with your Spanish accent. Bravo!👏
Hi a Native Spanish speaker here and long time subscriber your Spanish is good enough you could actually speak with a Venezuelan or colombian or spaniard
I started Japanese on duolingo earlier this year, I am studying Japanese for years already and I also have classes, but I thought it would be a good little practice to add to my japanese learning journey
"Can I speak Spanish after practicing for five and a half years?"
Jeez, I would hope so XD
I've been studying polish on and off for like 7...Not nearly as good as Evan
It’s not really about the number of days though, it’s about the number of hours. 15 minutes a day for 2000 days is only 500 total hours. Cambridge (the publisher) estimate 100 to 200 hours of dedicated study with a teacher to go up a level. So 500 hours should have you in the B1 class.
@@joepiekl One thing worth a note, I'll say their hour estimates for C1 and C2 are really, really optimistic. If you get to a C2 in 1000 hours in a non-closely related language, you're a very, VERY talented language learner.
But yeah, hours of study are a better measure than chronological time.
Your masseuse must have been so pleased to be able to speak Spanish.
i already speak spanish fluently. since i'm portuguese, it made it pretty easy imo, but my issue is writing. i can fully understand when someone else writes in spanish, but if i have to write in spanish, i need to use google translate to make sure, because the issue with speaking another romance language is that you're gonna get things mixed up. i don't have that much of an issue with english because they're not related languages, but spanish and portuguese are, so i find myself writing the portuguese word that's very similar to the spanish word, instead of the spanish word. luckily even if i don't use google translate to double check, the spanish speakers i speak to tend to understand what i mean.
but that was why i went on duolingo, hoping it'd improve my writing, but after like a month, i gave up on it. i think it definitely helped with my pronunciation and learning a few new words, but not really for writing, so i quit
As a native speaker, real shocker to me is that you have experience in the Smash scene. And that spa story is wonderful
They've recently made it so you can only do a lesson to earn hearts when you've completely run out of hearts and I absolutely hate it. Sometimes I just want an easier lesson to recap knowledge I already have, especially when I'm not feeling focused enough to learn a ton of new words.
The only way I can do that now is to purposely make five mistakes??
Does it let you do multiple lessons to get back up to five, or just one lesson, which is basically useless? Mine has stopped letting me earn hearts recently too and I’m at a loss about what is going on.
that or pay £60 a year for recap excercises 😭😭
Oh i just commented this, mine has been doing that too 😭@@dees3179
After 690 days on Duolingo my understanding of spanish is aprx B1, but I also listen to podcasts on youtube, watch films etc. Struggle to speak though.
It's a lot easier to see or hear a word and recognize it than it is to pull the word out of the dark recesses of your brain.
I have been learning Russian for 967 days, I have weeks where I really struggle but then it clicks and I am flying again. I try and listen to as much Russian as possible and feel pleased if I can understand a lot of what is being said. I don't think that Duolingo helps with writing in the language though.
I have no idea what level I am currently at because I keep having to do the Tournaments in the Diamond Level. In my updates I am told that I am in the top 3% of learners. Russian is interesting because some of their words sound like English or Italian.
I think that next year, I will go to the Brasshouse Language School here in Birmingham and learn to write in Russian.
The tournaments just make you do more lessons. I'm lazy, so if I get into the tournament, it means i don't have to try too hard, as I will just get kicked back into the Diamond league. My strategy is to start playing as late in the day as possible on Monday. Then, I get placed with an the other slackers. It helps being in the US, with few time zones past Hawaii.
I’m about to hit 365 days of learning French on Duolingo, just started Spanish/Italian in the last 6 weeks or so.
Learning 3 languages at once is probably a lot but my goal is not fluency, my goal is just to keep my mind active, same reason I do either 30 minutes walking or jump rope each day.
I’m currently on section 3 of French so still only A1 but I was pretty proud of myself that I’m getting to the stage where I can read a sentence in French and get the gist of it
I had to interpret a parent phone call in Spanish once as a substitute teacher. They wanted to know when parent-teacher conferences were, but I thought they were trying to set up a private meeting with their child's teacher. English has a LOT of vocabulary compared to some other languages, and Mexican Spanish uses quite different vocabulary than Spaniards use.
