Is Duolingo Really a Good Way to Study Japanese? | A Japanese Man Reacts to Duolingo

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My problem with Duolingo is that my family was kidnapped after I missed a single lesson and it’s a bit too strict

My problem with duolingo is that my brain uses more efficient heuristics for determining the correct answers. So instead of thinking about what is correct, I just know what to choose because duolingo uses the same pattern/structure for everything.
Eventually the repetition does start to take hold. But I have to make an effort to really study each exercise. Otherwise it just becomes a japanese language themed puzzle game to me

One time I was talking in Japanese to my friend who takes Japanese classes, and he was actually really confused with how casual the words that I learned were and said that it could be possibly insulting to a stranger. Thanks for the insight.

Shogo should make an app to teach us

A lot of people miss this, but every single question on Duolingo has a comment section. You can access by pressing the discuss button after answering the question. In the comments a lot of native Japanese speakers break down the sentence, explain the grammar and the formality of words.

Finally a ESclipsr that promotes Duolingo! Almost everyone says it's bad, but for me I used it for German a while ago, and when I started learning Japanese it made me hooked, and the system to learn Kana helped me memorize every character. I use Duolingo as a supplement to some textbooks and workbooks that I have. No access to a teacher, but I surround myself in Japanese to learn, and Duolingo was a motivator for me.

For me the biggest problem with DuoLingo is that it gets really tedious after a while. It's the same kind of exercises over and over. The upside is the stories are really cute, and there are classes that are varying in quality, but at least you can start talking to real people. I've done a few of the beginner conversation classes, and they're okay! Another thing is that the progress quizzes are SO much harder than the material you're learning.

For me, the fact that you don’t really learn if a word is slang or keigo is one of the reasons I switched to French. I felt so awkward and thought I should just go back to the Genki textbooks

You know that the Japanese grammar is difficult when even a native speaker is having a difficult moment with it.

Actually I've been using Duolingo for 4 years to learn Japanese daily. But, this app gives you a repetition of exercises and it's very basic. And as you say it is an easy to go app to keep in touch with the language but not really useful for JLPT proficiency tests levels. I also use NHK world and NHK easy Japanese news to read which is useful to strengthen the difficult version while reading different news in Japanese.

I finished the Japanese course and am now studying spanish. I'm on a 1137 day streak. It's not perfect but it got me somewhat conversational and I continue to review the lessons!

This is the first Duolingo reaction video I've seen that isn't also trying to sell its own language learning product, and 99% of those act like it's not great for learning.

I had a 180 day streak on Duolingo, but when I started studying Japanese in Japan, it became more stressful to keep it going. The biggest problem with Duolingo is that it doesn’t explain why things are the way they are, you just kinda have to figure it out on your own.

I like Duolingo, but my fear when speaking other languages is accidentally offending people or starting in Japanese panicking then accidentally mixing in German and Spanish. The other problem is remembering what I learned. However, I learned more and retained more with Duolingo than books, and Pimslur.
Great video though.
Thank you so much 💖

I would never suggest ONLY Duolingo for learning Japanese. I enjoy using it, but I also use wanikani for kanji/vocab and satori reader for grammar/vocab. What I also like about Duolingo is that it's free, meaning a lot more people can mess around with different languages.

One thing that wasn't mentioned here was the "discussion" section for each exercise. When you finish a sentence building exercise, there will be a speech bubble icon that you can tap and it will show you a discussion about that specific exercise. You will most likely find someone asking a very pertinent question and you will probably find a well researched answer. Other comments will further clarify what was used, and why it was used, and many other things.

Hey, thanks for the contextual video for my duolingo studies! Not sure if you've tried it or had anyone else mention it... I've interacted with or looked up long time players (not sure my sources) and they've recommended that once you get far enough into a language (or if, say, you're a native speaker of the other language!) it's worthwhile to start a second course inside the app that is the flip of what you're otherwise studying. So if you're studying Japanese from the context of English, start a course on English via Japanese. That way you can see both sides of what the languages focus on for structuring and whatnot.
Hope I've offered something beyond two cents, thanks again for the Japanese! It's going to be a long time before I can try learning that language again, but it's been a long term dream for so long it's only a matter of time - so get your license and I might be able to buy your lessons ^_^

I just LOVE your dramatic pronunciation and explaining why something might not work, very entertaining and informative! ❤😂

2:39 shogo remarking "ohhh you can get a daily reminder to make your goal! perfect!" and then moving the mouse very clearly to the block button took me OUT

This was so interesting. I've been studying Japanese on duolingo for a couple years now, and I took beginning Japanese in high school and college, so I feel like I have the basics down pretty solid. But I've been wondering if I should try another program to become more fluent, because I still don't feel like I could have a whole conversation with another person yet. I'll be curious to see what other methods you review!

