I'm not sure, but I do know that a lot of things are incorrect on Duolingo, so I would recommend a Japanese tutor, or apps like renshu, or hiragana pro, not saying duo doesn't help withe the learning process, but I like to have other resources as well.😊 i hope this was helpful!👍
In many peoples opinion Duolingo is horribly inefficient, but anything will help so if you like it use it. Just know that there are many methods that are MUCH faster (such as this very platform). I have never used Duolingo myself but this is what I've heard.
the definition of "fluent" varies from person to person......
however in the case of duo....at best you could get to travel phrases, very basic stuff..... far from any reasonable level of fluency
RUN far away, don't walk from the evil owl..... their goal is $$$$ they want you to pay to use the most basic stuff anymore.
As with all things that start out nice, corp greed takes over and the (censored) continues
You're already on renshuuu!!!! You have access to awesome learning tools FOR FREE that far exceed anything duo could offer!
If you need help with renshuu, there is a discord server as well.
If you love renshuu consider donating/paying for it. The pro features are nice (though not required) and a lifetime membership is cheaper than anything duo has to sell you. (and it goes on sale from time to time).
I used it at the start, for me it was much easier at the beginning due to it holding your hand more, being slower and some of the over-generalization that made it easier, however I was doing it and renshuu at the same time and once I got close to N6 on renshuu I started to notice that duo was holding my hand a bit too much making hard to know if I was learning or just relying on it and was too slow for me so I have stopped. This is just my opinion, but I think it's really good for when you're starting as the slow pace, hand holding, and over-generalization make it easier to manage when starting from 0 however once you get past the absolute basics it is way too inefficient for the time it takes
In many peoples opinion Duolingo is horribly inefficient, but anything will help so if you like it use it. Just know that there are many methods that are MUCH faster (such as this very platform). I have never used Duolingo myself but this is what I've heard.
While I obviously am happy to have people learn here, and I do hear a lot of people complain about DL, I do hear others say that it helps them, so you need to figure out what works best for you :). Don't let anyone tell you that a particular method is what you HAVE to use :)
I completely agree with Michael here. The problem with the internet nowadays is that a lot of people get to hate on stuff and form opinions that is basically not even their own; they never tested it for themselves. Someone said something is bad and that person without thinking any further also says it's bad.
I used Duolingo, and still do, and although I 100% agree that it won't get you far on its own, it can only help, not the opposite. Yes, Duo seems to be going through that AI route and yes, they push to charge you money, but personally I did felt progress. But again, that's because I persevered. You'd be surprised at how many interesting words it showcases you, I keep seeing people spit out the ご飯とお茶をください phrase they teach in unit one, but it goes so much beyond.
You can't really form an opinion if it's only based on what you hear from others. In the end, only you know what works well for you.
I'm not trying to justify Duolingo being good or whatever, but if it was that bad it wouldn't be so popular. I'm just honestly tired of seeing people spit on everything these days when they can't even test a product themselves for more than 5 minutes.
I have actually tried the Japanese course on Duolingo for more than a month, and while I'll say that it might be useful for complete beginners, I quickly realized that this app didn't help me grow a lot. Even after skipping a bunch of lessons to advance more, the pace was just too slow for my taste, there were barely any explanations, the pronunciation seemed artificial, and some of the sentences were just plain wrong.
There's also the fact that Duolingo has become littered with ads and low-quality AI content, which was the final straw for me. After that, I switched to apps like Renshuu and Bunpro, and my learning experience has improved a lot ever since.
Of course, this is just my personal experience, but I'd say give it a try and see for yourself! There are a bunch of people who find Duolingo to be useful, which is absolutely valid
I’ve used it a bit. It helped me a lot as I was learning katakana and hiragana, but it’s pretty bad with grammar. It’ll teach you phrases to use while on vacation and stuff like that, but I wouldn’t recommend it if you want to be fluent. Plus, it doesn’t help very much with kanji. You have to learn a lot of phrases before the kanji section gets unlocked, and the app only lets you learn two-three characters at a time. Overall I think it’s pretty inefficient and I wouldn’t recommend it if your goal is fluency.
When I started on Duolingo years ago, it was basically barebones at the time. It wasn't offered on the PC version of the app, IIRC. Even at that, what they had was essentially similar to other apps, but barely explaining anything. Like it expected you to know to work it out right then. Looking back, it was a rudimentry approach at that because without going to depths of what you're expected to learn, it would seem repetitive without purpose. I only tried it for once myself since some native Japanese people made reviews about it, and I know others did it for other languages.
I didn't last long on it for how much it didn't really feel like teaching anything. A few years after that, apparently they went the way of AI, and it just felt like they didn't really care about what it's trying to teach anymore. Felt like it was being used for convenience rather than actually being sincere about teaching something.
I have no idea if they've ever improved on that, but I've been steering clear of using AI for that sort of thing which pretty much ruined any desire to try it again.
I've been using Duolingo since I began learning Japanese... In fact, it's the platform where I learned Hiragana and Katakana. I've spent a lot of time on it, now I'm like in section 5 out of 6 sections of their course. Their course doesn't stick to JLPT levels, so at Section 5 I'm still getting a few words from N5 and even words from N1. It's really unbalanced in that way, but I'm fine with that. I'm using Renshuu for the more standardized learning.
