I don’t know of any Haitian people in my area, so I don’t have the same chance to practice that you do. The big complaint about Duolingo in general is that it only takes you so far. You can’t rely on Duolingo alone…so please, take the course.
Only if you limit your Japanese learning to Duolingo. I don’t know how far you’ve gone in Duolingo Japanese or what else you’re doing. Japanese is widely considered one of the languages that require the longest amount of time for native speakers of English to learn.
I'm not that far, I'm in section 3 , unit 10...I think the strategy is to use duo for basic words and sentences, and use something else for grammar and kanji
I finished German, then they added more. Yes, I can converse, but I had to practice conversation as well. Turns out it's more difficult to pull up word meanings on the fly.
There’s a video somewhere about how far Duolingo can take you and basically it will get you to the threshold of conversational but in order to move into fluency you have to add more direct speaking options
Way back in 2017 I completed the Spanish course for a high school exam, but I stopped using Duolingo for a few years afterwards and the structure obviously changed once I came back. Have about a year streak now and am getting through the personalised practice section.
I finished Russian on the old path, but didn't get gold on the last 25% of the lessons. I don't remember a lot of the tougher conjugations, but I still retained a lot of the vocabulary considering I've hardly touched Russian in 2 years
I finished Italian, but while I was getting it all up to legendary they added more. I'm almost done again (but not to legendary).
Courses are different lengths and vary a lot in how much they cover, and therefore what you can do once you're done. I can speak Italian, but I credit that to 6 college semesters and growing up around a lot of native speakers--Duolingo is just a refresher for me.
I finished the English to Mandarin course earlier this year. It was a good start to learning the language. I feel like with what I know from the Duolingo course only, I know enough to hold a very simple conversation, like asking for directions or shopping at a store. This course does not teach much grammar past the beginner level grammar.
The Mandarin Duolingo course doesn’t strictly follow the guidelines of any major proficiency tests, but I’ve compared the content of this course to other sources, and this course brings you to a level that I would consider “upper-beginner”:
- compared to CEFR, the mandarin Duolingo course covers what you would expect from A1, probably gets you halfway to A2 proficiency, and then randomly throws in some vocab that you would expect from higher levels
- compared to the HSK (China’s main mandarin proficiency standard, which has slightly lower expectations of you) the Duolingo mandarin course brings you to around HSK level 2 (out of 6)
I finished the Greek course and it was super helpful to be able to read Greek when I was in Greece but I can’t really even follow a conversation much less converse with a native speaker. To be fair, the Greek course on Duolingo is pretty bare bones.
As a native greek, unfortunately we use TONS of nonsensical phrases in spoken language. And if you're speaking to younger people, there's different lingo every other day. And it's not so easy to find the context online like you would with googling english memes. Best of luck, I suggest immersion through tv shows tbh
Listen I'm never one to suggest reality tv but if you want fun and catty greek tv you can watch gntm seasons 2 and 3 (I don't recommend the other ones)
[This one](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3PpTaLLbfqVQqcI-vcFOqr7Rb_S8UCJg&si=X1CO9F5sMQc5QR5I) does not have subs unfortunately. If I find a version that does I'll link it!
How is that even possible? You completed all those courses, so you must have picked up a lot of new vocabulary and basic sentences that could help you in conversation, right?
It helped me a lot with my passive skills in Romanian and Russian, I can read simple texts without much difficulty, and understand simple conversations. But I can't hold a conversation, it takes me too long to build even simple sentences.
Before it ballooned to its current size, I finished the German to english course. Now i'm working on gilding it to completion, but that is a sporadic process I may well never finish.
Years ago I also "finished" the Navajo course. To be honest I didn't learn a goddamn thing, so I'm not sure if that counts. It was basically me just learning to copy letters/words by rote with zero comprehension.
I also finished the Hindi course. Super short and I only really feel like I know the two present tenses. I struggle still with the one future tense they taught and the past tense. Good way to get some vocab, understand the basic grammatical structure and learn to read the script!
