Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material • Hacker News Board

Re: Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material

#121

Post by senatorobama » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 9:30 PM UTC

gnulinux wrote: post #112

crazygringo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I speak Portuguese fluently as a second language, and wanted to see what the Duolingo material was like. First warning sign: I couldn't pass the test to study intermediate content, because a significant proportion of the multiple-choice answers were just wrong . Then, looking at the beginner content, a shocking number of answers were wrong as well. It was kind of funny, since each piece of material had user c…

I'm a Turkish native speaker and I couldn't pass their intermediate Turkish material as well. EDIT: Also it felt like the whole game was written from an "Indo-European" perspective. For example, in Turkish there is a word "bir" (read [biɾ]) which literally means "one" which is sometimes used akin to indefinite articles (a/an). But they're not exactly indefinite articles, and sentence usually makes sense without them…

Funnily enough, the most ancient Indo-European languages have an incredibly complicated case system.

Re: Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material

#122

Post by Kyragem » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 9:33 PM UTC

I speak four languages fluently and Duolingo is a joke at all of them. Crowdsourcing is definitely not a silver bullet because if you pay peanuts you get monkeys. In my book Duolingo is a $50M VC investment above the Juicero disaster.

Re: Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material

#123

Post by namaemuta » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 9:38 PM UTC

ljm wrote: post #72

firefoxd wrote: post #45

I did Duolingo seriously for more than 370 days in a row. Spanish: I speak french and English so Spanish is relatively easy to complete. After completing the course, I tried having conversations with people (with friends but mostly uber drivers) and I was surprised how many times i learned it all wrong. I had to read a lot or children book to remedy that. French: As a french speaker, I went through it as a meta cours…

I had a similar experience and almost straight away I felt like I wouldn't learn much besides random vocabulary. Learning 'la tortuga es verde' and 'el hombre y el niño' and similar isn't particularly useful in the grand scheme of things and it's not going to help you get to 'la cuenta por favor', 'donde esta el baño', and so on. In fact you might run into certain situations where your vocab tells you one thing but t…

> The only problem was that my writing was miles ahead of my speaking

That surprises me because Spanish is one of the few languages that what you read is pretty much what you have to say. Each letter has its unique sound and in very few cases the combination of them forces you to make an unexpected sound (for example "que" that would be expected to sound k-u-e but actually sounds like k-e). The entonation is another story but despite of it, your pronunciation should be clear enough to understand you.

Re: Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material

#124

Post by lolc » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 9:39 PM UTC

gnulinux wrote: post #112

crazygringo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I speak Portuguese fluently as a second language, and wanted to see what the Duolingo material was like. First warning sign: I couldn't pass the test to study intermediate content, because a significant proportion of the multiple-choice answers were just wrong . Then, looking at the beginner content, a shocking number of answers were wrong as well. It was kind of funny, since each piece of material had user c…

I'm a Turkish native speaker and I couldn't pass their intermediate Turkish material as well. EDIT: Also it felt like the whole game was written from an "Indo-European" perspective. For example, in Turkish there is a word "bir" (read [biɾ]) which literally means "one" which is sometimes used akin to indefinite articles (a/an). But they're not exactly indefinite articles, and sentence usually makes sense without them…

Having only learned Indo-European languages before, when to use "bir" was hard to get right in Turkish for me. But our teacher insisted.

That's not to excuse Duolingo obviously.

Re: Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material

#125

Post by JetSpiegel » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 9:45 PM UTC

jwong_ wrote: post #102

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice resources. I should probably elaborate on my actual study methods: - Vocabulary study with Anki - Kanji study (RTK order) with a script that shows vocab on my desktop - Grammar study via Tae Kim - Listening practice with regular consumption of Japanese music & television - Reading/writing practice by engaging in Japanese discussions on Mastodon, IRC, 2channel - Reading practice with Japanese manga and novels - R…

Can you share how you're showing the vocab on the desktop? That would be a neat study tool.

I liked Tagaini when I was learning Japanese a couple years ago.

https://www.tagaini.net/

Re: Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material

#126

Post by travv0 » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 9:46 PM UTC

chrischen wrote: post #110

firefoxd wrote: post #45

I did Duolingo seriously for more than 370 days in a row. Spanish: I speak french and English so Spanish is relatively easy to complete. After completing the course, I tried having conversations with people (with friends but mostly uber drivers) and I was surprised how many times i learned it all wrong. I had to read a lot or children book to remedy that. French: As a french speaker, I went through it as a meta cours…

I’m trying to learn Japanese and 99% of the apps out there focus on memorizing phrases out of context that could be applied to any topic, and market itself as a language learning system. I’ve yet to find a single app that beat out a one-time read through of a Japanese grammar guide. That being said memorization apps can be useful, such as for vocabulary, but I’ve yet to find an app that markets itself as that.

