

I've pursued the self-study of many languages. I've taken Italian classes for five years, Spanish for three years, and Intensive Catalan for a semester, all in school.

The main disadvantage of Duolingo, and the reason why I question if you can become fully fluent with the platform, is the lack of practice. Completing the placement test can unlock many levels that you may have already mastered, giving you a leg up in the learning process. After a couple of minutes, I opted instead for the intro lesson. It's about five minutes in length and it gets progressively harder. My high school Spanish skills were many years out of use, but I tried to dust them off to take the placement test. I decided to start with Spanish on my desktop and I had two options: Complete the intro lesson or take the placement test. How language learning works Duolingo on desktopĪ great aspect of Duolingo is that you don't have to sign up right away to start learning. Online, Android, iOS, iPad OS, and Windows 11/10.ĭo not need to create an account right away to start learning Spanish, French, English, German, Japanese, Italian, Korean, Hindi, Chinese, Russian, Arabic, Portuguese, Turkish, Dutch, Latin, Swedish, Greek, Irish, Polish, Norwegian, Hebrew, Vietnamese, Hawaiian, High Valyrian, Danish, Indonesian, Romanian, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Czech, Swahili, Hungarian, Ukrainian, Klingon, Navajo, Esperanto, Finnish, Catalan, Haitian Creole, Ukrainian If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. ZDNET's editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping.
