Is it just me, or is the free version of Duolingo kind of useless? What's a good free resource for learning basic Spanish?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Got a trip to Mexico coming up in a couple weeks, and I’ve been doing the free version of Duolingo to learn some basic Spanish. I’ve gone through quite a few lessons now, and it seems to just be repeating the same basic stuff over and over and over. At first I appreciated the repetition, to help me memorize, but I’m beginning to think it’s just spinning its wheels while it tries to get me to upgrade to their paid version. Is the free version of Duolingo kind of a scam?

Second title question, what other resources might be better to learn some key basic phrases in Spanish in a mere two weeks?

2

I found the free version useful for basic Spanish….like reading signs and basic communication with my neighbor, who speaks no English. I only did it about 15 minutes a day though, and it was a few months before I felt like I’d gotten anything out of it. And I’m sure not fluent.
I don’t know if anything is going to do that in a few lessons.

3

Your best and cheapest bet is listening to YouTube videos in Spanish at 75% speed with closed captions enabled.

4

I don’t want to spoil the party but that is asking a bit too much, I am afraid.
But worry not: many Mexicans can cope with English. You’ll be fine.

For longer term endeavors, I recommend watching movies in Spanish with subtitles on and reading books again you liked in English, but this time in Spanish. You’ll need the dictionary less.

Duolingo is not my cup of tea. Perhaps it works for others, I can’t say anything meaningful about it, sorry.

5

Uhh, that was an aggressively editorial quote clip. I said:

I don’t think that’s too much to learn in two weeks. I already know helpful phrases such as:

  • Una cerveza, por favor.

  • Dónde está el baño?

  • No votamos por Trump!!

I also have a long-term goal to learn Spanish, as I plan to visit other Spanish-speaking countries in the future. So I’m interested in the fundamentals of Spanish grammar as well, not just learning phrases parrot-style.

And I am aware of this as well. We will be in a touristy area where pretty much every resident of Mexico we encounter will likely speak English as well as I do. But I would at least like to make a bit of an effort to speak the language. For the amusement of the locals at my terrible pronunciation, if nothing else.

6

My apologies if it came across as aggressive, I just wanted to point out you may be aiming too high. But the three phrases you write are a very good start!

Long term my recommendation stands: watch movies with subtitles, read books you already know. And speak to people. If they are amused at your pronunciation you already have a good subject to keep on talking.

7

The word ‘aggressive’ was probably not quite the right choice; I just thought you took part of what I said a bit out of context. But I appreciate your advice, though I think that consuming Spanish-language movies and books is best done for immersion after learning the basic grammar rules and gaining vocabulary.

The college and major combo I chose 40+ years ago required 3 semesters of a foreign language, and I chose French back then. I really didn’t like having to learn all the grammar rules, because it took a lot of brain space I needed for my actual major. But I could actually follow the dialogue watching movies and TV shows in French afterward (I used to barely get a French Canadian TV station when I lived in Detroit, Michigan).

8

Someone here recently mentioned a State Department site for learning a foreign language in a hurry.
Ah, here it is:

9

I like Pimsleur. You have to actually do the responses. I was able to spit out whole conversations in Vietnamese without effort.

10

I really like language exchange apps. You can meet native speakers. They aren’t language teachers but it’s good for learning basics

As well as making friends. When I took my son to Italy, I learned some phrases and also make some connections so when we went we actually meet a few of the people. One guy showed me around his town, and others gave me a lot of information which made traveling around much easier.

11

Thanks! I downloaded the ’ FSI Spanish Basic Course’.

Thanks, but after a one week free trial, it’s $15/mo., and I always forget to cancel after the week. If I keep up with learning Spanish long-term, that may be a good way to go, but right now I’m trying to stay with free options-- have enough subscriptions nickel-and-diming me to death right now as it is :smirk:

12

You have to in duolingo too.

