Yep, exactly the same feeling as me. I was truly confused after Evan s video. Especially because I was much more familiar with his videos, but I didn't feel like he was in any way attacked. If anything, his video was the one attacking.

Same experience here, realized that only now. I moved on after Lamont's video and found it great, especially because I got the same experiences (though I have a few people at my workplace, who seem to use Duolingo as a supplement effectively). When I saw Evan's video, my initial response was, that he's kinda right, though I didn't take Lamont's video as an insult to him. There was a particular part of Evan's video though, where I thought to myself "Now, that's just getting really insulting really fast". Now I'm confused and feel like I understand both of you guys lol xD

I felt the same way - Evan continued going on about some unnecessary or even flat out wrong things regarding this video. And as someone who typically likes Evan a lot, it left a sour taste. This video however, did not. I think it was wrong for him to have responded publicly the way he did, while insinuating a lot of things that are clearly not true...

anki

Yes, it was very important for me as a short first introduction to Irish about three years ago. For a language with a limited number of free beginner resources, and a very very limited amount of comprehensible input materials, Duolingo was a logical place to start.

How I got into learning spanish(I was also learning it at school, but school lessons in any language(obligatory ones High school and before), usually can`t teach you a language) was through duolingo and watching television shows in spanish, first with English subtitles, then later with spanish subtitles and without.

Duo is basically a way that I find what I should study elsewhere next lol it was my introduction and it is the only to my partner use since they are not able to put much effort into language learning and aren't in a rush

Yeah, but on the other hand, if I were to start another language I would choose something like Pimsleur or Language Transfer focused only on sounds and speaking.

It's a good start. But after being given the same small group of words for over 3 hours in the Japanese course it's just a waste of time. I've learnt far more with other apps in less time

I agree 💯 with this. Duolingo does have its merits but it needs to be seen for what it is. The gamification aspect helps keep motivation up, it's a quick and fun way to keep different writing systems fresh in your mind, and it's an easy source of dopamine. It's definitely not something you should rely on as your sole source of language learning -- unless you really really enjoy long walks to the airport.

Learning Danish myself, any resources?

@@emiliasky6117 I have a premade deck of 8,000 sentences I found on Anki. I try to add to it with my own cards, but I have limited time to sit in front of a computer. I mainly immerse in Danish content on Netflix. Getting rid of subtitles has finally seemed to work for me, my comprehension is improving rapidly.

It's not a gateway drug though. It's just a drug, and the only way to satiate your habit is more DuoLingo. If it was a gateway drug, we'd see thousands of people saying DuoLingo helped make them fluent. Anyone who has ever learned a foreign language to fluency realizes DuoLingo did nothing for them on their journey.

@@emiliasky6117I would personally go on KZfaq and see what they have. I think there are a lot of good Danish learning KZfaq channels out there. Though, I’m not 100% sure, cuz I haven’t looked much into it ^^

That's it. I tried to finish the German tree in a month for a video a year or so ago, and I realised it was going to take like 5 hours a day. Personally, I think I COULD read Harry Potter after that (Swedish helps obviously) but still, 150 hours when you could just do an Anki deck in like 5 days of 2 hours.

Native speaker here! I'll be happy to help if you ever have any questions :)

With the old tree configuration it was possibile to make a speedrun, jumping as far as you could get (directly testing on units without practicing them and spending otherwise useless lingots) but this was like a mountain marathon to reach the Airport.

This might be a hard question to answer accurately, but what would you say is the necessary vocabulary level in ones target language for a HP book? (Never read it, even in English) 1,000 words? 2,000? Thanks!@@daysandwords

That is indeed tough to answer, because a) what language are we talking about? In French it's almost possible for anyone with fluent English (not quite, but 100 words would put you close). b) what's your tolerance for "ambiguity", that is, for not knowing quite what's happening. Mine is very high with audiobooks, not so high with series, and most people's is very low for books. But if you pair the book WITH the audiobook, then you can do it in most languages immediately But honestly, I'd recommend just reading one first. Like, the first one takes about 8 hours of audiobook (and make that 5 if you listen at 1.6x which is super easy for a native speaker of English) and then that significantly increases your chances of tolerating it in a new language and actually learning something.

Nice story. Perhaps Duolingo can refresh your German skills.

@shahrazade26 Just checking - are you joking? I am asking for real because it sounds like you're joking. This person described how they became fluent in German very quickly, and I'd believe them, because what they did was essentially the perfect methodology... and then you say "Maybe Duolingo can refresh your German skills." Again, I am actually asking because you could be 100% serious, or 100% joking and there are no tells as to which one it is. 😂

I also liked it at the beginning but the problem is, ANYTHING can be made to be engaging. Literally anything IF (and it's a big IF) you don't mind sacrificing what it actually is that you're doing. e.g. "Do you want to get thin fast, but don't want to stick to a boring diet? Well I've got a diet you CAN stick to... I call it the Lamont diet... you can eat WHATEVER YOU WANT WHENEVER YOU WANT!" Customer: "But then I will stay being overweight?" Me: "The advantage of the Lamont diet is that ANYONE can stick to it!" To me, that's what Duolingo has become. It has sacrificed learning for "being engaging".

@@daysandwords I agree. Any skill learning needs involvement and dedication. Duolingo came from being an quite overly praised learning tool with a gamification system to become just a game about languages. Better play Chants of Sennaar or one of the many videogames who don't pretend to be learning courses but just entertainment with a language theme. Or in the other way better use more serious learning methods not emphasizing on the obsolete and basic audiobooks/flashcards courses. It's just like the fact people don't play Zacktronics games to learn programming or automation. Better remove our dusty Arduino board from the drawer and start reading documentation. All in all, even if academic methods have their own drawbacks, we can't get away with them to learn at least the basics. On most skills, it shows in advanced levels when someone learned using shortcuts and as a learner it can be difficult to correct those habits.