I started learning German two years ago and got bored and switched to Spanish because it was more practical for where I live and then a couple weeks ago, I got bored again and started learning Italian and at some point I started learning French so I have four languages that I hop around between And I really enjoy it. I’m a little bit competitive so that keeps me on the platform.
Nice to see this in my feed. Been in a DuoLingo funk. I'm at 1624 days. Spanish is my main language, but I'm signed up for twenty languages (new language = some easy wins). I've been sticking to Spanish for a couple weeks. Second DL language is French, interesting because it's one of my most recent additions. Went on a real tear for a while. Next are Arabic, German, Latin, and Korean. Making decent progress with the German and Latin; the others I'm pretty much just constantly reviewing instead of progressing.
Im on 51 days on Spanish. I could probably get by asking for basic directions & ordering food on our trip to Mexico in March. I swear Ive learned more in 51 days than my entire grade 11 year.
33 days into Norwegian! Yeah, it's a weird one to pick, but my Mom came from there and I grew up hearing the language around my grandparents and visiting Norwegian relatives. I've always wanted to try it, and now I have the time.
Im three sections into Norwegian... I have ZERO verbal comprehension. I'd suggest another resource for Norwegian as well.
@@CD3MC Oh, I'm going to -- I'm on Section 2 Unit 5, and I figure I'm going to get through the 40 units in this section and then start with online tutoring/conversation, or maybe a full course with a live teacher. I'm pretty sure my pronounciation is crap.
One thing I really don't like about Duolingo is the scattergun way they present grammar and rules -- you're supposed to 'pick it up'. but I'd really like to have a clear explanation of the differences between prepositional pronouns, for example.
Leaving a comment for the algorithm
I have had a very similar experience with English. I'm German and I have learned English in School and mainly UA-cam and the Internet generally. I read wrote and heard English regularly. My problem was, that I never really spoke it. Even the two times I was in the UK, I never had a real conversation. But a week ago, I tried a social platform called VRChat, where you can have face to face conversations with people from all over the world. I was so excited when I realized, that I actually could talk. Of course it was far from perfect and another German complained, that I had the thickest German accent imaginable, but that wasn't important anymore. I really recommend VR Chat. There are a lot of weird people there, but for practicing a language, it can be great.
I think it is more important to keep trying than to be perfect :)
13:30 That's me. I'm on a 900+ day streak on Duolingo Spanish, but most of the time I just do one of the listen or speak lessons at like 10:30PM because I forgot to do a lesson earlier.
Duolingo should be sponsoring you
I am not learning Spanish but Japanese and I've begun to find discrepancies in common language I appreciate that it's an app . But those discrepancies make a big difference in conversation. Plus I suck at trying to say Brazilian lol😂😂
314 days in and I definitely know a lot more spanish than when I started! Having had classroom lessons (either in full time education or evening classes) in French, German, Italian and BSL I can say it is much slower progress, but given that I'm doing 10-20 minutes a day rather that a couple of hours a day, I'm still pretty pleased with my progress. It's free, it's fun and fits into my life around my ridiculous work schedule and other commitments.
Tiny nerdy detail: I’m still in section 3 and do have these lesson types. But one difference I noticed is for me the “podcast” host speaks in English and only the callers are in the language I’m learning. So that’s one way it’ll get more difficult on later sections.
Yeah same, it's cool to see that it gets more advanced
It sounds like Duolingo is really working for you. I used it a few years ago when I started learning German, but I dropped it as soon as I found something that worked better for me. It actually got to the point where as much as I enjoyed learning German, I hated Duolingo. That’s when I decided it was time to find something else.
What did you switch to?
I switched to using German pod 101.
