掲示板 Forums - Is DuoLingo an approved app to learn Japanese fluently?

I maintained a daily streak for three years before switching to renshuu. My impression was the exact opposite of いのしし’s: it seemed okay for review but terrible for learning.

Anyway, I’m glad I switched. I could never have done the things I do here when I was over there.

No. I asked マイコー (the dev) if some feature were possible in the past and the answer was "No, because of money". Because it had to be made manually by people like a few features on renshuu (like the grammar question). Those are not generated by AI or some code but by people who got paid for that.

Some sentences are verified by natives too (the ones with a star). Some words and sentences are voiced by natives too. That cost money.

Also, thanks for the advise but I have more than 200 lists on renshuu. I "paid" for those list with my "free time". And I'm happy with that. But not everyone want to do that or are able to do that. Plus, like that I said, some feature can't be done on renshuu.

Anyway, I'm not here to argue what is the best tool, I'm done with that.

Only things I want to say, to the beginners only, is: Don't think too much, just try it. The only important thing at the beginning anyway is to not give up and be consistent. You will also learn what you like and don't like in the process. And that will be more useful for your long term journey than advices from other people. Advices like that are good when you're already know where you're standing. So just try it and after that follow the advices of the people that are like you.

Start from you and you will an happier japanese language journey imo :3 (and stop spending so much time watching "top 10 app to learn japanese in 2025" on youtube, you could already start to learn japanese instead)

Just my own experience and take: Duolingo years ago used to be fairly okay. There was a lot of repetition, a lot of freedom to space the reptition as one saw fit, and move on to new lessons in between. There wasn't much grammar from Duolingo itself, but most exercises/sentences had a small discussion forum in which more experienced users could teach and explain the why behind the practice. This was the case with all languages, I remember the Ukrainian course was lovingly tended to almost entirely by a couple of volunteers, people who cared about the work almost as Michael and Saki do here. (I mostly studied Russian and Ukrainian when I was there but did do some Japanese before leaving.) As for the Japanese course, it wouldn't get you very far, but it was a good place to start, learn the basics, kanji was integrated in naturally, and could get a lot of reading/writing practice.

Then Duolingo started updating.

The tree became the path. Linear. Less freedom to practice what you want and move on where you want.

The normal ordinary voices were removed in favor of a handful of characters around whom everything in Duolingo became centered. The characters were definitely a ymmv situation but if you weren't into it, tough luck they were everywhere.

Worst of all the sentence discussions I mentioned above, gone. All forums even, gone. First locked, then even worse taken down entirely. A treasure trove of crowdsourced information erased. No real effort to teach grammar or any way to get an explanation from a human as to why the language does what it does. Still Duolingo c. 3 years ago still could work as a series of reading/writing practice exercises used in addition to other resources.

But Duolingo kept updating.

The hearts system once on mobile only, became introduced on to web Duolingo. Much of what was on web Duolingo was replaced with the weaker mobile version. (There was a way around it by registering as a school. That loophole may have been closed, don't know, I bailed by then.)

Ads. Everywhere. Get Super, buy Super, buy an owl plushie and buy more Super.

Writing practice got nerfed by Duolingo forcing everyone to use multiple choice bubbles. Pretty much any sort of enjoyable customization by then had been removed to push everyone into a very similar linear experience. Any feedback opposing any change is famously ignored. Duolingo takes pride on not listening to the people only their "experts" and "metrics."

To end on a positive that last point is what makes Renshuu great by contrast. We're seen as people, not as numbers and metrics. Not everyone learns the same. Not everyone has the same individual goals even if they share the same overall goal of learning Japanese. Here if you want more practice in a specific category you can add that schedule or customize the settings to focus on the type of question you need. There's freedom here, more than Duolingo ever had even back when it was better. There's a serious effort to teach grammar. There's opportunity to structure study toward JLPT standards if the user wants. There's a garden where you can buy and place cats.

There isn't an ever-present demand to buy Pro here, and yet look at that I bought pro as have many others. Turns out just having a good service with a promise of more (and also the availability of a lifetime option) encourages people to want to upgrade more than in your face advertising.

but tldr, Duolingo updated itself into a weaker choice by my experience. But ultimately I still stand by my belief that not everyone learns the same. It could work for others, that's not for me to say. Maybe there's helpful stuff that's been added since I ditched the place. Personally in addition to Renshuu I prefer Cure Dolly on Youtube, TanoshiiJapanese and a simple little kanji site called Realkanji.

I clearly said that I asked the dev if it was possible and he said that it was not. For logical reason and because of the choice he made. It's just that renshuu has its own strengh and weakness like every other app. And that's fine.

As for the "custom" question, just take a random textbook and note all the question that are not present neither in renshuu, duolingo. Better than that, take a random japanese textbook and note all the question that are not present in most western ressources. Or just the question in a JLPT exam. Why do you think those question are not added in most app?

Just the question on Duolingo where you have to selected a few words in a correct order is better than the structure sentence question on renshuu. Simply because the words has been choosen to make think and recall the nuance instead of deducing the answer by process of elimination like in most app using generic question with a bunch of randomdly selected words. It's fine for beginner because they still don't know enough. But at intermediate level, when you just find the correct answer by process of elimination, it lose its value.

Anyway, that's just one example. Across all the ressources that I mentioned earlier, I probably have fifty or sixty different types of questions. Questions that need to be carefully thought and crafted to be useful. There are questions for beginner, intermediate and advanced learners too. A thousand questions by questions types would be a good start. If you have the time and motivation to do it for free, then by all means. Otherwise, just telling people how to get the best of renshuu, without overselling it, is good enough.

On that note, I'm done here. Sorry for the aggresive tone but I thoroughly think that every tools have their own strengh and weakness. And overselling them or just saying "it's bad" is only harmful. There are people that don't like renshuu, people that hate anki and people that use duolingo even at intermediate level.

So yeah, anyway, have a good day and good luck with your japanese journey

Yeah, sorry for that.
For the "custom question", I should have said "question type". For example, 同音・同訓異字 (same sound/reading but different kanjis, similar to homophones but japanese distinguish 同音・同訓) questions which are like a basic essential exercice for japanese. I don't know why but I never saw that kind of exercices in most app. It doesn't seems important but if you studied enough kanji, you know that they are everywhere. Especially in casual conversation where people drop almost everything and just said one word. If you didn't work on that, you will struggle to follow a lot of conversation at native speed. Also, you can't just select random words or kanji that have the same reading. If you type a random in the dictionary you can find more than fifty kanji in the dictionary sometimes. If you don't think about each question, it will just be a nightmare for beginners.

As for anki, no. I tried again but no thank you. It wasn't possible to do what I want with the current addon, some were oudated too and I don't want to spend month coding my own addon. It's not worth it. As for the classic yomitan + anki combo, honnestly, I was disapointed with that. Renshuu on my browser + yomitan is better for me. Or just reading anything on the internet. At that point, learning out of context just feel slow. And by out of context, I mean not in a conversation, article, etc. Single sentences doesn't count for me except for specific exercices like the 同音・同訓異字 since I didn't practice most of those exercises. Otherwise, full immersion is better than sentence mining imo. Quicker too since it can make you work on a tons of things at the same time.

So yeah. I really wish that I could that. But I can't, realistically. So now, I just use each tool for their strenghs. And I'm fine with that. Less time searching for the holy grail, or trying to create it, more time spent learning japanese