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Add to SafariWhen comparing Memrise vs Duolingo, the Slant community recommends Duolingo for most people. In the question“What are the best sites for learning foreign languages?” Duolingo is ranked 1st while Memrise is ranked 2nd. The most important reason people chose Duolingo is:
Progress is measured gaming-like by gaining XP, and leveling up. They use other creative gamification techniques to keep you motivated such as making wagers and improving your position on the leaderboard.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Helps grow your vocabulary quickly
Memrise uses "mems" to increase your vocabulary, which are a way to connect a word to its meaning.
A common example is associating a word with an image.
Mnemonics are another one they use to help you remember new words. For example,
"le parcours" (route or course) could be remembered with the mem "People who do parkour pick their own route".
Pro Free account without a time limit
The Basic account is totally free (has no time limit) and is very generous.
An upgrade (with more features) is available for 9 USD / month.
Pro Huge vocabulary
The courses can teach you a very large vocabulary (for example, the first level Spanish course has 1705 words).
Pro Android app can be used offline
You can download courses to use offline with the Android app. Great for when you're traveling.
Pro Easy to use
You will understand quickly what you should do, and you will begin to learn in less than a minute.
Pro Foreign keyboard on screen when necessary
This saves you from having to copy/paste characters or worry about your keyboard settings.
Pro It makes you write the words
If you choose this option, writing is a very efficient way of memorization.
Pro Learn from natives
Official courses have videos of natives, recorded recently, to help you along.
Pro Awesome community made courses
Pro Courses available using Tim Ferriss' method
Pro Motivates through creative gamification
Progress is measured gaming-like by gaining XP, and leveling up. They use other creative gamification techniques to keep you motivated such as making wagers and improving your position on the leaderboard.
Pro Generous free plan
Duolingo is completely free to use, with no features limited to upgraded accounts. If you want to go ad-free, the cost is $12.99/month.
Pro Super easy to use.
Very intuitive app. It has the kind of "intangible" user experience that simple feels better than the others.
Pro Has a mobile app
Pro Friendly, active community
There is a discussion board available on the site, and a really active community on reddit in r/duolingo (30k + members). Everyone is friendly and happy to help or offer support.
Pro Extensive
Duolingo is exceptionally thorough when it comes to teaching the nuances of language. It has plenty of audio material, articles to translate, and a cooperative development made by users.
Pro Engaging learning method
Each lesson uses a variety of different learning methods to keep it interesting and fun.
The lessons are short so you aren't forced to focus for long periods of time.
Pro Frequently adding new languages
You can check out the courses page to see what languages are "hatching" (being developed) and what languages are in beta.
Cons
Con Doesn't teach much grammar
Memrise is more focused on increasing your vocabulary, so has very little on grammar and sentence structure.
Con No grammar
Con Typos and other mistakes in target languages
There is no guarantee that the word you just learned is the correct spelling, because there are so many errors throughout many of the user-made courses.
Con No context
Con Not really effective
Con Some useful functions like pinning your active courses were removed
It is hard to have an organized dashboard if you have more courses, which is most likely to happen, as starting them is the only way to bookmark them for later.
Con Lack of uniformity
It is driven by community, that can be good, but quality isn't always the same and it misses some uniformity.
Con Lack of diversity in some courses
Some courses will have a very poor diversity for vocabulary lessons. For example, a Russian reading lesson, will repeat the 5 same people names for 8 to 10 minutes. It can be annoying, or demotivating.
Con Low level and mistakes in the official courses
Memorization of a phrasebook is not a good system for many learners.
Con The search function is broken
It is very hard to find most courses, many user-made jewels are hidden at the bottom of the pile and are quite impossible to find without knowing precise details.
Con No way to rate courses in the official or the community made ones
Con Not funny
Con The staff doesn't communicate well with the userbase
Explanations of changes, responses to feedback by large groups of users, implementation of new stuff based on user's needs and not against them, all that could use improvement.
Con The app is too easy
Con Rhythm is too slow
Con Mobile app is less beneficial because it's too easy
Some of the games available on the mobile app are different from that on the desktop version, and are oversimplified/make it very easy to guess.
Con Little production of target language
Duolingo focuses heavily on reading comprehension and translation into one's own language rather than encouraging production of text/speech in the target language.
Con The hype in the community creates false ideas about what level Duolingo gets you to
Duolingo is a good tool for a beginner, and a good supplement to other resources. But it cannot get you from zero to understanding natives, tv, and books; and their "do the reverse tree and just speak" is usually not the correct answer to "what should I do after finishing the tree".
Con Tediously repetitive with not much advancement
Not good choice for brushing up on a rusty language. Teaches through constant repetition of same few (very basic) words over and over. Little progression. Range of vocab and grammar very limited. Tedious in extreme!
Con Counting only on Duolingo is a waste of time
Con Repetitive questions on entire lessons
Same questions all over until one section completed.
Con Doesn't take you to an advanced level
Con The health system on the IOS app disrupts learning
5 mistakes and you're out, unless you pay, wait several hours, or use a special review that currently doesn't let you choose what to review. Especially terrible if you're learning multiple or more difficult languages.
Con Available languages are predominately European
Duolingo teaches 23 languages from English at the moment: Latin American Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Irish, Turkish, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Esperanto, Ukrainian, Polish, Welsh, Greek, Romanian, Hungarian, Hebrew, Swahili, Vietnamese and Japanese (the last currently only on the app). Popular non-European languages such as Mandarin and Arabic are not currently available (although Korean and Indonesian are in development).
Con Dangerously addictive
