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Post your suggestions here!

As announced in the ‘Welcome thread’, you can post your suggestions here, and for this very reason:

Though we usually refer you to our profiles and streams for posting suggestions, due to the buzz around the release of our course, we’d like to get all of your suggestions together in this thread (of course also for the sake of keeping an overview). Mind that we can’t really make many changes that are not on the sentence level, just after the course’s release into beta. Since we can’t just implement changes without much tweaking and certainly not soon, the implementation of certain suggestions may take a while. Thus, what we’re doing is giving you the opportunity to post your suggestions in one place, and we will check these once in a while.

July 16, 2014

This discussion is locked.


Hello everyone! We'd like to give an update on the progress of suggestions that have been made in this thread.

We decided to clean up a bit in here first of all. Anything deleted is either implemented at this point (e.g., special accent marks), is in the process of being implemented (e.g., articles with images) or cannot be implemented/we don't plan on implementing.

Here is what is currently on the list of things that are being worked on:

  • articles with images: the staff plans on implementing this
  • speaking exercises are here for some (it's an AB test), and may eventually pass the test and become available to all.
  • placement test: we have been told it should be fixed, but there still seem to be issues, so we'll look into that.
  • Asbtract Nouns 1: can't change this at the moment, but it's still on our minds, don't worry :)
  • adding sentence variety: this is something we're slowly working on and have already done for many of the skills in the beginning of the tree. We're also working on taking advantage of context in some sentence exercises to show you the difference, for example, between various adjective forms.

Also, we've managed to make it possible to accept both "jij" and "je", "zij" and "ze", "wij" and "we" for audio exercises (it will only appear as a typo if you're technically wrong).


Should there be verb conjugations on mouseover like most of the other languages? or does irregular verb be rare enough that it is not necessary?


I would just like to chime in here and say that this would be very helpful. Of course I can bring up a different website to look up the conjugations but I feel it really breaks the flow of study when I need to do this.


I think it would help to have a word list, similar to what "Spanish for English speakers" has. Maybe its just me, but I like to see the list of words I have learned and look at my progress (I know THAT many words ALREADY).

By the way, thank you for making this! I have always been curious about Dutch.


I think the "Tips & Notes" are great, and I'm appreciative of the work that has clearly gone into them! I have a suggestion to make them more awesome still, and that is to include example sentences with the explanations. (I have seen some example sentences in some of the notes, so maybe adding them is a work-in-progress?)

For instance, I'm currently doing the lesson on Object Pronouns, and here's the note on 'hen' and 'hun': "After a preposition and after the direct object, you use hen. After the indirect object, you use hun." An example sentence or two would be a great illustrative tool.

Hartelijk bedankt!


Hello! Enjoying the Dutch course very much and learning a lot. One thing that is really bugging me though is that when I do a general "strengthen skills" session, I often end up without any skills strengthened at the end of it! This is despite getting through 20 questions and getting 18 or 19 of them right. Since I'm quite far down the page by now (level 9?) I have loads of skills that need strengthening all the time. One way of strengthening them is one skill at a time. This is quite quick - sometimes even if I only get through three questions I get that skill back up to gold. But it only strengthens one skill! So my suggestion is that every time you complete a whole test on the general "strengthen skills" test, you should at least end up, you know, strengthening some skills. I would expect two or three skills at a time, at least in the later stages. Thanks!


I think the skill Verbs: Present could do with fewer lessons, or more content. It's currently got nine lessons, most of which dedicate 20 questions each to teaching effectively two new verbs that don't have anything irregular or especially difficult about them.

Otherwise, the course is in great shape already. Calling it a beta almost feels deprecating.


The first 5 lessons are dedicated to giving users more extensive practice with regular verb conjugation in Dutch (we know we already introduced verbs in a number of places earlier in the tree). However, this is the first skill in the tree to focus entirely on verbs, so we decided to start a bit slow.


The present is not so easy when you don't have a basic knowledge of the language. The course is in beta because there are to many errors in it. Not all possible translations for each sentence are available.


Not sure if this has been mentioned as I haven't read this thread entirely.

As I tend to fail lessons a lot, I repeat them again and again a lot, and I've begun to notice that the sentences come out in the exact same order each time. I'm not sure if this happens in the whole tree, but as it's got more difficult I've had to repeat the lessons more and therefore it's become apparent.

I don't remember this happening in any other languages so maybe it's a little bug. It's not a big issue just more of an annoyance and it means I only see the latter sentences once and the earlier ones maybe 3 or more times.



My suggestion: adding a language tip on prepositions. Those are one of the hardest pieces of any language to translate, since they are so context-dependent, and I was surprised to see that it was not one of the first things to have a piece written up for it. Thanks for putting out the course!


I find that when I make a mistake on whether a word is het or de (e.g. I type "de hemd" when it should be "het hemd") it makes me practice that word a lot subsequently, but a bunch of the sentences don't actually feature the definite article (e.g. "wij dragen hemden"), so it isn't helping me on the aspect that I get wrong, and can make the practice a bit tedious. I realise this is a bit fussy, but it would be nice if the program could recognise that it's de/het which I got wrong, and select for sentences which contain this.

Although another solution would be adding more sentences overall, as that would also make practice less tedious.

On the whole though, it's an excellent course and I'm really enjoying it - thank you!


I love Duolingo for French but would like more lessons added to the trees. Specifically, I believe the imperfect (imparfait) should have more exercises as well as the subjunctive. I think a lesson on restaurants with vocabulary related to making reservations, patio seating, ordering food, how well cooked one orders the steak, adjectives about portions (copious, skimpy, good value, ), adjectives about the staff, (efficient, hurried, pleasant) and environment itself (intimate, noisy, inviting etc). Another section of lodging with all hotel vocab. More animals and more food would be helpful too. Adjectives could be broken down into separate categories for physical characteristics for people, places, personality traits etc. Really, I just want more lessons as it is not as fun once you complete the tree.


