Let’s just say I’m skeptical.
Well they say that they will teach you to speak in 3 weeks so I guess they mean being able to ask questions like ‘How are you’.
Any app that promises to teach you anything in a short period of time is bullshit, no different than losing 20 kg of weight in one week. I wonder why people even believe in that…
It’s all about marketing. If an internet provider offers you 10 megabits/s for x amount and another one offers you 50 for the same amount, you know which one most people will choose, even though the second provider most likely can’t offer that speed at all for that price and all they do is advertise a peak speed which you may reach if you’re using the net in the am leading up to monday. They do the same with cheap computers and advertise 500 GB of storage, which to anyone who is unfamiliar with the technicalities may sound good, but is actually a slow, cheap magnetic drive as opposed to the better 120 GB SSD drive which doesn’t cost all that much more.
Numbers sell, and I can help but think that they may be aiming for the larger crowd of people who are maybe less serious about their project and who will buy a language course once and never again once they fail. Advertising like this makes me roll my eyes.
usablefiber - In context, the ad is saying that it’s possible to have your first conversation in 3 weeks eg. introduce yourself, talk about where you’re from, how you’re going (USA: doing), how you got to your location, what you’d like to drink.
It has its merits for those who’ve never learned a language, and also for those learning from scratch. I like Babbel myself; it compliments LingQ.
“With This App Made By 100+ Language Experts, You’ll Be Speaking A New Language In 3 Weeks”
I didn’t read much of the details but I read this headline which I interpreted as kind of far-fetched. But of course it depends on how the reader chooses to interpret the headline, how the reader defines “speaking a new language”. My impression that it’s far-fetched doesn’t make me dismiss the app as completely useless. Of course it may be very useful like DuoLingo to a beginner, but in the long run I think that in order to truly “speak a new language” you have to use several tools to achieve that goal and it won’t be done in three weeks. I still understand that they may be using advertising like that to get attention on an internet already very saturated by language learning apps and websites. Still I prefer more modest advertising.
" I wonder why people even believe in that."
I think their believe lies on all things their smartphones can, quickly and very easy, do.