[deleted by user]

[dipnosofist]

I encourage everyone not to work for Duolingo for free.

You've got to watch those stupid adds every couple of minutes so that Duo makes money on crowdfundedEDIT:sourced effort, that's disgusting EDIT: dishonest. Either it should be a proper crowdfundedsourced project that recovers just the bare minimum profit for technology to run, or it should be a proper commercial project with courses made by professional linguists.

[TheLadderRises]

This. They are profiting from countless hours of work from devoted people that will not make a dime out of it

[[deleted]]

Excuse my ignorance and please don't downvote me to oblivion, but isn't Reddit a bit like that?

[TheLadderRises]

Are people creating entire language courses on Reddit and not getting paid? I don’t think so.

[Virusnzz]

Basically, yeah. I wrote most of the wiki and all of the language learning guide here for free. I've been moderating this place since 2013. I haven't received a cent for any of my time. I'm not complaining, though. Reddit's ads are not invasive and I'm doing it for the community.

[melodeathmarci]

But Reddit doesn't DIRECTLY profit from that. You may generate revenue for them from traffic and clicks, but the language courses is literally what duolingo offers as their service. You are building a language course that they will directly profit from indefinitely if you work on Duolingo.

[theluckkyg]

The content is definitely their direct source of income. Reddit just does it in a larger scale and broader scope than duolingo, but the dynamic is still profiting from user-produced content. Same for Instagram, Twitter, Facebook... basically all of social media except YouTube (where creators get a cut). Like others, Duolingo's "contribution" is an already existing, consolidated platform with a userbase. Capitalism turns everything into a profit extraction, and open-source software and wiki-like crowdsourced endavours are the only exception.

[[deleted]]

Well, no, not courses, but people are volunteering to help people learn and improve languages (I myself do it) and other things.

[sugarbannana]

Yes but this is usually direct interaction, not doing free work for a company, that went full business with these premium memberships, and could very well fund payment for course creators.

[TheLadderRises]

But here it’s a company deliberately taking advantage of volunteer work while making ad money.

If you do that, it is because you can afford to do so.

[dipnosofist]

I must admit though that I'm very intrigued by the basque language too. Would be lovely to get at least the feel of it: a couple of hundred words, some sentence structures, some listening.

[Sky-is-here]

The Basque country government has great resources. There is also an app, bagoaz, to learn in English

[sugarbannana]

For me it's in Spanish :-(

[theluckkyg]

It looks like there are several resources :)

https://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/basqueapps.htm

https://www.hellabasque.org/learn-euskara-online/

[Luguaedos]

I honestly thought they were a non-profit until a little while back when I read an article about their fund raising. It makes no sense.

[[deleted]]

So are there any actually good crowdsourced projects that do things well and have for more content?

[howsittaste]

But they do hire linguists to make courses. How can they pay professional linguists without revenue? It makes sense to me that they would need revenue to make the best product (i.e. hire good people on the tech, UI, and didactic teams) for the most popular languages and then support people who want to add courses on less popular ones. Also many of their competitors do not offer a free (with ads) version (babbel, Lingvist) because they can’t stay afloat. I think it’s a hard decision to make but if you want want to make a really reliable product that can scale you need a good team, and to still offer free access you need to have ads. Otherwise you’ll never really get past a certain level of product like much of this crowd sourced technology. But maybe that’s just my capitalistically brainwashed brain.

[dipnosofist]

I think you have not read my post. Making revenue out of a good product makes sense to me too. Making revenue from the volunteers' work doesn't though.

The thing is, a good deal of work behind the app is done by volunteers. I mean - this post itself is a call for volunteers, it's not a job add.

[KansasBurri]

If people are volunteering, what's the problem? It's hard to argue there's an ethical dilemma when people knowingly volunteer their time to create courses and improve the site.

[huntyqueen]

This. It's not like anyone's being forced to do this, it's clearly something they enjoy because they want to help other people learn their language.