This is a discussion about Dutch. I am not sure that the Dutch moderators can help you with this, so you may want to add this to a French forum discussion or create your own discussion in the French forum if you search and don’t find something for this.


I'd like a lesson on "to be" in Dutch. 'Zijn' is fairly straightforward, but it couldn't hurt to reinforce it as well as teach the odd "ben jij/je" exception. Moreover, I'm not really sure what's going on with all the standing/sitting/laying/etc. Are 'staan' and 'zitten' interchangeable with 'zijn' when referring to physical presence? When should one be used over the other? What are the various connotations of each? When do 'staan' and 'zitten' mean a form of 'be' rather than literally standing or sitting?


Yes, I found the exercise with "Ik loop te zingen" etc the least clear so far. I figured out through trial and error that to get the right answers I should just ignore the "posture word" and translate as "I am singing" etc. Through reading the discussions and talking to Dutch people that I came to the conclusion that the "posture word" does matter and imply meaning (usually), but the exercise as a whole tends to lead to to the opposite conclusion! I think it's a useful exercise, but worth thinking about how to introduce the concept...


I just looked at the basics 1, and the lessons seem to be well designed. Although, my suggestion is that the tips and notes should contain a small summary paragraph (at the top) explaining the basics without going too deeply, and then the rest of the information can be below.

This is because when starting a language one would expect the basics to be simply, but upon seeing so much text, it makes it seem that the language is complicated. Also it is generally good writing practice to summarize your points and then expand them within the text/essay.

You could also ask the stuff if they can enable some way to hide/show extra information,e.g. expand or collapse. Thereby hiding unnecessary information until the user wants to see it. This should be relatively easy with html, but markdown probably doesn't allow it.


The Italian course has Flashcards and Immersion, will that be available for the Dutch course?


I can not answer your question directly, but some big courses (Spanish, French, German, Italian, ?) were built by Duolingo themselves (as opposed to trusted members) and have more features. Fluency is currently restricted to these courses, and my guess is that flash cards are too.


I am new Duolingo user. So far it has been a great learning experience. I have one suggestion for the translation quiz for Spanish class, I am not sure whether other classes would have the same problem. In the quizzes where we have to pick the right English translation, the first letter of first correct English word is always capitalized. It feels like an unnecessary hint to give away, and it is hard to ignore it.


I second that! This happens in all languages. It is particularly distracting in lower levels, where sentences tend to be short and knowing the first word can mean a lot.


I think the last skill (Dutch foods) would greatly benefit from having pictures, since most of the words won't be translated anyway, it would give more meaning to the lessong.


I was thinking it would so freaking cool if you guys would be able to list up each languages alphabet with the correct pronunciation of the letter just a click away!


It's a nice idea, though the pronunciation of a letter often depends on its combination with other letters etc.. For example, in Dutch an e can have a long, short and voiceless pronunciation, plus the combination with an i or a u results in a completely different sound than the separate letters.

If you want to know more on how to pronounce things in Dutch I would advise you to have a look at this website: http://www.heardutchhere.net/DutchPronunciation.html


I have a suggestion for duolingo but I'm not quite sure where to post it. Although it's not specific to Dutch per se, I hope someone up the food chain likes this idea and can pass this along to duolingo's developers.

After getting somewhat far into a language I wish there was the option to complete only one type of an exercise exclusively. For example, I wanted to improve my listening, but in order to do so I had my eyes closed for every exercise (so that I couldn't read the text) in order to try to figure out a sentence's meaning just from hearing the audio.

What I hope for is the option to have a series consisting ONLY of audio exercises to improve your listening or ONLY of translation exercises (ex. translate english to dutch, non-multiple choice) to improve your grammar/writing/sentence construction. I say this because I think my reading skills are well developed but my writing and listening could be strengthened. I imagine this could be different for other learners so perhaps you could have a series of different exercises to improve different areas (ex. a focus on reading, a focus on writing, a focus on listening, a focus on grammar, a focus on words that are tricky, etc. etc.).


Perhaps the key here is to have each word's Strength rating split into separate audio and visual Strength ratings. Then the AI could track when these diverge and the Strengthen Skill exercise could weight the questions towards the weaker sub-strength.


Hi, do you plan to add a "Words" section, as there is for other courses (e.g. German)?


I don’t think Words is something that is “added” as it is only available for the first courses that came out before the Language incubator. All the languages that were made in the incubator don’t seem to have it and were made through a different platform. I recommend Tinycards and Memrise which have Duolingo vocabulary for Dutch.


I think it would help if the compound verbs were shown together (not separated) in the lessons where they're introduced. For example, in Prepositions pt. 2, there is a sentence where the verb "voorlezen" (to read aloud) is introduced, but it is split ("Zij lezen een menu aan hem voor") and is not shown together in the rest of the lesson. If I didn't previously know about the compound verbs, I would have no idea why voor was there. Also, if voorlezen were shown together, there could be a tooltip that says "to read aloud."

For example, "De jongen wilt voorlezen" or something like that. I hope that makes sense/is helpful.


Oooh, so that's what's going on with the weird words at the end! Yes, some background grammar on the Prepositions would be very much appreciated, particularly as this section isn't terribly intuitive for an Anglophone.

Thanks so much for the other grammar explanations. They're very helpful.


I would like to suggest that an introduction to dutch pronunciation be added to the very beginning of each section that introduces something new that is pronounced differently. Due to the audio quality not being as clear as it could be, and the lack of visual cues (no video of someone's mouth as the words are being spoken) it is hard to tell exactly what subtleties I'm listening to.