Another thing I will add is that Duolingo, as adorable as it is, REALLY misses the mark on explaining why things are how they are. It does well in explaining conjugation patterns in languages that have them (i.e. romance languages). However... some really important details... go missing. In French (again, as a native French speaker), we have 3 articles: Definite, indefinite, partitive. They penalize people when they use them incorrectly, but they don't explain why. It's never explained why some nouns take the definitive "I like French" whereas others take the partitive "I want coffee." Someone would need to previously understand the articular parts of speech then learn about French's specific rules that are not like, for example, Spanish's, a cousin language. Just my input. Japanese is beautiful but I'd need to learn from a native speaker

The only issue I have with DouLingo is that it’s very hard to heard differences between words when different accents are used.
I’m trying to learn some Japanese before I go to Japan.

I think duolingo is such a nice tool to introduce a new language to someone. It's not a big deal to learn the whole thing, and it gets a bit tedious further, but sumetimes it's really enjoyable to go back to this app and answer their exercises just to remember some of the basics! ^^

It's great as a companion tool to learn a language, but I think you def need to be following up with some textbook studying to understand context, appropriateness, etc. They methods they use definitely help the info stick way faster than anything else I've used, so I use it to lay a foundation and then build on the knowledge after it's committed to memory. Currently doing Spanish, Japanese, and French. Not confusing or any more difficult than 1 language at a time, tbh!

You can report errors in Duolingo too. So if something is really informal or your translation was right but, for example you used "cash" instead of "money" you can essentially protest and tell them, "No I was right!" Or "This is very informal!" It helps them improve.

I started taking japanese lessons taught by an actual japanese person. I can say that duo did help very much but it really didnt explain why things were said the way they were. My only problem was that i only used duo to keep up my streaks and rankings rather than actually learning so i stopped using it..

One of the frustrating things for me learning Japanese with Duolingo is that the order in which I've been learning words in the first sections is difficult. I'm not learning by 'group', so I can say 1, 2, 3, 4, white, cloudy, dirty, vegetable, etc. But very little in terms of language 'grouping.' It makes it hard to remember what I've learned, since they don't seem to be organized in any way other than how they want you to learn hiragana, but you also don't learn hiragana the same in the main lessons vs in the pure character-lessons! There are some hiragana you don't learn til the end (before you move onto variations), but if you're just in the main lessons they're towards the beginning? It lacks the flow I've had in learning Romance languages.

I use duolingo, and I also get mistakes with the English part, as English is my second language. And it is a little frustrating, but when I started using it, there wasn't a course for Spanish - Japanese

I am a native French and Arabic speaker and I like to use Duolingo just to keep my French in top-shape (and needlessly learn 7384 languages for fun). I live in the states now so there aren’t many French speakers around here. I noticed some of the pronunciation is odd too! I would never pronounce “ien “ as YAH it’s more like YEH… it bothers me so much I’m like “no one says bien like this.” The Arabic is even tougher I’m like “this sounds like I plugged it into Google translate.” Otherwise it’s a really cute app. The stories are fun and the podcasts are interesting

You would make an excellent teacher of Japanese language, your mannerism is so approachable. As for learning the language, I’m visiting unexpectedly and had been studying Portuguese for family reasons. So now I’ve stopped and am trying to focus on what I think I’ll need to be at least polite in Japan. I’d rather learn from you as a native and as a person rather than an indifferent organisation. 😊

Keep in mind that Shogo is from Kyoto and Duolingo is teaching standard Tokyo Japanese.