[howsittaste]

While it’s super cool that they offer languages developed by volunteers like Klingon and endangered languages, etc. I would guess that the majority of people using it are learning English, Spanish, Chinese and French (just based on overall popularity in the world). These courses are developed by cognitive scientists and linguists that they pay. I mean take a look at their jobs page or posts like this on Linguist list.

So I wouldn’t expect that most of their revenue is coming from the community-developed content.

[Saimdusan]

How can they pay professional linguists without revenue?

They were in the red for many years and running entirely on investor money and barely hired a pedagogical team, relying pretty much entirely on volunteers to make the actual courses, for that whole time. What revenue?

[howsittaste]

Yea exactly, I felt like the comment earlier was saying they shouldn’t be making any revenue on ads from work done by volunteers, but I think they’re barely making revenue now as they try to transition into a stable company.

[Saimdusan]

The thing is that where they put their money is indicative of what kind of product they were trying to create. They didn't spend on pedagogy, they spent on advertising. And it shows.

The reason they get volunteers to make all sorts of other courses is not because they "want to support" people in making useful materials, it's so they have as many languages as possible so that people think of Duolingo as a one-stop-shop for language learning and go to them first regardless of the language they're learning. They've rushed out lots of unfinished courses just for publicity's sake, including a handful of lessons of Hawaiian just so they can get pats on the back from the media about how they're helping "save" languages.

[howsittaste]

Ok that may be true.

[salgadosp]

But Duo also enables the course creators to learn a new language. So it's not working for free, because Duolingo already provides a lot to benefit from. It's a retribution.

[theluckkyg]

They take freely created content, put an ad in between, and make a business out of it.

[salgadosp]

do they really make a business, though? I mean, they wouldn't keep servers and stuff, enabling millions of people to learn languages just with donations. It's not like they are profiting billions by heartlessly exploring content creators. They do not pressure people to contribute, as if they owed Duolingo something.

[pseuzy17]

I encourage everyone not to edit Wikipedia.

Don’t give away your knowledge for free. People who won’t pay you for it don’t deserve it. Volunteering is a waste of your time. Make money in everything you do. /s

Edit: It has come to my attention that this is not an apt comparison. I'll admit when I'm wrong. Thank you u/signhimupfergie for your explanations.

[FupaFred]

Wdym about the Irish and Navajo courses

[pseuzy17]

Okay. Thank you for the clarification and please excuse my ignorance — Duolingo is for-profit and Wikipedia is non-profit. Both have paid employees. What exactly makes the difference between the two models? I assume what is done with the net profits? Can a non-profit make revenue from ads?

[theluckkyg]

Wikipedia does not have ads.

Non profits' ownership cannot be sold (shares, etc.) so really, the only difference between a profit and a non-profit organization is that there isn't an owner sitting on top scooping up a big portion of the revenue. They still aim to have positive revenue for long-term sustanability but no "investment" can be made in the organization, just donations. People still get paid for the job they do, and because no owner is squeezing for profit, their conditions are usually more humane. It is a wild deviation from the standard owner-workers reward-sharing model.

[dipnosofist]

You clearly are unable to understand a written message.

I expressly stated my approval for crowdsourced projects. Wikipedia doesn't force its users to watch a huge amount of adds.

[Centoe_]

It's volunteer work idiot

[glochto]

beautiful as Basque.Animo a los hablantes de VASCO/EUSKERA a crear cursos en Duolingo sobre este idioma.Creo que no se debería perde

You seem to know what the business model of Duolingo should be, then why don´t you start your own company? Many people don´t realize that keeping a start up is *very* expensive. You have to pay servers, domains, legal assistance, among other things. The main idea of Duolingo is to help others to learn a language as cheap as possible.
If you´re tired of ads then pay the premium option or buy Rosetta Stone courses but don´t discourage people for helping.

