Language learning app Duolingo to mothball Welsh course (nation.cymru)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[-] [email protected] 46 points 11 months ago

That's really sad news 😔. Duolingo started as a great platform to learn languages for free but has more recently focused on profits and a recent IPO. The course content has suffered considerably (speaking from the Spanish course point of view).

I'm actually surprised that they still had volunteers and don't understand the decision to stop the Welsh course being edited. It's not like they make a custom course per language, it's all generic and then the content is different. Anyway, fuck them.

I wonder how hard it would be for the Welsh assembly to recreate a Welsh version of the app on their own? They have talented Devs that could do this and volunteers that already curate the language courses. Cut Duolingo out of the equation.

[-] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago

Enshittification strikes again.

It's becoming clearer and clearer that for-profit companies are not the way to drive quality in the tech sector long term. That they even torch their own products to try speaks volumes.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

for-profit companies are not the way to drive quality ~~in the tech sector~~ long term

FTFY. For profit companies are not a good way to drive quality and innovation long term anywhere. It works short term as small start ups try to be better than the market leaders to get a market share, but then they become a market leader and the best way to make profits is no longer to innovate. Capitalists will tell you that in an ideal world capitalism would drive other small companies to innovate to become market leaders and thus improve things but because of the disproportionate power capital gives in a capitalist system, the market leaders can squash all but the best new innovators, leading to an overall reduction in innovation or worse a reduction in quality because it;s no longer needed to drive profits

[-] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Its almost like we can do better than capitalism

[-] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Ah that sucks, I thought it was great they were doing courses for even some dead languages.

[-] [email protected] 31 points 11 months ago

I wish people contributed to opensource alternatives like LibreLingo with more developers and course creators, it would be up to the community to maintain, not some private company that can dump a course whenever they like with no recourse for the users.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Didn't know that exists. Thanks!

[-] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Looks like an interesting project, only one language supported at the moment though.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Yeah, it needs more contributions

[-] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

1722 day streak on Duolingo Welsh. Bye then Duolingo!

[-] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

It looks like they're not actually removing the course, they're just not intending to update it further in future. So if you've started it you might as well keep going?

Definitely worth writing to your (Westminster and Senedd) representatives about this though to try to put pressure on Duolingo to reconsider.

this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023

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