I think the problem with duo is it uses formal language more than conversational language. I think the idea is to give people basics on which to build using things like watching japanese media, or talking with japanese people

Duolingo actually helped me A LOT for starting off learning japanese, ever since the pandemic and classes being delayed, I had a lot of spare time on my hands so I decided to self-study japanese. A few months of Duolingo mixed with youtube tutorials, anime watching and music listening, I could understand A LITTLE bit of japanese but enough to understand simple conversations.. I still need to learn A LOT of other words and Kanji study using OTHER learning materials.
As of now I can watch some Vtubers and sometimes listen to japanese radio through radiogarden, (radio is tough to listen to, they talk fast for me to follow, but that just means I ain't there yet).

Hi Shogo!
If you use the mobile app you can also learn just hiragana or just katakana.
Then you only get lessons in the symbols and what they mean. It's really interesting and I found
it really helps when you're trying to translate, for example Japanese songs!
You're a real inspiration to all of us thank you for the in-depth video's Shogo!

One small thing tho: Japanese (in Duolingo) is available to English speakers, but not (by default) to Spanish speakers. I am a teacher of English, but my native language (and thus my IP region) is Spanish so I had to switch Duolingo to English so I can access to the Japansee course. That is not because I can't learn Japanse from Spanish, it is because there is no Japanse course written in Spanish in Duolingo.

I recently stopped using Duolingo for Japanese. I started out learning Japanese with Duolingo because I was vaguely curious about learning the language and already had Duolingo on my phone from learning Italian. It helped me learn hiragana and katakana and understand some basics, but the further I got, the less I felt like I was learning. It would often get frustrating with longer sentences where you just forget to put 1 part in, like the section where every sentence is like "It takes 10 minutes to get to the hospital from the station by car" and then the next one is like "Going from the park to the hotel, it takes 5 minutes by car". My wrists would get tired from doing my daily lesson on that section.
And then some things were annoying, like it often requires numbers to be typed as kanji (but I think not always), and sometimes I would dictate the Japanese to my phone, which would always use arabic numerals, and sometimes I wouldn't notice, or I'd have to go and replace all of them with kanji. Then there are the cases where the same word or construct does or doesn't accept a certain translation in a different section based on what lesson they're trying to teach, but then when doing review practice, you don't know which section it came from.
But the main problem I had was that it got to the point where it was no longer the best use of my time towards improving my Japanese, but I had trouble stopping it, almost like an addiction because at that point I had a streak of over 1,000 days and I didn't want to break it. But I finally stopped and started trying immersion instead. Honestly, for how long I was doing it, I can't even understand most sentences I hear, so it really wasn't working beyond making me feel like I was making progress.

The problem with DuoLingo is that it almost never takes you out of your comfort zone, making real situations be an impossible challenge even for someone that's practiced many hours in DuoLingo. Real word usage and input, even if simulated, is by far the strongest method to learn languages.

Would definitely be happy learning Japanese from Shogo, hopefully lessons come soon

Learning the Time absolutely destroys me for some reason. I struggle so badly with it.
I’d love to take up actual classes one day but until my wallet and my schedule allows it, Duolingo will do 💖

I picked up Duolingo Japanese again-this is maybe my third time around? I’ve used it for German and Ukrainian before.
At least Duolingo has improved somewhat over the years. When I first tried Japanese there, the program was the same for all languages. And they threw out Hiragana and Katakana with no real explanation of what any of it was.
It’s better this time around. They’re trying to introduce Hiragana and Katakana from the beginning. They offer romaji in tiny letters and make the Japanese characters more prominent. And they have a separate section to show how to write in Hiragana and Katakana.

If you got your language license I would happily be one of your first students, currently trying to study hiragana and katakana before delving too deep into words so I can learn IN Japanese writing instead of English letters. Best of luck to you! Although I'm sure your skill will be more then enough to earn your license!

You better watch your back boy😶
Ps: For who are whining about getting their relatives, lovers and friends you should have your lessons in time amd not miss the notification or else that wouldn't happen😶
Ps: Thank you for using Duolingo😊❤️

As someone that is currently using DuoLingo, I found Shogo's "Mistakes" to be perfectly indicative of the experience. Typos or Unintended entry (do not the feed the animals), Narrow or Inflexible translations, or strict vs colloquial translations. Sometimes it is very easy to understand a sentence and be completely unsure as to how Duo will accept an answer.
In the Skip Ahead test, Shogo had 3 Hearts, which is not the case for most lessons. While Mobile does have a hearts system that replenishes over time, PC does not have such a hindrance and you can make many mistakes.

