Best language learning app or tool

[Vice honcho room temperature]

I need to better myself and I want to try and learn a language using something on the phone or the computer. Anyone have any luck using them?

[King Boo]

Duolingo isn't bad for a free one. There's a paid tier too, but you don't need to pay to use it.

I used Babbel for a bit and really liked it, I just couldn't justify spending the money for as much as I was (or wasn't) using it. In a perfect world, I'd still be using that.

[Deleted]

Memrise is good, a tip: while the courses the app offers are okay there’s a lot more courses created by users that you can’t access via app but they are there if you go to the desktop site you can find all the courses and they get added to your app when you click on them.

These apps don’t explain much so there’s a limit to their use but they are a good supplement to review/practice stuff you’ve already studied and the native speaker audio is going to pay off after enough time.

[Lance Uppercut]

Hello talk

It’s like Facebook for language learners

Can direct message people, phone call, or post on a public wall for corrections/comments. Instant translation.

I mean, you need to have some basic foundation of a language like how to read/type staff and how to ask « how do you say  in... » but otherwise it’s been a godsend for me

[Ultimo Gallos]

My uncle swears by Rosetta stone. He tried for years to learn spanish for his job. And he just could never get a grasp on it. He got Rosetta Stone and learned Spanish fairly quickly.

[Raskovnik]

It depends on what kind of language you want to learn. IMO, stuff like Duolingo is perfectly serviceable when learning a romance language. I've tried it out for Spanish, which I already know to a decent degree, just to see how it was and I thought it was satisfactory. I also used it with French for a while and thought it worked well enough for that too, although I've since moved on to Lingvist as they had an annual subscription for over half off on Cyber Monday and I've been enjoying that a lot more.

[Lance Uppercut]

Dec 5, 2020 20:13:54 GMT -5 Ultimo Gallos said:

My uncle swears by Rosetta stone. He tried for years to learn spanish for his job. And he just could never get a grasp on it. He got Rosetta Stone and learned Spanish fairly quickly.

Yeah language nerds tend to mock it, but I found Rosetta Stone great for its pronunciation drills, and hearing the various tones pronunciation over and over. Especially French with all its silent letters and liaisons, and dealing with Chinese

[Sam Punk]

I made a lot of progress using Baselang.

Language Transfer is also great. And it's free.

[Deleted]

I like RS (been years since I used it thou) but it's pricing is a bit much (same as a Prime membership I think) it markets itself to companies as the software to give to their business people before a year long stint in the Paris or Tokyo office and prices itself accordingly, Pimsler does similar.

Although it's not perfect I am impressed with Duolingo's pricing method, the free version is pretty much the same as the paid only with a hearts system not unlike lives in old arcade games, lose your hearts with wrong answers and its game over until a new heart arrives in a couple of hours but you can instantly get new hearts by watching ads or reviewing past lessons, the former increases the apps income allowing it to improve (they update, the Japanese course was a mess when it debuted now on its 3rd or 4th reboot its improved to okayish) and the latter helps the student. A case of a win win interaction between customer and company which is rarer than it should be these days. I believe the owners noticed the correlation between wealth and foreign language ability by noticing that the immigrants with the worse English came from the poorest countries (Central American ones mainly) laudable enough intentions also makes me overlook the odd annoying thing about the app.

[Cranjis McBasketball]

Think bigger and invent your own language.

[Vice honcho room temperature]

Dec 6, 2020 3:05:20 GMT -5 Cranjis McBasketball said:

Think bigger and invent your own language.

I first need to learn Esperanto then I can move from there

[captaincheapshot]

[67 more]

I use Duolingo for Japanese but it's not great while starting, there's a definitely a bit of own research that needs doing alongside it. For example, it teaches you that つ is tsu but doesn't explain what っ is (shows that the vowel is short), so it throws you at first.

[sammyss]

Actually there is no just one best language learning app. There are a number of ways to learn a language and you need to select the method best for you based on your learning style. We don't know your learning style, but you do. Everyone needs different time. Personally I've been learning German for about 5 years and my level was to enough to translate my work documents, so when needed I use thewordpoint.com/services/translation-service/financial-translation-services . And I think that some people only need a book. Others need audio instruction. Others need a book and audio instruction and some need to be immersed to learn and on and on. Choose your style