Dear anyone,
Your duolingo forum registration isn't automaticaly transferred to duome forum so in order to join duome forums you need to register with your existing or any other username and email; in any case it's advised that you choose a new password for the forum.
~ Duome Team

Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

We can't solve any technical issues that you may have with other services, but the Duome community may still give you some answers and ideas. Ask your questions, share experiences, exchange tips and advice and be welcome!


Forum rules

Duome can't solve the technical issues that you may have with any particular product.
For technical support, please, contact your respective service provider.
However the Duome community may have the answer to your questions.
Share your questions, get answers, share experiences, exchange tips and advice.

The language learning product subforums are listed in alphabetical order.

verdensrommet
United States of America

Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by verdensrommet »

As DL changes, its losing my favor and I'm curious what other free resources you've used, especially good or little known resources. Let me and others know below!

Native: 🇺🇸 ~ B1: 🇪🇸 Upper A1: 🇳🇴 Image Lower A1: 🇩🇪 Dabbling: Image 🇸🇪 🇨🇳

User avatar
Jacko079
United States of America

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by Jacko079 »

I personally use these two as supplements to Duolingo.

https://app.memrise.com/

https://languagedrops.com/

You can also check out this post to find some more resources.

Learning: Italian and Arabic.

User avatar
duome

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by duome »

I loved ChineseSkill (LingoDeer seems to be the same thing), now it's more than just Chinese, though it started as Chinese from English course clearly inspired by Duolingo, used to be free, but not anymore. Same about lingvist.com - very useful, but they also went to a subscription model.

dstepl
United States of America

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by dstepl »

Beelinguapp: Though pricing is complicated you do have access to most of the site for free, and you can read articles and stories according to your level in a language.

Lingodeer- Strong Asian language courses (European, not so much), particularly regarding grammar, and gives you a variety of exercises, but oddly-paced

Both sites offer Chinese, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Spanish; Lingodeer also has Vietnamese and Beelinguapp offers Arabic, Hindi, and Turkish.

(I'd suggest Babbel as well, but you asked for free apps)

User avatar
MoniqueMaRie
Germany

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by MoniqueMaRie »

[mention]Jacko079[/mention] can you describe your experience with languagedrops a bit. I just found out that I could learn Icelandic with this app and I always wanted to learn that language.

Is languagedrops similar to Duolingo? The decription I found makes me suppose so.

Native :de: / using :uk: / learning :fr: :cn: :it: / once learnt Image / trying to understand at least a bit :poland:

User avatar
Jacko079
United States of America

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by Jacko079 »

MoniqueMaRie wrote: Fri Jun 03, 2022 1:07 am

@Jacko079 can you describe your experience with languagedrops a bit. I just found out that I could learn Icelandic with this app and I always wanted to learn that language.

Is languagedrops similar to Duolingo? The decription I found makes me suppose so.

I enjoy Language Drops a lot! It isn’t similar to Duolingo, in that Language Drops doesn’t teach sentence structure. Language drops is purely for learning vocab. For learning a TON of vocabulary, they offer a wide variety of subjects and topics also. Language Drops is free, but does have a premium version also. Hope that helps!

Learning: Italian and Arabic.

User avatar
buho

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by buho »

Anki.

  • Free(as in freedom) and Open Source
  • highly customizable
  • thousands of plugins
  • heavily uses spaced repetition
  • import-export data
  • many other benefits

though there's a learning curve for using it. But once you are comfortable with it, you can use it for anything. Be it your exams or learning your favorite song.


if you're looking for a duolingo-esque app, then memrise is also better(or at least was last time I used it).
Even lingodeer isn't that bad.

Edit: there's beelinguapp too. it's good for reading stuff in your targeted language. Though I won't recommend it as a singular source.
In fact, I wouldn't recommend any app as the only source to learn a language.


PS: My flow of learning a language is:

  • get to know the mere basics (you can achieve this in 2-3 months if you're consistent).
  • consume stuff in your targeted language. examples might include:
    • songs(with/without lyrics)
    • podcasts
    • videos(easy languages is a good channel on YouTube)
    • read stuff on platforms like duome, reddit, etc.
    • talk to someone (texting/calling) on any app of your choice(discord is quite famous for this).
  • be consistent
User avatar
Corinnebelle

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by Corinnebelle »

[mention]buho[/mention] Does Anki teach grammar? They are just flashcards to me, but you can learn alot of words that way. Just watch out for the leech setting. If you can't remember a card too many times it will be removed from the deck. There is some way to get them back, but the best thing is to turn it off, if that is feature you don't like.