Today, when I went to my mom's assisted living center. One of the other residents was bilingual in English and Spanish, but with dementia, she is losing her English. I was only able to pick up about 1/3 of the eyes. I'm at level 53 in Duolingo, with a 600 day streak in Spanish. Sometimes, it's difficult to pick up all the male/female/we/they for different verb tenses. Being older doesn't help, and sometimes a bit of alcohol before taking a lesson doesn't help the lesson stick. The worst part is my small short-term memory, so if I miss a few. I will only concentrate on one question and skip the other wrong questions until I get back to the question I'm working on. Amazingly, I am learning some stuff, while forgetting others.
Just heading towards 1000 days in Swedish, I've been at the daily refresh end of the course for a couple of months now and really hoping they might add some of those podcast or story lessons in somewhere. I feel like I'm at a much lower conversational level than I should be after 2+ years of consistent practise; I can understand pretty much any text or speech at this point but I really have issues with complex sentences when talking myself.
I've been watching a number of swedish speaking youtubers and watching shows and movies to take my understanding that extra step towards slang usage and cultural understanding but I'm really finding it hard to practise my speech.
Guess its time to bite the bullet and just go spend some time in Sweden, I really want to try living there for a while to see if it clicks with me but don't want to take that plunge without feeling confident in my ability to communicate clearly.
If you’re on the refresh then yeah it might be better to move on to a resource that continues you on your journey (with some immersion for good measure)
Is it just me or is something weird with this video framerate? Like I feel like it's sped up more? (mic throughout sounded great!) I know Evan likes to test different settings so just curious if anyone else thought it was a bit off at any point during video? :) also only 2 minutes in but excited to see where this goes video wise!
got close to 2500 days on japanese. Cant speak a word, now i just feel I have to keep the streak going
I studied German throughout college. Duolingo is fine for staying sharp on vocabulary, but it doesn't really help with complex sentences. I found Pimsleur to be more effective in that regard
I got on really well with German on duolingo, but in the last couple of months it suddenly broke. First it stopped listening to me, forcing me to skip all speaking exercises, then it stopped letting me earn hearts by doing lessons. Now it won’t let me report either problem because the help page will me fill it in but just returns an error message, I’ve repeatedly reported it via the feedback page but that’s not the correct location. Has anyone else had this problem? It’s driving me nuts.
Like any resource, I think Duo is what you make of it and it happens to suit me well. I’m just desperately frustrated to get halfway through B1 and be thwarted. I had set my self a time goal to beat to get to the end of the course and as B2 isn’t in that course I’m nearly there, and now I can’t make it because I can’t earn hearts and I have to wait for them to respawn. 🤬
I dont really know about this, might be incompatibility with your device, you can try any or all of these steps.
Uninstall the app, clear any caches and residual files, do a complete restart of the system, update your apps, redownload it, try again.
1442 days on Spanish, have finished the entire course. I am at about C1 level but of course I also use other Spanish resources. I can easily communicate with Spanish people on any virtually any subject. If I don't know a word I need I have enough vocsbulary that I can pick another or describe what I mean.
i finished the entire spanish tree forever ago. so then i did spanish for speakers of french, for speakers of italian, for speakers of german. and i finished all of those. now i'm doing french for speakers of spanish. and according to my mom who has a phd in spanish i'm still at the B2 level maaaaybe C1.
There's no substitution for being immersed in the language and culture. Head to Spain for three months and engage in lots of conversations and what you have learned so far will be turbocharged 👍
I am trying to learn Korean and find very challenging as a speaker of a Latin based language.
Same. 저는 한국어 어려워요. 😅
I found duolingo didn't help much with Korean. Object markers, Subject markers, Topic markers, and leaving out pronouns, and that 'you' is rarely used.
Politeness levels is not really dealt with. Like that you should end most of your sentences with 요 and why ending with 니다 can sometimes be too formal.
@ I use Duolingo as refreshing practice. I learn all the other stuff from “Talk to Me in Korean” 10/10 reccomend. If you combine both of these things together and consume Korean media it can help a lot.
lived in Spain for 3 years(less than 2000 days).
I speak fluent,y Spanish, and a bit of Catalan.
no app involved, just social interaction and a smile,
They do say that the best way to learn a language is to live in a country where they speak it.
