One of the top apps for the past few years to learn any language is Duolingo. People seem to be obsessed with this smiley-faced-but-actually-wants-to-murder-you Owl. While I’m on my long journey to learn Japanese all by myself, I want to try the more hip and helpful free apps on the market. To be completely honest, I just haven’t found the right app or source that allows me to learn the way I want, so meanwhile, I’ll be trying everything.

After A LOT of Duolingo memes, I decided to finally sign up. I was determined to see what all the fuss was about. And… I never got so mad with an app in my life. Seriously, it was nerve-racking! At first, I was trying to understand exactly how everything worked. I took the initial test to evaluate my level of Japanese since this wasn’t my first rodeo… It got me nowhere! Apparently, I didn’t learn the vocabulary they wanted so, I was back to square zero. This got a little bit on my nerve, for starters.

Then I resigned myself and tried to move past all the Hiragana that I already knew. It was super easy. So easy it was even boring – all because the Owl didn’t let me jump that part, now didn’tcha? *taking a deep breath* So my experience with Duolingo wasn’t starting on the right foot. But maybe, it was going to change once I started to progress and learn something new. I don’t think I need to tell you that it didn’t happen.

The learning system

One thing I quickly realize – and found strange – is that Duolingo doesn’t have learning sessions. The entire platform basically works as a continuous test, question/answer, with multiple answers most of the time. So no space for teaching. Whenever I bumped into a new word that I never heard before, it didn’t teach me, per se. I could hover over a word and see the translation. But that’s like going to the end of the book to look at the answer sheet. I was given the correct answer without any explanation or tricks to help memorize it. That is not learning for me.

And since the app is based around learning words through question/answer, forget about grammar. The only grammar you are going to learn is from stock sentences. Change a word here and a word there, don’t move anything else and… hey! Now you can say you’re eating an apple instead of a pear! You don’t learn how to identify a particle or when to use it or even if it’s a particle or part of the word! And not being able to get an explanation is annoying.

Duolingo doesn’t explain anything, and it gets very tricky when it comes to cultural words or expressions that don’t have an exact translation. Or worst… the formal language! English doesn’t have a formal version. It can be polite but doesn’t have words exclusively used in formal situations. And this becomes tricky to translate. I often found myself not writing exactly how the Owl wants and having the question wrong when the answer was the same but not as formal. And having that question wrong when I said the same thing, just not as polite, really pisses me off!

Game features

Some people find this app fun because you are “learning”, but it feels like you are playing a game. I won’t argue with that. It does feel like a game. It’s a very chilled app to play around with, has a clean interface, it’s pleasant to the eye… Although, I’ve started to notice that a game-like interface doesn’t go well with learning, at least for me.

Let me make a small detour to my first post on learning Japanese when I dived into the app Drops. It was fun. I was eager for my 5 minutes to be available again, even though that time pressure wasn’t the best. And you know what that taught me? ベーコン the word for “bacon”. And you might ask why? Because I found it funny how the lady said it, and my mind started saying it randomly. Also is a loanword, which sounds very close to the original, making it easy to memorize. And what about the rest? I don’t remember. The app is fun, it plays like a game, and when I’m on it, I feel like I’ve learned all these words, but in reality, I’ve just learned how to play the game.

The easy answer

After a week of using Duolingo, I’ve realized that I don’t even read the entire answer. If I have three choices between よる(yoru), よむ(yomu) and きたない(kitanai), I only read the first character because it’s different from the other two. When I have to choose between よむ(yomu) or よる(yoru), then I’ll pay more attention or else I’ll get it wrong. For a multiple-choice question to be really good, the words must be identical with only one character changing – even if the word doesn’t exist. That way, I’ll have to be focused on what I’m doing.

I understand the way Duolingo is structured can’t have made up words to make the questions harder because you are learning with the questions. And this comes back to my point: it should have learning sessions. I don’t understand why they don’t exist. A bunch of words are being dumped with no explanation. I have to either look up the correct answer or try and fail. Grammar is a mythical creature. The answers become easy and all the same after a while. And what for? This isn’t how you learn a language.

Repeat, cheat, repeat

I also have to say that Duolingo has other types of questions besides multiple choice. And when I have to write down in Japanese or in English, that’s when I realize what I’m learning. Although you can cheese your way out of these ones too. There’s an option to switch to a word bank that tells you the correct answer through capital letters and grammatical sense. But you might ask: then why don’t you avoid the word bank? Well… because of typos. The Owl is not forgiving with misspellings, especially in Japanese. On one hand, I understand it, but it could be more forgiving sometimes.

I don’t feel that I’ve learned anything with Duolingo because I could easily cheat the system. For most of the listening exercises, you select a word, and it reads out loud before you confirm your choice. Easy to cheat. In matching the pairs, the app reads the Japanese words out loud so, you just need to know hiragana to be able to match it. Easy to cheat. With writing the sentence, you can either use the word bank or hover over the word to have a translation. Easy to cheat. Obviously, taking the easy way out isn’t going to teach me anything, and I usually avoid using them. Although I wish they weren’t there, to begin with.

I didn’t enjoy my time with Duolingo at all. Even when I was “learning” entire sentences instead of loose words, it was boring. They repeat a lot of phrases or just change one word, which makes it easy to know the correct answer. The app lacks challenge, and all the repetition and easy answers bore me. I don’t feel I need to pay attention, that I need to think. The only time I find this app hard is when I can’t cheese my way out. And even the “hard questions” aren’t that hard. It’s more of the same.

Everyone talks so good about Duolingo, and I’m disappointed. I was expecting something better and similar in a way to WaniKani, with the systemic repetition. I guess I was wrong… But this is my experience with Duolingo. Everyone is different and learns differently. This one doesn’t work for me, but that doesn’t mean it can’t work for you.

Have you tried Duolingo? How do you feel about it?