@@daysandwords "It has sacrificed learning for "being engaging"." Totally agree on this. I used Duolingo for a long time. At the beginning, I started with French. As a Spanish speaker, it was easy to learn and the first tree I tried help me to get a simple overview of the language (about a month or so). It was a shorter version of the tree almost 5 years ago. After that, I went to the reverse tree: learning Spanish from French. I took advantage of native speakers in the Forum section, speaking about how they say things in French. And I could ask questions in French. After 3 months, all the Duolingo work was just repetitive and less meaningful. It was just to keep the numbers, to feel engaged. Not learning, but keep going on the app. I was able to read in French, I could understand some TV shows. I couldn't speak a phrase (speaking is not the strength feature in Duo). So, in the end, not so useful. My experience with Korean was even worse. Not having anybody to teach you grammar on Korean properly is really a demeanor for that language. And the quality of your learning depends on the person in that specific course. Mostly, languages different from English, Spanish or French are terrible: not well reviewed, lots of errors, few options for every sentence... So: without discussion, without other benefits and with a lot of disadvantages, you should better spend time in other sites or resources. The only good thing I see in Duo nowadays is: easy access. You can take your phone everywhere and try some sentences, it's better when you are on the bus and you want to do something but not as demanding as a podcast or when you are waiting on a line for your grocery shopping. Other than that, I don't see any benefit. And this one is really not that great to invest your time in it.

People want everything to be fun and engaging, and effortless, but the truth is our brains need the effort, they need to feel that they work. CI is about reading and learning what interests you, but if you don't like medicine you won't learn useful phrases about health and in case of emergency which might be incredibly useful if you intend to go to a country where your target language is spoken. You really want to know how to draw out money from ATM in Japan. How to buy basic stuff anywhere. Ask where the embassy is. And foremost: where's the toilet :P Not everything in learning languages is fun, some things are just plain boring but useful and for that reason worth learning. It might not be fun when you learn it, but when it comes handy - then the real fun begins. :)

​@daysandwords The idea that you can't effectively learn with duolingo is provably false. The evidence is that people do it literally all the time (I'm sure the developers have their own evidence but nevermind that). Tools for learning exist on a spectrum and it's certainly not the worst (depending on HOW you use it). It's absolutely not all I use but I can definitely confirm that I've memorized and learned to use quite a few words and phrases in Russian using it. I'm not fluent but conversational at a basic level at least. It's a fun way to drill words and phrases. I'd something is working for someone they should probably ignore a random KZfaq naysayer. Your best indicator for what works is your own results (I'm pretty aggressive and broad in how I use it unlike a lot of people probably but still).

900 day streak doesn't mean much. It could be doing like 50 lessons and practice (repeating)... What is """important""" (or was before they completely fucked up the XP system) was XP amount. I had like 25k in Spanish by the time I went to university (so equivalanet of 2500 lessons, finished the tree, repeated a lot, used other sources) - and I was at B1 level. Some people might use Duo every day for 5 minutes - 900 days = 4500 minutes = 75 hours? Basically A1-A2 level. If they spent 1 hour per day for 900 days, they would definitely be B1 (in combination with other resources, when duolingo tree ends :D )

People can't understand a language because they are just doing tasks for keeping a streak instead of actually learning, practicing and repeating things. And to be honest, after a while you can solve the tasks from feeling without any knowledge of the language if you get used to what the duolingo expects from you in every course equally. Like as, i literally could just go to any random language course and get a 30-50% accuracy on the highest check point without knowing anything about the language at all. And it's only because duolingo teaches you how to satisfy the website's tasks instead of teaching you the language.

@@BeSk9991 You definitelly need other sources for any level. Duolingo is only good for being a practice tool that you use as an addition to a real learning method.

"Their catchphrase is literally "The world's best way to learn a language" " And it very well might be.

Cheers for watching and replying Evan! Honestly I very nearly contacted you beforehand just to not be all "KZfaqr drama" about it but this video had already gone through so many changes, I thought I needed to just get it done. Thanks for being (seemingly) cool with it. But to the issue - do you think that it's fair to say that with Duolingo, it's going to take a very long time to get to the stage that you can read your own material and learn from them? That's really my biggest gripe with it; yeah it's fun, it's free(ish)... but it started out reasonably slow and only got slower. As for the thumbnail - yep, guilty as charged. It's just a weird thing that certain tiny factors make people more likely to click. 2.9M seemed like the right number... not really sure why. As you can see from my views, I need to do everything I can, including simplifying the title of your video. Initially I actually used the thumbnail from your very recent video about the updates, but I thought that was a bridge too far, since that's not the main video I was talking about. Anyway - I hope you're well, and check out Dreaming Spanish, best thing that's ever happened to Spanish learners. 😉

@evan I appreciate that you didn't come here flaming me but I don't really see how it's any LESS deceptive to be all like "lmao" and "gonna tell mom I've finally made it" (basically acting like things are cool) if you're actually hating this and seemed to be quite annoyed by it (based on your video). I don't know why you would comment on mine at all. You accused me of pretending to like you so as to be win sympathy... But here you are pretending to be fine about this when you're obviously PO'd. I've got some videos on the horizon so it might be a while before I get to your response, but I feel that we both just misunderstand each other. We have different styles and the same words seem to mean different things to us, so now we're beefing. I'm sorry about that. Yes, I used your face to get views, and yes, it was deliberate. I am deliberate with what videos I make, because I can't afford not to be. You pointed out yourself that my older clickbait didn't work. Basically I've gotten better at it. We can talk all day about whether Duolingo made you fluent or not but to be surprised that a smaller KZfaqr used your face for views... Really? Dude it's happened to ME and I haven't even cracked 100K subs. That is this platform. I wouldn't be surprised if it happens again (certainly now because you responded to it). I _genuinely_ hope you are well, and I hope your stay in Germany was or is going well. Lamont.