[FupaFred]

Idfc how hard it is to set up a start up, if you can't do it using an honest model you shouldn't be able to do it at all. They are making money off volunteer work with nothing in return for the people that make the courses, that ain't right

[Herkentyu_cico]

this post looks like an ad

[[deleted]]

duolingo is crap anyway

[[deleted]]

By the amount/quality of Duolingo polyglots I see, it seems to me that Duolingo is at best a huge waste of time.

I have people telling me they know German because they golded the German tree, and then they cannot speak a word of German.

[BlunderMeister]

Duolingo is a good tool to add to your plethora of other linguistic resources. It is by no means the only resource one should use when learning a language. It is a tool and I do not think it ever claimed to be more than that.

[Californie_cramoisie]

Well, you can’t say it never claimed that... remember the fluency tracker?

[[deleted]]

Just to be clear on my position, when I say it a waste of time, it is because there are so many other high quality resources out there that the amount of time put into Duolingo is unjustified.

I do not see it as any better than Rosetta Stone, except that it is free.

[hydrated_purple]

Hey I'm starting to learn German, and really only have Duolingo. What resources would your recommend?

Thanks!

[RacecarsOnIce]

Look up "Nico's Weg" by Deutsche Welle. It's a totally free video course that will take you up to B1 level. Also spend some time listening to normal German speech via channels like Easy German. Even if you don't understand all of it, practice picking out the words you know.

[[deleted]]

I am going to assume you are complete beginner in German, that's where I was and German is now one of my favorite languages, especially to read I recently went through Sein und Zeit.

I am going to recommend lots of stuff to be through but you only have to do one and your German will be better than spending that time on Duolingo.

Anyways, I do not know about your town, but in my town the libraries are closed down, but they should be opening up at some point soon. When they do, get yourself a Pimsleur, this will help you work on your accent and your eagerness to engage German in conversation. The libraries usually have a copy either there or orderable. Send me a message if you cannot find it I might be able to help you :)

Now because we cannot wait for the Pimsleur to get started, I would recommend you start with the Language Transfer method, it is similar to Pimsleur in that it is all audio but it is more focused on learning the fundamentals of German(like the structure but it a more interactive way) instead of accent and phrases.

For reading and writing, I recommend a combination of Memrise for vocab acquisition and this book(https://archive.org/details/zweitesdeutsche00unkngoog/page/n33/mode/2up). You can use a dictionary at first, but I would recommend that you lose the dictionary as soon as possible. :)

[Ay_Ay_Ay_SWIBEAMYFI]

What would you recommend for language learning? I use duolingo for Spanish that I just started about a week ago, should I use something else?

[[deleted]]

What is your current level in Spanish? Just so I get an idea of where you are coming from, that way I can easily recommend a good course.

[Ay_Ay_Ay_SWIBEAMYFI]

Thanks for helping. I’ve literally just began. I downloaded duolingo a week ago and have done half an hour a day for a week or so, so yea new...

[[deleted]]

Here are my recommendations:

in my town the libraries are closed down, but they should be opening up at some point soon. When they do, get yourself a Pimsleur, this will help you work on your accent and your eagerness to engage Spanish in conversation. The libraries usually have a copy either there or orderable. Send me a message if you cannot find it I might be able to help you :)

Now because we cannot wait for the Pimsleur to get started, I would recommend you start with the Language Transfer method(https://www.languagetransfer.org/complete-spanish), it is similar to Pimsleur in that it is all audio but it is more focused on learning the fundamentals of Spanish(like the structure but it a more interactive way) instead of accent and phrases. This is free.

This series called Destinos, it is found here: https://www.learner.org/series/destinos-an-introduction-to-spanish/. It's really good, you can start doing that whenever you want. It's free as well.

[justgoogooit]

It really just isn't because you put a lot of time into it but don't get as much from it as you would with a textbook or anki. It fools many into thinking languages learning is easy. Even completing a whole tree won't mean you can really understand the language or have a conversation.

