Review Number Two: MangoLanguages

MangoLanguages is a website I had never heard of before until I stumbled upon it one day. It caught my attention- if websites can be pretty, then this one sure is- and I decided that this would be one I would review for this blog. And now the time has come! So, let’s get started:

Price

MangoLanguages is free conditionally. If you have a “local” library with a paid subscription, you’re golden. Now, see, maybe you’re asking yourself, “why did she put local in quotes like that?” Well, the reason is that local is pretty subjective here. When I was prompted to see if there were any libraries near me with MangoLanguages, half them weren’t even in my general area- some were hours away!  So if you live near plenty of libraries, there’s a good chance that you’ll find one with access; then all you have to do is enter your library card number and you can start learning.

Otherwise, it’s kinda pricey at $19.99/month, which gives you full access to the entire site and all its language-learning tools. If you don’t have a library subscription, or you find that it’s a little expensive (no judgement here), then you really don’t get access to a lot.

Languages

So, if you do have access to this program, you’re getting about 70 languages, and a good amount of them are for English speakers. And, as I’m sure the amount alone suggests,  there’s a lot to choose from in terms of learning. There are lesser-spoken languages, such as Finnish and Scottish Gaelic, as well as outdated languages like Latin and Shakespearean English– and that’s one I’ve never seen offered before. The more commonly studied languages also have a few different dialects: Spanish is broken up into Latin America and Spain, just to give you an idea of what I mean. So you really do have a large selection to choose from.

Courses

Duolingo had trees, MangoLanguages has pathways- we’re on a nature theme here, and I’m loving it. Each language has a pathway, consisting of four units,  and each unit is broken up into chapters. There are about five to ten courses per chapter,  along with a review session at the end. It’s a little more flexible than other sites in letting you choose what you want to learn and when. There’s no unlocking, no goals to get to the next level- if you want to study chapter 8 before you even look at chapter 1, go ahead. And if you want to only look at one lesson in chapter 8 before you zip on over to chapter 4, you can do that, too. You have complete control over what parts of the units you want to study, which is a feature I really like.

Here’s an example of what my Spanish (Latin American, if you want to get technical) pathway looks like. I only worked on chapter one, but I poked around in a few of the others just to see what they were like and to get a feel for the website as a whole.

How it works

MangoLanguages focuses on the hearing/speaking aspect of learning a language, which, you know, is pretty important. What I really liked is how all the goals and expectations were listed at beginning of every lesson, so you knew exactly what to expect going in, and so you knew if that was really what you wanted to learn.  After you read those, there’s a narrator that walks you through the entirety of the lesson. She- from my experience in the Spanish course, it’s a female voice- teaches you new phrases and words, as well as how to pronounce them. And if you say anything wrong, she gives you pronunciation tips as you go to help you improve. Again, from my experience, there’s no typing or translating whatsoever. It’s all about how to speak and pronounce. So if you’re someone who’s much more of an auditory learner and prefers to have that voice explain things as you go, MangoLanguages is probably a good route, provided you have access to it. If that’s not your style, then this probably isn’t the right website for you.

Features

There are a few neat features that come with MangoLanguages:

1. Translator: Mango has a built-in translator, located under the ‘Tools’ tab, that operates pretty much like you’d expect a translator to work. You pick the language you want to translate from, type in a word or sentence, and pick the language you want to translate to. It’s like GoogleTranslate, but it’s nice to have it in the same place as the lessons, rather than have to go a seperate tab altogether.
2. Specialty Courses: On top of the four units of courses, there are also a few specialty lessons that you can take in order to get more of the everyday usage of the language. In the Spanish pathway, for example, there’s a course for texting in Spanish, medical words, and a course for librarians- a few out-of-the-norm lessons that sound pretty fun to learn.
3. Culture Notes: In each lesson, on top of learning the language, there are also little breaks where fun facts about the culture of whatever language you’re learning. So I heard a few fun facts about Latin America, and about Spanish in general. It’s just a fun way to really immerse yourself in the language, and the culture that surrounds it.

Final Thoughts

MangoLanguages is a pretty neat site- they have a lot of languages to choose from, and a lot to offer. And honestly, it’s great that it’s based on speaking and listening to pronunciation- it really helps you learn what the language sounds like, which is kind of the whole point of learning it, right? So if you’re an auditory learner, this is a great site for you! If you’ve got library access, I would definitely check it out. I’m honestly not sure if I would pay the subscription fee otherwise, though. In my honest opinion, while it’s a good site, it’s not something I would pay $20 a month for- but I’m also not the best auditory learner. But if MangoLanguages sounds like your perfect website, and if it fits your learning style, by all means, do what works for you.

First up: Duolingo

That little owl up top is the mascot for Duolingo, arguably the most famous freemium language site there is. I figured there was no better way to kick off this blog than to start with one of the most well known language-learning services out there. So, today, I’ll be giving you a rundown of what Duolingo has to offer!