The dutch use of -ij, -sj, the different pronunciation of the letter g, v, w, r, and other conventions of pronunciation are better explained explicitly than to be left for the beginner to infer from the audio and spelling.


Rather than do that, we created an overview thread of Dutch pronunciation to equip you with the tools you need to make it through the course with a good understanding of the correct pronunciation.


I'd love to see microphone activities of Dutch learners on iOS please!!!!!!! Is it in the plan at all for the near future? i know when i use my laptop there are microphone activities but i mainly use duolingo on the go on my phone. Any response would be great!


I'm loving this course so far! One thing I would really like to be able to do after finishing a lesson is study vocabulary from that lesson (and previous ones). Perhaps there is a way to do this and I'm simply not seeing it? If not, I would really appreciate such an addition. Daily study of vocabulary using, e.g., flashcards is really important, especially for beginners like me.


I'm not completely sure Duolingo is the best place to study vocabulary. You could try www.memrise.com though. There are some courses on there that cover lots of Dutch words: http://www.memrise.com/courses/english/dutch/


Thanks for this! Looks like it will be very helpful.


How about specific verb only drills or similar in the lingot score? That way when your tree is completely gold you can practice solely verbs with the strengthen skill, which I feel for the languages I am learning are my weakest.


I see that the post is one year old but still it's not very ancient. Is there a possibility to use 'alt' key with letters to produce German umlauts or Spanish/French/etc fancy letters? I know that one can change keyboard settings and so on, but the ALT key feature would be very handy especially when switching frequently between languages. I know it won't work for Russian or Chinese, but would for most of languages with just a few accents.


I think this would be great.. I have been looking for a way to do this, but so far haven't found any.. ;-(


Hi! One thing that I would love that Duolingo could have is a mode that I would only write in the language that I am learning. I don't like the fact that even if I have finished tree that I am learning, I still write more an English than the other language. I think it's would be great!


This is something we as course builders cannot change, the Duolingo developers could.


I wish there was Dueling on Duolingo.. I have seen posts about how there WAS dueling, but that it was taken away.. It would be a great idea to bring it back again, this time for use of pc and ios devices.. me and my friend were just talking about this last night, I hadn't realized there used to be such a thing in the past.. But I think it would help encourage to klearn the language, by making it more fun for you and your friends.. Please consider!! And if you think there should be dueling once again please like my comment! Thanks everyone!


i think this would be really cool Emily! :-D


I don't know if this is still followed, but I have a few suggestions for typing special characters.

I try to complete lessons quickly, and it's a bit of a hassle to constantly move from the keyboard to the mouse to type accents and special characters.

To remedy this, why not have it such that an accent is entered when the user presses the ` symbol immediately following a valid letter (based on the language). Following for ñ, if a user types 'n~', make it an ñ. Likewise for German, if the user types 'e:', change the character to ë.



Another solution would be turn on additional keyboards on your computer On windows I can easily switch between keyboards in the bottom right corner once I have selected it in the settings


I think there should be lessons in learning different alphabets or characters For example, to learn Russian or Mandarin.


This forum is for Dutch and the discussion is requesting suggestions for the Dutch course.


HI, I have a few suggestions:

  1. When you fail to pronounce a sentence right, the correct pronunciation should be played!

  2. If you start learning a language through one language, then start learning another language through another language, you shouldn't have to continuously switch between these languages on the course selection page, you should be able to switch the way you can if you are learning two languages from the same language. To clarify, when I say "though a language", I mean the language you select as the one you know"

  3. You should be able access the Words flashcard feature on the Android app

  4. The "idioms" section should give a more literal translation where the words have the same meaning and an explanation of the idiom meaning rather than expecting you to translate it into an English idiom where the words have completely different meanings but the idiom is used in the same way. This is not just easier to learn but gives a much better understanding of the idiom and the words.


I agree very much with suggestion 4!


Is there a way you guys can make it clear if we are learning Latin Spanish or European Spanish.


Latin American Spanish


Hello, I am speaking on behalf of people I know who, like myself, are learning languages with Duolingo. I see cases when people drop learning the languages with Duolingo for one very simple awkward reason - they accidently skip the day and as a result they loose the "on a # days streak", they get a zero streak and have to start over. They feel very frustrated, get demotivated and drop learning. It seems a no big deal right? Just a number after all. But I'm just telling you what I see. Yes, it's their fault and they even have an option to freeze the streak. Yet it doesn't help because they were busy and just forgot about opening Duolingo to freeze the streak.

I've asked them, what is it really that you're upset with. They said - "Now I won't know how many days I've studied language for". So there you go, this phrase makes up a suggestion:

It would be nice to have one more number - the number of days that I have studied the language for, irrespective of whether there were gaps in between or not. For example, I study 5 days in a row, then 2 days gap, then 4 days in a row again.

The 3 numbers that we should see is:

  • Language Fluency: xx%
  • On a 4 days streak
  • 9 days of studying

See? That last number - 9 days. That way a person can always know how many days he or she spent learning the language, or how many times a person opened Duolingo to study the language.

It seems a very simple feature and yet will keep a lot of frustrated folks from dropping learning new languages.

Kudos, Oleg


Please please please a course of Korean for English speakers!!!!



-timeline chart of daily xp -best month/week/day -daily/weekly/monthly averages

Would be relatively easy to implement, I think


This thread is about the Dutch tree (all Dutch lessons and sentences), which is made by volunteers. Your suggestion is something only the Duolingo team can implement.


Firstly i have to say i was blown away by the depth and complexity of this platform as well as for the fact it is free! - Thank you for bringing this volume of value in front of everyone willing to participate!

