r/duolingojapanese
Watching everyone else get their course updating, waiting for my turn.
u/vectorhacker — 2 days ago
▲ 86 r/duolingojapanese
This is where I quit, and I'm going to rant about why now.
I originally downloaded Duolingo mostly out of curiosity. I'm a language teacher with a degree in English linguistics, and I've always wanted to learn the ins and outs of a language that really isn't anything like the Indo-European languages, plus I do have an interest in Japanese culture (no, not Anime). I was also curious how the app did what I do for a living, of course.
That should tell you my first problem - for most normal people, having grammar explained to them is what turns them off learning a language, and Duolingo leans heavily into avoiding that to "keep things fun", but for me, that quickly became a source of frustration. I don't want to figure out new grammatical structures from having 100 examples thrown at me, just tell me how stuff works.
But okay. The repetitive drill exercises did do a good job of teaching me how to read Hiragana, and initially it wasn't too hard to figure things out. The more things progressed, though, and the more the sentence structures started to rely on things that are very unfamiliar if all you know is Indo-European languages, the more frustrating that became. And honestly, I think it was the gameification that helped me stick with it regardless.
What also became obvious is that Duolingo is patient zero for the observation that learning is contextual - I can remember a ton of stuff when I'm on the app, but as soon as I'm looking at something else, it feels like it's mostly gone. To an extent where I actually thought it was funny to see it so clearly, but it does highlight another problem with learning a language on an app - you're really just learning how to game the app, not how to speak the language. The same way I have to be careful to teach my students the actual content and not just how to pass the test, I guess.
So I kept going and kept promising myself I would supplement Duolingo with material that actually works for me, but of course I got lazy and never really did.
What really killed it for me, though, was what's happened in the last few months. Plenty of us have complained about the restructuring of the course resulting in being bombarded with unfamiliar vocab, which now turned gaming the app into basically a guessing game, and doing legendary on old units (which I actually did always find useful for review purposes) flat-out impossible. Now I felt like not only did I not understand anything because the app wouldn't explain grammar, I also didn't understand anything because I was signed up midway through a course I'd not actually done.
And then there are the bugs. The app crashes at least once a day, and for some reason the voice recognition, which was always fine, now also doesn't work properly anymore - some of the time. It seems to be worse during the flash card exercises for some reason, and that's not helped by the fact that those are the exercises most affected by the fact that I don't know half the vocab I'm expected to know.
So I've gone from learning a little and having fun to not learning much and having fun to not even having fun with the app anymore, and it's time to quit. Hopefully I'll work up the motivation to replace it with something more suited to my learning style before I forget everything I've learned because it's not nothing, it just isn't much.
u/RustyJalopy — 4 days ago
Japanese course AI words translation ruined everything
Honestly, in 2026, I can’t recommend Duolingo to anyone for learning Japanese anymore. The devs literally killed the app by replacing all the hand-crafted, verified content with AI-generated garbage. Sure, there used to be occasional pronunciation glitches before—like when a word used an Onyomi kanji reading, but the text-to-speech engine read it as Kunyomi, making it sound like total nonsense. But that was rare enough to pass on. Now, though, they’ve outsourced all the word-in-sentence translations to AI, and it completely broke everything.
The AI has zero context for the specific exercise and no clue what words are actually available in the user's word bank. As a result, it spits out translations that are either completely irrelevant (and therefore useless) or straight-up mixes up words. And if you actually trust the AI, you just get flagged for an error.
Here’s a perfect example: a lesson introduces a new word, "hand" (te), written in hiragana. The student has never seen it before and obviously can’t answer correctly without checking the hint. Duolingo tells them that this new word means "and". Now, te-grammar is used as a connector in certain contexts, but the student hasn't even covered that yet. Plus, without a preceding word, it literally cannot mean "and". But the student has no choice but to trust the app and use the translation they were given. They don’t know it’s absolute nonsense... And of course, by pure coincidence, the word bank actually includes "and". So the student memorizes the wrong meaning, follows the app's own instructions, and still gets the answer wrong. Trust in the app is completely shattered.
In the pre-AI era, translations were done by hand. The curriculum creators knew for a fact that if "hand" had to be written in kana for a lesson, they did it simply to make things easier for the learner, and it still meant "hand"—even if it looked identical to the grammatical te connector. Back then, you could be sure the translation was correct because it was manually tailored to that specific context.