I think the main advantage of tools like this is that they give you confidence. It’s great to get over the hump of actually constructing sentences and feeling you’re actually speaking X. It’s both more fun that other learning methods and can push you on to more high level learning more quickly. Oh and the fact that you repeat the most common grammar the most often is way better than traditional teaching methods.

The downside is that if it’s your primary method of learning, there’s a danger of overconfidence, given how narrow the vocabulary tends to be. You also don’t spend enough time practicing the skill of expressing something that you don’t yet have vocabulary for (this is a difficult thing for these methods to test).

I think duolingo and pimsleur get too much hate these days, but it’s worth knowing some of the drawbacks.

13

One credit per 5 lessons on Audiuble. No subscription.

14

The advantage of Duolingo is the ‘gamefication’ of language learning can be really helpful for people whose motivation declines when they find out that learning another language is challenging. In my experience, Spanish is not as complicated in terms of grammar and pronunciation as other languages such as Russian or German - in those languages, the repetition with ‘instant’ correction is really useful to reinforce concepts of gender of nouns, declension of nouns, conjugation of verbs, and choice of case.

Duolingo is not particularly good at correcting pronunciation - in Spanish, you can be pretty fucking sloppy and still have your answer count as ‘correct’. Here, there is nothing like working with a native speaker.

Duolingo does not really offer you any useful skills for conversation, or for writing on your own. It’s simply beyond what their ai and laid off course creators are capable of.

The only difference between the free version and the first level paid subscription is the ads. I doubt the ads make Duolingo Inc. much money in and of themselves - they’re just there to annoy you into paying so you don’t have to deal with them. I haven’t used Duolingo Max because of my strong feelings about ai.

The following is my personal opinion based on having worked seriously on French, German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish (as well as having dabbled in Greek, Hebrew, Gaelic, and Japanese). Your success will depend heavily on your motivation - when I first took French in junior high school, I’m sorry to say that I didn’t care about it at all, and my marks reflected that attitude. Taking German in university, I was more motivated, but I lacked discipline - if you don’t memorize the gender of each new word you encounter, you will have a real struggle when you go to use pronouns. By the time I took Italian and later Russian, I had both the motivation and the discipline, and did quite well. I’ve since gone back in French and German and applied myself accordingly.

With Spanish, it has been mostly Duolingo - I found a conversation class at the New York Public Library, but the level is pretty elementary. I’ve now caught up with a couple of other conversation classes, and I have a weekly Zoom call with a tutor for conversation. I have a score of 71 on Duolingo, but I find that plus $5.00 might get you a pupusa - I certainly cannot converse as easily with the people in my neighbourhood as I can with native French, German, or Italian speakers.

So what I’d recommend - for your short term goal, you might be better off to pick up a Spanish-English phrase book and augment your Duolingo studies with that. Showing the willingness and the interest to learn someone else’s language is at least as important as your ability at a beginner’s level. You may find people on your Mexican trip who are willing to help you advance your language skills.

Longer term, I have found a university course/extension course is the most effective way to get you started in a language - a combination of grammar, practice, conversation, and writing. You can always augment that with podcasts, YouTube videos, reading, songs, and with some Duolingo work. The downside is that it’s more expensive. The upside, for me, at least, is that I have found I progressed much further in studying with fellow human beings.

All of which is just my humble opinion, of course!

And above all, buena suerte en español!

15

Duolingo has probably improved since I last used it, but there must be much better. I am trying to learn Mandarin, and HelloChinese has taught me a couple thousand words, their characters and basic grammar. I have a lot of work to do on pronunciation and tones remaining.

I speak decent Spanish. In only two weeks, what I might recommend is the old Shortcut to Spanish book by Berlitz. It teaches you 100 useful words, which can be lumped into 500 useful phrases. It is a solid approach and doable in two weeks, and would go far combined with a translate app.

You can access it free if you have or sign up for a free membership on archive.org, worth having anyway.