Stop Anki from suspending leeches

🇺🇸 L1 🇮🇱 Advanced beginner Duolingo levels

Languages without borders, languages bridging gaps, the Red Cross are my heroes.

mathemajician
United States of America

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by mathemajician »

Corinnebelle wrote: Fri Jun 03, 2022 8:00 pm

@buho Does Anki teach grammar? They are just flashcards to me, but you can learn alot of words that way. Just watch out for the leech setting. If you can't remember a card too many times it will be removed from the deck. There is some way to get them back, but the best thing is to turn it off, if that is feature you don't like.

Stop Anki from suspending leeches

To some extent you can make grammar flashcards, by doing fill-in-the-blank sentences where the word you should use is indicated and you have to conjugate/decline it appropriately. I haven't done it yet but I'm planning on copying the grammar exercises out of my textbook that way.

User avatar
buho

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by buho »

[mention]Corinnebelle[/mention], I'm sure someone has made a grammar quiz in Japanese on anki(as majority of language learners on anki learn Japanese).
But yeah, it doesn't "teach" you. it's more of a reinforcement app.

and thanks for the heads up!

User avatar
Corinnebelle

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by Corinnebelle »

[mention]buho[/mention] 49 hits for Grammar here

🇺🇸 L1 🇮🇱 Advanced beginner Duolingo levels

Languages without borders, languages bridging gaps, the Red Cross are my heroes.

User avatar
LICA98
Finland

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by LICA98 »

I tried Drops and it's quite decent overall (will be using it), tho the way they push the premium version is even worse than Duolingo 😱 like on the web you literally cannot create an account without entering your credit card details for a "free trial" :roll:

on android it's not a problem tho as you can download a cracked premium app (what I did) then it's actually usable 👍🏽 apparently without premium you can learn for 5 mins a day and then you have to wait for 10 hours wtf 😱 just when you thought hearts on duolingo were bad...

will try for several days then list the positives and negatives ;)

User avatar
LICA98
Finland

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by LICA98 »

so as promised
Image

what I liked
+you can learn any topic in any order
+there is an unlimited lessons option where it never ends
+you can just exit the lesson at any time and it will remember the progress
+fast way to learn vocab without having to bother with complete sentences (there are some of them too tho)
+they have a lot of topics and words
+ability to skip words that you already know (or don't want to learn)
+they have some languages that aren't present on Duolingo (e.g. Croatian, Estonian, and Icelandic)
+it's possible to learn any language from any language (so you could learn 2 at once) :shock:
+gamified system (like duolingo)
+streak option
+achievements
+option to suggest improvements to the app
+you can set your fav words
+offline learning
+you can turn off the sounds completely unlike on duolingo (i.e. if you learning while listening to music)
+words have a strength meter
+you can just click on information about a topic and they list all words there
+there is an online dictionary
+the design is quite good and there aren't redundant cartoon characters or (de)motivational messages :)

tho I did the premium version so some of these may not be available on the free version, I wouldn't even bother using the free version as they let you use it just 5 min at once :roll:

what I didn't like
-the fact that you have to have premium in the first place for it to be usable and it's quite expensive (if you can't or don't want to get the cracked version)
-the "drop" (=animation) when a new word is presented is quite long and you can't skip it
-having to constantly drag the word to locations instead of just tapping the location
-when you have the unlimited option the lesson never stops so you have to decide yourself when it's time to stop and move to another one
-lacks landscape mode (and if you force landscape mode with a 3rd party app it fits the screen poorly (unlike duolingo))
-the streak is only counted when you use it for a while (so if you just use it for 10 seconds it won't count, you have to do like 2 minutes at least)
-there is a profile picture but you can't change it?
-some visuals are very similar
-on many compose the word exercises the words are broken up randomly rather than by syllables and on some you literally have to put the punctuation after the sentence
-a bit too easy, there are 3 difficulty levels but I put advanced and hardly noticed a difference
-grammar explanations are completely absent and most verbs are presented just in the 1st person form
-some languages that are available on duo are missing (like Romanian or Czech)
-for non Latin script languages if you have the Latin transliteration option on it will also give you some match or complete the word exercises in Latin script only

Last edited by LICA98 on Mon Jul 11, 2022 7:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
ARCANA-MVSA
United States of America

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by ARCANA-MVSA »

Metalanguage doesn't teach grammar, but it's great for vocabulary. It has audio made by native speakers (no computer voices, which is one of my favorite parts about it), everything is available even offline, and it has a very wide array of languages - including many not available on Duolingo. Best of all, there's next to no gamification, and everything can be redone as many times as you want. It's all completely free.