@@daysandwords Halli hallo, so my initial reaction was shock and using humour as a coping mechanism as I worked out my feelings on it all. As I sat on it and thought about the video, it did cause me genuine upset and hurt. So yeah I was really trying to “be cool with it,” but then my shock wore off. Sorry for the perceived deception there. I will say there have been some comments from some of your viewers on my video which I’ve found incredibly nuanced and insightful. Ones that were better able to convey your history of things and better intentions except for the whole using me out of context to make a point thing. Most still agreed with my point that you could’ve done that a bit better. The thing is, besides the ultra low-quality “react channels” that throw one of my videos on and then pause every 5 minutes to pretend they’re adding any value to my video they’re stealing, I honestly do /not/ have anyone using my face/videos for views ever. (I will note, your video was HIGHLY transformative and incredibly well-edited featuring loads of added value so I absolutely do not place your video anywhere near those channels.) I’m not really a large enough KZfaqr for that to be worthwhile for most people (I’m not really bringing them clicks), but I suppose within this one niche, maybe so! Also, the videos I make aren’t like… big debatable topics; most are just “here’s my experience” which is really hard to…make a video arguing against or for? Because you can’t really argue with someone else’s experience. (Though you did.) You can share your own, sure, but most everything I make (outside of say… the recent video) I strive to make them as inoffensive as possible to /avoid/ that type of response at all costs. This is what caused such intense levels of shock and upset that of all the niches I make videos in, the duolingo one felt so innocent to me, so devoid of controversy and safe. I feel like I make way less “personal” content these days out of an intense anxiety of someone using it against me in bad faith. So to have a video brutally going through everything I’ve uploaded and attempting to inherently discredit my personal journey through strategic cuts I found abhorrent (even if that was not your intent). There were so many points you made I felt like I could’ve agreed with or at least been able to say “well we just have different definitions of things” as I’ve never claimed to have mastery in the foreign languages I’ve learned, as I felt like in every single video I’ve made that you used, I’ve always signified the exact level of fluency I’m talking about. You even left in the bit I said as such. My concession of “soft yes” in that video 5 years ago was pretty much making the exact point you were. But you painted it as disingenuous while then basically saying the same thing? I hope you’re able to see that this along with you using that recent clip of me saying “I couldn’t speak the language” which referred to my recent 2 years of not actively learning German to mean I couldn’t speak it at all at the time of my OG video really solidified to me that you weren’t “making a mistake” but were deliberately misconstruing me for your own content. I couldn’t agree with that. Hence my response. Saying “that is the platform” and I should expect people to use my face and name for views I find a bit of a deflection here though. Whenever celebrities get harassed in public or private and people online say “that’s the price of being famous” I really, /really/ disagree with that sentiment and believe it shows a very large lack of empathy. If you wouldn’t like that type of behaviour then regardless you shouldn’t condone it. So to contribute to that and say “that’s just the way it is; it’s happened to me” I find that sad. I feel like sure, it’d be different if I was purporting myself to be a professional language coach or something like that, and let’s say I was using my position to convince others to trust in me to get them to sign up for my course, because then sure, I think you’d have grounds for… let’s say “protection of the space” from this bad actor. You’d really want to convey that we’d all need a lot more “proof” this guy is who he says he is and is in this case an absolute mastery C2 fluent guy! But in my case, in that video as well as every video since, I’ve always conveyed the reality of my personal language-learning journey and that has /never/ been someone in the C1 or C2 range. I think the inherent discrepancy here comes from our different niches and styles. My niche is for the average person who’s interested in learning enough of a language to be able to engage in it by using it at shops and restaurants, expressing themselves, and consuming foreign media, not necessarily mastery. I’d absolutely be a bad channel for mastery as I am not that at all and… sigh… I really feel like I’ve said as much multiple times recently and in the past. I try to be realistic about my own journey. From what I’ve learned from your insightful viewers’ comments is that your channel is more in-depth. More, let’s say, for like “well how can I learn MORE of the language, and learn more efficiently to be GOOD at this language and make locals be like DAMN OKAY WOW.” That’s cool as hell man, and definitely a very important niche for the people that would like to move from the “minimum effort to engage in a foreign language” to more serious efforts. On this topic though, I will say, I don’t know if you’ve considered this before, but before previewing my video, I asked a friend of mine to watch yours first to ensure they had the full context, and they told me after finishing your video, their overall feeling was demotivation. They didn’t feel motivated to continue learning a foreign language at all, not just on duolingo, but at all. I’m sure that’s not the feeling you’d want to instil in a viewer, right? I know you created a follow up video about what you use instead of duolingo which is great, but that one video of me alone was so negative that someone like my friend felt like not only was her slow growth on duolingo pointless but the growth of her language in general. Even though she knows me and has had chats with me on the topic, your inclusion of that bit of me saying “I couldn’t speak the language” while saying it was about me EVER speaking the language even made her confused until she watched my video. Your editing is very persuasive, eh? I personally have worked with solely 1 (at time of writing unless I’m forgetting one?) language sponsor which was featured in my recent video you used B roll from, and when chatting it out with them (and all possible (and failed)) sponsors, I stipulate that I can’t pretend I’m not using rivals too. So many sponsors require not talking about competitors in the content (makes a lot of sense), but I couldn’t do that honestly as I do and will continue to learn on duo. But I worked out with the brand (and a future one hopefully?) how I ADD these in to my routine and how they add value to what I’m already doing. Even when duo’s being a bit shite with their updates, I still do admit I’m using the app still / AND / I add in the sponsor. In your case, I guess you don’t really have to worry about that as even though you used it in the past, you’re now against the use of duolingo, so you can authentically be like “duo’s shit, but ayyyy this spon ain’t bad.” But from my perspective the optics of that isn’t great… but that’s probably because it’s my perspective as someone whose channel is NOT all about language learning. It probably makes more sense in your niche, and so my comments about it probably come from a lack of understanding of YOUR space so apologies for that. In completely tangential comments, otherwise you seem like an overall right chap. You’re clearly a well-rounded lad (at least by just looking at online things) in that ya know, you’re working on your fitness, you’ve got a family you’re taking care of, etc. I personally have no beef with /you/ just with your (in my opinion) dishonest use of my language-learning journey in your video. We disagree about some things in the space as is natural, but we absolutely agree with a LOT of things that could have been interesting to explore had you (as you told me in your original comment you planned on doing, but didn’t) actually messaged me prior to talk about. We could probably agree that once you clear that A1-A2 area, duolingo would be VASTLY improved if you supplement it heavily with other media. But… as you know as you’ve got my videos downloaded in your timeline, I’ve pretty much said as much too. I said it with positive intentions whereas I personally feel your video repackaged my own but things were said negatively. Does that make sense? You can disagree! I do apologise for my tone in my video as lord almighty is it SHARP. Sarcasm is how I write rebuttals and in this case it was just… a bit biting when if I’d focused more on say, the type of thing I’ve written here, it would’ve been less harsh. I talked about this in a comment I made on my own video, but I do mean it when I say I do also hope you continue to learn languages and enjoy doing so and also continue trying to help people succeed! We’re both in places where we actually can motivate and inspire people to learn a foreign language which I can assume is something both of us enjoy 🙂 At the end of the day, you’ll always have a better english accent than me. Would kill to sound Aussie 😅

"so as to be win sympathy" ​ @daysandwords - a MISTAKE?! (Mock horror.) I guess you learned English with Duolingo! LOL

@@ski2miYeah and if I'd translated these thoughts directly from my native language, as well as making jerky and awkward mistakes for THREE HOURS STRAIGHT, then I'd admit that I wasn't fluent in English.

another welsh learner!