Here are few things me and I believe people using this platform could use and it would enhance the immersion and help retention.

2 suggestions for Flash Cards when/if possible:

  1. Flash cards are missing speech button - I find it hard to retain words since I'm more audio kinda type.

  2. Flash cards with customizable layout, being able to add pictures to the words, sound files, editing text would help cognition a ton.

About the 2nd suggestion, I can imagine this would stress the platform if people start uploading tons of stuff. But i figure it is possible to make some minor editor inside the site for drawing simple pictures using colors and shapes that won't drain storage, make server overloaded or have any security issues)

Further suggestions/corrections/comments are welcome.

Cheers in forward for reading and pondering on this subject!

P.S. I wasn't sure if this was the place to post such suggestions - will move it elsewhere if needed.

Edit: I was just introduced to "tinycards" on original post https://www.duolingo.com/comment/20676655 and i am hoping to see this app integrated into duolingo site/platform.


Can Romanian be available on mobile soon???????????


This is the Dutch forum. It will eventually be available on the apps also, but I don’t know when.


I think there should be Duo costumes for every language. Duo dressed with the countries' main characteristics(if the language has more than one big country, like Portuguese, just make two of them!).

Also I would love to get Japanese and Mandarim to 3rd phase in the incubator.


I think it would be handy to have in the tips and notes section all the words for each lesson and in each conjugation as a brief overview/memory aid.

Also I know this is a large change, but I really think that one of duolingo major downfalls is that it just goes over very precise sentences. I think the introduction of a large text translation/long audio dialogue at each checkpoint or just a bank of large text translations of different levels would be really useful to get a sense of the use of the words in nomal language.


Please introduce an option to shuffle tinycards.


This is the Dutch forum.


In my opinion it would be better if you will do a Night Mode, it would be better for everyone who want to put this mode. I don't know but my eyes are on fire every lecture what i work on.


Check on the wiki for Duolingo where there are some user created programs that do that.


Hello! I am writing in April 2018. I hope this thread is still watched by Duolingo. If there is a more current place for it, please feel free to forward it.

First, I LOVE Duolingo.

Thank you for: all the creative work of the designers and of the native speakers who offer grammatical assistance in the discussion areas of every question; the free access across all of the multitude of languages; the fast feedback; the fast and slow modes; the variety of presentations that allows for listening, reading, writing, and the potential for repeated spoken shadowing on words and phrases; the positive daily feedback with the cute owl and his/her flag-draped trophy at the end of the tree; the encouragement of daily practice with the streak counter and lingots; the ability to thank helpful people in discussion communities by donating lingots to them; the across-platform record keeping of my progress in all my languages; the new podcasts and stories that are witty and helpful; the visual and written content that supports and respects human diversity; I could go on. Just know I admire your work tremendously.

Here are my suggestions: 1) Have an "About Duolingo" link that maps out and explains the structure of the program and the various paths available for achievement and review.

Basics: a) Tree b) circle "topic" c) lessons

Use: a) Options for progression - Achieve Level Ones all the way to the end of the tree OR Achieve Level Three before progressing to the next circle. Explain the relative benefits of going through a circle at level one and advancing to the next circle vs. taking the same circle to level two and three before advancing to the next topic circle. b) The difficulty levels - Explain whether or not there is a sequence of difficulty(1-2-3-4-...) at each circle level that would make more sense as a review after developing more vocabulary farther on the tree. c) SRS - Explain the Spaced Repetition System so that Duolingo learners can more efficiently use our short term memories and succeed in filling our long term memories through effective review.

2) Get rid of the badly conceived "HEART HEALTH" that has ruined the smartphone version. a) Heart Health inserts anxiety into what is normally a delightful Duolingo learning process. How could that be helpful? b) Heart Health is biased against people who make unintentional typing errors on their little phone pads because of physical problems. c) Heart Health undermines learners' success in the highly useful technique of Daily Practice. One of the well-researched pillars of learning anything is daily practice. Why would Duolingo want to curtail a learner's practice session? Once smartphone Duolingo users lose hearts and access to lessons for several hours, they more metaphorically "lose heart". d) Heart Health punishes error-making. Making errors and learning from them is one of the hallmarks of people who eventually reach a high level of achievement in languages and many other skills. To turn Duolingo learners into overly perfectionistic speakers of a new language will stunt their growth and impede their ability to reflect on what makes sample A different from sample B. Imagine how silent the world would be if we expected our babies to say every new sentence perfectly before speaking more to them!

The Heart Health thing is a real problem. Learners can avoid it by using the computer-based program that doesn't include this counter-productive element.

Once again, thank you, Duolingo.


This maybe the umpteenth time you are seeing this. But it would be nice if you could give users options to switch between the strength based system (old one) and the crown skill level system (new one). Really frustrating to write la mujer, el hombre, el agua etc hundred times just to get one skill golden.

And an important suggestion for Tinycards. Please develop a proper algorithm to determine the memory strength of the card decks. For eg; No way am I going to forget words like el niño, la niña while I am trying to complete the last few card decks in Spanish. It's very boring and frustrating that you have to do card decks like Basic, Phrases etc over and over again.


Hello! Hope this thread is still watched by the mods. :)

I have 2 suggestions.

  1. Could the ability to retake a particular lesson please be re-added? the crowns version of Duo took that away and really screwed up those (like me) who want to re-take the lesson 2-3 times (to memorize new words/things better, make the skill stronger) before moving on to the next lesson.

  2. In the Spanish course, there's no skill for "Para vs Por". I believe it's as important and tricky pair as "Ser vs Estar" in this language, deserves a separate set of lessons/practice.

Thank you!