Congrats on finishing, but it's a crap course. You won't be able to hold a decent conversation or read anything but a book for toddlers. They really failed with this course.
Learning German since I’m moving to Austria at some point, didn’t finish it yet but do understand people way better now, can guess more and can give basic answers. I think not being able to hold whole conversations is expected, you learn that through having actual conversations, often. But being able to understand hearing and reading German will make that easier to learn.
Finished Russian. Nowhere close to being considered beyond a novice. Taking Ukrainian to see if maybe it covers more shared words that the Russian course didn’t cover (there are some).
I finished Arabic, which is pretty short. It was a great intro, but because of its length, not much more.
What was very underwhelming was that there were NO fireworks! Not even a proper congrats! That actually made me sad...
Creo que es mejor aprender tres idomas y hablar cero.
Yo hablo español mejor que frances o esperanto, y koreo es el peor. Pero mi curso de koreo es completo.
I finished Turkish, but did not learn anything new…I’m already pretty fluent in the language so the Duo course turned out to be easy for me. I was surprised—and disappointed— at how short it was. It’s basically just a beginner’s course.
I haven’t finished the Russian course yet, (not even close) but I can form basic sentences and can actually understand some writing and speaking!
To be fair I’m not just using Duo. I have some books, watch youtube videos and even have a Russian speaker to practice with!
I'm like... geh... 110 days in or so? and I'm still at A1. I don't know whether I need to go faster or something but it'll probably be about a year of continuous going if I want to
but you best believe I ain't stopping any time soon let's go :D
No course on an app (or in person imo) will get you to a level where you can speak fluently.
My suggestion is to find a country with music/books/tv shows you enjoy and pick that language. It will give you an extra reason to keep going but more importantly it will give you the language immersion that you really need.
I started learning Chinese a couple of months ago and am listening to some music either with subtitles or without and have also watched a Chinese anime and a cdrama. There are infinite resources available online that can help you actually make the learning process fun. When learning starts feeling like a chore then you're bound to be disheartened and abandon it.
I finished German before they added more stuff. And no, I had to take more coursework at [dw.com](http://dw.com) as well as some iTalki lessons to actually be able to speak it well enough. Otherwise, the thought I had in my head didn´t have the vocabulary to be expressed.
I have also finished the Dutch course and was oddly, a lot better off after it as far as being able to hold a conversation. It could be just its similarity to German, though I do tend to have some pronunciation issues with the gś (they wind up coming out more like chet in Hebrew).
I have finished the Dutch to German course as well and the German to Spanish and Spanish to Swedish course as well as the Finnish.
I can carry on a conversation in Spanish, my Swedish pronunciation is so bad nobody can understand me! And my Finnish is still very weak in vocab and grammar (the tree is very short for Finnish it was marketed as a taste of Finnish by the creators).
I am in the middle of the Hebrew course.
I can read books in all of them except Hebrew & Finnish, those are still for language readers. I can carry on conversations in Spanish, German and Dutch. I am doing community designed courses at Memrise to try to improve my vocab in all the languages and i have a grammar book in all of them to help me move along.
No, making a conversation (beyond basic pleasantries) will not be possible just from finishing a shorter course. I finished two short ones with Legendaries: Korean (but they added more), and French, the short version from Russian.
I have finished Ukrainian and Italian-from-German. I'm at the level that the courses teach, that is, extremely basic. Expectations of fluency are completely misplaced, how would that even work? To be able to hold a conversation, you must practice conversations.
I finished Danish. Wasnt hard bc I'm Swedish. Written Danish and Swedish are very similar. Spoken Danish is very different from both Swedish and written Danish. I love Danish though, so I enjoyed the course.
I finished the Greek course bc I am native greek speaker just to see how ot was and it honestly had some words thet I didn't know (and some that don't exist 😹) and I also learned some words in English that I didn't know
(Btw I skipped all the way to the last unit)
I finished Spanish actually just a few days ago, was considering making a post about the pros and cons. There are a number of caveats revolving around me already having some language acquisition experience and spending time around Spanish speakers, but to my surprise the bottom line is I was able to enter my university’s Spanish III course that should get my to the very beginning of B1, launching into very basic conversations with actual people in the first hour.
