Bought the Lifetime subscription of both apps. Babbel (German) and Memrise (UK) are European language learning apps. They are working perfectly on my degoogled Fairphone 6 on /e/OS

I'm using Babbel, but I keep wondering: Why isn't there an actual good app to learn languages?

Babbel is like: Here's a ton of new words, cases and phrases and since you remembered a fraction of it in a simple multiple choice test, I'm gonna assume that you know all of it from now on. Good luck!

Sure, you can repeat stuff, but only in annoying and shitty ways. :(

Apps that use the actual learning process aren't viewed as fun and users aren't drawn to them as much, is my theory. App economy doesn't care so much about teaching you a language as much as they care about keeping your attention.

Duolingo is like: learn the same fucking words for a year straight which you can never ever use in reallife because it makes no sense. 0 grammar explanation.just phrases over.and.over.

Dont let.others use duolingo with their ai sloooopppp

You can repeat your learned words and phrases in Babbel. Just do a listening/writing/speaking. or flashcard lesson.

You need more than a phone app to learn a language.

Or just use Anki, youtube (videos in target language) and free online resources and a good novel and a bit of discipline and effort.

First of, there are a ton of great language learning videos on youtube geared for each specific language, showing their journey and tools. Most boil down to these mentioned above

There are alot of great free anki decks for vocabulary when you are too lazy to prepare them yourself. I use one for japanese made from anime lines, you learn phrases said in actual media which is nice, sometimes there are some grammar rules explained if needed. I'd suggest to make an effort yourself and watch media, take a word or sentence, cut it out with some software to a short soundfile, add it to anki., sync to your phone.
The extra effort stage of finding and translating a line is worth alot. Then you have the spaced repitition from anki. But as I said, just use a premade deck instead if you are too lazy for the software setup.

I didn't realize babbel was European. If they are European, why do the support Spanish from Spain and Spanish from México, but only Portuguese from Brazil and not Portuguese from Portugal?

Duolingo used to be a fun app for a fist time contact with a new language. But learning progress is too slow and can not replace a more serious learning app such as Babbel.
But the worst part: they enshitificated Duolingo beyond limits (to make money) and killed the fun part.

Simple economics of 20 times the population maybe?

Try Language Transfer. It’s a different approach from those two apps, free (Patreon supported) and made by a European guy (UK).

Is it a good idea to use premade decks? I feel like that is an important part of the process to me.

It really depends on your commitment to learning. As a side hobby 10 minute commitment while commuting – yea its a great idea. But with the goal to actually learn the languague it is not.
Premade decks are like duolingo or like learning vocabs in the school, sometimes a bit useless and not really what interests you.

For me the deck that I use right now is kinda nice and I enjoy it. It focuses on vibes more than completness in hello-goodbye styled topics. Like a few cards about teineigo and conjugations of it to get a feel about it and then it moves on.
But yea I am not much into languague learning and I would say it is a huge part to creating the deck after your needs. I just learn for a few minutes a day and have long breaks, its not my priority to actually learn japanese I only want some knowledge to understand anime better and it does work.

It can be a good starting point. Learn a fun deck and when you've done that and you are at a stage where you can comprehend enough, then you can make the effort for the extra vocabs that you encounter yourself.
Altough I have found a lot of stock-audio-file decks that are boring af, so I am not sure if I'd recommend if I didn't have that japanese anime deck.

Who enshitificated: Duolingo or babble?

Duolingo enshitificated its app. Sorry, my text was poorly worded. I’ve corrected it.

Thank you for the clarification!

I'm currently using this, and find it very helpful. They're available as podcasts. Make sure you're playing it on something that you can easily and frequently pause & restart, and jump back a few seconds. AntennaPod is great.

There is an official android app, that has a big play/pause button, so you can pause mid-lesson. Doesn't offer much more than playing the lessons, though, so may not be better than your average podcast platform.

Language Transfer is a radically different approach and I like it a lot. Almost the opposite of vocabulary learining platforms - you learn very little vocabulary, but you learn the logic and intuition behind the language. Even standalone, it is great, but supplement with some vocabulary - and you're on your way.

Don't use Babbel. People have tried that in the distant past and it didn't work. /s