@@randomize2225 Bore da! Could I ask what you use to learn? I've been trying to fight through Say Something in Welsh for nearly a decade.

How's that incompatible with duolingo or any other language app though?

@@AA-lz4wq It isn't incompatible you use it as a supplement to engagement with actual text and audio and an SRS but the question then is why bother with an app that is inferior to those things? If you like doing it anyway ofc you should do it but it just isn't very effective if you're serious about learning the language. Also esp for non-European languages (though I can only speak for Japanese) the sentences are really not very native like and the robot pronunciation frankly sucks. Though I haven't used it in years so maybe it got better, idk.

Normal, yes. Not sure how the frustration is desirable, though.

​@@AA-lz4wqmore time spent in Duolingo means less time spent really learning the language AND fostering an addiction

​@@jewelweed6880everything good comes with a struggle. Frustration is a sign of growth. If you aren't tired after gym you aren't progressing

I did that with spanish for 2 years before I realized that my skills were still awful. I decided to get a Spanish teacher and focus more on communication and listening, rather than mindlessly learning vocab

holy shit yeah! i am not complaining about the self-reporting people that say they would do 0 progress in language-learning but thank god for duolingo it helped them get out of the house and walk towards the airport but there are so many people that i know that have been walking for hours and hours with duolingo and have internalised the conclusion that the issue is with them i think this includes Evan for a bit because in his video reply he clearly sees Lamont's video as a personal attack on his language-learning ability just because it is the easiest thing for you to do does not mean this is what 'clicks' with you and you must be bad at learning languages other ways and us 'actual language-learners' shit on you it's easy because it is a game but after basic sentences, it will be more and more game and less and less language acquisition honestly it is just baffling how after a period of external study your perceived level in the duolingo-space skyrockets even only for memorisation (which is basically what duolingo is mainly) you can blow duolingo out of the water with language comprehension you can also reach a level where you understand alternative translations for duolingo's one + a few hidden options

What do you do?

@@rickynoodles2816 Personally? I do vocabulary reviews and immersion for at least an hour everyday. (I occasionally study grammar, but I don’t stress out about it too much.) This year I plan on doing a language challenge every month on top of that. I’ve simplified this quite a bit since I don’t think writing a paragraph is going to help anyone. This channel has a ton of videos with great advice when it comes to language learning. So you’re in a good place if you need more help. Good luck on your language journey!

Im using Duolingo, pretty much just too get down Katakana and Hirgana. I think it actually might be helpful woth those.

@@genericascanbe3728 I found it helpful for getting to the point where I could read most hiragana and katakana, at least with what they had around 4 years ago, and while I'm sure there are better resources, I think it does a good enough job at that. But when it came to then perfecting my ability to read hiragana and katakana and learning to write them, I found just writing out all of them over and over from memory (and correcting after each attempt) really effective, and after months of Duolingo, I was able to finally remember the last couple hiragana I kept confusing and the several katakana I never remembered, plus I could write them almost as naturally as I could write the Latin alphabet. For kanji, I highly recommend starting out by using spaced repetition with an order that puts basic kanji before the more complex ones that contain those ones as components (e.g. 日 and 月 before 明), and making yourself both remember the meaning of the kanji and be able to write the kanji from the meaning. I did that to start out, and only did it for maybe a month or two, but it taught me how to break down a kanji when looking at it and understand the kinds of components I should expect to see in them. Before I did that, they were just a bunch of lines and shapes, and if I saw a new kanji and had to reproduce it, I'd have to go line-by-line, comparing mine to the original as I went. Now I can glance at a kanji and just write it down, maybe looking back once or twice if there are a lot of components in it.

@@genericascanbe3728I second that, I think the new kanji learning feature could potentially be useful too

I quit Japanese on Duoligo. Duolingo is good for basics, not so much for advanced stuff.

For android.. I've found Kanji Senpai is really good for learning how to write kanji.

The best language resources are the ones you will actually use. If there's too much of a barrier to that you're not gonna use it and you're not going to get anywhere.

"Staying consistent" doesn't matter if you're not actually doing anything useful. You should spend those 30 minutes doing something else.

@@ketchup901 what makes you an authority on something being useful to me or not ? I speak four languages, two of them I would not speak if it wasn’t for duolingo. That’s pretty useful to me.

@@tomtocz7284This is a video about how Duolingo is not useful.

@@ketchup901 There is a saying that the best (insert subject) resources...are the ones you actually use. If it sits on your shelf, it isn't magically going to get in your brain. There are loads of programs that are more efficient at teaching, but they can be too content heavy. My memory isn't good enough and neither is my attention span, to use those exclusively. Duo is not very efficient and at the moment, that is working for me. Should anyone use it exclusively and expect the world from it? Definitely not. That is nothing new. Use other resources and maybe take breaks away, but keep up the duolingo during that time to keep the language in your life? That sounds useful. I don't know how many times in the last 20 years I have used a standard program diligently for a week, take a break, and next thing I know it has been a year. Yeah, haven't gotten very far. Still, I have been chipping away for 88 days with Duo, and in that time I have finally broached topics I had been avoiding for a long time. I have other resources and books. The plan is to go ahead and take breaks from all that like before, but keep the Duo streak so Arabic stays in my life. There are other ways to do that minimum, but this is what I am using now. My breaks in between studying a program are shorter. That's a win.

Thank you!

I don't understand why people are so down on duo lingo 💔 jag älskar duo lingo

@@MichellesdesignsEtcconveniently @daysandwords posted a 26 minute video to help you understand.

​@@MichellesdesignsEtcdid you watch the video?

@@MichellesdesignsEtchave fun walking across the ocean

Yep, learning scripts is fair enough. I have said that (but many years ago).

I found it only moderately useful for learning Japanese script (well, kana, not kanji). It is, however, very good for Korean script. But Korean speakers i know say the Korean course itself is horrible, even by Duo standards.

I found it useful to learn the beginning stages of a language. Duolingo is very good material when you're at a point where you can't read basic sentences

Yeah, I learned cyrillic from DuoLingo. Probably took longer than it would've through other methods, but what else am I gonna do on the train for 10 minutes? 😅

And learning small languages, like Lamont said. But then again, Duolingo is fucking those languages over as well.

