Introduce yourself Topic is solved

[jamgorham]

My name is Austin Gorham, and I am doing the Duolingo Spanish course.

[duome]

Hi Austin,
You first posted in November 2025, were you reading the forum silently ever since, or did you come back after being absent all this time? What brought you to the forum originally and what brought you back if you're returning after being away? How is your Spanish compared to November?

[LeoLol]

Hi! I am Leo! I am just here for the duolingo stories, haha. I think they are a pretty good way of learning, but I am bummed they are locker aaaaall the way into the middle of the courses.
I started learning Dutch a month ago

[Thomas.Heiss]

Dutch is also available on Busuu (which is Freemium).

If their Dutch course is similar to French A1 then you'll see some challenging dialogues, video or audio files after lessons 20-30, when the difficulty curve suddenly increased quite quickly.

Normally Duolingo alone won't get you very far.
And the newer Cefr/Ai courses (which go up to 1030 units) likely will have removed grammar tips on Duolingo.

Edit: I was wrong this time. Dutch only offers a path with 123 units which goes to A2 / section #4.
If you're lucky, then this (older one, not yet based on the new AI platform) course still contains some manual work and tips from volunteers or contractors.
For many CEFR courses the old Web Tips & Notes are gone which were based on older tree versions.

But you can find them on Duome here: www.duome.eu/tips

I don't learn Dutch so you'll have to check for yourself what applies to your account and course.
But this is what other learners have been posting for other newer courses on Reddit or when they ran into course updates.

Indeed, the layout of the units names of the Dutch path looks a bit older to me, not like the newest Duolingo Ai based courses.

[CaptainLevi02]

I am doing the Duolingo Chinese course, and I am required to post here before I can view stories. Hopefully it will work now

[duome]

It should work now, but here's a gentle reminder that it'll work as long as you have recent posts on the forum - we're looking forward to hearing from you regarding your language journey - this is how we can (hopefully) build a helpful community

[junhao]

hello

[duome]

hello

...is anybody there?..

[junhao]

hello i'm Junhao. i'm posting as i have trouble loading the stories and guidebooks. are there any special instructions i need to follow to gain access? thanks in advance

[duome]

They should be visible for you now. I'll add some explanation on those pages to make it a bit more straightforward.

[brahmsrahms]

I wrote a self-introduction to read the stories. My name is Stella. I am in 5th grade. I am from Korea.

[hbbnb123]

Hello, I'm ''hb'' and I learn french.

[Thomas.Heiss]

@CaptainLevi02

Check the Reddit channels.
There are other/better apps suggested to learn Chinese Mandarin with those tones and making use of Hanzi and stroke orders.

IMHO an Azure AI TTS system alone won't get you very far.
Users have already confirmed that the audio is often wrong even in the Japanese course.
I can confirm the same for Brazilian Portuguese since they introduced the cartoon characters and shifted towards Azure AI.
Someone probably has copied over the rules engine from French and thought it would be a good idea to cut the audio of the PT end letters/consonants.

How do you manage to learn a complicated Asian language which has tones only with Duolingo?

[Akcron]

Hello I’m Jackie. I’m trying to learn German.

[pwm12]

Hi, new to the forums. Can't seem to access the German stories.

[AngeloTed]

Hello, I'm not really new to the forum. In the wake of the May shutdown I couldn't enter the forum any more, although I tried everything, from using a different browser to asking for a new password. I finally managed to sneak in through the back door, using a new browser, a new name, a different language and a different mail address. I'm the member formerly known as Chrisinom.

[duome]

Chrisinom, I sent you a PM

[james0707]

Hello - I'm James and I'm learning Spanish and Italian

[agussschh]

Hi, I am agus, I am a native spanish speaker studying russian and portuguese

[Sevalertekin]

Hello, I am Seval from Turkey. I Learn German in Duolingo for a long time but just realized this forum while searching for additional documents. Could you please give me access to guidebooks and stories? Thank you

[orokanasaru]

Hi, I'm Mike and I've finished Spanish and Catalan and am working on Chinese

[on_study]

Hello, my name is On. I am learning Japanese.

[sleepytune]

Hej hi
I have been a Duolingo user for over a decade, and have a streak for over three years! I am currently studying Swedish, but I also have studied a decent amount of German.

[dollotron555]

hola soy César de Colombia me llamo dollotron555 en duo lingo con 63869 aprendiendo japones y alto valyrio con una racha de 655 días

[mr015]

Hi! I am learning Russian and I love Duolingo!