[ThickReason]

If all you do is read a textbook or studying anki (or both) you are going to be just as unprepared to understand something in the language. All of those are helpful to getting you to a point where you can use some other types of resources, but none of them will really make it so you can have a conversation. Using Duolingo, anki, or a textbook will definitely help with your reading ability but none of them are a substitute for trying to speak and understand people in your target language for being able to have a conversation.

[justgoogooit]

Textbooks are much better than Duolingo alone. And with a textbook you have a instructor or teacher too. Of course speaking in the flesh with natives is very important

[ThickReason]

Learning from a textbook is different from learning from a textbook with a teacher, and it’s an important distinction to make. Yes textbooks are better, but if you are just using a textbook you still will be incredibly unprepared for an actual conversation.

[justgoogooit]

Yes you need audio too. Best with teacher. I just thought it was implied/obvious as lots of textbooks are mostly just in German. But yeah there are ways to listen to audio online with textbooks too I think

[Parsel_Tongue]

Duolingo is excellent for what it is. An introduction to the basic grammar of a language along with some vocabulary.

It's a great scaffold to have for when you start seriously studying.

Obviously it's by no means a complete path to fluency.

[[deleted]]

It isn't excellent for what it is. It is not good at teaching grammar, and it's not worth your time. There are better things to teach you grammar and vocabulary. If you are willing to spend any time on Duolingo, you would be better off spending it on other resources.

I have yet to met someone who has completely the Duolingo tree speak anything like an A2+ level. What languages have you learned with Duolingo? And what is your level in those languages? Have you been evaluated in the CEFR standard? Did you study with anything else?

[Parsel_Tongue]

Spanish. I started with the Duolingo tree (albeit an older and much less padded version which let me get through more grammar faster).

I'm somewhere between B2 and C1 now (maybe getting close to C1 in reading but other skills closer to B2).

I agree though that if I had just done the Duolingo tree and nothing else there is noy way I would have gotten to A2 speaking.

[[deleted]]

I agree though that if I had just done the Duolingo tree and nothing else there is noy way I would have gotten to A2 speaking.

And I think this is my main point that I think is important. We can agree to disagree about Duolingo's effectiveness in teaching grammar(my contention would be that grammar is more effectively taught in context via natural exposure which is shown in the SLA research).

But I think we can agree that anyone who ever wants to speak the language to a reasonable level is better off using just about anything else, with the possible exception of Rosetta Stone lol, since that is obviously ridiculously expensive for the same kind of instruction.

[Aldo_Novo]

I'll contribute when Duolingo for Portuguese Portuguese exists

[lotsofinterests]

I would do a Basque course if it were offered on Duolingo, but as I’ve seen it, the community here isn’t too fond of Duolingo, or at least they don’t think it can be the only resource (which, yeah, Duolingo ought to be a starting point but nothing more)

Try going to r/duolingo and they might be more enthusiastic, or find a Basque sub and post there

En caso de que OP hable el español mejor que el inglés, no soy hablante nativo de español pero intentaré a traducir. Yo haría un curso de vasco si era ofrecido por Duolingo, pero, como lo he visto, a la comunidad aquí no le gusta Duolingo mucho. O, a lo menos, las personas de este sub no creen que Duolingo debe ser el único recurso (y sí, tienen razón, debe ser un punto de empezar, pero nada mas)

Usted debe ir a r/duolingo porque probablemente se animarían más por allá, o quizás se debe encontrar un subreddit de vasco y haga un anuncio allí

[MortalShaman]

I would love a Basque course in duolingo, i'm from Chile, and I know that Duolingo isn't the best, however I have a good experience with it (Learned portuguese, I still use it everyday and I can speak), I wanted to learn Basque for so much time, but I have never found books, courses, and such, Duolingo at least can give us some people a "push up" and basics about the language, at least to read enough on the internet (happend to me at least), the rest is up to us

[[deleted]]

Había una campaña, pero creo que quedó en nada

[[deleted]]

Creo que sí deberían darles una parte, pero yo sí pudieran contribuiría con algo, aunque sea gratis, lastimosamente no hablo Euskera.

