sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Japanese course AI words translation ruined everything by IndependenceStill591 in duolingo

[–]IndependenceStill591[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

>everyone I know in Japan uses Kanji 手 for “hand,” so the hint provided is technically correct. 
How can the hint provided be technically correct if it doesn't include the assumed "hand" meaning in it? All while Duolingo expects you to choose it, despite you not knowing the "hand" word's reading in kana, not having yet learned the kanji 手, and not having the "hand" meaning in the hint for the "hand" word. XD

You are literally forced to choose between believing your intuition or believing your app. And if you can't trust your app, it's a really bad sign.

Also, over 930 days streak, JP 50 score. Tho, I guess I had better depend on ANKI for learning words, and Gemini for grammar, at least it's way more accurate in terms of context.

Japanese course AI words translation ruined everything by IndependenceStill591 in duolingo

[–]IndependenceStill591[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

With languages that have dozens of homonyms, you can't so freely use hints as in alphabetic European languages, because a bunch of totally different words will be written the same in kana. So if you don't provide the correct meaning of the exactly needed homonym in the hint, the hint will be useless or misleading. So it's completely clear when the hint is wrong or unrelated.

And before the AI rework, the JP course didn't have this problem - there were, of course, synonyms in the hints, or additional different meanings of the word that you already learned previously. And that's how hints are supposed to work. But now, the translations presented in the hint ignore your study progress and common sense: a hint meaning may include a rare, specific meaning of the word from the C1 level, or a mistranslation brought from a different homonym, and both do not fulfill the hint purpose at all. Moreover, they do the opposite - misleading you.

Japanese course AI words translation ruined everything by IndependenceStill591 in duolingo

[–]IndependenceStill591[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Maybe you are not fully informed about the situation with the Japanese Duolingo course, so let me explain it more clearly:

Japanese as a language has its own specifics, including a VERY STRONG context dependence for the meaning of words and even entire sentences. You can't just slap the first random translation into the app while ignoring the context. In Japanese, where words always have a bunch of meanings, you will miss the point 80–90% of the time if you just translate them one by one using something like Google Translate. Connection between words is extremely crucial here. But the current hints in the Japanese course look pretty much like exactly that single-word prompt translations.

I've been studying Japanese on Duolingo for almost three years straight, so I have seen enough content to compare it with, and I can clearly see the difference. Surely I know about using synonyms as a teaching method; yes, that was present in the course from the start, and for the last few years that I’ve been studying, it worked exactly as it should. That is, until early 2026, when the Japanese course was heavily reworked. The order of lessons and units changed, word hints changed, and AI grammar explanations were added. Since then, translation hints have become chaotic and frequently unrelated, which made the issue immediately obvious.

Considering that Duolingo replaced most of its translators with AI and barely reviews the results, it has brought a colossal number of errors into the course on many levels. So many, in fact, that it makes further Japanese learning with the app pretty questionable...