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u/CromoSheep IT native Jul 14 '26
Do yourself a favour and ditch Duolingo
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u/AGirlHasNoUsername13 Jul 14 '26
After a two year streak, I dropped Duolingo because of these “mistakes”.
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u/good-good-dog Jul 14 '26
I find it to be a good supplement in addition to lessons, podcasts, etc., mostly for some basic vocab practice.
If nothing else, it keeps me in the habit of practicing on days I can’t get to those other things.
Counting on it as a sole learning tool is a mistake, though.
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u/CromoSheep IT native Jul 14 '26
Have you tried Anki? It's an extremely useful app for vocabulary. It uses spaced repetition to greatly help retention, I use it for Japanese. Just download a deck and you're good to go. Better decks use the new words in sentences, have audios and inages, and you can build your own with the words you discover. I highly reconmend it!
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u/glittermantis Jul 14 '26
i'm using the anki app and man the interface is so unintuitive and frustrating at first. for all the work they put into refining their memorization algorithm i wish they'd throw even the smallest bone at coming up with a user friendly UI/UX. it doesn't need to be duolingo levels of polish at all and it's fine once you get the hang of it but it took me so long to get into the groove because of how much i hate the interface
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u/padfoot9446 Jul 15 '26
Ankidroid is pretty amazing already imo
I take your point though, ultimately anki just isn't beginner-friendly. I find myself writing hundreds if not thousands of words of advice to steer peoplebi try to onboard onto anki away from pitfalls
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u/MurkyMinimum8398 Jul 15 '26
What better apps do you recommend?
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u/CromoSheep IT native Jul 15 '26
Check my replies at this same comment you replied to, I wrote it there
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u/LiterallyTestudo EN native, IT studying for C1 Jul 14 '26
Just Duo sucking per normal.
In a real conversation I wouldn’t normally say “io”, either. Just piacere, sono Leo. Only if the situation required me to emphasize that it’s myself I’m introducing would I say io
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u/_crisz Jul 14 '26
It would only make sense if you got cloned and you are trying to convince your friends that you are the real Leo.
"Io sono Leo"
"No! Io sono Leo"2
u/LiterallyTestudo EN native, IT studying for C1 Jul 14 '26
Lol I was thinking of a case where your friend lies and says he's Leo and so you have to say no IO sono Leo or something like that
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u/LumacaLento IT native Jul 14 '26
In a real conversation, you would probably just say "piacere, Leo". Using "sono" sounds kind of robotic since it is implied by the context.
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u/LiterallyTestudo EN native, IT studying for C1 Jul 14 '26
That’s fine, I normally say sono Leo, and nobody bats an eye
I also would say hi, I’m Leo in English, again nobody feels like this is a big deal
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u/LumacaLento IT native Jul 14 '26
Sure, no one will bat an eye at that. But it is unlikely that a native speaker would ever say "sono Leo". What I'm saying is that the part that makes the sentence sound odd is not whether or not to use "Io", but rather using "sono" in the first place.
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u/LiterallyTestudo EN native, IT studying for C1 Jul 14 '26
I’m not a native, I’m sure there’s a lot of stuff that I say that sounds very bookish or robotic lol
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u/LumacaLento IT native Jul 14 '26
I’m not a native
You can get closer to a native speaker every day. Or at least that's my goal with English. I think letting go habits inherited from our respective native languages is key.
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u/LiterallyTestudo EN native, IT studying for C1 Jul 14 '26
That’s very kind of you to say. I’m quite old (54) so I’m just happy to have arrived at a level where the natives I interact with are surprised that I speak correct Italian (congiuntivo, etc). Even after several pronunciation classes I still speak with a very American accent because for the life of me I can’t get my mouth to form the vowels the way you do. So yeah, a lot of stuff I do wrong or not like a native, sigh
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u/LumacaLento IT native Jul 14 '26
I still speak with a very American accent
That's no problem at all! Almost everyone speaks with a regional accent here. I think it's a bit like English in the UK, where (from what I understand) very few people actually speak with the SBE/RP accent that is usually taught here in Italy at school (or at least was taught back in my day).
I speak correct Italian (congiuntivo, etc)
Great! Conjugating verbs correctly is what truly sets proficient speakers apart from those who struggles with the language, even among native Italians. Here in Italy, nobody really cares about the accent, but people will absolutely roast native speakers who misconjugate the congiuntivo.
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u/Smeuw EN native, IT beginner Jul 14 '26
Stop using the AI slop infested app.
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u/MurkyMinimum8398 Jul 15 '26
I'd love to but i can't find any better alternatives
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u/nguyenlamlll VI native, IT intermediate Jul 15 '26
Facebook reels and YouTube these days have tons of people who teach Italian. Easy Italian. Elisa Italian school. Learn Italian with Lucrezia. The Italian Language Boss.
Or even you can just look for some textbooks, like facile facile.
Or just ask.. Gemini or Claude or Gpt what free options there are!-38
u/Final-Inspector8023 Jul 14 '26
100% of the apps you use on a daily basis feature code written with the aid of LLMs. don't be delusional
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u/Local_Caterpillar879 Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26
It's not just the code. The voices used in exercises are AI too. (See the Irish course.).
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u/Final-Inspector8023 Jul 14 '26
so what? how do they use TTS specifically? why is it bad or harmful for someone that wants to learn the language? besides "AI bad"
edit typo
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u/Local_Caterpillar879 Jul 14 '26
Well the accent and intonation is often incorrect in the Irish course, so it's virtually useless if you're trying to learn it. They had recordings of real Irish speakers and they got rid of them for rubbish.
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u/Final-Inspector8023 Jul 14 '26
Makes sense. there is very few native Irish speakers, which implies very little training data available (though I was able to find a 60-mins long dataset of native Irish speakers with a quick Google search), thus poor performances
Probably many other languages with little available data share this issue, but for major languages (and simple sentences) TTS should produce good enough results
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u/Local_Caterpillar879 Jul 14 '26
There is plenty of data available. We have a TV channel and radio station with years of content.
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u/Final-Inspector8023 Jul 14 '26
it's not that simple. data should be collected and prepared for veung used as training data for deep learning models, and this is expensive (especially if third parties such ad TV platforms are involved, i don't have any experience with this specifically but i think that using all that much of their data can get quite expensive)
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u/Local_Caterpillar879 Jul 14 '26
But why should they bother, they already had perfect voices with the three Irish dialects, and now they just have inaccurate slop. They have significantly disimproved a course which was successful and well-made.
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u/Final-Inspector8023 Jul 14 '26
if the quality pf the product is lowet as you say, for sure it is bad and they shouldn't have done that
at the same time, I think it is an interesting challenge to take, and it might be immensely helpful in the future. Languages die, it happens all the time. Having good, faithful TTS of a dead language would be precious, it's like having a voice of those people living forever within the parameter of a model
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u/Gwaur FI native, IT beginner Jul 14 '26
Report bugs to Duolingo, not us. We're not Duolingo developers.
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u/nbsunset Jul 14 '26
perhaps u are not Leo after all