I am currently learning Japanese as my 2023 resolution and I do use Duolingo. It's fun and I like the way it's with the i+1 method, but it can be tedious at times. I've been recommended Memrise as well who has videos on how to write the characters or people say the word in question. Also thank you ESclips for the recommendation of your channel!

I have gone through soooo many “on the go” apps and duolingo is something that definitely helps with my studies to GO ALONG with my Genki Books.
I also enjoy the competitive aspect of the “leagues” and that’s basically a global leaderboard and you compete throughout the week for earning XP. You are seeing real people’s profile photo and username with a score right next to there name. I love competition and it’s a great motivator. ESPECIALLY when I first started.

I've been using Duolingo to study Ukranian. I studied German in college, and there is heavy study on gender, cases, articles, and conjugations. But this doesn't appear much in Duolingo. I've had to understand there are different forms of pronouns and even conjunctions by my previous language learning. Having charts for these can help distinguish one from the other.
That could be the reason it's tedious to a lot of people. In English we don't have so much emphasis on genders for inanimate objects. And we have prepositions that determine case, like to or for. And the word "and" only has one form in English, while I've encountered two so far in Ukranian.
I'd supplement first with cases, conjugations, and genders. Have some tables to guide you.

I wanted to thank you because I find your videos truly amazing and useful, also you always make my day.
P.s. when you make Inu-chan speak I always smile and laugh a lot. Please take care and keep going❤

I am trying to learn Japanese with duolingo and my main issue is to actually understand the correct way of putting sentences together. Love your videos btw!

I've been on DuoLingo specifically for Japanese for two years now -- I adore it. I know it's not perfect because language through an app just can't be, but it follows alongside some of the textbooks I have and threw Kanji at me really early on, which I super appreciated.
I think it's important to note that no one should ever use one single source for learning. Even Duolingo suggests using other sources to supplement, but it keeps me coming back every single day and even teaches me newer references that a textbook wouldn't.

For me the biggest problem with DuoLingo is gets really tedious after a while it’s the same kind of exercises over the upside is the stories are varying in quality, but at least you can start taking to real people I’ve done a few of the beginner conversation class and they’re okay! Another thing is that the programs quizzes are SO much harder than the material you’re learning

Shogo made me feel very motivated when I first saw him on ESclips, he didn't only motivate me to study Japanese but also motivate me to study normal school subjects such as math since I really wanna be a teacher in Japan. Shogo is the best example for motivation in my opinion.

Hey, I really recommended Renshu for learning. It's a very complete app for learning Japanase.
There's a community behind it that helps you with mnemotecnics for remmembering Katakana, Hiragana amd Kanji, they come with examples, pronunciation and writing practice. Also, it has lessons of grammar which breaks the sentece and explains it to you, there's always a tab where the community also explains!
In addition, there's a dictionary integrated and every lesson you complete they reward you with a new word.
There are plenty of other features and games!
Even tho it's really confusing at first, I really recommend it. ❤

You should try out the feature where you can learn かな characters and review and go over them. Now that I am starting to learn Japanese again, all the characters from Duolingo that I had gone over I remember completely and are helping when I'm learning かな again now

I’ve always said that language is a forest, and each book, person, program or other lesson is a path in that forest. You cannot learn the entire forest from one path 🙏💕

The absolute best advice I can give to any learner of Japanese is to learn Kanji as soon as possible. You should walk out of semester one with 300 kanji, semester two with 800. The sooner you learn Kanji, the sooner the language goes from random sounds to actual meaning. Compare もっています to 持って在す (I know 在す is an anachronism). One is just sounds, the other is communicating a person is literally in the act of holding something in their hands.

Мне дуолингво понравилось тем что есть аудирование. Не в каждом обучающем приложении можно найти озвучку. Плюс, с дуолингво просто начать и легко втянуться в изучение языка. Тебе дают основы, некоторую базу, тот же алфавит, с которой потом намного проще самостоятельно изучать язык по более серьёзному учебнику. Мне нравится подход, когда я сначала заучиваю определённую конструкцию, а после узнаю, почему она построена именно так. Наоборот почему-то хуже запоминается. И да, сова старается, поддерживает)))

I use Duolingo atm mostly to not lose much of what I learned when I lived in Japan, to get some grammer and such back. And slowly stepping forward in my own speed. Hope I one day feel comfortable enough to open my Genki and Minna no Nihongo books again XD

I'm too busy studying German, so I haven't dabbed in the Japanese lessons.
Duolingo is very animated and beautiful in the atmosphere perspective but in some exercises it feels all like fill in the blanks and mainly multiple choices.
It should for one teach you to the alphabets then the pronunciation to finaly leading into conversations in basics.
It's a fun app but there are several crucial elements missing as a learning language app.