Unfortunately not everyone is able to do that so duo lingo it is :)
@AlexJacobs0507Living in a country and expecting to pick it up naturally does not work for everyone. Also, if you have a job like mine where I spend 10 hours a day speaking only English then coming home and spending the evening alone, I might as well be back in England! It's not like I would have many opportunities speaking with the natives on weekends either. If I go out for a coffee the waiters all speak good English and have no time to waste on chatting with a customer, or they just want to practice English with me.
I get too frustrated with my lessons early on in A1 and I keep deleting courses only to start them over again.
Very interesting. How much would you say little bits you might remember from school are helping with your grammar? I've been doing Duolingo Kiswahili for three weeks now, and without any grammar information, I'm just floundering (I've got a beginner book that I'm going to have to resort to). So far, I've learned that 'of the' can be la, ya, za or wa, and 'my' can be langu, wangu, yangu, zangu ... but I have NO idea when to use which, or if there are any more alternatives I haven't been introduced to yet. I think the fact that they have 18 noun classes (think 'genders') has something to do with it, but of course Duo hasn't told me that. I really doubt I could learn even very basic Kiswahili from Duolingo alone, but I admit I struggle with learning languages.
three weeks is nothing. Adjust your expectations! three years, more likely.
The really exciting time for me in high school was when I went from (concept English Spanish) to (concept Spanish), i.e., skipping the "translation layer."
I like Lilly
What if you want to learn Mexican dialect Spanish? I feel that would be most useful for parts of the US.
That pretty much is what duo teaches, no Spain Spanish
When i waa using duolingo i was a bit annoyed that when u translate a sentence from, for example japanese to english, it says im wrong if i use the japanese grammer when translating to english. I mean yes it makes sense, but i feel like it would help me understand japanese better that way. But i guess it gets more complex with more difficult sentances.
Sounds like you're at about my level. I don't consider myself fluent at all, just conversational. Learned mine by going to Mexico for six month 25 years ago. Have you tried watching movies or reading novels in Spanish? Do you catch all the words listening to songs?
Hola Evan, quiero estudiar espanol con duolingo tambien.
The main thing I struggle with is motivation. I often think "I want to"... but then just cba...
What are you opinions on the superduolingo? Especially the new features that have been added there. I love that it's the only advert in duo 😂
Its just amazing seeing all the stuff that the spanish course has thats just missing in the dutch version. I can see the spanish one being quite effective. As its basically everything I have to practice in dutch school. Yes duolingo is just very lacking in comparison. So I guess ymmv.
I will never use Spanish for anything and I'm not the most keen learner, still in at the beginning of A2 (first exercises in past tense). But I'm surprised how much I already understand, or have a feeling that I get the gist of what's going on when I watch UA-cam and someone speaks Spanish in otherwise English video. Occasionally I listen to simple stories designed for beginner language learners and then I often feel I would understand most of it if only I had larger vocabulary: in my experience, in most everyday conversations people don't use that complex grammar anyway, not at least something that would prevent comprehension 100%
The only time I find for using the app is 5 minutes in the evening. It also is using much more of my concentration learning polish via English as it is not available for German. I often feel like I barely make any progress with new vocabulary but over time suddenly I know a word I struggled with for a long time. These small things keep me going. I have no intent to use my polish "in the wild" any time soon although my best buddy is originally from Poland and we could have conversations in polish.
400 days into Spanish on Duo myself. Interestingly I understood about 95% of your example lessons, but still can't communicate with another Spanish person to save my life.
Evan (Not meant as a personal critique) That was NOT B2 Spanish. I know a bit of Italian and French(~B2) and I was able to understand nearly every word and therefore accurately semi “guess” the meaning of the sentence . This was even true for the listening exercises. If you haven’t figured out where I’m going with this: You Shouldn’t be able to understand B2 of a related language. And yes this is true for the Romance languages as well. They are closely related but not this close.
Honestly this is concerning because I have spent a lot of time on Duolingo as well and I am supposedly N3 (~B1) in Japanese.
Romance languages are very similar and if you know one of them, you'll be able to partially understand others. Yes, they are this close. That has nothing to do with the language level.