However, ever since I discovered Renshuu a few months ago I've been using Duolingo a lot less. To me, Renshuu is basically everything I was looking for in a Japanese learning app, and it has way more features than Duolingo. I never got the Duolingo subscription (whatever it's called, it's changed names over the years) after using it for years, but after using Renshuu for only a few weeks I got Pro. I think that shows that I like Renshuu a lot better.
In short: try it yourself, it's free, see if it clicks with you. You can definitely make real progress with it, but it's not into teaching deeper nuance or going beyond basic explanations for a lot of things. It's also got next to zero customization. But it works, and some people like it, and that's what matters.
For me I have that duolingo max, and I can say it has been pretty helpful as it lets you improve your formation of sentences and it also gives you speaking exercise + short podcasts by which you can interact! That is the most beneficial I found in it ! But on the other side it doesn't teach that much grammar. It just gives you a short summary or smh like that. I have seen some youtubers in Japan getting interviewed that how did you learn japanese from duolingo, and they were pretty fluent. Duolingo has also provided a system to correct your mistakes and some other games. But the fact that It provides very weird sentences is not beneficial. Everything has its pluses and minuses. Using it right will always help be it anything.
Personally, Duolingo became so much predatory after they introduced energy system. And Japanese lessons/courses there is a lot as Japanese have many characters and Duolingo takes energy even you do correct ones. I do not recommend it.
There is ethical concerns as well, as the whole company is heading for 'AI first' approach that just makes the quality go down a lot.
I feel like Duolingo is a terrible choice for learning Japanese. It might be ok for other languages, but the lack of srs, grammar and kanji is bad. Duolingo gives you really slow progression and is filled with ads, and has no kanji help at all.
It kinda depends on what you are trying to learn. For writing, it's helpful because it repeats the same character for that session. However, in general at least in my opinion, I find it near impossible to get to new content or make much progress with it alone because it only doesn't let you make many mistakes before you lose 'hearts' and are forced to pay to continue or wait a while day to regain them
P.S: Duolingo will pester you to do 1 lesson a day no matter what
Duolingo is able to do things that renshuu is not able to just because of money (like some custom question where you need to pay people to do them). I wish some of these were on renshuu too... but that will not happen. Because Renshuu's Dev made the choice of making renshuu free for everyone :3 (minus the pro feature of course)
But in the same time, that mean he is working alone on the app with a limited budget (compared to other companies). And that he can't do everything he want. And at intermiate level you will feel those limit for "some" aspect of japanese.
So it's not really black and white. I used Duolingo for a bit and the things that annoyed the most was the god damn artifical voice. But other than that, I still used it for a while. And I did learn a few things with the hated green owl. Like 90% of the people that hate it. Because they used it for long enough to get frustrated with that app.
So, it's fine to use duolingo at the beginning. Maybe it will be the app that will get you started with your japanese journey. Or not. But you have to try it to know for sure. The only important things at the beginning is to find a app that doesn't burn your motivation. In that regard, renshuu is more difficult to use and can more easily burn your motivation. But once you get used to it, it become really powerful between beginner and intermediate level. A bit less between intermediate and advance level because there are no free JP-JP dictionary unfortunatly... (but still very useful for kanji and reading imo)
To sum up: - Beginner level: Any app that that doesn't burn your motivation. Duolingo is safer imo. Renshuu is a bit less safe. Anki is the worst (because you have to do everything by yourself). That doesn't they are bad or good or that you shoudn't start with renshuu or anki. Just that you will have more chance to burn out.
- Intermediate level: Multiple app that are good at different things. For me, it's renshuu for kanji and their reading, JA sensei to write, japanase website and primary school to high school excercices for grammar (intended for native), a few japanese app for various things and finally immersion by watching youtube or reading.
And after that, well, just use japanese like a native and learn new word, expression or kanji like a native.
I used Duolingo years ago it’s been a while so I know a lot has changed When I used it, it did teach me basics as a beginner and helped me with words but had no sense of grammar. It took me ages to figure out what です meant I went through a lapse of no Japanese studying thought and after coming back (with 1,000,000 notifications ) I realised I wanted to use a different app since Duolingo had changed so much. I think it was good for vocab but if your not a complete beginner don’t bother, it wouldn’t get you far. But I did like listening exercises as they help with knowing what someone is actually saying (hint hint マイコー ) I’m kidding I know you’re very busy and have a lot of other things on the infinite list of updates. It would be nice to know that it would be somewhere in the endless void though
Anyway in short unless your complete beginner there’s no point or unless you can be bothered to pay for all the subscriptions to get a decent idea of Japanese. There’s a lot of better apps you could spend money on though
When I used it, it did teach me basics as a beginner and helped me with words but had no sense of grammar. It took me ages to figure out what です meant 
I went through a lapse of no Japanese studying thought and after coming back (with 1,000,000 notifications 
) I realised I wanted to use a different app since Duolingo had changed so much. I think it was good for vocab but if your not a complete beginner don’t bother, it wouldn’t get you far. But I did like listening exercises as they help with knowing what someone is actually saying (hint hint マイコー 
) I’m kidding I know you’re very busy and have a lot of other things on the infinite list of updates. It would be nice to know that it would be somewhere in the endless void though 
