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Duolingo Suddenly Has Over Twice as Much Language Learning Material

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

#151

Post by sudosteph »

zubi wrote: post #26
2bitencryption wrote: post #5

has anyone had success with any of these language-learning apps, even as supplemental material to a more traditional education? I've tried to use Duolingo for Japanese, with very little success on its own. Paired with my own studying, it was only a bit more helpful, but not more helpful than flashcards. Another app, LingoDeer, was better, because it had a curriculum and more unified lessons, and I could swap between…

I successfully learned Esperanto, extensively studying solely on duolingo for 3 weeks, then jumping on to other material. It was one of best things that I did for myself. I particularly recommend Esperanto to HN readers as the language itself is "hackable".

ĉu vi povas rekomendas la aliaj materialojn ke vi utilis? Mi jam forgesis plej de miaj studisoj...

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

#152

Post by glandium »

ubernostrum wrote: post #145
knodi123 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You might believe that 'estoy caliente' means that you're feeling really hot, because you learned that 'estoy' means 'I am' and 'caliente' means hot, but you would be confused when the room bursts into laughter and won't tell you what's so funny about it. That's pretty funny - I was taught in my german class that "ich bin warm" directly translates to I'm feeling hot, but colloquially it means "I am gay". And here,…

When I studied French in school, on my first trip to Québec some of us were eating dinner and someone came by to ask if we wanted anything else. One of the girls in the group responded "Non merci, je suis pleine" -- word-for-word "No thanks, I'm full". And got a laugh, because the connotation was not "I'm no longer hungry", but "I'm pregnant".

I'm french, and I've never heard of that connotation for pleine. OTOH, if you tell me "je suis plein/pleine", I'll take it that you're drunk.

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

#153

Post by ljm »

vram22 wrote: post #117
ljm wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>More often than not I'd plug words and sentences into Google Translate, check dictionaries when I wasn't confident about a certain suggestion, Ha, I do that too sometimes (GT), and when it doesn't work, I do this: https://translate.google.com/#en/en/Blame%20Google%20Transla... and share it with the person I am talking or writing to. Just first change the language of the right side text box inf GT to the target langu…

It’s super useful when you’re not treating it as a tool that does all the translating work and you copy/paste the result, but one that lets you explore how words fit together. I think you have to be comfortable enough with the grammar to get a feel for what seems to flow, though.

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

#155

Post by megablast »

simias wrote: post #138
gnulinux wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not even just "indo-european" bias, it's just that word-for-word translation of sentences without any context only gets you so far. Even for something as "simple" as English-to-French it breaks down when the languages don't map 1:1 with each other. For instance there's no single way to translate "I ran" in French, it could be "j'ai courru" or "je courrais" depending on context and depending no the lesson Duoling…

Which is fine. It is about being understood. You are never going to get fluent from a course. Language changes, and even native speakers are learning new things.

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

#157

Post by cema »

romwell wrote: post #129
gnulinux wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think "пива" is the partitive case, though.

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

#158

Post by pbhjpbhj »

googlemike wrote: post #13

I have only used Duolingo for languages I am fluent in. There is a mode somewhere where you can take a set of exams to see where you place on the fluency spectrum in any given language they offer. I do this for pure curiosity to see how far I get up on their "track". I find it to be a super shallow and lacking system - the words encountered have little to do in the way of everyday conversation, things you see on TV,…

Isn't the point of phrases like "the little spider is red" that you can substitute to say many phrases, so you can - vocab willing - then say that 'the big dog is scary' or 'the small pizza is hot' or whatever. You're supposed to be learning a model sentence [definite article][adj][n][v][adj] to enable you to make statements about things in the present tense.

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

#159

Post by rayxi271828 »

strken wrote: post #131
gnulinux wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would this matter, at all?

It would matter to those of us trying to learn a language, because if another app was better, we could use it instead of duolingo. At the moment I'm supplementing duolingo by nattering away to my father in French and asking the half-French guy at work how to say various things, but if the app is teaching me things that are plain wrong, I'll have to either find another app or start taking real life classes, which is w…

I've been trying a few of these lately. I passed French DELF A2 late last year and going for B1 in a week.

My chronological progression of picking up French via apps/courses (lots of trial-and-error):

1. Duolingo

2. Michel Thomas audio course - this has its critics but it gave me a much more solid, if limited, foundation on grammar.

3. Lingvist - I was lucky to find this early. Added around 2000 words to my vocabulary (yes they claimed ~5000 - that was inaccurate; conjugations and plurals are counted separately). Today you need to pay $23 / month to get the same number of words.

4. Clozemaster - it offers a lot more words, so I got a paid subscription. Got disappointed really fast though because its automated method to offer mass sentences really shows its flaws quickly: there are many errors and nonsensical cloze placement. I got tired of flagging.

5. Assimil - seems good, but without any gamification or anything I can play on my phone while waiting, commuting, etc., this soon dropped off the radar.

6. Speechling - this one should not have the problem of Clozemaster or Duolingo, because they have a human teacher correcting your speech. I imagine their sentences are more carefully curated as well. I started the trial, but dropped after a while because I found I just couldn't allocate the time to sit in a quiet place and record myself for an extended amount of time. Yes, it's a genuine "it's not you, it's me" thing. I really like their recent features and will probably try this again during a less hectic life period. Hongyu (the CEO) is super responsive too, which is great.

7. Glossika - this is what I'm currently on. It's not perfect; their main thing is you hear someone saying X in English and a moment later the equivalent in French. They offer mass repetitions as well, with the same class of problems: occasional inaccurate translations. The reason I picked this one instead of Speechling is not quality: it allows me to listen to mass sentences while doing mindless boring stuff that I have to do anyway (e.g.: doing the dishes, walking to/from the subway station, etc.). This allows me to get French exposure every day, even if not perfect, which ends up meaning more exposure than what Speechling can give me.

8. I'm a subscriber of one more app, I can't believe I forgot to add this one the first time: Kwiziq. They have a very specific target: teach you grammar from A0 (i.e.: the level below A1) to C1. My main problem is that they don't have an "aging" feature. Something I learned fully in A1 9 months ago will be forever marked as "mastered", despite my having forgotten it completely. Nevertheless I continue to be a happy subscriber. It's fun to finish a quick grammar quiz here and there as you're waiting for food, queueing for stuff, etc.

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

#160

Post by ubernostrum »

glandium wrote: post #152
ubernostrum wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I studied French in school, on my first trip to Québec some of us were eating dinner and someone came by to ask if we wanted anything else. One of the girls in the group responded "Non merci, je suis pleine" -- word-for-word "No thanks, I'm full". And got a laugh, because the connotation was not "I'm no longer hungry", but "I'm pregnant".

I'm french, and I've never heard of that connotation for pleine. OTOH, if you tell me "je suis plein/pleine", I'll take it that you're drunk.

I was unaware of it until it happened. Was told it's a Québecois thing.

They also taught me the helicopter joke.

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