Trouble is that the topic is Dutch and the mods on this thread are not responsible for Crowns nor Spanish. Create your own discussion for Spanish as your second suggestion is a great one. Put the first one on the Crowns discussion.


With the combination verbs and phrases, e.g., terugkeren, eruitzien, and waarnaartoe, it would be great to have that information pop up.

edit: Oops. Just saw this suggestion is already up there, of course. Go vote that one up!


Whilst I'm aware the course has only recently come out of beta, I'd really love to see Dutch have Immersion like many other courses.


None of the courses have immersion anymore.


The "call-out box" telling you what is wrong with your answer (in the translation/answer window) often obscures the translation that you have typed in, so that you can not review why the translation is incorrect. This 'call-out" box needs to the lifted higher or repositioned away so that the error in the answer is clearly visible.


I am not noticing this; perhaps it is a function of screen size/layout? I have a dual monitor layout, and usually run DuoLingo on the secondary screen with 1680 x 1050 resolution. I keep miscellaneous screen shots and notes visible on the main screen at 1920 x 1080 resolution.


I love Duolingo! I just wish that I could add some of my own new words that are not on your program into my daily Duolingo practice.


Did the strengthen skills change? For some reason it will only test me on two words each time I do it. I'm definitely not at full strength, so it can't be that, and this doesn't happen when I strengthen individual lessons. I understand that Duolingo would want us to drill these words in great depth, but I have predictive text on my phone, so the repetition of sentences means that I can have the correct full sentence handed to me without needing to think about it. Having more variety in these sessions will overcome this issue


Sometimes those issues seem to occur with the general "strengthen skills". Not too long ago there were similar complaints in the French course.



it would be nice to have a small button that allows to learn a complete lesson with all its sublessons at once (I don't mean the 'Test out' option).

Example: I have a lesson 'Basics 1' with 5 sublessons. I click 'Learn complete lesson' and I am able to learn all five sublessons at once (which should of course take 5 times as long). At the end I get 50 points.

It would be nice to have this feature!


To the DuoLingo staff:

Is there any task I could assist with that would expedite the availability of a WORDS tab in "Dutch (from English)"?

I am an experienced database programmer (competent or better in SQL, C#, C, VB.NET, and VBA; and some HTML, XML, Java, Java Script and VBScript) keen on learning new languages.

Duplicate posting of my comment just now here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/9310545


Hey, nicely done with the dutch course!

What I'd like to see is some way to "practice", but only by translating english --> dutch. I feel that translation from english to dutch only appears at the end of the lessons (if at all) at the moment, and I'd like to practice that some more. Or am I not in the right forum for this? :P


Hello! First, thank you for Duolingo! My suggestion/enhancement request is to make flash cards available for each unit as well as for the entire course -- in the same way that strengthen skills is available for each unit. This way, you can easily cycle through all of the words in a unit without having to do strengthen skills several times (and, perhaps, luck of the draw, either get, or not get, review all words). Thank you for this opportunity to submit a suggestion!


I am sure this must have been posted already but I would really like speaking exercises where they give you a sentence in your native language (English in my case) and you have to say it in the language you are trying to learn (Italian in my case). I can usually work out an unfamiliar sentence with the word choices you give me but would be hard pressed to do it blank (especially speaking) I think that would be a great learning tool. Thanks!!!


This kind of exercise does exist! But for some reason it seems quite rare - I've only ever been given it once or twice, in many months of learning. Part of duolingo's A/B testing I suppose; there was a survey on the facebook group and it seems like only one third of Dutch learners are currently receiving speaking exercises at all. Also btw, you are posting on the Dutch course at the moment - there might be a similar topic for the Italian course.


Due to the "we can’t really make many changes that are not on the sentence level", this suggestion might get ignored, but....

I suggest two possible things (although they are kind of the same thing): First, vocabulary games that are not just flashcards. Just straight up definitions and terms but in a better format. Second, again with the learning vocabulary, a practice type of round with just vocabulary, where it alternates reading the term out loud with the word on one side of the screen and you type in the translation. Just for vocabulary building. Sometimes a few of these are thrown into the practice sections, but its not with all the vocab. and I know I would benefit from this. I don't like straight up vocabulary flashcards and if you aren't motivated it's easy to cheat at or stop early.


I think that the "Words" tab should have the ability to sort the practiced words by skill. For example you could sort by skill and then all of the "Clothes", "Foods", and "Animals"(ect.) words would be separated.


Do you have a Words tab for Dutch? I didn't know it was available yet.


No, but i'm mostly learning french. Do you think there should be an option to sort words by skill like "clothes" or "food" because it doesn't make much sense to study the words alphabetically. Rather it is easier to learn the words by general topic. What do you think?


Why are you posting in the Dutch forum then? And sure, but only after all languages get the words list.


Oh, sorry I didn't realise that.


Hehe, it's okay. Just remember that the Dutch flag doesn't lie on its side like the French one! :)


When we complete a tree, we should get a certificate saying, for example, "Congratulations, Julie Jackson completed the Spanish course.", so that we can put it on our resume and when the employer asks for the certificate, we can just email it to them, and they'll know we didn't print it off the Internet.


In the fist skill, "Article" lesson1 , there is a guideline that seems to have an error. It just does not make sense to me. Quote: "Most nouns beginning with ge-, be- and ver-: het. However, nouns which end in -ing do not follow this rule: those always end in de." end in?? should it not be: "...:those always use de."


You're right. Thanks for reporting! I just changed it, so it should be pushed to the website soon.


I feel like it's important to add "chance to fix misspelling" feature. Sometimes it's just a misspelled word and it result in a mistake, what a shame.


Hi! For a bonus skill, would it be possible to add 'business <language>' as one? Like learning basic business lingo for French, for instance.