> That being said memorization apps can be useful, such as for vocabulary, but I’ve yet to find an app that markets itself as that.

What about Anki?

Re: Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material

#127

Post by skosch » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 9:47 PM UTC

_betty_ wrote: post #46

kwaldman wrote: post #2

The new version is very good for Chinese. It is giving me much more complex sentence structure.

I'm just annoyed it forces you to learn the writing system.

Learning characters has enabled me to watch movies, because subtitles are often easier to follow (and look up) than mumbled, fast, dialect-tinged dialogue. And the ability to watch movies is a game changer for language learning.

Note that recognizing characters is much easier than being able to write them correctly from memory (and you really don't need the latter – even Chinese can't write anymore; look up "character amnesia").

Re: Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material

#128

Post by poisonarena » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 9:50 PM UTC

firefoxd wrote: post #45

I did Duolingo seriously for more than 370 days in a row. Spanish: I speak french and English so Spanish is relatively easy to complete. After completing the course, I tried having conversations with people (with friends but mostly uber drivers) and I was surprised how many times i learned it all wrong. I had to read a lot or children book to remedy that. French: As a french speaker, I went through it as a meta cours…

Disagree, I went from no spanish knowledge to being able to basically text/whatsapp. Some of the phrases were retarded but I was still learning new words and a bit of grammar. 4 years later and I am fluent and still credit duolingo for giving me a boost and making it fun/gamifing the very basics.

I also disagree about Japanese, I used to it learn the kanas and I am continuing to learn with it.

I don't understand why there are people that hate on this free language tool so much.

Re: Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material

#129

Post by romwell » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 9:53 PM UTC

gnulinux wrote: post #112

crazygringo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I speak Portuguese fluently as a second language, and wanted to see what the Duolingo material was like. First warning sign: I couldn't pass the test to study intermediate content, because a significant proportion of the multiple-choice answers were just wrong . Then, looking at the beginner content, a shocking number of answers were wrong as well. It was kind of funny, since each piece of material had user c…

I'm a Turkish native speaker and I couldn't pass their intermediate Turkish material as well. EDIT: Also it felt like the whole game was written from an "Indo-European" perspective. For example, in Turkish there is a word "bir" (read [biɾ]) which literally means "one" which is sometimes used akin to indefinite articles (a/an). But they're not exactly indefinite articles, and sentence usually makes sense without them…

>You add +I accusative suffix to [imply definiteness]

Very interesting! In Russian, the accusative suffix would play exactly the opposite role. While there's no real way to say the beer without additional context, you can say:

поставь пиво в холодильник / put the beer in the fridge

поставь пива в холодильник / put SOME beer into the fridge

Re: Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material

#130

Post by simias » Thu, Apr 12, 2018, 9:57 PM UTC

KeitIG wrote: post #51

firefoxd wrote: post #45

I did Duolingo seriously for more than 370 days in a row. Spanish: I speak french and English so Spanish is relatively easy to complete. After completing the course, I tried having conversations with people (with friends but mostly uber drivers) and I was surprised how many times i learned it all wrong. I had to read a lot or children book to remedy that. French: As a french speaker, I went through it as a meta cours…

Exactly my problem with Duolingo. It is great for Vocabulary, but in the end it's just knowing it by heart, and I was suprised there are no real courses explaining you the synthax of a phrase or some other advanced rules.

I don't find it great for vocab either, Anki or Memrise are massively better IMO since they only do that and they do it well. Of course it Duolingo you get the words in some context which could be better but since half the time the context makes no sense anyway why bother? I just did a Duolingo review about "household items" right now and it repeated twice the word "stairs" and thrice the word "kitchen", words I have no real trouble with. How about giving me some vocabulary I actually need to practice instead?

And at least on Anki or Memrise you can select decks that match what you want to learn, such as getting the basics to order at a restaurant or ask for directions. On Duolingo I think I've learned how to say "the bishop sends a pineapple to the queen" before I learned how to say "bathroom".