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Tiffanie Gray's avatar

Be careful with DuoLingo it is very anti-Christian in a number of ways. I had to quit it because it was just too much for me to deal with. (after a 3+ year perfect streak - it was hard). The grammar is so-so on it. But it can be a fun gamified way to learn some language bits to start.

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Justin Lillard's avatar

Thanks for the heads up.

Can you elaborate on some of the most egregious specific examples that you felt made it anti-Christian?

Have you found any alternative language-learning apps/resources since that you consider good substitutes?

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Tiffanie Gray's avatar

No apps that are free, unfortunately.

It does a lot of sentences that you are forced to learn such as "Maria is my wife." where the character and voice are definitely female that are saying this. There are LOTS of these. Also, male characters/voices saying that "I need a new pink dress" type things (that is not an exact quote, but an example).

the 3-4 "children/teens" that are characters are mostly okay, but are often very sassy or disrespectful of their parents/teachers. Funny, but not a great example for kids.

They definitely push veganism.

There are other things that are more subtle.

If those things don't bother you (hearing them over and over and having to select sentences, word choices that condone it/enforce it - it's pretty insidious...I mean, you can just ignore that part, right? But, to get perfect scores, you have to choose those things...it gets in your brain, especially young brains) then it is an okay program, not great, just okay But, it is free.

There are a few youtube videos that talk about the grammar, etc downfalls of it.

Babble is supposed to be okay (again, not free)

Roseta Stone is supposed to be very good

Pimsleur is pretty good

But, none of those are free.

There are sometimes youtube channels that teach languages, though, so you could look into those.

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Justin Lillard's avatar

Thanks! I would certainly have concerns about the unsupervised use of this app by children. I'll keep up my search for alternative and share them if I find anything really good.

Out of curiosity, what language(s) were you working on? Latin, by any chance?

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Tiffanie Gray's avatar

lol. No, not Latin.

Russian, Vietnamese, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Norse, Irish, Scottish, German, and Hawai'ian.

Now, not all of those were to the same level.

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Justin Lillard's avatar

What kind of Greek? Modern? Classical? Koine?

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Tiffanie Gray's avatar

Modern, I guess? It's whatever DuoLingo teaches.

It was a weird situation. I grew up in AZ and CA and learned bits of Spanish from that. I studied Russian in HS and college, but was not proficient at all. So, when I joined the military, I told them I wanted a language that wasn't close to Russian. So, I ended up with Vietnamese. Met hubby in military who had learned Chinese (those two languages are NOT the same! lol).

Many years later, out of the military for a long time, kids grown. I decided to see if I could brush back up on Vietnamese and Russian, because hubby spoke to people in Chinese restaurants.

So, I started with DuoLingo. Then I had an online friend who was French, so I decided to learn French. And an online friend who was German, so decided to start learning that, too. And well, I knew some Spanish, so I started that, too. And I love Renn Faires, so started Irish and Scottish. And I have some northern heritage, so decided to learn Norse. And I always thought Greek looked cool, so I started Greek. And well, learning Chinese so maybe I could talk to hubby some, seemed a good idea. And I lived in Japan for a while, so I started Japanese. I had visited Hawai'i before as well as learned a little Hula, so I started that, too. And Portuguese, is the "other" Spanish, so, well, why not?

Anyway, never got to any major proficiency with any of them, though it did bring back some memories. And I enjoyed it for quite a while. But, the stuff I talked about just started draggin on me, because it was in every lesson. in every language.

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