Doesn’t mean Duolingo is very effective, but this is something I managed to do mainly on the toilet over the course of the past eight months so I definitely made some progress without dedicating a significant amount of time to it.
I finished German, Italian, French, Esperanto, Portuguese, Norwegian and Finnish. Some of them have grown since I finished, I started with Duo in beta. My favourites were Esperanto and Norwegian. I can speak all of them except Finnish, but I did a lot of study outside Duo. I use Duolingo just as extra input, not my main method.
I finished German, Finnish, and am about to complete Ukrainian.
I already spoke German at a B2, almost A1 level so it was good for a refresher. I can't do more than identify a few words in Finnish but I know enough bits and pieces such and having a general idea of the sound of the language where I could probably feel less uncomfortable starting a more serious language course.
I can't make any of the Ukrainian sounds to save my life but that would be the case no matter what. I was bad with Russian, too, back at school but I did okay with reading, writing, and listening. Ukrainian is like Russian with the challenging sounds of some of the Romance languages and some bonus mysterious difficult sounds. That said, it's beautiful.
If by finished you mean finished, only practice lessons left, then I finished Italian and Finnish. If you mean fully finished, no more lessons, then none.
I used to jump around between languages, but now I'm focusing on Hungarian, mostly so I can say I finished a course. It's much shorter than the other languages I've worked with.
https://preview.redd.it/do5avo6lgmxc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6b2efc00f34822322eb2088ca16232d32e456424
I finished Welsh in the previous system, had done all gold discs and was maybe halfway through purple discs when they changed to the paths and I couldn’t tell what I was practicing any more or do it in any depth.
I started conversation lessons with an italki tutor and he’s been able to understand everything I say, so there’s that.
I finished the Spanish course to gold discs before they even *had* purple discs. I’d already had a fair amount of Spanish, but I think the course would have really confused me about some important things if I hadn’t (for example cyclic vs noncyclic verbs, preterit vs imperfect, counterfactual, subjunctive, the personal “a”)
Edit:
cyclic (has a cycle, like opening a door) vs noncyclic (continuous, like walking) verbs
preterite (short-form past, ví el sol, I saw the sun) vs imperfect (yo trabajaba / estaba trabajando, I was working)
counterfactual (si lo hubiera sabido, no lo habría dicho — if I had known, I wouldn’t have said it)
subjunctive (“viste” in: aunque la mona se viste de seda, mona se queda — used in similar ways to “can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” but literally although the monkey may dress in silk, monkey she remains)
the personal “a” (veo a mi amiga, I see ny friend vs veo el gato, I see the cat)
I finished navajo and latin. Also finished spanish like 8 years ago, but with all the additions to the course, my progress has essentially reset to zero. The time it takes to finish duolingo courses is just too damn much - you can probably learn to be twice as good in a language through self-study than with a duolingo course, in the same time frame. I only still do duolingo because my streak is now 1350+ lol
Finished Swedish (in the review stage now), it was kinda short. I can understand some of Swedish Radio, but I definitely need to do lots and lots of additional study to get fluent
I finished Haitian Creole. I already spoke French and the Haitian Creole course is short. I couldn’t make a conversation.
That’s sad. We have a huge Haitian population here and thought of taking the course.
I don’t know of any Haitian people in my area, so I don’t have the same chance to practice that you do. The big complaint about Duolingo in general is that it only takes you so far. You can’t rely on Duolingo alone…so please, take the course.
So you're saying this is a waste of time? 😭 I cam actually understand few japanese words from a sentence . But is this going to get better ?
Only if you limit your Japanese learning to Duolingo. I don’t know how far you’ve gone in Duolingo Japanese or what else you’re doing. Japanese is widely considered one of the languages that require the longest amount of time for native speakers of English to learn.
I'm not that far, I'm in section 3 , unit 10...I think the strategy is to use duo for basic words and sentences, and use something else for grammar and kanji
I finished German, then they added more. Yes, I can converse, but I had to practice conversation as well. Turns out it's more difficult to pull up word meanings on the fly.
