Hi all,
I want to try to learn Spanish on my own, right now I barely know anything. Asking in the libre culture community because I know a common answer is duolingo but I don’t want to install an app store other than f-droid.
Hi all,
I want to try to learn Spanish on my own, right now I barely know anything. Asking in the libre culture community because I know a common answer is duolingo but I don’t want to install an app store other than f-droid.
Duolinguo feels more like a very annoying ad than a learning tool, often under-explaining what it tries to teach while heavily penalizing and shaming the user for getting things wrong.
What I would suggest, other than hiring an actual teacher, would be to immerse yourself in works from their language, such as music, comics, books, movies, and so on. Also, Spain’s Real Academia Española has a dictionary+conjugator site that is VERY helpful, even for “dialects” such as the Latin America variations (link for the tool is dle.rae.es). Finding someone to try to talk to in Spanish may also help, although getting to know some of the grammar beforehand is advised.
Now, as for either free or FOSS programs specifically for learning the language, sadly, I’m not aware of any.
Your complaints about duolingo are valid but can be mitigated to an extent.
Setting up an ad blocking dns on your phone greatly improves many apps.
As far as being too penalizing, you can get rid of the heart restriction by creating a classroom in duolingo and adding yourself to it. This has to be done in their browser interface, but once done will remove hearts in the app as well.