[Vlot Vlaams]

Hej hi
I have been a Duolingo user for over a decade, and have a streak for over three years! I am currently studying Swedish, but I also have studied a decent amount of German.

Hej och willkommen.
Jag undrar, har du hittat någonting intressant på svenska forumet här?

or in better English and Swedish...
Hi, I'm wondering, have you found anything interesting on the Swedish forum here?
Hej, jag undrar, har du hittat något intressant på det svenska forumet här?
(so I missed the double definite form ... and it's so simple, not?)

So Swedish, and German ... is your speaking already good enough?

[Moeberb430]

안녕하세요! I'm Melissa. I've been studying Korean very casually for years. I love the sound of the language and I'm a sucker for a good drama. I also listen to a lot of Korean music. Originally, I wanted to teach English in Korea, but due to reasons outside of my control, I could not. I've stuck with it, but I definitely would like to improve much much more.

[Thomas.Heiss]

안녕하세요, 멜리사님.

Welcome to the Duome community.

I started learning Hangul in May.

I'm still trying to figure out all of the pronunciation rule changes, batchim and consonant assimilations
I've ran across a few Korean app suggestions on Reddit and found the one or other YT channel and teaching resource suggestion.

FYI: The newest CEFR/AI-based Duolingo path now has 1030 units.
I have no clue how good the AI translations are, especially not in later sections.
But the updated course is very different from the old one (which got criticized so much) and section #1 starts with something else.

Lately I found a website which wrote down most of the pronunciation rules in one go, but I somehow lost it again (private/incognito browser window) and can't seem to remember the name (it was NOT How-to learn Korean or the other one TTMK).
Hopefully I find it again one day over a Google search.

Currently I'm working through the Hangul course on Busuu (last few remaining batchim lessons).
I'll see for how long I can stick to the main A1 course.
I tend to forget a lot very quickly.
At least Busuu explains something for Korean grammar / verbs/ formal and informal versions.

I somehow find the old/cached Web Tips & Notes a bit confusing for the Korean alphabet.
Either they go quite into more detail, sometimes lack proper examples or don't tell me what they specifically mean.
So I'm getting lost more quickly.

Maybe a tutor and better didactical course is needed to work through all the given information.

I'm just trying to pick up the single pieces here and there.
It's getting more and more complicated about the sound changes and I seem to always miss some important info.
Not all found threads / websites or collected info go into FULL detail.

Well, not that I thought it would be any easy to learn a foreign script in an Asian language.
But the complexity of all the sound changes and assimilations just baffle me.

The Duolingo "Characters tab" doesn't explain them all.
But the letters are not all golden there (consonants), not yet.
Only sporadically some short tips show up after x practice sessions.

Unlike Japanese they don't even include a "Tips" link which is clickable at the top on the Characters tab!
So reviewing might get more complicated at the end.
I guess I'll switch to other commercial apps soon or I'm trying to find one of these self-study courses from Korean which probably go into more detail.

Somehow I want to see the big picture, but when the one or other sound change rule is missing or incorrectly / only partly described it doesn't help that much, but actually adds to my confusion

..(...)..

Looking back to my French and Portuguese progress for the last 4.5-9.0 years:
I wish I had some better headstart with Korean or previous exposure.

I already know that I will be "nowhere" in the next few years to be able to hold a real conversation.
Luckily, this never pressured me as I don't really do it with PT and FR either or trying to push hard into the intermediate territory.
But having to start from scratch again instead of progressing (films, TV, podcasts, reading short stories, free talking,..) in the other two languages plus English kinda feels a bit silly

Wanted to try something new without being killed by Mandarin tones or the three writing systems in Japanese and 2000-3500 Hanzi or Kanji symbols.

For new Korean learners on Duolingo it's quite unfair that Japanese has all these given unit guidebooks and besides the section #1-3 short "grammar concepts" introductions (on the newer app version, not on the website, I opened a bug report) there's not much to pick up for formal Korean instructions.
And the later sections #4-8 in the latest Korean path don't offer anything like that.

A girl from a YT video suggested Bunpo to learn grammar incl. Batchim rules.
The other 3-4 apps or websites do also require a subscription, but I heard that LingoDeer offers a free intro.
Do you know what other apps do teach Hangul for free with native speaker recordings and go into more detail with all the sound changing rules?

Good luck with your Korean studies.

독일에서 인사드립니다

[maddog]

I am Joe and am working on learning Spanish. It is much easier for me to read and write than to listen and speak the language.

[Meli578588]

Hi Joe,
Same with me . It’s also a big difference listening to Duolingo and thinking I have my French down and an actual person speaking French to me .
• All in time, all in time for most of us , I would think.