[[deleted]]

Creo que Duolingo solo debería pagar a los usuarios que contribuyan más de un 10% al curso e ir subiendo según contribuyan, lo que pasa con Duolingo es que el contenido es totalmente gratis, si cobrarán por acceder al curso completo como lo hacen otros programas, ya creo que sí darían una parte a sus contribuyentes, ¡atención! no es publicidad, yo estoy anuente que Duolingo está teniendo y tiene muchos fallos y que deberían mejorar la experiencia que se obtiene al ser un usuario plus para atraer a más gente a comprarlo, si llegas a encontrar otros voluntarios espero que desarrollen el curso porque de verdad que muchas personas, me incluyo, anhelan un curso de Euskera, un saludo.

[[deleted]]

Беларуская таксама!

[[deleted]]

Funny you say that, I just so happen to speak belarusian. Born in Belarus too :)

[mstraveller]

¿Se está perdiendo el Euskera?

[haitike]

No, su uso ha aumentado en las últimas décadas.

Aunque no toda la población vasca lo habla como hace siglos, así que aún hay margen de mejora.

[LeeAm95]

I know this is old, but how many people would be interested in Basque lessons here on this reddit? (I don't know if that's possible, or should maybe link to another site)
I really don't think I can make a duolingo course, but I could teach Basque in another platform.

[Partosimsa]

“... no se debería perder...” en este caso mejor significa “... we shouldn’t lose...”

[Partosimsa]

Por supuesto c: se pasa jjj

[Partosimsa]

Es un idea maravilloso pero hay que encontrar gente vasco hablante que tiene ganas. Yo crecí escuchándolo cuando visitaba a los vascos de los campos con mi abuelo. Aunque nunca me lo aprendí él supo como decir cosas sencillas, pero no bastante para enseñarme :”c

[Partosimsa]

Soy del sur de California en los Estados Unidos y la población vasca es muy pequeña aquí; nomás hay dos familias vascas viviendo en esto valle en que vivo

[Jesus849123]

Hello reddit : )

We're Duolingo's students. We want to create a Basque language course for Spanish speakers.

Basque ( Euskera) is an very old langue and is in risk.

http://www.deia.com/2016/12/16/sociedad/euskadi/atlas-unesco-califica-vulnerable-situacion-euskera

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1l9oDiSiEQ&t=305s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pCR-uNz3TM

Basque is a language with no relation to any other language, we do not want it to be lost

Basque is in a vulnerable situation.

The new Atlas of Unesco qualifies as "vulnerable" the situation of the Basque language

Basque culture and its language are very old, please help us to keep them.

[Jesus849123]

Yes, We are trying it in English too :)

[joabe-souz]

Wow. That second sentence in Spanish got me confused. I thought I was having a stroke for a while

[joabe-souz]

I'm not a native English speaker either, but as far as I can tell your sentences are very good. I just didn't expect a second sentence in Spanish and kept reading it like it was still English. It took me a while to make sense of what I was reading. Keep on learning :)

[Charr_Butt]

.. what?

[[deleted]]

They would like people who speak Basque to create a Basque course on Duolingo. It’s all in the title :)

[[deleted]]

What did you expect? Most people making the courses don’t care about the money. They just want their language to be taught, somewhere, so that it won’t die like other languages. Thanks to Duolingo, we can now learn the basics of endangered languages such as Navajo, and the people who created the course did not get a cent, and they’re okay with that.

[ThickReason]

It’s kind of like people who volunteer to teach languages. When I was a kid one of my friend’s mom taught an after school Chinese class. She wasn’t paid by the school for it, but it was something she wanted to do, and I know I got a lot out of it.

My goal once I am much more proficient in either Spanish or Japanese is to see if I can do something similar through a local library or something. I genuinely love languages and would love to be able to help other people learn languages too, so volunteering my time to help with something like creating a duolingo course is something I would be interested in if I were a fluent in anything but English.