For Russian exclusively, there's Russian Made Easy and its related app, Read Russian in 3 Hours (which was immensely helpful to me for learning to read Cyrillic). I've also heard good things about SemesterRus, though I haven't really delved into it yet.

For German, the Deutsche Welle course is far above Duolingo in terms of quality and depth. For anyone looking to learn German, this one is indispensable - definitely give it a shot, at least!

There's also Nextlingua, which is functionally the closest I've found to Duolingo (it actually has some form of grammar tips!), but it still had some polishing to do last I saw. The courses are very rigid and the voices are computerized (the base voices being much worse than the premium voices), and every lesson can only be opened with a 30-second ad; but the Premium version is unlocked after six ads for the next 24hrs, meaning no more ads for the day after six lessons. The lessons themselves are ok; they're pretty rigid, as I said, meaning they only take one answer and there's not a lot of free response, but there's a good variety and it seems ok thus far. (Maybe someone else has seen this app?) Easily my favorite part about it is the built-in keyboard, which matches the real thing and was immensely helpful for learning to type Russian. Languages offered: Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Russian, German, English

Also check with your library to see what they offer, because sometimes you can find some good stuff through them for free. Mine has Mango Languages and Pronunciator, the latter of which I like as it lets you record your voice and compare to the native speaker recording (the equivalent app available to individuals is Bluebird, which is not free; Pronunciator is only available through a company, agency, etc. for members to use).

For Welsh, the LearnCymraeg series is ok, though there are some points where it gets kinda confusing ... not impossible, though.

And for German learners/speakers who might also be interested in Plattdeutsch, there's PlattinO, which is an app dedicated to learning East Friesian Plattdeutsch using Hochdeutsch as the base language.

Outside of those ... YouTube is your best friend. I've found several channels for other languages from German, plus any number of cartoons far better than the Duolingo menagerie (my favorites so far being Retter von Redwall and die Abenteuer von Tim und Struppi) ... maybe I should make a list of the cartoons I've found so far ...

Best of luck! :)

Libavka tavda valdyavisveltsinvok

mathemajician
United States of America

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by mathemajician »

ARCANA-MVSA wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 6:28 am

Outside of those ... YouTube is your best friend. I've found several channels for other languages from German, plus any number of cartoons far better than the Duolingo menagerie (my favorites so far being Retter von Redwall and die Abenteuer von Tim und Struppi) ... maybe I should make a list of the cartoons I've found so far ...

OMG I loved those books so much! Thank you for mentioning that!

User avatar
MsFixer
Japan

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by MsFixer »

[mention]ARCANA-MVSA[/mention]
I'm very impressed with your comprehensive review! I wish your review comment can be one of the sticky posts (but I know a reply cannot be separately sticky.)

Can you kindly categorize your recommendations into two groups: A: "alternatives" and B: "post-Duolingo"?

I believe Duolingo courses in general are good for absolute beginners trying to reach lower A2. But I guess some of your recommended learning materials are not "alternatives" for Duolingo, but "post-Duolingo" ones (i.e. upper A2 or higher).

According to verdensrommet in another post, for example, Deutsche Welle covers German content up to C1 level. I thought from verdensromment's recommendation that Deutsche Welle is not exactly an "alternative" for Duolingo but it's more like a "post-Duolingo" material. -- Correct me if I'm wrong.

For more information about the previous post, please refer to Good, free language specific courses (like Deutsche Welle) for other languages?


I still recommend my fellow Indonesian learners the Duolingo Indonesian course as one of the best apps for absolute beginners. But I also would like to suggest them to have a good exit/graduation strategy once they conquer the all skills at Level 1 or higher. The streak and other gamification aspects try to keep you using Duolingo, but it's not an achievement at all to go to the same kindergarten for 5 years.

