I started learning Japanese with Duolingo almost 2 years ago and since then I've been using it more or less. However I don't think it's good for Japanese. Duo just throws sentences, that are often weird and not even natural, at you and makes you memorize them instead of explaining anything. Learning with duo takes way longer than actually needed since you can't progress fast and only few vocabs are introduced in the units. Also I think the Kanji learning system could be better since you can't choose what kanjis you wanna practice writing etc. I think it's a useful tool when starting to learn and get to know Japanese, though. But if you are already on a higher level you should concentrate on other, better resources. As I know duo is better for languages without a different alphabet/script like French and spanisch.
As someone who used a duo for a decent bit (learned most of N5 and N4 through it). It works in some aspects more than others. FYI Duo is not bad at EVERYTHING. For one it has a great way to learn hiragana and katakana (and also they recently added kanji). They also use the words in context of a sentence, sometimes the sentences may be weird but they help you understand how it can be used. On top of that their lessons are short meaning that you can learn at whatever pace and place you want. It also is a great fun way for beginners just to get into learning Japanese. Though lack of an explanation can be obstructive but they try to make you learn through trial and error like how a child would and for anything you are confused about you can just look up why it is. The main negatives I noticed that can't be justified are the accents. Although they teach you most of the needed vocab their pronunciation may just be straight up wrong, this is a pretty big issue. Another main issue is not explaining grammar and politeness levels and all of that stuff. they also seem to be biased towards some endings more than others and it can be confusing as to why you answer didn't get accepted or the translation provided is questionable, most the translations and sentence aren't wrong per say but weird, but I will say if you supplement in watching Japanese media you can get used to more natural phrasing but still know the basic grammar structure from Duolingo (of course this isn't the best thing to do but it works). I feel like the duo gets too much hate but I would say that it does have some issues. If you like Duolingo don't let it stop you, it is great for casual learning or for beginners. Though I recommend trying some other programs first as again Duo has some pretty big issues.
I find Duolingo to be good for vocabulary exposure. I use it daily. I don't think it's a good way to really learn grammar, pronunciation or kanji. I do remember that when I took the N5, there was a word that I hadn't come across anywhere at that time except Duo.
I used duo before i started using renshuu. It's good for practicing hiragana and katakana, but anything else is uhhhh my biggest problem with duo is the fact that it kind of. Puts all efficent and good ways of learning behind a paywall. It's not bad to use duo alongside other resources, but as long as you're not soley using it as your main source of learning japanese, you'll be fine.
In my opinion duolingo dosent work for japanese. I haven't used it long so idk if it takes a while to reach this level, but duolingo, in my experience, didn't really teach anything about formal/casual speech or verb conjugation and I feel like a lot of the vocabulary it teaches you early on is kind of useless. well, not "useless", but not the first things you'd learn. japanese is a somewhat complex language - a sentence can have very different implications by just changing how you conjugate a verb, and i find it really interesting so it'd be a shame not to even notice any of that. I think the best way to learn japanese is via some websites made specifically for japanese, dictionaries (choose your own vocab), and renshuu is also helpful. i recommend writing diary entries too as practice and also so you can notice what vocabulary you need to learn.
In my personal opinion, renshuu surpasses duolingo in many aspects. I used duolingo (free version) for a year straight and stopped... among the many things I didn't like were: It has many errors and you have to wait someone to correct them, in the meantime your are learning wrong. A lot of sentences are absurd and too far from reality, something like: "the pink elephant eats hamburgers"... why don't they use more common phrases for real situations?. Since I used the free version, the amount of ads was really annoying.
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I like duolingo, but I feel like it's notifications and games are kinda annoying. Set aside, here's my username : TheMochiQueen
The old Duolingo including sentence discussions was great. The way it is now, it's almost completely worthless. I keep going because of my streak but I don't expect to learn anything new there. It's just a few additional sentences additionally to my main non-Duolingo learning sources.
I honestly don’t think duolingo is very good for learning Japanese at all. Most of the time, you don’t know the meaning of the words that they’re teaching you and the things that they teach you are limited as you have to spend more than a year just to learn basic Japanese.
I don’t like Duolingo anymore for learning Japanese because they usually teach grammar without explaining it, which makes understanding sentences sooooo hard(´；Д；`) The kanji learning feature also doesn’t teach things like the meaning of radicals or what they look like in different parts of the kanji, which makes me feel so sorry for people who don’t have renshuu The design of the app is ok, and it’s really well made, but there’s no place to ask questions or learn about the culture of Japan like in renshuu’s forums. The lessons in Duolingo are nice and short, but then again, what’s the point of even doing a lesson if it doesn’t teach you anything. Maybe some other languages can be taught by the Duolingo method, but definitely not Japanese.
I tried Duolingo years ago and did not enjoy getting inundated with emails and notifications every single day, so I quit using it. I haven't heard many good things about Duolingo's learning structure, probably because it doesn't offer a lot of flexibility and the app tries to force you to buy things and uses an annoying "life" system. I prefer to study at my own pace without feeling pressured to study every day to maintain some gamified "streak."
Duolingo is a fun app with lots of little features. It's great for learning the basics of Japanese but will not get you completely fluent. There's no real lesson structure it's just chucking random things in your face. Still it has a good purpose. My username is RhiannonR980. Happy learning!
I was learning Japanese through duolingo sometime between February 2023 - July 2023. And it seemed fun at first, until at around April I started to realize how slow it was. I knew about 75 vocab but I didn't know any kanji and I only knew about half of hiragana and katakana. I was doing about 3 lessons every day. I didn't know many grammar expressions, the only verb I knew was desu and I didn't know how to conjugate it in any way. When I watched a youtube video about Japanese particles I finally realized how difficult the Japanese language really is. It took me a few months to get to unit 7 on duolingo and while it taught me things slowly up until now, now it was teaching me about 5 words every lesson and a few kanji. I then got scared because I was used to duolingo teaching me things slowly and so I felt that this was too much, and I quit learning Japanese entirely. I got back to learning Japanese in February 2024 and now I am using renshuu instead.
my biggest problem with duo is the fact that it kind of. Puts all efficent and good ways of learning behind a paywall. It's not bad to use duo alongside other resources, but as long as you're not soley using it as your main source of learning japanese, you'll be fine.
The design of the app is ok, and it’s really well made, but there’s no place to ask questions or learn about the culture of Japan like in renshuu’s forums. The lessons in Duolingo are nice and short, but then again, what’s the point of even doing a lesson if it doesn’t teach you anything. Maybe some other languages can be taught by the Duolingo method, but definitely not Japanese.