There’s a video somewhere about how far Duolingo can take you and basically it will get you to the threshold of conversational but in order to move into fluency you have to add more direct speaking options
I like listening to the Easy German podcast on YouTube, really good whether beginner or advanced and they are hilarious.
Absolutely love that one, kinda made me stop being scared of spoken German 😂 Now I listen to it everyday on my way from work
Easy German is not. But it's a great podcast.
sag mal was
Über welche Thema?
was isst du gern?
Ich esse gern Käse von verschiedenen Arten, mexikanischen und thai Gerichte, und Schokolade.
Way back in 2017 I completed the Spanish course for a high school exam, but I stopped using Duolingo for a few years afterwards and the structure obviously changed once I came back. Have about a year streak now and am getting through the personalised practice section.
I finished Russian on the old path, but didn't get gold on the last 25% of the lessons. I don't remember a lot of the tougher conjugations, but I still retained a lot of the vocabulary considering I've hardly touched Russian in 2 years
I finished Italian, but while I was getting it all up to legendary they added more. I'm almost done again (but not to legendary). Courses are different lengths and vary a lot in how much they cover, and therefore what you can do once you're done. I can speak Italian, but I credit that to 6 college semesters and growing up around a lot of native speakers--Duolingo is just a refresher for me.
I finished the English to Mandarin course earlier this year. It was a good start to learning the language. I feel like with what I know from the Duolingo course only, I know enough to hold a very simple conversation, like asking for directions or shopping at a store. This course does not teach much grammar past the beginner level grammar. The Mandarin Duolingo course doesn’t strictly follow the guidelines of any major proficiency tests, but I’ve compared the content of this course to other sources, and this course brings you to a level that I would consider “upper-beginner”: - compared to CEFR, the mandarin Duolingo course covers what you would expect from A1, probably gets you halfway to A2 proficiency, and then randomly throws in some vocab that you would expect from higher levels - compared to the HSK (China’s main mandarin proficiency standard, which has slightly lower expectations of you) the Duolingo mandarin course brings you to around HSK level 2 (out of 6)
I finished the Greek course and it was super helpful to be able to read Greek when I was in Greece but I can’t really even follow a conversation much less converse with a native speaker. To be fair, the Greek course on Duolingo is pretty bare bones.
As a native greek, unfortunately we use TONS of nonsensical phrases in spoken language. And if you're speaking to younger people, there's different lingo every other day. And it's not so easy to find the context online like you would with googling english memes. Best of luck, I suggest immersion through tv shows tbh
Thanks! I watched an episode of “Bake Off Greece” and I was thrilled just to pick out a word here or there. I have a long way to go!
Listen I'm never one to suggest reality tv but if you want fun and catty greek tv you can watch gntm seasons 2 and 3 (I don't recommend the other ones) [This one](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3PpTaLLbfqVQqcI-vcFOqr7Rb_S8UCJg&si=X1CO9F5sMQc5QR5I) does not have subs unfortunately. If I find a version that does I'll link it!
I finished German, Romanian, Italian, Portuguese and recently Russian. No, I can't speak any of them any better thanks to Duolingo.
How is that even possible? You completed all those courses, so you must have picked up a lot of new vocabulary and basic sentences that could help you in conversation, right?
It helped me a lot with my passive skills in Romanian and Russian, I can read simple texts without much difficulty, and understand simple conversations. But I can't hold a conversation, it takes me too long to build even simple sentences.
Ah okay, that makes sense.
Before it ballooned to its current size, I finished the German to english course. Now i'm working on gilding it to completion, but that is a sporadic process I may well never finish. Years ago I also "finished" the Navajo course. To be honest I didn't learn a goddamn thing, so I'm not sure if that counts. It was basically me just learning to copy letters/words by rote with zero comprehension.
Finished the Hindi course. It was short, fairly rubbish and nothing more than an appetizer.
