#wtfduolingo

[wtfduolingo]

I am old, tired

and I'm ready to hand this blog over someone more active on Tumblr. I've inherited this blog from someone about 10 years ago (god!) and I want to pass the baton to a tumblrina who will keep it going for another 10. My only condition is that you're a Duolingo enthusiast and if you should get too busy to run this blog, to hand it over to someone new.

If you're interested write me in my inbox why I should believe you that you won't abandon this baby of mine

[tofutiger]

Thank you, Duolingo. I’d never have guessed it!

[abarbariansperspective]

So I’ve got a four year streak going on for Duolingo, and I couldn’t be more proud of myself for practicing all these years. I’d have submitted it to @wtfduolingo as well to further pump my tires, but I somehow can’t. Anyways, for like the two or three people who’ll like this, this goes out to all ya’ll.

[an-fiach-dubh]

Duolingo trying to get political. It’s ok duo, we all know 26+6=1

[nocturnalpisces]

[vielsprachig]

A bit creepy...

[typhonbaalhammon]

Duolingo vs Social Media

So, if you’re a Duolingo user or you’ve seen their tweets or any of their promotional stuff, you may have noticed they quite consistently bash “social media” as part of their marketing strategy.

And I find this very weird. First of all, implying that any and all social media is a waste of time in such a dismissive manner make them sound like “old man yells at cloud”.

But more importantly, “social media”, as the name implies, are used to communicate with people. Social media play a big part in my social life, and I tend to use them either to say stuff to people or to react to what other people say (kind of what I’m doing now). This seems to me to be the most obvious use of language learning.

It’s especially weird since Duolingo itself is for many of its users a glorified vocabulary worksheet. I haven’t yet tried out its social features but it does have them (making it some kind primitive social media).

I’ve been using twitter to improve both my finnish and my spanish, by following a bunch of finnish-language accounts. Duolingo, just what do you think I’m learning languages for ?

(Not to imply that talking to people is the only reason to learn a language, there’s plenty of other reasons including wanting to read stuff without waiting for a translation, and the sheer joy of discovering a different grammar. But I reckon these reasons are less popular).

Anyway, there’s plenty of reasons to argue that Facebook or Twitter are bad, but in this case, it’s quite baffling. I get that it’s not meant to be a full-fledged argument but it’s jarring to me nonetheless.

[polglotette]

Duo getting a little intense on me