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Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

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Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#161

Post by hodanli »

Aromasin wrote: post #30

From my experience, yes. I did about an hour a day total - 20 minutes on waking, 20 minutes at lunch, and 20 minutes before I go to sleep. 3 years ago, I didn't know a lick of Spanish. Now when I go, I can be a translator for my friends. It's not great, and I trip over my pronunciation a lot, but it's functional. As to the context of article, I'm also in the group that thinks the latest Duolingo updates are the worst…

my 9 years old son was really enjoying the app that I bought one year subscription. after the update he stopped and when I asked why it was clear he hated the new update and doesn't like to touch the app.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#162

Post by twixfel »

posterboy wrote: post #135
pkulak wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

Well, this is one of the problems Germany has. Lots of moaning about immigrants failing to integrate, no real effort on the part of the bulk of the existing population to help them integrate, including such luxuries as "talking" and "listening". Your attitude would be unthinkable in the UK or the US but is everywhere in Germany. I can see why communities like Turkish one are often considered as having failed to integrate in Germany, and I don't believe the blame lies with the Turks, let's put it that way.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#163

Post by brozaman »

watwut wrote: post #146
pkulak wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Getting gender right is something any competent in person course will force you from the start. Having American accent is something to be expected and fine. Using wrong gender causes pain in listener. It really pops up great time. Gender in gendered language matter, unfortunately. The best advice I heard is to always memorize the word with its gendered article. (assuming language has articles)

> Gender in gendered language matter, unfortunately. The best advice I heard is to always memorize the word with its gendered article. (assuming language has articles)

For written language yes, spoken it doesn't really matter as people will cut you a lot of slack.

In Spain there was a football comentator from England, Michael Robinson. Robinson had an obvious English accent and even though his Spanish was very very good, but he still he messed some things -including genre- and nobdy cared. He was a comentator for many years and people liked him a lot.

In the US you have other examples of the same things. For instance I can think of Sofia Vergara and Charo to name the first that come to my mind. Both quite popular and I can spot their accent and some mistakes instantly and I'm not even a native speaker.

Also I mess gender a lot myself when I speak English and people don't seem to care.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#164

Post by duckmysick »

barrell wrote: post #114
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…

> Some people can pick up languages relatively easily, and some people can’t. I’d push back on this idea, and instead say that some people learn really well from the current tools, and some people can’t. 99.99% of the population picked up their mother tongue just like everybody else. Naturally there are differences in the population, but I would posit that if you learned a language once (or twice or three times - I k…

> 99.99% of the population picked up their mother tongue just like everybody else.

They have - over the course of many years, completely submerged in the environment of their mother tongue, when they had an abundance of leisure time.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#166

Post by willyt »

Je suis anglais et j’étudie[0] français avec Duolingo tous les jours depuis 2019. J’écris ces phrases sans dictionnaire ou traduction Google. J’ai étudié français au lycée pendant trois ans il y a vingt quatre ans. Je ne sais pas si j’ai fait beaucoup d’erreurs de grammaire mais peut-être quelqu’un pourrait me dire?

[0]Not sure if I’m using the right tense here I’ve got a feeling it’s present where we would use past continuous? Expect there’s lots of other mistakes I don’t know about.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#167

Post by siwatanejo »

nmfisher wrote: post #86
davidzweig wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to hook ChatGPT into Language Reactor (better with realtime ASR and TTS) to make a virtual conversation partner. Latency might be an issue. I was playing a bit with GPT-NeoX before. It would be nice if you could restrict the vocabulary it uses somehow for beginners, if not the range of grammatical concepts. I don't know how you would achieve that. A 'conversation partner' might be a bit aimless as a activity,…

I’m building something similar for Chinese[0]. Every time a new language model was released, I tested it with pinyin conversion (the standard Mandarin phonetic romanization), and they all failed miserably - until ChatGPT, which so far has performed flawlessly. Sentence generation isn’t perfect though (at least with my rudimentary prompting) - it will regularly generate “Chinglish” phrases (like word-for-word translit…

I've been looking for ages for a way to learn chinese with pinyin (or just audio, no chinese characters), please don't give up.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#168

Post by broof »

Whenever Duolingo comes up, I always like to point out that their website is VASTLY superior to their app. It's essentially more difficult, because you can type your answers without being babied by just clicking on words. Additionally, you can export the website as a PWA onto your phone, so it feels like an app but you get the extra features.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#169

Post by nkrisc »

lake-view wrote: post #74
vouaobrasil wrote: post #57

The Spanish course is one of the best courses on Duolingo. I took a slightly less-developed course -- the Portuguese course and completed it. At the end of the course, I was able to have basic conversations in Portuguese. I had one half hour conversation where I talked only in Portuguese to an Uber driver and we talked about what he was doing, what he did in his spare time, etc. It was a little rough going at times b…

> No online course can ever teach you to become fluent. I get your point, but with the pace of AI, there's a good chance this statement is not true in 5 years!

I don’t think that will ever be a replacement for living somewhere the language is spoken. I believe true fluency requires that (unless you’re some kind of savant) and I don’t think AI can replace the experience of walking into a shop, reading all the signs and labels in the language, making small talk with others in there, talking to the cashier. It’s that kind of immersion in a language that combines not only practice reading, writing, and speaking the language, but also all the other sensory experiences that reinforce what you’ve learned and forms associations that deepens your understanding.

Re: Can Duolingo actually teach you Spanish?

#170

Post by nmfisher »

siwatanejo wrote: post #167
nmfisher wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m building something similar for Chinese[0]. Every time a new language model was released, I tested it with pinyin conversion (the standard Mandarin phonetic romanization), and they all failed miserably - until ChatGPT, which so far has performed flawlessly. Sentence generation isn’t perfect though (at least with my rudimentary prompting) - it will regularly generate “Chinglish” phrases (like word-for-word translit…

I've been looking for ages for a way to learn chinese with pinyin (or just audio, no chinese characters), please don't give up.

Thanks! I agree, I'll stay away from characters, at least at an early/beginner level (although I am including them mostly for aesthetic purposes). It's a huge hurdle that lots of people don't necessarily need/want to overcome.
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