MsFixer with Pulau Bahasa | Native: 🇯🇵 | Learning: 🇮🇩 (B1)

ARCANA-MVSA
United States of America

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by ARCANA-MVSA »

[mention]MsFixer[/mention] Well thank you :) Actually, all of these apps can either be used alongside or in place of Duolingo. Even YouTube has full introductory courses for different languages if you can find them :)

Metalanguage would be a good companion app for Duolingo or any alternative to Duolingo, but not good as a lone alternative. It has some phrases and some vocabulary with some basic exercises for practice, but no grammar, and no real exercise of grammar.

Nextlingua, PlattinO, Pronunciator/Bluebird, Russian Made Easy, and yes, Deutsche Welle are all meant for rock-bottom beginners (PlattinO actually only goes up to A1, but some further material can be found on YouTube for anyone interested in taking it that far - plus the app has some links to further useful materials, such as a dictionary). LearnCymraeg is meant for beginners too, but it's not the best designed and a little clunky, which makes learning with it harder - this one I recommend using alongside the DL Welsh course, especially because it uses native speakers rather than computerized voices - the difference is very striking in Welsh. There are plenty of apps for those with a somewhat stronger basis in Welsh, though, from what I could find, even if a lot of them are intended for kids.

That said, I did find a new app called Polygloss which allows one to exercise one's target language with a partner - either a friend or random person. You pick an image and give clues about it in the target language - the partner then has to guess which image it is. And back and forth it goes :) You can also offer and receive corrections, and play a few other language-related games (though I haven't found them yet, hehe). This app is good for those who have a better basis in their target language - not necessarily beyond Duolingo, but not a complete beginner either. I like it so far, and definitely recommend others to try it and see what they think :) Because of the way it works, it offers pretty much any language, if you can find someone to play with.

Viel Spaß und Erfolg beim Sprachlernen! :D

Libavka tavda valdyavisveltsinvok

User avatar
MsFixer
Japan

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by MsFixer »

Thank you [mention]ARCANA-MVSA[/mention] for your informative follow-up comment! I'll refer to it when someone is looking for alternatives.

I think many Duolingo users (including prospective ones) expect too much solely of Duo. But Duo or any other learning materials cannot be a "one-size-fits-all" solution.

I also would like to say to all of you that self assessment is always the most critical key for language learning. In order to choose the right material(s), the first thing you should do is to identify your current level, learning style and personalities. Otherwise you will waste your time on gathering tips, which just make you drown to death in the flood of information.

MsFixer with Pulau Bahasa | Native: 🇯🇵 | Learning: 🇮🇩 (B1)

User avatar
IceVajal
Germany

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by IceVajal »

As Memrise was mentioned, I thought to bring this article to your attention.

Android Authority: Memrise's language learning courses leave Duolingo in the dust.
https://www.androidauthority.com/memris ... o-3185707/

N :de: - B2 :us: - Beginner :ru: (Busuu: B1) - :netherlands:

User avatar
LICA98
Finland

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by LICA98 »

IceVajal wrote: Sat Jul 23, 2022 9:43 pm

As Memrise was mentioned, I thought to bring this article to your attention.

Android Authority: Memrise's language learning courses leave Duolingo in the dust.
https://www.androidauthority.com/memris ... o-3185707/

yeah duo's now all about the cartoons and health and less about the language learning itself :?

User avatar
Thomas.Heiss
Germany

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by Thomas.Heiss »

You may want to add the game LingoLegend (for IOS and Android) to the above list:

viewtopic.php?p=39934-language-app-benchmarks#p39934

:de: Native | :us: Upper-B2 (BritishCouncil) | ImageL25 (Duo) / A2 (6+y, McGraw-Hill) - Learning (Busuu): :fr: (A1 McGraw-Hill) | :brazil: (interm.)

User avatar
Thomas.Heiss
Germany

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by Thomas.Heiss »

There is a website to practice 6 languages:

www.linguno.com

Efficient language learning tools in six languages:

  • customizable conjugation exercises in context using spaced repetition
  • adaptive listening exercises with more than 100.000 recordings in each language
  • flashcard-style word exercises for your own words and for the thousands of words in our word bank
  • daily crosswords for multiple difficulty levels and themes
  • tracking your progress over time
  • detailed popup dictionary for all exercises
  • conjugation database
  • tense guides

Source: Their website.

:de: Native | :us: Upper-B2 (BritishCouncil) | ImageL25 (Duo) / A2 (6+y, McGraw-Hill) - Learning (Busuu): :fr: (A1 McGraw-Hill) | :brazil: (interm.)

