Finnish on Duolingo

inkku · Post by **inkku** » Wed Jun 24, 2020 8:52 am

Duolingo has a beta version of a Finnish course, I have not checked how good it is but at least they keep you reminded...

https://www.duolingo.com/course/fi/en/Learn-Finnish

**Sponsor:**

Valinnan vapaus · Post by **Valinnan vapaus** » Thu Jul 09, 2020 2:34 am

As a Finn, I don't actively use any myself but I have found that the more languages are "supported" by the service provider, the less likely their Finnish course is going to be any good.

Yeah, two minutes and I'm fairly sure this is a piece of trash. It makes me angry. The words are pronounced by a bad voice synthesizer. The information given is irrelevant. STAY AT A DISTANCE OF AT LEAST TWO CONTINENTS FROM THIS PIECE OF CRAP! There are SO many better ways to get started, incl. virtually any tutorials on YouTube. If you want SRS, WordDive is by Finns and is probably fine. I don't know any others.

mdn · Post by **mdn** » Sat Oct 03, 2020 9:50 am

Valinnan vapaus wrote: ↑
Thu Jul 09, 2020 2:34 am
WordDive is by Finns and is probably fine. I don't know any others.

WordDive's problem is that the creator has shifted heavily to English/Swedish (and might be small efforts to other languages, but not Finnish), so Finnish seems is not even somehow maintainable there.

3 years ago it was awesome, and their site information is still from that time.

https://www.worddive.com/en/learn-finnish#courses wrote:Level: Elementary-Advanced (A1-C1)
Duration: 150-400 hours
Size: 2430 study items

Current state:

A lot of words are fully removed. Seems about 1/3, so there are about 1700-1800 words maximum. No room words anymore (makuuhuone etc), almost no numbers, no käytävä, no edessä takana other similar words with dog (I still remember ) It was a big surprise for me - I decided to repeat the full course 1 month ago (on totally new account), I have 1519 permanent words now - and 39 courses finished (of 40, so 97.5% finished). Last 1 is "a Penny for Your Thoughts" - different proverbs which have absolutely crazy translation (without information what it really means in Finnish).
It says up to C1 level, but there is no any course with such level. B2 is maximum.
Absolutely unusable in some languages in dialogs/studies which requires reaction - they show instead any character, so almost impossible to understand what to write. For example: "Minä _____ Tampereella. ."
Update: it is shown strange in the post, should be empty square characters

Anyway, regarding to the topic - I have tried to check Finnish on Duolingo, and it is just a nightmare.

Even modern WordDive is much better.

heretostay · Post by **heretostay** » Sat Oct 03, 2020 4:31 pm

I wanted to help improve it for others, so I went through the entire Duolingo course in Finnish and submitted hundreds of corrections. It is really poorly designed and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

Valinnan vapaus · Post by **Valinnan vapaus** » Sat Oct 10, 2020 9:14 pm

heretostay wrote: ↑
Sat Oct 03, 2020 4:31 pm
I wanted to help improve it for others, so I went through the entire Duolingo course in Finnish and submitted hundreds of corrections. It is really poorly designed and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

Is that even something you SHOULD be doing? It's effectively free work for them... Instead you could have posted everywhere that you can to stop buying it. They don't deserve anything.

Finland Forum

Find information about moving to, living in and life in Finland