# [2020.08.30] lernu.net

I registered at lernu.net in December 2011. The site was around about
a decade at that moment and looked a bit old-fashioned. In my
opinion, it had three distinctive perks. First of all, it was
unconditionally free: no subscription, no premium content, no ads.
Second, it had translations into a bunch of languages, more than
twenty if I recall it right. There are not many sites which are so
multilingual. And last but not least, it had alive language tutors.
And yes, tutoring was free, since all of the tutors were volunteers.

So, I learnt Esperanto there and then became a volunteer for several
months. I answered questions and checked the homework of dozens of
people. Then, at a smaller scale, I volunteered when they started
developing a new version of the site.

Unfortunately, the new version came up only in 2016, about a year
after Duolingo launched their Esperanto course. It's hard to compete
with such a colossus. At Lernu they don't have mobile applications of
any sort, and that's strange, especially today. They stayed free and
are still available in such languages of which one can only dream at
Duolingo. I mean, at Duolingo you can't learn Esperanto from Russian,
and at Lernu it's possible. And yes, ads at Duolingo are not that
annoying, but at Lernu there are none. No ads, c'mon:) I don't know
why precisely but they didn't implement a language tutoring feature
from the old version which is an irreplaceable loss, in my opinion.

Anyway, today I finished a course at the new version of Lernu which I
started a couple of months ago. The story on which it's based, 'La
Teorio Nakamura' is somehow similar to 'Jen Nia IJK' from the old
site, although it was much more entertaining for me to read.