I have been using it to help me learn Russian and I personally think it is great. Within five units I have effectively learned how to sound out sentences and phrases just by reading the Cyrillic. I am nowhere near fluent, however I can use translating apps to figure out the structure of what I am trying to say and then use the knowledge I currently have for pronunciation. I find that the weirdness of some of the phrases and sentences is also very entertaining and forces you to really pay attention to what is being said. One of the sentences I already got was " there is a girl in my luggage"

I started learning Japanese on Duolingo and switched to Spanish. Honestly, if Japanese had as much care and attention paid to it as Spanish does with the app, I would have stayed with it. There are Hiragana and Katakana flashcards that ask you to draw the figures, but I'd like the same for the Kanji in the lessons as well.

Thank you for you perspective on Duolingo. It is as I exected, and one would need to supplement learning with native speakers. That, to me, is to be expected. If you can do Rosetta Stone next Please I would appreciate.

Interesting; your first encounter with the app was after their big redesign. I’ve been using it for Italian, and each of the little check marks used to be grouped into topics, so you’d do 5 sets of lessons just on household Objects before moving on to a practice sets on a new verb tense, with tips and tutorials for only that idea; now they pepper in about 5/6 of these topics into each checkmark of the units. I’m sure it would have been better if i had started i the new method, but making the switch was hard for me; i went from focused vocabulary and practice sets to the new method where i couldn’t see a clear pattern of organization. The new way made it harder for me to stay motivated, but you seem to like it.

Just got around to this video, very interesting. I’ve been trying to learn Japanese with the LingoDeer and Drops apps, would be very interesting to see you review those. LingoDeer is similar to Duolingo (but people say it’s better, and the company behind it says there’s scientific research behind it), and Drops is a vocabulary trainer app (similar to Anki, I think).

I'm using DuoLingo to learn Nihongo and I'm enjoying it. It is starting to soak in. I second some of the comments that many of the exercises are formulaic and I need to start working more on the Hiragana and Katakana. Yes, there are many different trucks Duolingo uses to encourage using the app and learning. I've stopped playing non-card games on my phone swapping with the Japanese lessons.

As someone who has 300+ days in Japanese duolingo, this was a very fun video to watch! I had to like and sub then and there cause I learned a ton from you today! I also would like to say that it's awesome that uou want to teach Japanese. Hopefully we can all support ad much as we can because you'd make an amazing teacher.

I have 703 day streak on Duolingo, and while it’s helpful for learning vocabulary, I find that it’s only really useful for when you’re just starting out learning Japanese. I was able to master hiragana and katakana really fast because of it, but after that it doesn’t feel like I’m learning much 😅

I really appreciate this video. I have really bad ADHD (medicated), but I just started using Duo Lingo to learn Japanese again after learning basic hiragana several years ago. I find the system *really* helps with the dopamine hits encouraging me to keep going every day.
It's a relief to know I can at least get my foundations with it before moving on to actual textbooks and a real teacher!

Excellent video on the Duolingo Japanese language! Have been studying for about a month now and I too wear a kimono while practicing. You know for immersion and to help my mind absorb it more readily :).

Great video! I've started using Duolingo to brush up on hiragana and katakana, I only had one semester of Japanese in college, so I'm already learning new things. I do have a plan to start supplementing with some textbooks and workbooks I picked up. I'm surprised how much I do remember, even basic grammar. Going to be the start of a long journey, for sure!