User avatar
Thomas.Heiss
Germany

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by Thomas.Heiss »

Thanks for your tip @ARCANA-MVSA

First time I heard about this interesting app Nextlingua from this Spanish company (from Salamanca).
So I guess the Spanish grammar stuff will be quite good incl. Subjunctive forms if they have native ES speakers or linguists and translators?! :-)

Searched the web; didn't find much.
The Android app exists since April 2018.

How can we search the archived duolingo.hobune.stream forum for a specific keyword?

ARCANA-MVSA wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 6:28 am

There's also Nextlingua, which is functionally the closest I've found to Duolingo (it actually has some form of grammar tips!), but it still had some polishing to do last I saw.

I installed V4.2.10 on Android for a quick French and Brazilian Portuguese test.

Premium Forever price is 39€.
On the Apple app store anorher "Premium Forever 50%" in-app payment option was shown from the private browser window, but without a price.
Do they have BlackFriday deals on top or something? Can someone take a look at the IOS app store (within the installed app)?

Nice thing is that the used grammar rules are also listed within the lesson and you can directly jump into them and read the texts/explanations without closing the current lesson.
Reminds me a bit about Lingvist which has some tips, verb conjugation tables when you answer a word wrong.

Not too many apps link grammar lessons within lessons directly, or which other ones could you all suggest (besides Busuu)?

Nextlingua has some great potential and it probably makes sense to go through the available lessons especially for a true or false beginner.

So far, the Android app is missing Accessibility settings to increase font size.
Some texts are quite small, compared to Busuu or FastLingo apps.
The app is using different font sizes for several items.

On a 6.67" screen and 1080x2400 screen there is really enough empty space in several grid areas to increase all the texts a bit.

Hopefully I can request this from the developers, else it won't be usable for me on this phone as my eyes hurt so much with translation/ correct the text exercises which fonts are again smaller (top left) than other fonts (e.g. multiple choice).

ARCANA-MVSA wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 6:28 am

The courses are very rigid...
The lessons themselves are ok; they're pretty rigid, as I said, meaning they only take one answer and there's not a lot of free response, but there's a good variety and it seems ok thus far. (Maybe someone else has seen this app?)

Lessons: 12 Levels à 30 exercises are quite some content.
Exercises are 15 available for every of the 12 levels.
19 Podcasts are available for Premium users too.

The puzzle "find the words in letter" gets already onto my nerve after the first six lessons.
I can hear and understand the French words and most of the time know how to type them (RECALLING) but simply can't find them in the rows and different directions. Takes so much time.

Later levels contain more complicated stuff incl. Subjunctive, Conditional, also found "en" and "y" French constructs (listed and explained by Dr. French grammar university).

ARCANA-MVSA wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 6:28 am

Easily my favorite part about it is the built-in keyboard, which matches the real thing and was immensely helpful for learning to type Russian.

I honestly hate it. AZERTY layout it is called and is not switchable to QWERTZ.
Too small.
Worse than Babbel which I neither found that great.

Too far away from Gboard's max height which can be user-configured, internal one has too small letters, a non-intuitive layout which doesn't follow QWERTZ.
Some letters like A are at different rows, far away from a normal German / Europe layout.
Means I need more time to search for letters than to simply type them down "with closed eyes".
I'm a fast typer on Gboard like on a real Pc keyboard (10 fingers).

Free typing for Recalling tests like Duolingo Web or 1-2 letter word blocks like LingoLegend would be a nice thing.

ARCANA-MVSA wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 6:28 am

and every lesson can only be opened with a 30-second ad; but the Premium version is unlocked after six ads for the next 24hrs, meaning no more ads for the day after six lessons

I find this concept of 3+3 ads a bit better than what LingoLegend uses as you can bulk watch them.

But in two cases I have already lost 3 or 6 ads counts.

I watched six video full screen ads shortly after 00:00am, got the Premium access granted but was not gifted Premium the whole day (no account was registered) as I somehow lost it again a bit later.
One time was when I switched courses Fr<->Pt.
Other time was when I click on the grammar rules button and checked the list what is all there. Afterwards the three watched ads were resetted.

There might be bugs in that specific app version on Android which need to be reported.
Annoying that it doesn't save the ads viewed state permanently for longer.

I think switching away from the app (focus) to another one might also be a bit problematic??

