I have definitely learned a lot of Spanish from Duolingo, and while I'm not fluent, i went from being able to count to able to hold some basic conversations with Spanish people i know.

1. There actually is a weekly leaderboard bracket where you compete with about 30 to 50 other people.

2. Completing a lesson is winning, losing all your lives is losing.

Just say AI bad use is cancer for human kind. Good use can help humans to do their task with less effort. So its all depend on usage.

Use free Anki and get a free 1k or 5k high-frequency community deck from Anki website. Or get Refold 1k deck (paid) for anki.

If you find Anki too complicated and you don't mind paying a sub (look for discount/vouchers), use lingvist (paid) or memrise (not sure how this app is now after the changes) to learn 1k words. Any app that focuses on high frequency vocab is fine I think.

Cancel subscription once you have learnt 1k words or can read comfortably a simple native book or graded books, or understand a podcast designed for learner (example InnerFrench), probably will take 1-3 months at about 10-30 words a day.

The main difference between 1k and 5k decks is that the 5k decks include very common type of words like "the", "a", "he", "she", "is", "are", which are so high frequency that you will acquire them by just doing anything in the language. Either type of deck is fine, it is up to you.

Try reading graded readers with audio at the same time as you are going through your deck so you are getting more context for new words you learn. You will encounter new words while reading before seeing them in the deck, which has a positive effect in remembering the word. Reading also helps serve to test how much you have improved in using the language.

Read up on some basic high frequency grammar in your target language. Depending on language you will have to also actively learn the alphabet, numbers, phonic and so on before doing any of the above.

The main idea of learning high frequency vocab is to start consuming content as soon as possible. Never forget that using(reading, listening, writing, speaking) the language is the main purpose of learning languages.

If you like gamification and keeping scores, count the books/article read, count the words learnt, count the hours spend listening don't count coins or gems.

Anki - https://apps.ankiweb.net/
AnkiDroid - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ichi2.anki
Anki shared decks - https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks?search=french
Refold decks - https://refold.la/category/decks/?show=all
Lingvist - https://lingvist.com/

A completely optional, side objective that has no bearing on anything else? You can completely ignore the leader board and still progress. It's not competitive.

Yeah of course, winning or losing a game has no bearing on anything. It's still winning or losing.

The main objective is to complete lessons. You have to pay to do that or wait for energy to replenish.

You're just pretending you are doing something useful with your life instead of just slaving away at your job enriching others.

/s, obviously. What a wild take they have.

I love this headline so, so much

Now say it in Spanish.

Mobilism.

Mobilism.

the realest comment on lemmy, ever

If anyone wants to practice their Japanese or have questions, they can message me.

I want every headline to end with "..., fails"

No, you don't. It's only when you lose hearts. You get to make 5 mistakes. You can use gems to replenish them or they replenish over time. After playing for a while you earn plenty of gems to restore your hearts mid lesson every now and then. You can watch an ad to replenish your hearts between lessons, but not during. If you're not making mistakes then you can keep going. It's not that difficult to not make mistakes either, a lot of times they flat out give you the answer by tapping on words.

There are plenty of things to shit on Duolingo as a company. Calling the app pay to win really isn't one.

主よ、如何なさいましたか。

Bragging about replacing your employees publicly over and over before actually being able to do so might cause an employee crisis

I used Pimsleur to get started on my L2 way back when. I am now pretty much fluent, after living immersively for a long time. The immersion, and dedication, and tutors, and language school did the heavy lifting. But Pimsleur gets big credit for helping me get started and get confidence.