Our Japanese friend in Kyoto was not Japanese enough for The Owl; that green bird is ruthless 😂
Jokes aside, this was a fun video. It really explores Duolingo's strengths and weaknesses. I think it's okay for basics, until eventually the harder topics would get harder to properly teach because it fails to convey the very specific nuances the real and living spoken language has. Like you mentioned, the dialects and keigo might not be properly taught through the app/website. Other than that, it's decently flexible regarding some mistakes like typos, but sometimes it's not flexible enough. The excess 'the' was just painful 😅
One last thing, the way you pronounced 'streak' like 'steak' but with an 'r' xD
I'm pretty sure it's pronounced 'streek'. Like 'sneak', 'peak', or 'leak' ^^

I just started learning Japanese 2 days ago so this review really helps. It seems learning the alphabet and a few basics is what Duolingo really helps in but a lot of videos strongly suggest using textbooks and other resources. Thank you for the heads up!

Hi Shogo! I am licensed teacher in my country and I am impressed with your new goal of becoming a certified Japanese language instructor! Teaching has its ups and downs but I know that you'll love every minute of it! More power to youuuuu!

That's amazing that the Japanese days of the week have that meaning. The days in English actually refer back to something elemental as well because each day refers to a planet, and each planet usually has an associated element or metal. Actually, they're the same as the Japanese ones. Monday, Moon (silver), Tuesday, Mars (fire/iron), Wednesday, Mercury (water/quicksilver), Thursday, Jupiter (air and weather and also things that grow/tin), Friday, Venus (relationships and love/copper), Saturday, Saturn (earth/lead). So really, almost identical to the Japanese system in many respects.

Something important to note are the settings you can apply to how you read and answer questions. For instance, you can set the characters to have hiragana pronunciations instead of romaji. You can also swap out the word banks for a blank textbox that lets you just type your answers the way you want (assuming you have a Japanese keyboard)

I really wanna visit japan but i have trouble learning. So i'm using duolingo in order to learn some basic speaking, but completely skipping any writing, hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Maybe this is bad haha, but i really just want to learn to speak. I think duolingo isn't the best way to learn any language, but it is very easy to start learning, but if you really wanna learn a language studying it and taking classes etc is most likely the best. Really great video! Nice to see someone have a more positive view of duolingo and understanding what it is actually for.

I was using both DuoLingo and Memrise to learn Japanese. I need to go back and start over. One thing I have that most folks don't, is close friend who is fluent in Japanese (he reads Japanese novels, written in Japanese). He's great at explaining the language nuances that these learning apps aren't able to. One of these days I want to vacation in Japan and I'd like to be able to converse with people without making a complete fool out of myself.

I've been using a combo of Duolingo and Busuu which I really enjoy. Also picked up Japanese from Zero, the videos that go along are fun. I'm only a month in and I really enjoy it and am looking forward

Edit (5/12/23): it seems Duo has updated their app, and honestly I like it. They have broken down the lessons to make them easier to use-and in addition have different voices to say the sentences you have to type so you get a feel of different accents and talking speeds. For learning hiragana, they have implemented a system where you now to write the hiragana symbols to move on to the next section. I’m glad they’ve made these updates. Makes learning Japanese a lot better 😊
(What’s below is pre-Duolingo update)
To be honest, I’ve been (trying) studying Japanese for like 5 years now, and one of the biggest things I hated about Duolingo was that it taught you sentences or phrases rather than words…like…it didn’t really teach you how to form the sentences (by which I mean why each part of the sentence goes where), nor did it explain the grammar (very well). It also didn’t explain (well) how to say certain phonics (like ra, ro, etc). I downloaded an app called Bunpo and that has helped me more in a month than Duolingo has in 5 years (albeit I was able to remember katakana and hiragana). I also wish it told you how to write the symbols or something.
Not to mention, it would at random substitute hiragana for Kanji and it expected you to know that. Like, I remember when 人 showed up and it took me having to google why you either say “hito” or “jin”, because Duolingo didn’t explain that, but rather expected me to know that.

I've only just started. It has helped me start off though in a fun way that works for my learning style. I don't have a goal to be fluent but to understand and read some Japanese in anime or games. I do dread the kanji though... It looks super intimidating.

I tried it to learn German.
For about 6 weeks, I practiced the same words in different order and occasionally learn a verb that helped me conjugate and string a sentence together.
Then i watched an episode of rick and morty in german, and i had already seen it in english, and i instantly learned several new words.
Duo Lingo is OK if you have no other sources, but if you do, and you definitely do, do literally anything else.

From 4:12 your pronunciation from reading from duolingo sounded exactly like the duolingo japanese language. That was awesome!