Duolingo should do more than just underline words that are "almost correct". It should blink the word or something to show that attention is needed.


Afrikaans should be on Duo. I have seen FB posts asking for it. It is the youngest language in the world, it is spoken by 15 million people and it is the grandchild of Dutch, with some French influence. Afrikaans is my first language and I can help develop Afrikaans for Duo. Are you interested, Duo Team?


I am enjoying using Duolingo and I have three suggestions for future updates. 1. Each lesson introduces new words. It would be very helpful if one could hover over, or click on each new word in the lists to view translations. This would be a very efficient way to work on learning the vocabulary as it is being introduced, before, during, or after doing the exercises. Also, this would make reviewing lists of words much more efficient. 2. When I make a mistake in the exercises, I am immediately moved on to something new. It would be useful if there was a way to remain on the sentence where the error was made so as to go over the sentence again as much as necessary to fix the correct answer in mind. 3. Some lessons introduce a few words at a time while others introduce quite a few. A more even distribution of new words would be nice and/or implementing my first suggestion where using the lists to study vocabulary would be very helpful. Thank you for this fine learning tool.


Would be great if you could include the Tips and Notes section in the app; its absence renders the app unusable for me except to refresh sections I've already completed. Might I also suggest you include International Phonetic Alphabet transcriptions for the word as it is pronounced in a particular language's standard form? For those of us who know the IPA, it helps immeasurably with pronunciation.


Could we have a setting to allow for turning off the text display when it automatically reads the sentence. At this time I am trying not to look at the screen so I can improve my listening. Getting a crick in the neck. Really enjoy using the service. Thank you.


Hi Duolingo, I have a suggestion!

I'm very satisfied with the system we have for Lingots, I think it's really cool, but I was thinking, once you finish a course, and you've earned whatever lingots you can, well, you've reached the end of the line. Could we have "added" exercises that include even more verbs and everyday objects, that we could pay for with lingots, to keep the system going? It would be silly to have a whole bunch of lingots, but not have any real reason to use them. And I can personally say that doing the exercises helps me to greatly improve my vocabulary. I wholeheartedly understand that whatever new thing DL implements takes time, and I want to say that I appreciate that. Thank you!


Hear, hear! Yes!


I think you should add a Tagalog/ Filipino language as I am trying to learn it so I can learn how to communicate to my parents and my family


Working through German at the moment a couple of thoughts came of how we learn numbers. It would be great is there could be a separate excersize which essentially let's you just count through one to one hundred and you have to see how far you can get each time before getting one wrong, when we are children learning numbers and letters is aided by learning the pattern which comes with repetition this would help alot.

Another thought is to have the option to see what you have written when you get something wrong often times I mix up words and think we'll if that's wrong what have a actually written but there I no answer for that. It would help disassociate words with other words as you would recognise the mistake made instead of worrying about the word you're missing.


Please consider looking at popular "dress up doll" apps and create an owl dress up doll page where we can use our lingots to buy clothes. I think it would be an extremely popular reward system. An added bonus would be to label the clothing in the preferre language which would also aid learning.


Hello! I don't know if someone already mentioned this, but I'd find it very convenient and immersive if voice play back came on when you correctly marked all correct translations during the exercises, maybe even with the option to skip the voice playbacks if other people find them annoying? And I'd also like the option for voice playback to automatically and consistently occur when you do the "Translate this text" exercises. I like being able to hear how these words are actually pronounced and hearing them commits them to memory more.

Thanks for reading my suggestion!


In order to give more context to sentences, there should be a way to show pictures of what is taking place. This could be done through crowd sourcing by allowing users to upload or paste a link for a picture after completing a sentence. For example, if a sentence reads "Sie essen," a user could upload a picture of people eating at a restaurant and thereby give "they eat" a visual representation. pictures could then be rated by other users to find whichever pictures best represent what is being said.


I'm sure it's been said before but I wish there was reading materials based on an individual level. No questions or points, just endless immersive reading.


Just finished the Spanish course. A couple of thoughts:

First, I've noticed that every now and then I would get one of those "write X word in the target language" before I even LEARNED the word. I immediately restart the exercise the moment this happens, but honestly that's the kind of stuff that should never happen. You guys should make sure to present these new words properly. It's impossible to translate words in the language we're learning into a word that we don't know.

Second, there really should be a whole lot more translation into the target language once the new vocabulary and structures have been presented. This is particularly important in my case. As a Brazilian, it's not uncommon to find yourself on the fence - "do I really know this word? or am I merely attempting to use a Portuguese word that might be the same in Spanish?". Without enough production, it's hard to become confident and notice small differences between similar words.

Third, the Spanish course is really lacking when it comes to conditionals. There should be lesson teaching you all conditionals (zero conditional, first conditional, etc), because I've just realized that hasn't been covered and ended up adding sentences to my Anki deck to patch that hole. As I said before, this kind of activity should also have a good chunk of sentences you have to translate into the target language, otherwise it's very tricky to use them when you actually need them. Translating into the target language would help us use the structures without having to think about them as we develop the ability to recall the correct verb tenses needed to convey the meaning of each conditional.

Last, but not least, I really hate the "choose all correct sentences" activity. It's more time consuming than the other activities. If you don't have enough patience to read through all the nonsensical sentences and just choose the first one that is correct, you eventually end up losing points because you that. There should be a way to get rid of this kind of exercise altogether for those who don't like it.

I hope this is helpful and you guys are able to implement some, if not all of these ideas.


would you consider adding a "Vacation" feature to the program so one does not lose their consecutive days streak. I had 368 day streak in Italian, went to Italy for two weeks, and lost my streak as my phone service provides no service in Italy. Thank you.


