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+---
+title: "Against Duolingo as a language learning platform"
+date: 2022-11-06
+lang: en
+categories: [ blog, language ]
+tags: [duolingo, language, learning, software, rant]
+translationKey: "2022-11-06-against-duolingo"
+---
+
+Up until last week, I would still have recommended Duolingo for language
+learners for beginner's material, but now I can no longer do so.
+
+It is undeniable that Duolingo is a great source if you want to learn a
+language (well, great in terms of quantity at least).  If you want to start
+learning a language and don't know where to start, just select a Duolingo
+course and you will learn from greeting and introduction to political and
+scientific vocabulary, from alphabet to relative clauses or conditional
+phrases.
+
+People often criticize Duolingo for having nonsensical sentences you would
+never use in real life or having only one sentence rather than a conversation,
+or doesn't have grammar notes. I would even defend Duolingo here, and say they
+are using it wrongly.  Whatever common phrases you would expect to say,
+"hello", "sorry", "thank you",... are all taught just fine, and the silly ones
+are actually only a few to let the learners have some fun. Grammar notes
+~~are~~ were provided for each lesson, and the silly sentences help you
+remember the grammar very well. Monologous sentences... well, they solved that,
+I suppose, with a side effect, but let's leave that for later.  The claim that
+you can't learn a language from solely Duolingo is moot, since you're not
+supposed to do that; you can't learn from your textbook alone even; you should
+use it in conjunction with other resources.
+
+Duolingo added ads and ad-free premium tier. It's business as usual; I didn't
+bat an eye.
+
+Duolingo gamifies the thing further with a leaderboard and ranks? Another silly
+decision I could ignore.
+
+Duolingo removed discussions. Okay, that's a rather backwards move. Maybe they
+didn't have enough moderators to handle it, which I doubt since they're
+expanding their business, but discussion was a very nice feature that allow
+learners and native speakers to discuss and ask questions on their grammar
+mistakes or ask for extra learning materials.  This was a serious downgrade.
+
+Duolingo made a [huge redesign] and you can't say no to it.  They said you
+wouldn't lose your progress, but this is a lie: my French and German course
+progresses which was completed 100% returned to zero (not that I use it for
+those anymore, but those are on the contrary to what they claimed). Questions
+now are often dialogues (if you could call 2 sentences so), which probably
+caused it. Grammar notes are removed, and in their place are these "guide
+books", which consists of nothing but mere "phrases you will learn in this
+unit".  This is not only an immense downgrade for the learners, but also a huge
+disrespect to the contributors.  They spent time to write those grammar notes,
+but now they're all gone.
+
+It's not like this happened before. One or two years ago, they added some kind
+of changes to this, which lost me some progress also, but they didn't go this
+far. Either way, I should have known better that you cannot trust proprietary
+platforms to respect you (see: a similar story from someone [whose Twitter
+account is deleted without clear reason][data-del]).  If you don't own it, it
+will fall out of your hands in one way or another.
+
+So in short, I advises against Duolingo for learning languages because:
+
+- it has become terribly broken as a language learning platforms, and
+- it is proprietary, it does not respect you
+
+Of course, this extends to online services run on free software as well.  Let's
+say, my Mastodon or Akkoma instance admin can just stop running that server at
+any moment, intentionally or not, and my data will be lost.  The developers can
+decide to add a new feature that will breaks old data, and I will also lost
+access to old data.  The only solution to this is run the server yourself or
+back up your data regularly[^0].  However, with a free platform, that data backup
+can be useful, as it can be used for an another instance of the software.  With
+a proprietary platform, that data will probably just be a big <abbr>JSON</abbr>
+that's very hard to read without a piece of software that no longer exists.
+
+So, my advices to language learners (and to myself as well):
+
+- use free software, such as Anki, to assist your learning
+- keep local copies of your learning materials, and make sure it's not
+  DRM-encumbered.  This includes not only movies, books, music, but also
+  notes and tips from online forums, though the latter might be less
+  valuable.
+- avoid online services which don't allow export/import your data, even if it's
+  run on free software
+
+Basically: own your software, own your data.
+
+[duo-redesign]: https://blog.duolingo.com/new-duolingo-home-screen-design/
+[data-del]: https://www.matuzo.at/blog/2022/your-account-is-permanently-suspended/
+
+[^0]: I don't do this, though, as I consider social network ephemeral
+  interactions, but for this website it is the case.