You have a wonderful, valuable ESclips channel, Shogo. I'm so impressed by your dedication to education and I love this channel so much. Arigatou gozaimasu!

I currently started learning japanese with Duolingo and so far i am doing okay but i cannot write with only characters..I always use the keyboard that is like the normal one but types in characters if that makes sense-

Shogo don’t be surprised your native language is getting more and more popular thanks to japans soft power= culture,music,movies,manga and anime

Thank you for making this. I started using duolingo to prepare for taking Japanese classes. I've been wondering how accurate it is.

I chose duolingo so i could use it whenever i need to wait for something (bus, doctors appointment, free time etc etc). Im ok if it would take many many years before i could understand Japanese, im not in a hurry.

The names of the days in a week are derived from the seven moving objects in the sky (five inner planets plus sun and moon) both in East Asian and in Graeco-Roman (and later Germanic) traditions.
日 - Sun - Sunday
月 - Moon - Monday
火 - Mars (Tiw/Tyr) - Tuesday
水 - Mercury (Woden/Odin) - Wednesday
木 - Jupiter (Thor) - Thursday
金 - Venus (Frigg) - Friday
土 - Saturn - Saturday

I have been using Duolingo to learn Spanish as an English speaker for over two years daily now and am happy with my progress. I've never gotten this far when it comes to learning a foreign language. I've studied multiple languages in my 29 years of life as it's one of my biggest passions. I want to be able to be fluent or almost completely fluent for job opportunities after I graduate in 2028

The interesting thing is I am using this app to learn Japanese so I'm happy you made this video

I am studying Polish in DuoLingo and a friend is studying Swedish. I delight in earning Polish, and she is very half-happy. It depends on who creates the language lessons. The Polish is often hilarious! My favorite sentence is "Excuse me, I am an apple" which blew "the elephant is drinking milk" right off the scale. I did start with Transparent Language which is free from my library system. Having a dual view helps so much!! And I know native speakers of Polish. A great benefit.

Wow, these early DuoLingo lessons look way better than the stuff I learned. I'm 4 sections into Japanese on DuoLingo, and I have a 62 day streak, but I have not learned any colors, or numbers. I've learned foods, directions, and some really basic sentence structure, along with the alphabets for Hiragana and Katakana.
My roommate is also taking Japanese through DuoLingo, and his lessons are completely different than mine. He did learn numbers, and colors. They seem to have several different beginner courses, and they just throw you into one of them at random.
One of the most annoying things is that I can't retake a specific lesson. If you clear a whole course, you can retake the course and then retake the lessons in that course. A couple days ago I took a lesson that I really struggled with, and although I got through it, I knew that I didn't really learn it very well. I wanted to retake that same lesson again, but the app doesn't let you.

Hi Shogo! Love your content, it helps me calm down and learn all about this wonderful culture!Super epic

The assessment test is a joke xD I studied Japanese for 1 year in Japan and then got too busy to keep up with my Japanese studies. A few months later I wanted to use Duolingo... After using Duolingo daily for 2 years (sometimes for hours a day) I'm still repeating a lot of content. There also are very many mistakes. But Duolingo is easy and fairly fun and definitely better than doing nothing.

I picked up Duolingo Japanese on a whim as I was bored over winter break and got sick of scrolling through Reddit. The gameification is what makes it useful but from the beginning I could tell that running excercises alone wouldn't cut it.
That said I was able to learn hiragana in under a week and can comfortably transliterate it into Romanji

My problem with Duolingo is that it does not talk about kanji. It tests you in the lesson before studying it, and studies the letters randomly

Thank you for this video and I really enjoyed watching your content. You kept making me smile and laugh. Thank you for making this so much fun. Much love, from Canada. And happy new year!

It's been awhile since I've used duolingo so I could be off base here but my biggest complaint of duolingo has always been the lack of grammar explanations, and the fact that they mix both formal and casual into the lesson without a clear explanation or indication of if it's formal or casual. I used to use it to supplement my French lessons in highschool and college and it wasn't that great for me

I try to learn Japanese by duolingo :D It was nice to see you testing it as a native speaker :)

This was a great video! I had used Duolingo in the past for Japanese but I fell off of it a while ago. Thanks for going through it and telling us about it’s pros and cons :D