Hablo español
It's true, I do speak Spanish. I'm not fluent, but after three years of learning every day I can certainly understand, speak and respond slowly!
To learn every day I, like many others, jumped in Duolingo for my bite-size daily language lessons. I've progressed far in that time. Since starting I have amassed 150,000+ XP points. I have no idea what they are; they just mount up. I hate the gamified aspect of it.
Racing back to the beginning, I started on the free trial for a few weeks. I quickly decided it was useful and stumped up an annual fee of £60 to avoid the constant adverts and the need for more hearts (more gamification).
It served me well, until the start of 2024 when I noticed the odd error. Imagine, me spotting an error in Spanish at my level, but I did.
A few weeks later a story came across my internet-computer-thingy-magic box with a headline that Duolingo were paying off many of their translators in favour of an AI (Artificial Intelligence) model. My hackles were up. I dug deeper and found a story via Bloomberg that 10% of the human translators were no longer required as the business model moved more towards AI.
The following month my Duolingo annual subs were due. I took the moral decision not to renew. I would let it expire and take my hard earned cash somewhere else.
So that's what I did. I expired in due course. Afterwards I kept going, purely for my own ego, on the free advert-frenzied version as I wanted to get a Streak of 900. That's 900 days of continual learning.
900 came today. The end of an era.
I need to find an alternative. Lingonaut interests me, but it's not quite ready yet. Lingodeer is another one I am dabbling in.
What are you using?