Need to do more tests on my side.


Edit (update 03-29-2023):
I sent the company a few support text messages from the mobile app and suggested to support the change of the font size (Accessibility / font text size settings in the profile settings).

They recently relaunched their website which is currently in BETA state.
Couldn't make much use of the new mobile website on the smartphone as there is a nasty bug which kicks me out.
The old website had very annoying sound clicking issues which were not possible to turn off. So didn't want to use it.
Also not all 12 language modules (e.g French, Spanish) were available on the old website.
Feel free to give their new BETA website a thorough test.

Last edited by Thomas.Heiss on Tue Mar 28, 2023 11:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

:de: Native | :us: Upper-B2 (BritishCouncil) | ImageL25 (Duo) / A2 (6+y, McGraw-Hill) - Learning (Busuu): :fr: (A1 McGraw-Hill) | :brazil: (interm.)

User avatar
coto.i
Romania

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by coto.i »

They made such an easy way to insert the accented characters. It's a pleasure to write correctly in your target language. Duolingo's way by using the mouse is too time consuming and, as I abandoned writing diacritics there at some point, I still need some training. Thanks for sharing!

Thomas.Heiss wrote: Sat Jan 07, 2023 5:44 pm

There is a website to practice 6 languages:

www.linguno.com

Efficient language learning tools in six languages:

  • customizable conjugation exercises in context using spaced repetition
  • adaptive listening exercises with more than 100.000 recordings in each language
  • flashcard-style word exercises for your own words and for the thousands of words in our word bank
  • daily crosswords for multiple difficulty levels and themes
  • tracking your progress over time
  • detailed popup dictionary for all exercises
  • conjugation database
  • tense guides

Source: Their website.

🇷🇴 Native Romanian speaker :us: B2-C1 :fr: B1-B2 :es: A2-B1 :de: A1-A2

User avatar
Thomas.Heiss
Germany

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by Thomas.Heiss »

FurbyZeKat wrote: Wed Mar 22, 2023 11:16 am
Thomas.Heiss wrote: Tue Mar 21, 2023 10:00 pm

But I wish I would find another method which allows me to focus more on the PASSIVE side.

Like more leaning back with a different concentration focus:

  • Not so much active clicking/tapping
  • separate comprehension tests, but not for all 20-30 minutes
  • no full translation exercises on mobile
  • not much typing (speak to text/voice to text dictation works not perfectly with Gboard and its overcorrections afterwards for previously shown words; SipSurf extension is made for the PC/Chrome desktop browser)
  • no forced cloze-deletions

Which means: I basically don't know how to direct my learning of Portuguese and French into a very different direction :-)
So far it seems that going from the PC (two broken old Laptops) to mobile is some success with that Oled screen and nice dual speakers.
You have dark mode, can reduce blue light, etc., also works at night.

Still haven't pulled out all the English grammar and vocabulary books which I bought in 2005.
Also got TOEIC and left it almost untouched after a few tests....so I think I'm more a smartphone guy (but I truly miss fast typing on the Memrise Web portal with some auto-completion support - need to find a new PC).

Did you check Drops?

I heard about Drops, but I didn't try it.
Is there a 5-n minutes max learning rule as said above by Lica??

Or can you stick to a FREE account without too many limitations - like Memrise (Web) 2016-H1/2020?
Honestly, haven't tried to review my completed official Memrise PT 1-7 courses for a while; they may now cost something. Last time it was only on the apps, but not for every account and not the Web.

Also had stopped learning on 2-3 bigger PT vocabulary courses from 2018 as there is no auto-translation from English definitions to German.
I often had bigger issues understanding and memorizing the PT words because of not knowing what the exact English definition really meant and when I looked up (EN) words they indeed were from higher CEFR levels.
Nobody realized my concrete forum suggestions from the Memrise community or what we need for support to be able to catch up easier with a huge backlog and not over-repeating the stuff in the same session we hardly can remember anymore (this is tricky with RECALLING tests).

https://languagedrops.com/premium

  • Their LIFETIME option is 150 Euros
  • A few days ago (when you posted your comment) I might have seen it for 99 Euros (with a special short-lived deal), or maybe I'm confusing it a bit. There was one deal a few days ago, right?
  • Yearly subscription still is 66 Euros. More than Busuu with 50-60% discount.