Exactly. And there is lots of nuance that this video is missing, for example, I only touch on Hawaiian vs Spanish, but Finnish sits somewhere in the middle. I assume you're using FinnishPod101? As for Evan's German, yeah, he accused me of "combing through the three hours to find the one part where I was lost for words". Well, umm, no actually. Had I have wanted to embarrass him, I could have shown 20 bits EXACTLY like that. Trying to think of the German word for an English word in your head and then saying it, EVEN IF it were the right word, is just not fluency. Anyone who's ever gotten anywhere near fluency knows that thinking IN the language is only one step towards that, but it's a necessary step.

same, i will not stop using duolingo i'll just stop wondering 'maybe the paid plan has something planned who knows' i had never heard anyone says that you can *concentrate* on duolingo for languge-learning before evan, and in any case nobody that actually did, so a qualitative review of his progress seems like a good idea i am glad other people can approximate his level of german as i really don't know german and had never heard him speak it as i don't watch his livestreams i genuinely watched his videos though and took what he said mostly at face value it's a shame he took it personally with his reply, and i'll try to understand his side of the story but bottom-line is still that the premise of this video seems right, and the arguments and evidence still stand

Someone has a good taste in target languages!

Me Suomalaiset Arvostamme ulkomaalaisia, jotka opiskelevät kieltämme. Ulkomaalaiset valittaa sitä etteivät saa työtä, vaikka he eivät edes usein osaa kieltämme. ♥️Rakkaudella Tampereelta.

"and it was 80% responsible for my knowledge in Spanish, supplemented by KZfaq, books, podcasts, songs, movies." But how could you possibly know that DL was 80% responsible for your knowledge? All the other stuff you described there, by sheer volume of words, contains orders of magnitude more. The DL just helps you to actually squeeze the juice out of those things. But the juice still came from those things. I think this comment has put the misunderstanding so succinctly as to inspire a second video in me about why people FEEL that Duolingo works even though it doesn't.

@@gradient5319 yes

@@daysandwords right? I would love to say that my current level in Spanish is due to my diligent daily study. but let's be honest. It's because I moved to Mexico a couple years back. The study is great, and I know people who move to Mexico and learn no Spanish largely because they aren't studying to prepare themselves for interacting with the people who live here, but can I really say that 80% or even 50% of what I actually know comes from apps and study courses? Probably not.

@@daysandwordsI think the video is 'great right? Yes I do, but I gotta say I've started using duolingo for the past 10 months ago, for free. I get the pay to win aspect. But I've actually learned so much German in these past months to year. This does not apply to everyone, but I can speak it FLUENTLY by just keeping up around a 80 day streak, I can easily have conversations with my German friends and family now because I grew up in america and I speak english, so I decided I would learn german. I made that promise, sure the updates are bad but I've learned so much, it's a great learning app but the paywalls are horrible.

@@daysandwords I remember in the 2000s there were equivalent "Rosetta Stone works" people. Many people learned languages with those tools, but it's presented to you in this neat little package that gives the impression that this is what language learning should be like. If you're a beginner, you just slog your way through it and accept that language learning really is this confusing and slow, when in reality it doesn't have to be.

Yes, I'm trying to work this out with somebody who I really care about, and it is a sad realization.

talking on the not uncommon 1:1 german-english translations, i will encounter a combination of words in german that seems very odd, z.B. “laufende Nase”, it makes me take a pause and think “what…? a running🏃‍♂️ nose??? but a nose has no legs??” but then comes the “WAIT… i know what that means, thats exactly how we say it in English!!” 😂😂

what resources did you use to learn slovak? i am trying to learn czech but i can’t find anything except duolingo

​@@claudiatheghost Is slovake eu website still online? In 2017 it helped me tremendously

its format not it's (=it is)

@@prplt You will please excuse my phone's overzealous and not AI autocorrect.

"In your analogy it's like walking to your car that's parked a street or two away to then drive to the airport." Yeah if you walk at like 100 metres an hour. It COULD be useful for what you're describing, if it didn't stupidly throttle the speed at which you can go through the lessons. Do you want to move beyond "The boy has an apple."? No worries! Duolingo will get you beyond that... in 6 weeks.

I never went after Evan because I don't think he's doing it deliberately. I think he acknowledges that his German wasn't good... but then I'm thinking "Ok so, "conversationally fluent using JUST Duolingo..."...Something here doesn't fit."

@@daysandwords I wholeheartedly agree. In the years I’ve been following you, you’ve never been malicious to another content creator or language learner. I feel your approach is always, “there’s better options to achieve your goal.”

Completely agree. After getting to decent proficiency in French I realize that the fastest flight to a new language is 1) absorb basics of the grammar to some level, 2) stuff a few hundred vocabulary in my head, and then 3) immerse immerse immerse, via reading galore and videos fully in that language and audio and repeating plots in the new language and so on… complete immersion is not given by apps at all. And it’s the only way there.

@@daysandwords I think a lot of the reason why Evan uses Duolingo is the sunk cost fallacy. He has spent so much time and he has seen some results so surely it must work, else was he just wasting his time? And it's clear that Duolingo fosters that sunk cost mentality with the streak

@ratoh1710 - Possibly!

Yeah, he was saying "conversationally fluent" to temper that... and that's fine... but that's my Swedish haha. I can't explain what my Honours thesis was about in Swedish, but I can tell you how I learned Swedish. Evan couldn't remember the word for "else", and when he did, it wasn't actually the term he was looking for. He was more like... conversationally "emergency" helpful, that is, if NO ONE had spoken English and someone was bleeding out, then Evan's German might have been slightly useful. My point isn't that he wasn't good or that he was lying or exaggerating. Simply that Duo wasn't working, because it doesn't work.

​@daysandwords I just think the term “fluent” is generally problematic, as it’s hard to quantify. I know you weren’t trying to make it out as if his German wasn’t good, unfortunately it was more just the result of the fact he had mainly been using Duolingo and also for him it was a hobby. All things considered he is verg good and has probably inspired countless others to dip their toe in the boundless ocean that is language-learning. Just imagine if he had a streak of hundreds of days through immersion learning and been in the air all that time instead of on his feet.. the only thing with that though is that often people who learn through immersion and get crazy results “no-lifed” it and spent hours each day consuming content. So, even if input-based methods are far more effective it’s hard to compare since sometimes people will only spend like 5 minutes on Duolingo.

@@daysandwords also haha yeah, I get you. I’m at a point where I could probably describe myself as fluent in Spanish, yet have struggled in the past with complicated political discussions.