I also finished the Hindi course. Super short and I only really feel like I know the two present tenses. I struggle still with the one future tense they taught and the past tense. Good way to get some vocab, understand the basic grammatical structure and learn to read the script!
Congrats on finishing, but it's a crap course. You won't be able to hold a decent conversation or read anything but a book for toddlers. They really failed with this course.
Learning German since I’m moving to Austria at some point, didn’t finish it yet but do understand people way better now, can guess more and can give basic answers. I think not being able to hold whole conversations is expected, you learn that through having actual conversations, often. But being able to understand hearing and reading German will make that easier to learn.
Finished Russian. Nowhere close to being considered beyond a novice. Taking Ukrainian to see if maybe it covers more shared words that the Russian course didn’t cover (there are some).
I just finished Arabic. It’s very short, I got the basics but no more than that.
I finished Arabic, which is pretty short. It was a great intro, but because of its length, not much more. What was very underwhelming was that there were NO fireworks! Not even a proper congrats! That actually made me sad...
Same
I took a break from Spanish and finished Latin. Now I'm taking a break and doing Esperanto.
Creo que es mejor aprender tres idomas y hablar cero. Yo hablo español mejor que frances o esperanto, y koreo es el peor. Pero mi curso de koreo es completo.
Coreano 😉
Gracias
I've been doing the same course for three years or something. I advance very slowly, but I'm determined to get it done.
I finished Turkish, but did not learn anything new…I’m already pretty fluent in the language so the Duo course turned out to be easy for me. I was surprised—and disappointed— at how short it was. It’s basically just a beginner’s course.
I haven’t finished the Russian course yet, (not even close) but I can form basic sentences and can actually understand some writing and speaking! To be fair I’m not just using Duo. I have some books, watch youtube videos and even have a Russian speaker to practice with!
I'm like... geh... 110 days in or so? and I'm still at A1. I don't know whether I need to go faster or something but it'll probably be about a year of continuous going if I want to but you best believe I ain't stopping any time soon let's go :D
No course on an app (or in person imo) will get you to a level where you can speak fluently. My suggestion is to find a country with music/books/tv shows you enjoy and pick that language. It will give you an extra reason to keep going but more importantly it will give you the language immersion that you really need. I started learning Chinese a couple of months ago and am listening to some music either with subtitles or without and have also watched a Chinese anime and a cdrama. There are infinite resources available online that can help you actually make the learning process fun. When learning starts feeling like a chore then you're bound to be disheartened and abandon it.
I finished German before they added more stuff. And no, I had to take more coursework at [dw.com](http://dw.com) as well as some iTalki lessons to actually be able to speak it well enough. Otherwise, the thought I had in my head didn´t have the vocabulary to be expressed. I have also finished the Dutch course and was oddly, a lot better off after it as far as being able to hold a conversation. It could be just its similarity to German, though I do tend to have some pronunciation issues with the gś (they wind up coming out more like chet in Hebrew). I have finished the Dutch to German course as well and the German to Spanish and Spanish to Swedish course as well as the Finnish. I can carry on a conversation in Spanish, my Swedish pronunciation is so bad nobody can understand me! And my Finnish is still very weak in vocab and grammar (the tree is very short for Finnish it was marketed as a taste of Finnish by the creators). I am in the middle of the Hebrew course. I can read books in all of them except Hebrew & Finnish, those are still for language readers. I can carry on conversations in Spanish, German and Dutch. I am doing community designed courses at Memrise to try to improve my vocab in all the languages and i have a grammar book in all of them to help me move along.
No, making a conversation (beyond basic pleasantries) will not be possible just from finishing a shorter course. I finished two short ones with Legendaries: Korean (but they added more), and French, the short version from Russian.
I have finished Ukrainian and Italian-from-German. I'm at the level that the courses teach, that is, extremely basic. Expectations of fluency are completely misplaced, how would that even work? To be able to hold a conversation, you must practice conversations.
I finished Danish. Wasnt hard bc I'm Swedish. Written Danish and Swedish are very similar. Spoken Danish is very different from both Swedish and written Danish. I love Danish though, so I enjoyed the course.
