Same problem as dating apps: if you could actually learn a language with Duolingo, then you would stop using Duolingo. No good for business.

The hard part is how to trick people into believing that it works or even "it's better than nothing". Hence gamification.

We much overestimate how well kids learn, and how "easy" is for them. Many kids have language difficulties, and they usually know, and they don't feel too great about it.

This is a far better one: https://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/1...

The part of seeing "You still need to decide what’s worth remembering" as friction I strongly disagree with.

That is a very important part of the learning process and IMO should not be automated. It is difficult because learning is difficult, but if you kill that you also kill the spirit of self-learning!

And not mentioned in the article, but I think the most important factor is that everyone in the SRS niche knows Anki, and despite Anki faults, everyone has put the effort to learn how to use it, got used to it, found a good-enough workflow, and have zero incentive to move to a more expensive alternative even if it is better.

1. Instead of the usual "1 new word, 1 card" have 2 - 3 new words on each card, and have each new word in 3 - 4 different cards (ideally with different inflection, meaning, nuance, etc) 2. Review cards fast and very few times each. Like 5 - 8 times / card (max) instead of usual 15 - 20. 3. Don't punish yourself, keep moving on even if you just half-remember. First familiarize and then internalize language patterns instead of just memorize words.

Review intentionally, totally concentrated on the task. 10 mins / day well done >>> 30 mins / day mindlessly.

Outcome: more fun, more effective learning, no memorizing rectangles.

Sure, but I think this is more about the fact that what you don't use, you lose. Learning languages is hard, so even learning old Greek keeps you brain sharp as long as you enjoy it to some extent.

Gym for the brain is good, what you do with it can be better, but gym is still good.

That is not a problem. Language is messy, you don't need 100% accuracy to learn. The problem is that LLM errors are fundamentally different from human errors, and you won't even know how to recognize them.

Your interlocutors can work around human errors, because they tend to follow the same patterns in same language. But they will freak out with LLM errors.

Listening and reading. Talking goes last. See Steve Kaufmann, for example

For low resource / endangered languages: LLMs still suck.

So no, I don't see the point of this beyond being cheap to produce and cheap to consume.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44119372

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

1. You don't need to learn hundreds of random languages in order to claim you like languages. Most people feel attracted by some languages and not others, so your generalization point doesn't make any sense.

2. For most people I know language is fun once they start to communicate meaningfully, no need to be on the professional leagues.

3. Some people likes to learn a bit of many languages, others like to learn a ton of just two, others don't have enough time to learn as much as the would like, others like languages but maybe also likes sports as much. Even then, almost 1/2 of world population is bilingual and ~1/6 speaks more than 2 languages.

4. The overwhelming majority of people has the tremendous skill of being able to enjoy something in spite of not having any immediate payoffs. Otherwise no one would be doing difficult things of any kind and we all would be great at filling tax forms.

I take from that that you dont like Finnish, you learn it because you have to, and your level is not good enough yet to participate in society exclusively in Finnish.

Nothing wrong with that, but you are generalizing a lot from a very specific context.

A lot of profient L2 speakers will tell you that L2 learning is a very enriching experience indeed.