Speaking as a conference interpreter: Switching between two foreign languages while getting a massage is next-level (N2?🤔)
@@Nova-w2i Japanese isn’t usually measured in the CEFR instead it’s N1(worst) to N6(best) so My N3 level is about lower intermediate. And no they are not that similar. Someone who is (was has been 4 years lol) B2 in Italian and B1 in French should in fact not completely understand B2 level Spanish. It’s like The germanic languages of English German and Norwegian . I grew up bilingual (English and German) and learnt Norwegian. These languages are very similar like the Romance languages but one is still not able to understand B2 Norwegian.
The biggest issue I have had while learning Italian, for free, on Duolingo is the lack of an explanation as to how the answer is wrong. Italian uses both 'a' and 'in' for the English word 'in' and I have no idea when I'm supposed to use which version. At least with il, la, le, l', lo, gli and i you get good examples of when they should be used, although still no real explanation.
I hate being penalised for having a very slight mispelling of the word I've typed (e.g. typing scoula instead of scuola, or missing a letter from what should be a double letter, yes I realise that changes the pronunciation for Italian but its still annoying), it makes it so frustrating to try and continue, especially when running low on hearts.
The "habit" and "streak" part was the downfall for me. The day I lost my streak I also lost every bits of motivation and it wasn't long before the app was uninstalled.
Have you tried Busuu??
Trilingual massages. Textilfrei. Equally impressive and hilarious. 😂
Thanks for showing advanced Duolingo. I never managed to make it that far, but it looks worthwhile.
For English, my favourite method was to pick one book chapter, one newspaper article or one season of a series and look up absolutely EVERYTHING I did not understand. I did that with Prison Break once and I am now fluent in American prison slang. For whatever it's worth.
Instead of saying to you should explain the story in Spanish the point is learning not earning. Those bare minimum days are good for making sure you get practice use so you can maintain what you already know without necessarily learning more.
THE GEMS are to be able to spend some days without studying and not losing your streak.
More Duolingo please
Más duolingo porfa
I've been doing Spanish with DuoLingo for over 1000 days. I can BARELY understand some Spanish. After 3 years, I would have hoped to be be futher along.
My goodness. I had no idea how much I needed this right now. I've been realizing over the past couple of weeks that I didn't waste 3 years on Duolingo learning Dutch and have been struggling with the criticism that Duolingo receives. This really helped and inspired me, which is what I needed. Thank you Evan. New subscriber.
2:00 as a native spanish speaker, I am very impressed. You'd be surprised how prevalent spanish ebonics is across the America's, your spanish was better than theirs
1355 days of Duolingo here. I wish they would add a delay before you could move on from a mistake.
What area of math were you interested in? I’m 268 days in my Duolingo journey in French. I’ve definitely made progress, but I’ve got a lot more marathon to go
Actuarial science and operation statistics
@ Cool stuff! I’ve heard that area has a lot of real world applications
I am learning Vietnamese using Duolingo, I was having lessons before. My objections to Duolingo are that their English is appalling. Try thís sentence: What did the engineer talk to the poet?
Also I live in Central Vietnam and they only teach Nỏthern.
Am I doing something wrong? Ive been casually trying to learn Scottish Gaelic on Duolingo for years and im currently on day 75 of a dedicated streak. One of the issues im running into is that i seem to be really good at "doing Duolingo" but i dont feel like im actually retaining all that much. Like i can do the exercises in under 5 minutes with minimal mistakes, but if you asked me to repeat any of the phrases i did in the lesson i would struggle to recall them, let alone tell you what they meant. Also, and this just might be due to Gaelic spelling being wildly foreign to an English speaker but i couldnt even begin to explain how the spelling works except for one rule: some names have an H added after the first letter if you are addressing that person. But i couldnt tell you which names change and which ones dont.
Is it always South American Spanish or can you choose European Spanish?