Yeah but Evan did actually say that it was more like an hour a day. The other thing is, a lot of people think that I only want to talk about things that take up 2-3 hours of your day. But I have two kids, of very different ages (which takes even longer than when they are of similar age). My Swedish learning at 33 years old was definitely unusual but I had a job and two kids... it's certainly not impossible.

@@daysandwords it’s great that you managed to find time for language learning despite those things! I imagine things like listening to audio passively would be helpful in such situations

"Those who find language learning fun after using this app, they will automatically seek for better, faster ways to learn that language." Will they though? I mean what if I could find an example of someone who learned German for 4-5 years before still completely sucking at German, only to then take up Spanish using exactly the same app, despite their OWN ADMISSION that the app is significantly worse than a few years back? If I could produce such an example, surely we'd have to admit that not all people (and I would argue, not even MOST people) will seek for a real language learning method?

Yeah, and I MAY (probably not) but may, make a response to Evan's response... but just quickly, MY whole point in this video is that you can't just be like "Oh making ONE mistake doesn't mean you're not fluent"... He doesn't make one mistake. He can barely string three words together, and he's clearly thinking in English (because he says "I mean" when he accidentally says the wrong German word). NO ONE has THAT definition of fluency. Literally no one. And the fact that this was 5 years ago makes no difference since he's seemingly still claiming NOW that he was fluent THEN. Like I am a slow runner now... I was faster 6 years ago. So I don't say I can run a 21 minute 5K now, but I'll challenge anyone who says I couldn't do it BACK THEN. But Evan is doing the opposite, he's like "I am, and was, fluent, and I did it through Duolingo." I'm prepared to admit that Duolingo did SOMETHING, but not MOST of it. And it took so long that I would wonder why anyone would bother.

​​@@daysandwords​At some point in that livestream, someone asks him if he thinks in German and he flat out states that he's thinking in English and translating. It's so bizarre to see him get so defensive about the fact that this probably wouldn't be considered "conversationally fluent" to most people and that his Duolingo video probably mislead people into having higher expectations than reasonable. The thing that really annoyed me though about Evan's response was that the entire argument relied on the retroactive weakening of his previous position from "I got fluent with Duolingo in 2 years" to "I'm just a hobbyist who does this for fun and I ultimately don't care about whether this method can get you to a high level" to make it look like you're just too stuck-up to respect his casual approach. All while implicitly maintaining that his fluency claims were still true all along. That was either dishonest or extremely sloppy of Evan. That video was just a complete strawman. He also completely misunderstood your airport analogy. I think your video was infinitely more fair and objective than his.

@@rpstneureis yeah he completely misunderstood the airport analogy, which I personally thought was brilliant. He also spent a lot more time doing more personal attacks. I'm not going to lie, I went into that video expecting something like 'hi, maybe you have an off expectation of duolingo, here are some ways it's actually really great and here is why I use it the way I do" and instead it was jokes about this youtuber' acting like a reddit moderator and using him for clout for his comparatively lower subscriber count' 😬. I don't know, I didn't expect that from him 😩. Either way, I don't think any points were really made since his argument was strawman, there's very little point in responding unless they can actually have a conversation to discuss the merits of each, but it doesn't sound like that other guy would even be willing to do that. I do think when a lot of people say fluent, they actually mean "someone of my target language can figure out what I meant eventually" like if you need help in the grocery store and you say "alcohol... Liquid... Cleaning... Please... Where?" instead of "where's the hand sanitiser?" (I have done this. This is me. I just never would have called myself fluent because I achieved sanitisation.)

Relatable. I never got far with DuoLingo, but I did do a French degree. When I moved to France for a half-year, I quickly realized I knew almost nothing. Many years later I learned about comprehensible input, and started aggressively using podcasts and shows, and doing much more *repeated listening*. This produced major improvements. Studying language like it's math gets you basically nowhere.

@@analogpark8059 I was absolutely not proud of my ability. The handful of times I had the opportunity to speak to Germans, it went nowhere except embarrassment. The killer was I'd see videos like Evan's with claims of how they got "fluent" using Duolingo and I didn't understand what I was doing wrong.

"I learned how to learn and that made a world of difference." Exactly!! I've fallen in love with the process of learning how to learn, and frequently fall down deep rabbit holes that take me away from actually learning my TL for a few days (or more), but I always come back to it with renewed interest and new skills that I can apply. I'm continually adding tools to my language-learning toolbox, some that I can use right now, some that I'm not quite ready to employ - yet.

@@berkanathurisaso for a complete beginner what techniques what would you recommend

@@thereal_vertixx2964 Honestly, it would depend on their situation. What language are they trying to learn? What resources do they have easy access to? How much time and effort do they have (or are they willing) to devote to learning the language? WHY are they learning that particular language? There's no magic one-size fits all language learning approach. I think that it's important to take the time to look at different approaches and different tools and assess how you might use them, not just how they're 'meant' to be used by the person selling them. I am most definitely NOT an expert in this area. I look for things that work for me and the way my brain works. Realistically, what works for me may drive someone else absolutely bonkers.

I love Speakly but they did have some app update problems that were on and off for a few months, and I think they're stretched very thing as a company, so I didn't mention them in this video. But yes IMO, for actual language acquisition, it's the best app.

so you think there are a sizeable portion of people who enjoy learning a language, not as a means to the end of having gained fluency in a language, but just as a mental exercise?

I have three of them just in my family alone - a kid who likes to dabble in foreign languages, a husband who isn’t super interested but likes to have something to do in stops at work, and my dad who is trying to keep his cognitive function from declining. None of them are worried about fluency.

A personal attack on Evan? So your impression of the video is that Lamont was saying that Duolingo works great, but Evan had been using it wrongly? An interesting take..... Evan keeps talking about the 3 German students from Stuttgart who he travelled with who couldn't speak English, despite having had at least 7 years of English lessons at school, as Germans today do. Was Evans attacking them personally?

The video got out of hand from what I originally wanted it to be. I wanted Evan to be ONE case study, but there ended up being so much about him that I thought I might as well not be coy about it. The reason that Evan is so important to show the (in)effectiveness of Duolingo is that if it were EVER going to work for ANYONE, it would be Evan. He had EVERYTHING on his side when it comes to Duolingo being successful... and after 4 years it results in him barely being about to get a sentence out without saying something in English or saying something completely non-idiomatic and wrong. This is Duolingo's pinup boy... the Michael Jordan of Duolingo... so... yeah.