I maybe have written it somewhere else already:
I got Mosalingua (the full fluency bundle, all languages, all modules) for 99 Euros + VAT, lifetime, on the special BlackFriday deal (normally they charge 6-12 months subscription based for MosaSeries module per language, lifetime for MosaSpeak module per language, and yearly for Mosalingua Web/app Premium incl. app bonus packs and 50+ dialogues or TravelStories).
I just need to get to use their new Premium app actively and step into how to complete the several learning rounds and how to review on a daily basis (MosaSeries and MosaSpeak modules are accessible within the app from a menu but run on the Web).

In comparison:
Memrise Web was dead easy; so I got not hooked into AnkiSRS with all the many app learning and review settings.
I might have had to install special addons and learn about the best default settings and what to change to get it the way I want it and how to play around with the review buttons.
So there is a huge learning curve and this one was intimidating.
In the past years I didn't have the nerves exactly for this because of other stuff going on in personal life which always takes energy away.

..(...)..

Instead I got "uTalk" back in 2017 (or 2018??) on www.stacksocial.com (much cheapter than their UK website) which came with a six language bundle license and I redeemed one licence for Portuguese.

Hopefully it will remember my account well, as no subscription is currently shown on the Web portal when I login again?!? :-)
My very old Laptop graphics card (no newer Intel HD/UHD) couldn't handle the uTalk Windows application and screen renderings that well, so I have not extensively used it in the past. Had the same problem with the rewritten Duolingo website in 2018 and constant Firefox freezes and high CPU load.

Maybe I should try it again on my new Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro phone (8-core CPU, newer GPU).

We had a thread about uTalk on the Duolingo community forum with a few learners, but for example the memory card reveal games didn't make me feel very enthusiastic, to be honest.
There were a lot of available categories, many mixed words (and phrases) to explore, great!, but the review games (for SRS) didn't appeal to me when I tried it a longer time ago.
Didn't feel like a real SRS application - when comparing it to Memrise (Web), Lingvist, AnkiSRS.
Maybe I was wrong...hopefully they have improved/changed something.

..(...)..

Last year I found Memorion SRS app for Android which allows to import existing decks (e.g for French there is the 1st internal Memorion built-in language stack, or the 2nd Decaleon deck which you can from import words online).
Even supports three languages per flashcard, if you really want to have and configure this.
This one can blow you away once you get accustomed to it, but there may be no online account, for synchronization, not sure.
No, have not actively used it, not yet, not AnkiSRS....only Memrise (Web) but Tampermonkey userscript support is gone with their Web rewrite.

:de: Native | :us: Upper-B2 (BritishCouncil) | ImageL25 (Duo) / A2 (6+y, McGraw-Hill) - Learning (Busuu): :fr: (A1 McGraw-Hill) | :brazil: (interm.)

User avatar
Corinnebelle

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by Corinnebelle »

@Thomas.Heiss They give you a few extra mintues if you keep a streak.

🇺🇸 L1 🇮🇱 Advanced beginner Duolingo levels

Languages without borders, languages bridging gaps, the Red Cross are my heroes.

User avatar
IceVajal
Germany

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by IceVajal »

@Thomas.Heiss, I used Drops for free and after about 3-4 months I got a lifetime offer which was quite good. Right from the start they offered an annual subscription for 39,95€, then I got a lifetime subscription for 41,95€! So sometimes it's worth sticking around. 😉

N :de: - B2 :us: - Beginner :ru: (Busuu: B1) - :netherlands:

User avatar
Thomas.Heiss
Germany

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by Thomas.Heiss »

LingoDeer is (or was??) running a new sale: https://www.lingodeer.com/marchsale-202 ... l?from=web

Spring into fluency with Super March Sale!

LIFETIME access for $120 both for LingoDeer and LingoDeerPlus.

Maybe it still works...

:de: Native | :us: Upper-B2 (BritishCouncil) | ImageL25 (Duo) / A2 (6+y, McGraw-Hill) - Learning (Busuu): :fr: (A1 McGraw-Hill) | :brazil: (interm.)

michalszot
Poland

Re: Best free Duolingo alternatives? any language(s)!

Post by michalszot »

I recommend https://vocabenricher.com. It is free and ad free web app for learning vocabulary. This app bases on flashcards and supports many languages. You can create your own flashcards with audio recordings and images. Flashcards can be shared with other users.

Post Reply

Return to “Product Specific Q&A”