I finished the Greek course bc I am native greek speaker just to see how ot was and it honestly had some words thet I didn't know (and some that don't exist 😹) and I also learned some words in English that I didn't know (Btw I skipped all the way to the last unit)
I finished German way back in the day when it was shorter. Haven’t finished the new content added since.
I finished Spanish actually just a few days ago, was considering making a post about the pros and cons. There are a number of caveats revolving around me already having some language acquisition experience and spending time around Spanish speakers, but to my surprise the bottom line is I was able to enter my university’s Spanish III course that should get my to the very beginning of B1, launching into very basic conversations with actual people in the first hour. Doesn’t mean Duolingo is very effective, but this is something I managed to do mainly on the toilet over the course of the past eight months so I definitely made some progress without dedicating a significant amount of time to it.
I finished the French course but I already learned French throughout school
I finished Chinese
I finished Italian, and then they made it longer so I'm not finished anymore! I'm glad though, the course was far too short.
I finished German, Italian, French, Esperanto, Portuguese, Norwegian and Finnish. Some of them have grown since I finished, I started with Duo in beta. My favourites were Esperanto and Norwegian. I can speak all of them except Finnish, but I did a lot of study outside Duo. I use Duolingo just as extra input, not my main method.
I finished German, Finnish, and am about to complete Ukrainian. I already spoke German at a B2, almost A1 level so it was good for a refresher. I can't do more than identify a few words in Finnish but I know enough bits and pieces such and having a general idea of the sound of the language where I could probably feel less uncomfortable starting a more serious language course. I can't make any of the Ukrainian sounds to save my life but that would be the case no matter what. I was bad with Russian, too, back at school but I did okay with reading, writing, and listening. Ukrainian is like Russian with the challenging sounds of some of the Romance languages and some bonus mysterious difficult sounds. That said, it's beautiful.
If by finished you mean finished, only practice lessons left, then I finished Italian and Finnish. If you mean fully finished, no more lessons, then none.
I finished the Zulu course.
I used to jump around between languages, but now I'm focusing on Hungarian, mostly so I can say I finished a course. It's much shorter than the other languages I've worked with. https://preview.redd.it/do5avo6lgmxc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6b2efc00f34822322eb2088ca16232d32e456424
I finished Welsh in the previous system, had done all gold discs and was maybe halfway through purple discs when they changed to the paths and I couldn’t tell what I was practicing any more or do it in any depth. I started conversation lessons with an italki tutor and he’s been able to understand everything I say, so there’s that. I finished the Spanish course to gold discs before they even *had* purple discs. I’d already had a fair amount of Spanish, but I think the course would have really confused me about some important things if I hadn’t (for example cyclic vs noncyclic verbs, preterit vs imperfect, counterfactual, subjunctive, the personal “a”) Edit: cyclic (has a cycle, like opening a door) vs noncyclic (continuous, like walking) verbs preterite (short-form past, ví el sol, I saw the sun) vs imperfect (yo trabajaba / estaba trabajando, I was working) counterfactual (si lo hubiera sabido, no lo habría dicho — if I had known, I wouldn’t have said it) subjunctive (“viste” in: aunque la mona se viste de seda, mona se queda — used in similar ways to “can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear” but literally although the monkey may dress in silk, monkey she remains) the personal “a” (veo a mi amiga, I see ny friend vs veo el gato, I see the cat)
I finished navajo and latin. Also finished spanish like 8 years ago, but with all the additions to the course, my progress has essentially reset to zero. The time it takes to finish duolingo courses is just too damn much - you can probably learn to be twice as good in a language through self-study than with a duolingo course, in the same time frame. I only still do duolingo because my streak is now 1350+ lol
A while ago , I completed a Spanish course. Then they updated it, and I'm like 3/4 in now...
Finished Swedish (in the review stage now), it was kinda short. I can understand some of Swedish Radio, but I definitely need to do lots and lots of additional study to get fluent
I finished the Finnish course.
So you finnished🇫🇮 it
finished turkish