Where is the value in maintaining a habit that has no positive effect. You may as well maintain the habit of smoking weed every day.

@ketchup901 - exactly. That's why I quit my substantial streak. I was like "This does nothing."

​@@ketchup901smoking weed has a negative effect. Duolingo has a slightly positive effect for me. It makes fun and stops myself to waste time on social media on the toilet for example lol. Because of I would use Instagram I would stay on the app for a much longer time. With duolingo I "train" my French for 3 minutes and close the app. I think that's positive.

In Japanese it is a very decent way to review vocabulary topics you might have forgotten about. The extremely strict translation part of it is infuriating for such a contextual language, but if you already know in advance that it's not "the one way" it can be a decent refresher. There's very common words I embarrassingly forgot even existed because they don't come up in daily life enough, but Duolingo reviews reminded me about.

"But if you need to study the basics of a language in order to be able to engage with it, it's the best option I've found." I get that it only does basics but to me it just does them too SLOWLY. Almost like they're incentivised to keep you on the app as long as possible.

Just buy a damn textbook. It has all the same information, sorted, organized, and arranged for easy comprehension. Read it for 5 minutes a day. Then spend the rest of your time memorizing vocab and consuming content. Duolingo is garbage.

@@WhiteScorpio2 >If you've read my comment, you would know that I already did and that I've found it much less helpful than Duolingo. Then you're honestly using a textbook wrong. A textbook will explain all the grammar to you, and should have loads of examples sentences and exercises to practice on, which you seem to value. >And it's obvious why: practicing in putting sentences together is much better for learning the rule This is a misguided idea. You don't learn grammar rules via output practice. You learn grammar rules by reading and listening to content - you listen so much that you start developing an intuition for what sounds right or wrong. You can speed this process up by reading and learning about the grammar (like looking at conjugation tables for different tenses), but all the grammar drills in the world aren't going to make you fluent. You need to be able to comprehend before you output. >I've never spent any time in any of the languages I've learnt deliberately memorizing vocab. Well, you're missing out. Memorizing vocab is like the easiest thing to do to rapidly increase your comprehension, and it's basically THE limiting factor in reaching higher levels of fluency. Whenever I interact with a language, I never feel like my grammar is holding me back, it's always my active and passive vocabularies. >How would I consume the content if I don't yet understand the grammar? You should focus on learning the basic grammar of a language and it's ~100-200 most common words before consuming content. This can be done incredibly quickly though. And with western European languages, the overlap between languages is massive, grammar and vocabulary both. Learning the present, past, future tense, the basic conjugations, subject-verb-object word order, just enough of the basics to be able to survive once you start consuming. It sounds scary at first, but it gets very easy to consume stuff very quickly. And you start with stuff aimed at kids, not adult content. Think watching Peppa Pig and reading graded readers. >"Duolingo is garbage." >Why? You supposedly just watched a whole 20 minite video where Lamont just explained it to you.

@@WhiteScorpio2 I don't have time to get into a long winded argument with you over this. All I'll say is that immersion (consuming content) with supplement from a textbook (to understand grammar points and provide starting vocab) does everything you want. You say that after completing DuoLingo you were ready to consume content you wanted. This is a lie. DL leaves you at roughly a B1 level at best - and your listening and reading skills will be garbage, as you've only been exposed to simple single sentences with not context. Consuming a native level TV show takes a lot of practice to work up to. Reading an adult novel takes a 10k+ vocabularly size - DL does maybe 2k words by its own estimation, and it counts conjugations as separate words. My methods, memorizing 200 words and learning the basic grammar concepts, take no more than two weeks. Imagine being able to watch content in your target language in a week! Meanwhile, people like yourself slave over DL for months or years, so that they can finally graduate to attempting to watch or read content. I went from watching kids TV shows to soap operas and reading Harry Potter in less than 4 months. Solely by lightly reading a textbook as needed, doing daily Anki and learning 20 new words a day, and spending the rest of my time watching kids TV shows, reading graded readers, and otherwise consuming content. I mean this sincerely - no one who has ever learned a language to any level of real fluency thinks DL was that helpful. All the people who do think it's worthwhile generally suck at their target language. They think they know a language, but they're probably B1 or B2 at best, and severely overestimate their abilities. It takes thousands of hours to master a language - why would you waste 400+ hours playing a language learning game that's only useful for A1/A2 level learning? You should be able to move beyond DL in a few short weeks.

​@@lazydictionary only spoke truth🔥

In that case I'd say keep up the Duolingo. Also I hope you get well soon!

Actually most of the smaller languages were just community created anyway. It was only ever the "big guys" (German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese) that had paid developers. I mean they had Klingon YEARS before they had Finnish so... yeah, you're just lucky that they never got Icelandic I guess!

Same here! I guess I'm lucky Nepaali isn't on their radar

I commented under this video several months ago and I would like to add that that not all of us a looking to achieve fluency as fast as possible, which is why I personally have no problem strolling through the airport and stopping by the bookstores and snack stores... but I guess someone who isn't as casual and is looking to learn the target language faster may feel disappointed and frustrated by all the hours/days they put into DL. Luckily that's not me but as I said before Duo slowly removing features that I loved like community discussion and extensive grammar tips and paywalling things like no heart lessons feels like the app just isn't the same...

Harming ppl? Lmao . y'all are so full of it. You are an ADULT!!!

Ì wouldn't agree that Evan's videos are particularly harmful, really, BUT... on the topic of being an adult... that response... wow... my 12 year old is actually more mature than that.

I'm not at all saying that people are not allowed to use Duolingo for 5 minutes a day, or even learn a language for 5 minutes a day. But Evan used it for nearly an HOUR a day (average) for four years and then couldn't make a basic sentence. Using Speakly and GermanPod101 for that long, you'd be nearing C1 in German.

I'm kinda conflicted on that. I came around watching Evan's response only now and he does have a point. Though I agree regarding the personal attacks. I noticed that as well. I guess he was offended, which he has every right to be. His goal is very much different from Lamont's and I can understand why he doesn't agree with him. And I understand, it probably doesn't feel good seeing your face on another guy's thumbnail, with some claims you just don't agree with. No need for personal attacks of course. But tbh, I understand why he felt, you were being harsh on him, Lamont. Looking forward to your response :) Regarding Duolingo: I have used it in the past, especially with languages where there just aren't any other resources. But I can ascertain it really is slow, so if efficiency is your goal, you probably need to find something else. As a german, I have to say, Evan's German really is good. Especially when his goal is learning just for fun, as he says. It's far from perfect, but it's good. I understand why he doesn't feel the need to be judged by people with different goals, though, tbh. He has a point there.

