I get that and agree that it has increased. But. I have to disagree about the streak and gamification. I am truly adamant not to lose my streak, closing in on 650 days. So I’ve done some French every day for almost 2 years now and it pays off. Of course I do a huge amount of other work with the language as well but the gamification really works for me, if I lost the streak I probably wouldn’t practice every day.

I have mixed emotions about @duolingo . I’ve been learning Yiddish because many of the sources for my research are in Yiddish. My goal is not to become fluent in it, but to be able to read said materials. I speak intermediate-level German, and learning the Yiddish alphabet on Duolingo has helped me to read and understand the texts without the need of using google translate all the time. But I definitely dislike the gamification and the constant push to compete with other users.

Seedlang is much better

I used to use Duolingo to learn Ukrainian but now I don’t use it anymore because it sends you notifications that you have not done a lesson for a while

I recommend Mango and Fluent Forever! Mango has free courses for endangered languages, I love their Irish course. The way they explain the meaning of words and how they work in context is helpful. I use Duolingo too because I like the vocabulary repetition, it’s helpful to keep me learning a little bit every day when I don’t have time to properly study. But it is not a language course, it’s a supplemental tool. I also like their writing system lessons, I recommend them for that

Habla por ti mismo. El búho me ha ayudado aprender español bien. Quizás eres solamente estúpido? 🦉

If you do it consistently for an hour a day you will learn more then you did in school. People want to do five minutes a day and have something to say. If the games keep people interested, who cares.

I am always shocked that people do it for a few minutes and then expect to be fluent. Then they complain they’re not learning fancy enough words when they don’t know the words they’re being shown. 🤷‍♀️

I just decided to cancel Duolingo after reading this thread. It does feel like a rather inefficient way of learning a language. And the constant advertising and gamification is annoying. And that's with a 1270 day streak

I love the app Kleo. It’s AI so it helps you when you pronounce it incorrectly (or don’t know it). It’s great!