Please bring back the owl's clothes. The clothes were actually fun. You just need more of them and mix and match. Check some dress up apps for ideas. It's no good for me to reward myself by skipping a day without affecting my progress. It's cheating.


It would be helpful to have an option similar to the I can't talk now pop up for when you cannot listen either. I used to be able to practice levels in down time when waiting for appointments or meetings to start when I could not speak or listen. Now I cannot finish a practice level. My progress just keeps going backward.


Hi, Ive got some suggestion regarding the reactivation of already finished units for strengthening. Info: Im currently learning Russian (based on English) with an intensity of 2 units per day to maintain my streak.

1) Implement a limit for a maximum of units that can get reactivated a day (say, 3 maybe?). I chose my daily limit consciously and I love to do more when I got the time and mood for it. At some point Duolingo reactivated (I think) 6 or 7 units on a single day. That is simply too much.

2) Also implement a limit for the total units that are in a reactivated state (10 maybe?). When you cant use the app for a certain time (and remain in the streak due to the streak shield) or only do the minimum because you lack the time for more, having 30+ reactivated units after a short time is absolutely pointless. It creates a feeling of being (negatively) overwhelmed, and if it werent for my streak, Id probably have abandoned Duolingo by now because of this.

3) Buying a streak shield or a weekend amulet should be taken as an indicator, that a user does not only want to finish/strengthen units at a given time, but simply might not have the time or possibility to do so. So once that shield/amulet is used by staying passive, there should also be no reactivations of old units at this day or weekend.

Some more explanation: I had eye surgery about a week ago and couldnt use my smartphone properly for about 4 days, because any illuminated display soon felt like it would burn out my eyes. I bought these streak shields for a reason. And I was not happy, suddenly being confronted with over 30 reactivated units. Usually I enjoy doing some strengthening in the morning or on my way to work and after work I try to find the time for either finishing up the strengthening or doing new stuff.

Having all these units reactivated leaves me with a feeling of being heavily overburdened, because I have no idea whether - if ever - I will be able to get back to a "complete" state again, without doing a 3 hour long Duolingo marathon.



Overall I love duolingo but I find some parts incredibly frustrating that I do not feel when using books or other apps.

My main issue is the amount of work I need to do each day to everything gold..about 140 px at the moment and I am not getting more than 1 mistake per lesson.

My main areas of issue comes from gender, usually gender articles when they stray from the norm or are impossible to tell, i.e., stazione, opzione etc.

My suggestion would be to have an option where you can turn on a gender identity option, I won't suggest blue and pink as I am sure someone will have a better idea but each word that is gendered would be clearly displayed. Then if you choose you can turn it off once you are confident it has sunk in. There is nothing more frustrating than having to repeat lessons because you got one or two genders wrong when you are not showing them in the first place.

Thanks and overall a great app


After the user has provided an answer (correct or incorrect), the gender of all nouns should immediately be made clear. This is particularly relevant for German, but would help with other gendered languages. It would greatly help to understand what went wrong after one has made a mistake.

For example, 'der' in German can mean Nominatif Maskulin or it can mean Feminin Genitiv.

Your idea, for an option to make the gender clear before answering, is also interesting.


I think Duolingo should provide video lessons on English grammar and video lessons on life skills like reading traffic signs, especially for ESOL students preparing for the CASAS Tests.


Practicing lessons: I think it would be very helpful if we could star/favorite certain lessons on the tree so that we can focus on certain lessons we find helpful. I've had a hard time remembering which ones I want to prioritize in practice time. I could make a list on my own but it would be really neat if we could favorite or practice specific lessons.


I would like to learn serbian, but unfortunately this language is still not available here, so I wish some day I could try it too. This app is so cool!


The cultural specific words (such as bitterballen an fierleppen) can be used in descriptive sentences (i.e. "bitterballen is a snack that can be found in most bars", "in fierleppen you jump over canals"). As someone pointed out, pictures are also a neat idea (if it is possible to add custom pictures).

In general, never consider the course finished. Add words such as (bike) helmet (!), grandchild, weedend, five minus two is three, ...

I may be daydreaming, but it would be nice with a naval unit, with non-technical words such as rowing, barge, tide, exploration, hovercraft (we need to know how to say "My hovercraft is full of eels").

If shapes are added (square, cube, rectangle, round, flat, ... ) it is a good place to sneak in a hint about the cube houses in Rotterdam.


As a terrible speller in all languages I would really like to see something that would allow people to practice their spelling in a more focused manner. E.g. You're given a word in English and you need to spell it in French, if you get the word wrong you need to re-write it correctly immediately before you can move on and then you need to answer it again at the end of the quiz. This would be separate to the normal lessons and the words would be comprised of your current vocabulary list. It would also help with learning vocabulary.

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My suggestion - You should have a process for users to nominate other users who consistently are answering their questions in the forums and who are posting extremely helpful instructional materials. These users who do that extra work for others deserve to be recognized. You could have a panel of users volunteer to do the review of the nominations and (along with your Duolingo team members) designate awards and/or recognitions. It could be an annual process or better yet a continual process of applications with announcements and recognitions coming out from time to time. I would be happy to help set it up as I am truly thankful of the other users who answer my questions.


Really wish you guys had European Spanish as an option. The "generic" Spanish I'm learning is heavily American in vocabulary and pronunciation. I have much more of a connection and travel history to Spain, and would very much appreciate it. :)


This is a topic in the Dutch part of the forum, your post belongs in the Spanish from English part: https://www.duolingo.com/topic/2


Hello, I would suggest the possibility of making a personal list of words of which one would like to learn and practice. Learning a new language, I am constantly falling over new words that i am writing down in my notebook for later use. It would be great if there was an option for me to write all of these words into Duolingo, where I would then be able to practice them. Thus I would be able to do all of my language training in one place. Duolingo could additionally use this knowledge to compare if many users are adding the same words and thereby find inspiration for what to incorporate into the public/official lessons. I believe this modification wouldnt be much more complicated than a simple upgrade to the already existing flashcard system. Thank you for a great website.