Price:

Duolingo is a freemium service. All the features (like courses, languages, forums, etc.) are free- literally, you’ll never pay a cent. But there is a Duolingo Plus, which allows you to go ad-free and download lessons off of their mobile app. It has three subscriptions: $9.99/month for one month, $7.99/month for six months, and $6.99/month for a full year. But, again, it’s honestly not necessary to pay for Duo unless you really hate ads. Or really like downloading. Pick your poison. But having regular old Duolingo won’t leave you deprived of any essentials.

Languages:

There are a total of 68 language programs available; 24 of them are designed for native English speakers. Some of them are even fantasy languages, like High Valyrian from Game of Thrones, so that’s really neat. There are also 22 courses being developed at the time of writing this, so there’ll be more to look forward to soon! But you definitely have a wide variety of languages to pick from, so that’s always a plus.

Courses:

Duo offers one main course in any language that you choose. They call these programs “Language Trees” (and it’s sort of shaped like a tree, which I love) and they’re broken down into three or four levels of varying difficulty. The levels all have their own categories, which are then broken down into different amounts of lessons depending on the content- some categories have one lesson, others can have nine or ten.

 

That’s a picture of my new Spanish tree that I started for this review. This is on the first level (The level 2 refers to my individual Spanish skills), and the little circles are the categories. The numbers below them indicate how many lessons there are to each category, so you know what you’re getting yourself into. When you learn a category completely (which is when it turns into a little gold medal) you unlock the ones below it, and so on and so forth until you get to the end of the tree.

Features:

Okay, so Duolingo has a lot of neat features to it. I feel like it’s important to know that going in. But I’ll just stick to the ones that I think are the neatest and/or most important:

1. Mobile App: Duolingo has it’s own mobile app, which I plan to review in and of itself on a later date. But I think it’s important that it’s existence is made known.
2. Discussion Boards: Duo has a huge forum dedicated to helping learn languages. You can filter posts out by the language you’re learning to get specific questions and answers, or you can view the entirety of the forum (and boy, there’s a lot of posts) to solve any issues you’ve got. You can ask questions about grammar, vocabulary, conjugations, specific lessons, specific sentences, or anything else your heart desires. Not to mention you can find plenty of resources on there, posted by fellow Duolingo users who want to make it easy for you to learn! Teamwork at its finest.
3. Words: Duo also has a tab open to view every. single. word you’ve learned in your target language. You can see, right off the bat, if it’s a word you know well or if it’s one you need to practice. There’s also an audio guide for how to say the word, conjugations if it’s a verb, and examples of how to use it.
4. Stories: This one is my favorite. It’s still a work in progress on the site (hence why it’s located under the “Labs” tab), but I love the stories feature. You work your way through stories, written entirely in your target language, and you translate them, one level at a time, through six levels total. There are only four languages so far that are available for the stories feature- German, Portuguese, Spanish, and French- but considering the fact that there were only two languages on there about two months ago, when I first used it, it’s safe to say that it’s growing fast.
5. TinyCards: Tinycards is a flashcard-based website run by Duolingo. Although it’s technically a separate program, if you sync your Duo account to the Tinycards site, it’ll instantly give you all the decks of cards for the language(s) that you’re learning, right at your disposal. It’s a great way to review and memorize the many, many vocab words that Duolingo gives you in its courses.

How it Works:

Duo is really heavily focused on learning sentences and sentence structure. It is a vocabulary site, sorta, in the sense that it will teach you words by using them in sentences, but at its core, it’s a website built on translating sentences. And that’s awesome, don’t get me wrong, but it can get a little confusing when the words in the sentences aren’t defined clearly, or grammar rules are a bit unclear. It kinda just throws new words at you and has the hope that you’ll understand them through repeated use- which works really well for some people, but not for everyone. If you’re someone that really is keen on memorizing words themselves and isn’t totally into that gung-ho immersion, this might not be the place for you. On the other hand, if you’re someone who likes to figure things out as you go, and who would really prefer to see the language used as it actually is in the real world and not through flashcards, this might be perfect for you.

Final Thoughts: 

Duo is a great site; let’s just put that out there right now. And I think that the old phrase “You get what you paid for” doesn’t really apply here for a few reasons: A) you pay for nothing, and B) You get a lot more than the usual for a free site. Think about it: you have access to 68 languages, entire courses, discussion forums, stories, flashcards, and so much else, all free of cost. That’s pretty amazing. That said, Duo isn’t for everyone, and it’s not a site that will make you completely fluent in any language, though it will give you a pretty good understanding of it. I wouldn’t recommend using only Duolingo if you’re really serious about language-learning, but it’s a great place to start and can give you a solid foundation of plenty of other languages.