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Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

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Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#131

Post by dazc »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #22

Something that bothers me both about Duolingo and Rosetta Stone (and similar apps...) is that they don't let you fail enough. What I mean is - when you were first learning your native language, you probably mispronounced lots of things and didn't understand the grammar. But you kept going, learning as you went. Duolingo et al. want you to get the pronunciation of things correct before they will let you go on to the n…

Not only do your answer's need to be perfect in order to progress but you can also answer correctly without knowing why you are correct.

Most people manage to speak their native language just fine but very few speak it anywhere near perfectly.

Obviously, you need to learn the basics of grammar in order to construct a sentence that sounds more or less right but I'm not sure Duolingo can even do this with any degree of success.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#132

Post by posterboy »

Natsu wrote: post #82
poulsbohemian wrote: post #22

Something that bothers me both about Duolingo and Rosetta Stone (and similar apps...) is that they don't let you fail enough. What I mean is - when you were first learning your native language, you probably mispronounced lots of things and didn't understand the grammar. But you kept going, learning as you went. Duolingo et al. want you to get the pronunciation of things correct before they will let you go on to the n…

> Something that bothers me both about Duolingo and Rosetta Stone (and similar apps...) is that they don't let you fail enough. I mean, if you get the pronunciation wrong, you're going to have a terrible time and I speak from experience trying to get a bottle of water in France and not having realized that I had the pronunciation so badly wrong they thought I was a Brit trying to find the bathroom (l'eau [~low] vs. l…

Interestingly, the loo is a Water Closet.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#133

Post by dazc »

klodolph wrote: post #73
poulsbohemian wrote: post #22

Something that bothers me both about Duolingo and Rosetta Stone (and similar apps...) is that they don't let you fail enough. What I mean is - when you were first learning your native language, you probably mispronounced lots of things and didn't understand the grammar. But you kept going, learning as you went. Duolingo et al. want you to get the pronunciation of things correct before they will let you go on to the n…

I took a foreign language class in college where our pronunciation was corrected ruthlessly, right down to the accents and stresses we placed in our sentences. It was super helpful for having conversations later on. YMMV, I really liked it. I remember a couple cases where our teacher interrupted the lesson and kept calling on students to repeat the same phrase until we all (or mostly) got it right. This extended to v…

I once had a short conversation with a hotel receptionist and she said my Spanish was kind of basic but OK, yet my pronunciation was perfect. I do remember feeling a lot more confident after this.

I'm not sure it should be instilled as ruthlessly as you suggest but it does reinforce the fact that there are some things you just can't learn from an app alone.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#134

Post by remarkEon »

ejolto wrote: post #102
remarkEon wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think so. Some people can pick up languages relatively easily, and some people can’t. I don’t really know how AI could solve this, unless you mean that the AI can ferret out your gaps and tune the program to your learning needs. Isn’t this what Duolingo tries to do? Genuinely asking. I pay for the “super” Duolingo for no ads and unlimited learning because I’m kind of addicted to it, but I plan trips to German…

> I plan trips to Germany every year because you really do need immersion to get to even basic fluency. That's not necessarily true, unless consuming lots of media in the target language counts as immersion. I became fluent in English without ever traveling to an English speaking country.

What is your native language?

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#135

Post by posterboy »

pkulak wrote: post #108
poulsbohemian wrote: post #22

Something that bothers me both about Duolingo and Rosetta Stone (and similar apps...) is that they don't let you fail enough. What I mean is - when you were first learning your native language, you probably mispronounced lots of things and didn't understand the grammar. But you kept going, learning as you went. Duolingo et al. want you to get the pronunciation of things correct before they will let you go on to the n…

I agree. I’m trying to learn German now and I keep failing lessons because I screw up gender and conjugation stuff. I wish there was a way to tell the app that I don’t give a shit. Even if I learn all the genders perfectly, I’m still going to be fumbling over words in an American accent. A few incorrect “der”s are not going to make me unable to be understood. And I can correct that later.

To be honest, if you don't get the agreement right I simply won't bother listening to you, unless in a good mood.

