I thought I’d tone down the hyperbole and not say “totally useless” but that’s not far off. I have numerous gripes with this site. But before we go down that rabbit hole, let me regale you with a story. So I was briefly part of this German speaking club, my friend always dreaded taking part in it which I found strange, considering he was fluent. Anyway, one day many moons later I decided to join in, I did have an ulterior motive, mind. This cute southern bell was there.

I did feel quite out of my depth here. I used to speak pretty good German 10 years ago – not quite fluent, but getting there. I was top of the class and the teachers were really disappointed I didn’t study German at University. I was really rusty but I could still keep a conversation going. A girl was sat next to me who was very quiet. I tried to make conversation with her but she told me she couldn’t speak and was only here to listen. Delving deeper, she explained that she had got 100% on Duolingo! She had excellent vocabulary but couldn’t construct sentences on her own. How tragic, to complete that turd to fruition only to find out how emasculated she was.

To summarize, these are the problems with Duolingo:

• From the above, it is not a substitute for traditional classroom learning. Not surprising given how robotic the exercises are. I’d compare it to learn python the hard way. Zed Shaw’s masochistic way to not learn programming.
• If you make a minor mistake (I’m not talking typos), you lose progress during an exercise. You have to do the same question again. I’m talking exactly the same one. It gets so tedious.
• It’s so boring, honestly reading a book is more entertaining.
• There’s lots of mistakes in the answers, marking you down even when you’re right. It’s a free service, so I guess you get what you pay for.
• They spam the fuck out of your email address, using a cartoon owl to coax you back to the eternal cesspit of boredom. Even if you opt out of one specific type of ham, they’ll spam you with other categories. E.g. Daily progress update vs. Weekly &c.

I tried Duolingo for Romanian and not much of it sank in. Then I just looked at a phrase book and learnt a lot more. Duolingo is poor for retaining information. If you’re serious about language learning, try a language exchnage, rosetta stone, pimsleur or a language class. Avoid relying solely on Duolingo if at all.