Only Latin American. And also only American English! I see many Brits confused by words like sophomore
My colleagues from Madrid think it's hysterical when I practice my Duolingo Spanish with them. They say that I sound like a Mexican!
i've been learning japanese for like 50 days and i just wish there were more mnemonics? tofugu has some really good resources for japanese and as someone who's a kinaesthetic and visual learner, having a mnemonic for hiragana/katakana or even for words (e.g. knowing what 'friend' is because of tomodachi life lol) i think would help a lot of people learn a lot quicker
You're possibly already familiar with it if you're using tofugu, but I've found Wani Kani really good as a learning tool utilising mnemonics for Kanji & vocab.
It's probably not worth jumping onto that though until you're comfortable with Kana.
@@ad3z10 i just signed up for wanikani actually!!!! i'm like on the border between knowing all my kana and working on kanji
Eso y esos = that/those, Esto y estos = this/these. Mnemonic to remember, "this and these have the t's."
I'm guessing you learnt Latin Spanish and not Castilian Spanish (Spanish spoken in Spain) so if you ever visit on holiday and use Latin words, be prepared to be judged and told "¿qué/cómo?". Juice = Zumo, never jugo in Spain 😅
You can pick which version you want to learn, I'm pretty sure
@@hayleyam28 I don't think you can. It gives you Latin American Spanish
i think i remember getting the option to choose between latin spanish and european spanish when i signed up, maybe it’s a newer feature tho
I did 500 days of Norwegian on Duolingo. Went to Norway and realised I wasn't able to understand what people were saying. I can watch Norwegian shows subtitled and understand but conversational is useless from Duolingo. You need face to face.
Interesting! Their Norwegian tree is not very fleshed out compared to their biggest 5 tho so yeah. That’d be missing loads
@evan btw, Norwegian is an epic language for English speakers to learn because of the amount of oh wow surprises. I loved it. Just slightly pointless for me because most Norwegians speak better English than me anyway.
A few years ago, I was learning Swedish with Duolingo (and a Native speaker at work). I actually learned more about the history of English than Swedish. So MANY words sounds the same as English, even if they are spelled different. Then I tried Norwegian and it was even closer to English. I knew they were similar but 🤯.
Also, whoever was doing the Norwegian sentences had a great sense of humor. One was a quote from the Princess Bride, another about Princess Leia having hair that looked like cinnamon buns. 😂
@@Jamienewt27 kjøp - to buy - "well this is different". Pronounced 'shop' 🤯
Hygge - a nice warm feeling. Pronounced 'hug'
Exactly right, it's an English etymology lesson
Omg you're friends with Dodie!? I love her. Her voice is so good, I've been listening to "would you be so kind" and "absolutely smitten" pretty much every couple days for years. ❤
Welcome to the wonderful world of dodie. Have loved her music since 2016. Check out her song in the middle!
Hi! I am a Spanish native speaker. I would like to know if I could learn Italian but using Spanish instead of English. (I am from Latin America, and we don't use vosotros)
Duolingo uses the language your phone is set in, to decide what language you learn to. You can probably google if duolingo does italian to spanish
En italiano se usa vosotros tal como nosotros en español de España por lo tanto te va a tocar aprender a usar vosotros 🤷🏻♂️
I'm in the US but if I scroll through the languages on my phone it has certain languages to others if you press the 3 dots. I don't know if they have Spanish to Italian though. @@Rebster
1000 days is 3 years give or take right; so more than 5 years to only get to b2 sounds kinda... remarkably inefficient, or am i wrong? I think when i had to study german i had achieved that within like 4 months, half a year, not sure.
With minimum time per day which would otherwise be 0? This misses the point. Bigger video explains it better in 2025
Spanish gets all the cool stuff! Danish doesn't have stories :(
But have you considered suggesting to your postman that he wear an astronaut costume for the lulz?
My xp was duo was good at first, then it became repetitive and i stopped learning. Just memorized the answers. Didn't really teach the grammar. Haven't used it in years tho. So if they put this level of effort into smaller languages then maybe ill look into it again
I keep forgetting Duo exists.
Did you learn Spanish in school (even a little bit), then saying "only with DuoLingo" here is a big oversell of DuoLingo.
Junior sounds better in Spanish. 😅