@alsvha my very limited experience trying to learn some basic Russian: Duolingo is utterly useless, Babel is ok. It has way less gamification and actually explains things to you.

I think at some point you need to try to talk to native speakers. I have heard good things (but not tried myself) about italki for this, in case native speakers are not around you.

@alsvha I saw that you’ve gotten into K-pop. If you’d like to focus on Korean, I found the “Quick Korean” YouTube channel helpful. Its content consists of four courses taught by the Cyber University of Korea. The first is available in multiple languages, but the other three are in Korean only (though subtitles can be enabled). The easiest way to find them is to go to the channel’s playlists and look for 바른 한국어. Searching for that will also pull up the channel directly.

If gamification is helpful, I would recommend LingoDeer for its focus on grammar. Some languages, like Korean, have more content than others, but the foundation I’ve gotten from the courses I’ve gone through has been enough to either give me the confidence to use a language outright on something like HelloTalk or to facilitate my search for books or other resources.

@alsvha

Search in youtube for: Easy <language you're interested in>

E.g. Easy Brazilian Portuguese

(but something like Duolingo might be useful to learn the basics first)

@alsvha

If you're looking for a more general language learning app, Babbel could be a good an alternative to Duolingo, but with less gamification. The company is based in Berlin and employs thousands of people.

Since I read in another comment that you would like to learn German, you could try the free version of Lingoni first (lingoni.com/). The founder has a YouTube channel where she provides free lessons and explains concepts really well: youtube.com/@lingoniGERMAN. If you subscribe to language teachers like her (she has build her own platform later and hired other teachers), you won't be giving your money to corporations that are investing heavily in AI to replace language teachers. 😀

@alsvha i have been having a lot of success with https://www.lingq.com

it's not very gamified. no 'lessons' as such. you just get real text, read it with dictionary popup, review words if you want or just keep reading. start out with basic intro texts, but you can import any article, pdf, ebook, youtube video (if it has subtitles) - meaning you can read material that is of interest to you personally, not only arbitrary lesson text.

it has helped me anyway.

@alsvha yes, I've learnt German to around a B1-B2 level.

I finished the German course on Duolingo, but that was before the AI slop came.

Pick and choose from the following:
Busuu (freemium app with structured course)
Language Transfer (free audio course)
Coffee Break German (freemium audio course)
Easy German (YouTube videos with bilingual subtitles, podcast in German) - this is the best resource IMHO. You can get transcripts and worksheets as a paid member.

Viel Glück!

@alsvha Depends on what language you want to learn, but I think the Coffee Break people have a great format between podcasts/videos you can do for free, and then paid versions give you access to word lists and other guidance.

There's probably even more available now. My description is based on embracing them in the early days nearly 20 yrs ago.

https://coffeebreaklanguages.com/