If possible, you should try and find a way so that during timed practice, the timer pauses while the question is being graded. For example, if my internet is slow I lose like 10 seconds on my time waiting for the internet to catch up and for it to decide whether my answer is right. It would make it much less stressful if the timer would pause after you've submitted your answer.


Yes! Also you should leave the unanswered question that a person times out on available for review along with the rest of the questions that were answered!


I think it would be great if there was a "further detail" option on when you get something wrong - similar to the information you get first time you are introduce (such as the dative case lessons). With some of the grammar stuff, sometimes you proceed by just rote memory rather than a full understanding or sometimes you forget. It would be great for the incorrect phrases to give you the option to look further in, rather than just trying to remember purely the "correct answer"


I might suggest, on the Japanese course, romaji when introducing more phrases and Japanese words, because I find it hard to understand every single syllable and sometimes I simply forget the hiragana. Without the romaji, I'm just kinda stuck guessing. Like, I don't think it needs to be right there with the question, but when you have the scrollover box that contains English, I'm saying that the romaji should be there, as well. Eh, this probably doesn't make any sense...


This discussion is for the Dutch course.


I have a complete method that I developed in 1980 for Kodak for the teaching of English to French speakers. Over a period of about 20 years, I used it on about 7000 language learners. The principles used are many of those found in Duolingo's approach and I believe it may be of pedagogical interest to you. I am not seeking financial gain.


I would really appreciate it if you also had 2 other courses: 1) Náhuatl and 2) Euskera


I don’t think that the Dutch moderator is the one you are trying to reach. See above, Topic: Dutch

We would need people who know those languages and a language to learn it from to volunteer to contribute at the incubator. https://incubator.duolingo.com/

Here is the Guide to asking for new languages: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/15014194


It would be awesome if the app had the "mark as correct" option for simple mistakes in typing like the online version. It's frustrating losing precious lives although you know the answer


Hello. I am ahmad and i joined duolingo for promoting my english but I can not continue more. While there is Turkish-english and arabic-english courses for learning english based on turkish and arabic i can not understand or endure this discrimination means why there is not Persian-english course for more than 110 millions Persian speakers. Please pay attention to millions English language lovers in Iran and other countries who are speaking Persian or tajiki as a same language and need to learn or promoting their english by a correct method based on tajiki and persian. Please search about my claim and be sure you will reach to my suggestion. Persian is an ancient language with a rich literature and millions speakers but you just notice to arabic and turkish. Specially notice to this point your other rivals do not support Persian-english course and it is the best opportunity for you to attract millions Persian speakers toward yourselves and you can increase millions members to your program easily. I am sure there is thousands suggestions for learning english based on persian, so be serious about our wanted. HELP US FOR LEARNING ENGLISH. THANK YOU AND GOOD BYE.


Human voices would be good, the robotic voices are terrible on all courses, it makes training your listening and checking your pronunciation impossible. I've used doulingo for about 5 years now and this is my only complaint.


Once someone completed the language tree, take a test and give them an online certificate. Many students who want to learn a language don't use Duolingo, as there is no certification.


Hi I am unsure if this discussion is still active but I feel like we should be able to select what skill to work on .. like writing, listening, or reading.


Are you even taking Dutch? This is a discussion about Suggestions for sentences for Dutch.


It would be cool if we could choose what style of learning we can focus on. Eg) I want to focus more on hearing exercises and less on the written form. There should be a button for you to choose what % a type of exercise takes up in a session. So if a person wants to focus on translating from German instead of to German it would be really useful.


I am learnings spanish.

I like to cover up the lesson's written phrase to train my ear to hear the words rather than just read them.

It would be a huge help if you would provide a slow playback option right next to the normal speed playback option so that we can attempt to distinguish individual words.

The buttons need to be a little below the written text so the buttons can be seen without revealing the written text.

I realize that a native spanish speaker can hear a very fast rate of speech and this is what we hope to accomplish.

But as a student, when I'm listening to the automated speech playback for the first time (or even 2nd, 3rd, or 4th time), I often cannot tell where one word ends and another word begins.

Thank you so much.


I love the variety of languages that Duolingo provides :) As a Taiwanese American, I really want to learn to speak and read like my relatives in Taiwan. I've come across some mildy awkward times where I've said phrases that to them, are a bit out of place. For example, instead of saying 'sui bian', I've said 'wo wu suo wei'. Maybe even courses into the different dialects in China/Taiwan (ex: Cantonese and Taiwanese Hokkien?) My education in Mandarin has been a mix of Taiwan/Chinese Mandarin and sometimes it gets confusing because I'm not sure whether to pronounce ('s' or 'sh') unless there's pinyin. The zhu yin fu hao is also something I wish Duolingo would present. Many people I've come across learning Mandarin are unaware of this alphabet.


Please add Hawaiian. I love Duolingo, and I’ve used it to learn French. I want to learn Hawaiian too, but I can’t find anything as good as Duolingo that teaches Hawaiian — and Duolingo doesn’t teach Hawaiian.


Hawaiian has been added to the Incubator to learn from English, but it will be a while before it is ready. https://incubator.duolingo.com/

This particular discussion is asking for suggestions for the Dutch course. It is posted in the Dutch forum.


Before the recent update, there was an option to practice speaking the language you were learning with an AI. Is that coming back for this update?

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