This is a two way street. A couple word order mistakes are much worse than occasional spelling mistakes in English. The phonology is similar enough that /k/ for /x/ (Loch "hole") shouldn't be a problem, for example. This differs of course with languages that have a completely different speech riddim and phonemes which are unknown to the recipient.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#136

Post by dazc »

Natsu wrote: post #82
poulsbohemian wrote: post #22

Something that bothers me both about Duolingo and Rosetta Stone (and similar apps...) is that they don't let you fail enough. What I mean is - when you were first learning your native language, you probably mispronounced lots of things and didn't understand the grammar. But you kept going, learning as you went. Duolingo et al. want you to get the pronunciation of things correct before they will let you go on to the n…

> Something that bothers me both about Duolingo and Rosetta Stone (and similar apps...) is that they don't let you fail enough. I mean, if you get the pronunciation wrong, you're going to have a terrible time and I speak from experience trying to get a bottle of water in France and not having realized that I had the pronunciation so badly wrong they thought I was a Brit trying to find the bathroom (l'eau [~low] vs. l…

My Spanish teacher told once me that when she was working in a hotel in London someone asked her where the 'ladies' were.

She took it upon herself to walk through the hotel bar & restaurant searching out a group of mature, well-spoken women.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#137

Post by dazc »

dotnet00 wrote: post #84
mikeyouse wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you need to learn a separate language with ChatGPT capabilities in the world? Learn one language well and let the computers translate between that one and the others.

Well, for one, learning languages is often just about fulfilling an interest rather than actually needing it.

Learning another language can also teach another way of thinking about things. There are also nuances that AI isn't going to help you with.

For instance, 'How's your father?' in Spanish means 'What is your father like?' In English it means 'How is your father's health?' - or it could also mean 'sexual intercourse'.

There will be better examples, obviously...

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#138

Post by scarface74 »

FPGAhacker wrote: post #65
scarface74 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I skip all of the pronunciation parts. Hell, I sometimes do call center implementations that do speech to text (Amazon Connect with Amazon Lex) and it doesn’t understand my native English southern accent. What chance does DuoLingo have? But occasionally I do use iOS’s built in Translate app and test my pronunciation by speaking Spanish and seeing if it can translate it to English. Going the other way is about 95% eff…

> But occasionally I do use iOS’s built in Translate app and test my pronunciation by speaking Spanish and seeing if it can translate it to English. That's pretty clever.

And no matter how hard I try, I can’t get it to understand any word with a rolled “r”.

Right now, I’m on lesson 29 in Spanish and trying to pronounce “pruebo” - “I taste” (also can translate to “I try”). It keeps thinking I’m trying to say “huevo” - egg.

Voice dictation works almost perfectly in English for me, so I’m assuming it’s my own mispronunciation

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#139

Post by OJFord »

posterboy wrote: post #132
Natsu wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something that bothers me both about Duolingo and Rosetta Stone (and similar apps...) is that they don't let you fail enough. I mean, if you get the pronunciation wrong, you're going to have a terrible time and I speak from experience trying to get a bottle of water in France and not having realized that I had the pronunciation so badly wrong they thought I was a Brit trying to find the bathroom (l'eau [~low] vs. l…

Interestingly, the loo is a Water Closet.

Are you correcting GP's 'bathroom'? Americans call the public facilities (e.g. in a restaurant) that or 'washroom', despite there (typically!) being no bathing or washing devices.

Fwiw, like 'toilet', 'loo' can be either the room/facility or the... 'appliance' itself.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#140

Post by ekianjo »

eliasbagley wrote: post #87
remarkEon wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think so. Some people can pick up languages relatively easily, and some people can’t. I don’t really know how AI could solve this, unless you mean that the AI can ferret out your gaps and tune the program to your learning needs. Isn’t this what Duolingo tries to do? Genuinely asking. I pay for the “super” Duolingo for no ads and unlimited learning because I’m kind of addicted to it, but I plan trips to German…

I'm guessing he's suggesting the AI can be a conversation buddy anytime you want, and also point out your mistakes so you can learn from them. imo this would be awesome and a game changer

spell checkers cant even get things right half of the time, not too confident AI will be able to change that
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