I've been using Duolingo to brush up on my German and start learning Latin, and it is . . . not optimal. Are there better apps for this? Or something besides apps?
I'm pretty fed up with Duolingo, and I'll be specific about why it's making me crazy, in the hope that will result in better answers.
German: I took a lot of German in college and even lived in Germany for a year, but I've forgotten a lot. I've started at the beginning on Duolingo, which would be OK, except it keeps bumping me back to previous levels, even though I almost never make mistakes (and the mistakes I make are typos). I know how to say bread, water, girl, and woman. I really do. I don't need to go through that a thousand times.
Latin: I have zero background in Latin. I tried to study it on my own once, but not knowing how to pronounce anything made me crazy. I make lots and lots of mistakes on Duolingo, and today, it wouldn't let me continue because I ran out of "hearts," which from Googling, seems to indicate I make lots of mistakes, which I know. I can apparently pay for more hearts, but I'm disgruntled enough with Duolingo that I don't trust the paid version to be good.
I also am not super keen on the "immersion" method Duolingo uses. I think I would do better if rules were explicit rather than just being expected to pick them up. I honestly have no idea why "in" is sometimes used for a location and sometimes not. I don't understand word order. I find myself googling in order to understand the rules, and that does help. The Teaching Company has an intro to Latin course - I'm considering trying that.
If you have an app to recommend, please say why you're recommending it. If you don't have the time to be specific, it's fine to skip this question. Also, I have googled to look at language app alternatives, but I'm looking for personal recommendations. I don't want to spend tons of time working on languages right now - I'm just dipping my toe in - which is why I'm thinking an app would be better, but if you have non-app recommendations, I'd like to hear that too. I'm OK with paying for something if it's good. |
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