When you open a learning app, you expect it not to lie to you or trip you up at every step. But that’s exactly what’s happening now. And these aren’t isolated incidents; it’s everywhere. About 50% of all hints and translations now have absolutely nothing to do with the actual tasks. That’s not just bad; it’s a dealbreaker. It’s enough to make you completely drop Duolingo as a learning source. Because now, with a 50/50 chance, you’re either learning nothing or memorizing wrong information, which means you’ll have to spend a long time unlearning those bad habits later. Here is just another example of how AI slop turns a perfectly functional system into something completely unusable.
P.S. Their new feature with AI grammar explanations is also a massive trainwreck. It gives you rules and translations you haven't learned (or shouldn't even know yet), or tries to backtrack and explain a correct answer with completely wrong logic.
u/IndependenceStill591 — 4 days ago
▲ 17 r/duolingojapanese
Left feeling very confused and tired after course update...
Just got the new update (yay?) and really felt the urge to vent.
I've gone from mid Section 5 Unit 35 (Schedule Plans) to having auto-completed(?) Section 5 Unit 185 (Weather: Discuss safety in storms) - very confusing.
Went back to review the first part of this new Unit 185 to see if I knew the content since I'd previously had a unit on disasters (S5 U31 iirc) which involved words like typhoon (台風) I thought might be relevant. Nope. There was a focus on edges of things like a table (端 - which; I'm just finding out while writing this; is misspelled in the course?!), getting in touch (連絡) and the word abandon (見捨てます) all of which I haven't seen before. Starting to feel like I've wasted a lot of time on this app...
Not only that; on my Kanji page I've apparently unlocked to Section 5 Unit 37, but only partially - not where I am/was. The previous Units now have different names which don't relate to the new course units; take Unit 35 again: it was "Schedule Plans" now it's "Seasons: Show new students around" and on the Kanji page it's now called "Ask what's in a dish". AND. According to the Kanji page, it only continues with Kanji up to Unit 52 before jumping to Section 6. There are 260 units now in Section 5. Now the app just looks like a buggy mess.
I feel sorry for the people who had this change two months ago as I am currently wallowing in the same BUGGY, confusing mess of a course as I reconsider my 700+ Streak.
There is perhaps a ray of hope though. 3 "Extra Units": Course update: Learn new words. I'm posting this now and will update (or delete idk yet) after I'm done with the Extra units... just... not today.
u/Valkren9 — 4 days ago
▲ 160 r/duolingojapanese
Finally!!!
Duolingo FINALLY changed the translation of 1年生 from ‘freshman’ to the proper term, ‘first-year student’. Thank you!
u/KillerCockapoo — 5 days ago
Was there something wrong?
I inputted the exact answer but it didn't work.
u/Fantastic-Try-6879 — 6 days ago
▲ 14 r/duolingojapanese
Half-way through section 4 (which is supposed to be an A2/N4 equivalent) and I still haven't gotten N5 grammar like plain forms and much more (not even half the genki 1 grammar). Is this normal? It's been mostly kanji in this section.
u/lordthundy — 7 days ago
▲ 17 r/duolingojapanese
?
Why did they split まいにち into まいに and ち? „Day“ means にち(日) right? Is that their mistake or am I missing something?
u/KairoArchive — 8 days ago
Multiple Meanings
I know this sentence actually makes sense but shouldn't it be :
On fall I often go to Kyoto ?
According to the learning context....
u/Historical_Room7949 — 9 days ago
Is there a way to "opt in" to receive the new update early.
Been waiting for it for a while now.
u/fkdjgfkldjgodfigj — 6 days ago
The Duolingo owl gave me 980 days straight of Japanese lessons. In 20 days we are going to celebrate 1,000 days together. This is the healthiest relationship I’ve ever had.😅😅
u/Kusha_l01 — 8 days ago
I got new japanese course today May 15
I got the new duolingo japanese course today May 15 which has 8 sections. It has alot more stories now.
Anyone got the new updated course today or this week?
u/winniebillerica — 7 days ago
Ummm...
Turns out they didn't say いえ, they said いえ because I picked いえ, but the answer was いえ
u/tromperz — 7 days ago
Duolingo didn't teach me this! (Rant)
I'm finally going to point this out. Since the big update for the Japanese course, it has been giving me these words expecting me to know them when I have never seen them before. What does 会いましょう even mean? The least it could have done is teaching me these words before just giving them to me like this. If they're going to update the course to make it more "accurate", then just add a couple new sections.
u/Exact-Art-2603 — 10 days ago
Looking for friends
Hey everyone, I'm looking to connect with some fellow Duolingo Japanese learners! 🇯🇵 It would be awesome to find people to practice with or just chat about our language learning journeys. Feel free to reach out! 🗣️😊 #Duolingo #JapaneseLearning
u/Barbarosa313 — 9 days ago
I only have 8 people in my diamond league this week
u/naheuytheotter — 10 days ago