I do think Evan has some good points, or at least, points that I can see how he would think are right, given what he's seen. My video is far from perfect, even in terms of what I wanted to make. There were mulitple bits re-written, and even the whole video was actually re-shot because the initial video just wasn't really... anything at all. It's a flawed piece of content, as basically every piece of content is, at least if it's not by James Jani. So some parts of it give the wrong idea, and since Evan is the central theme of the video, I can see why he was upset. But many many videos have been made about me, calling me far worse than anything I called Evan. And I just ignore them, because they are garbage. So I'm surprised that Evan went out of his way to make this long video that only brings more attention to my own. A KZfaqr of his experience should know better. But anyway... I am learning about 60% towards a response now, still not certain that I'll do one.

Japanese sentence structure on Duolingo is usually extremely strict compared to real life use. It's probably a good way to get the particles/SOV structure in your brain, but by intermediate level you will know how free the language really can be, but Duolingo due to its game app setup doesn't usually offer that freedom.

​@@thedude3445that is what anime is for

Maybe Hunger Games? They're in lots of languages.

Yes. I agree that someone who claims to be fluent in a language after 3 years of using an app needs to adjust their expectations.

100 Day Duolingo Update: Let's start with the fun part. I am now able to say basic phrases like hello and goodbye to my Polish best friend in Polish. He introduced me to a family member where the only mutual language was Polish. We couldn't say much to each other, but they really appreciated the effort I made, and we ended up having a good time regardless. Sadly, the daily Duolingo grind has killed my motivation to keep playing with the app, and I think I'm ready to let the streak end. In the first month or two, I studied my languages consistently: I took notes, gave myself homework, and made a lot of effort when working on the listening exercises. After a while, I stopped doing all of those activities, and my learning has halted. There is some minor progress every day, but it's like nothing sticks without me teaching myself the languages. I still think it's possible for Duolingo as a support when learning a new language, but I see that I can't get it to work for me without using professional language teaching/learning methods at the same time.

I also think I'm gonna quit it. It has only gotten me "XP"

Wow, I really appreciate you taking the time to explain your language learning journey. I read all of it, and it wasn’t too long! I’m lucky enough to have a partner who is patient and will help me speak their language. But I don’t think that is the common case.

Thank you! Honestly it went through three iterations, each of which were unrecognisable from the other two, so it ended up being maybe a bit "too much video" in one video.

It does it slower than something like Drops or Anki or Clozemaster or Memrise

@@vytahI think that comes down purely to personal preference. I like the aesthetics of duo over Memrise and it gets me to spend more time on language learning than if I were to just use Memrise. I do like and use language drops, but unfortunately the free version is very limited. It’s all about what works for you. Whatever gets you to spend more time.

nah. grammar is a lot more important and i'd argue harder. especially for people learning languages that are less similar to ones they already know, like an english speaker learning japanese or a turkish speaker learning spanish. vocab is important obviously but learning vocab as "word in target -> word in native" is NOT HELPFUL AT ALL.

Grammar is important and I am studying that with a teacher. But a teacher can’t teach vocabulary

@@eyalben what is that supposed to prove, please explain? also, i have never learned anything from my experiences with teachers in language learning, it simply never worked. will i go around presenting that as proof for anything?

Nobody is saying that duolingo will make you fluent… Except for duolingo themselves, just searching their name up on google and the first thing that pops up is “Duolingo - The world's best way to learn a language”. In the language learning space duolingo is mostly regarded as either a toy, a beginners playground, or as you said, a tiny boost from the sidelines. Step out of that zone and into the general population the you will notice people thinking that duolingo will actually make them learn a language..

Yeah, no one is saying that Duolingo will make you fluent... Except the guy who's biggest videos, with close to a million views each, are about Duolingo making you fluent... oh and Duolingo. BUT ONLY THOSE TWO WITH BIG PLATFORMS OK!

Do too much relativism and your brain will ooze out of your head, and you'll be unable to draw any conclusions. Everything-is-validism is poison for being able to evaluate the world correctly. > Some people learn quicker than others and some learn slower than others. True. That's called general intelligence and some measure of interest. Doesn't mean Duolingo is a good way to learn for just about anyone. > But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t help to some extent Oh, it helps. The issue is the help just stops at the beginning of a really long trek, and the app is more focused on keeping you addicted than booting you off of it ASAP, which should be the aim of an effective learning method. Like if I wanted to learn Korean, say, it's much more effective to load up say, Refold's new Korean deck, Naver's Korean-English dictionary and 태웅쎔's (te-ung-ssem) Comprehensible Korean channel and just watch the Korean teacher play videogames while trying to figure out what he says. My English is great. All videogames and online forums, zero Duolingo. My Swedish is okayish, I can think and express myself in it, but my vocabulary and knowledge of idioms are limited. All traditional school education with classes near entirely in Swedish, consistently over many years. Zero Duolingo. Among people I know IRL, there's not a single Duolingo user who's even at my level of Swedish at their Duolingo language, nevermind the fluent English. It's not about if you can't glean some benefit from the hours. Absolutely you can. But it's like, say, if I wanted to get in shape, I could stand at my desk. Is that good for me? Sure is. Will it actually turn me into something that doesn't resemble a wheezing, asthmatic dwarf with a Movement score of 1? Never. I have to walk and run a bunch for that. Standing helps, but the benefit is capped, and we only have so much time on this Earth before it's time to go and expire like a magazine subscription. Even easy languages take tons of hours to learn properly, see Language Simp grinding German daily as a job for a month now, or Steve Kauffmann acquiring Mandarin in a year while studying it as a job and then some. If you're not learning for work, can you afford to just sort of waste your time? I think not, if you want some kind of result.

Pay attention next time. Or maybe even watch the video to begin with. The guy said multiple times "I became fluent using nothing but Duolingo". Also Duolingo themselves say "The world's best way to learn a language." Is it REALLY true that no one is saying it will make you fluent? (Of course no one is saying "Like a native" because literally no method ever claims that because it's so easily refutable. I never said that this is what they ARE claiming, so that's a strawman.) Let me ask you, if there is truly NO right OR wrong way of learning a language... What would we call a "way of learning languages" which was 100% proven to be 0% effective? We can't call it WRONG... So what do we call it?

From their fan-base, it looks pretty true too.