Duolingo

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Sebastian.
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Duolingo

Postby Sebastian. » 2012-09-30, 3:03

Found out about this site randomly. Sounds like a neat (but perhaps too good to be true) idea.

What do you guys think? :hmm:

Wikipedia wrote:Duolingo is a free language-learning website and crowdsourced text translation platform. The service is designed so that as users progress through the lessons, they simultaneously help to translate websites and other documents.


Link: http://duolingo.com/

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Reinder
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Re: Duolingo

Postby Reinder » 2012-09-30, 8:29

I have actually got 1276 skill points on that website. I took some lessons just like you do on sites like Livemocha and after that they got me to translate a few sentences. I don't believe I ever contributed to translating the web. There are so many people who translated that same sentences ad I did, but also a lot of different translations are submitted. I have no idea how they'd let this work.
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Re: Duolingo

Postby Car » 2012-09-30, 10:28

I love that site, it's really great and a nice idea.
Please correct my mistakes!

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Re: Duolingo

Postby Remis » 2012-09-30, 12:25

I will sing the hymn of Duolingo until the day I die.
Okay, maybe not, but it really is an extremely cool site. I'm currently about halfway into the Spanish course and quite able to use Spanish resources for reading about/"learning" Nahuatl. :P Also looking forward to Portuguese, which should be released soonish, according to the creator.
Remis Kalvan | art / ˈfɛɪsˌbʊk | L1: [flag]no-nb[/flag] L2: [flag]en[/flag] reading short stories in: [flag]it[/flag] [flag]es[/flag]

TAC 2012 [flag]ja[/flag] [flag]la[/flag] ([flag]es-mx[/flag] [flag]non[/flag])
Of immense interest: [flag]grc[/flag] [flag]akk[/flag] [flag]egy[/flag] [flag]ar[/flag] [flag]mt[/flag] [flag]ga[/flag] [flag]eu[/flag] [flag]pl[/flag] [flag]prg[/flag] [flag]nah[/flag] [flag]qu[/flag] [flag]nv[/flag] [flag]zh.Hant[/flag]
Wanderlustin' for [flag]ain[/flag] [flag]ka[/flag] [flag]mn[/flag] [flag]cy[/flag] [flag]af[/flag]

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Re: Duolingo

Postby kibo » 2012-09-30, 13:31

I like this, I took up German and perhaps I will do French after it.
But I don't really get the real world translation exercises. How do they expect me to translate sentences like "Die einen suchen mit vielen Worten Schuldige, die anderen schweigen und wieder andere schweigen mit vielen Worten.", and then rate the best translation when I've learned only the basic vocabulary and grammar? :?

edit: I mean, I understand that this is a core part of the method, I just don't understand why require a beginner to translate/rate something they haven't really learned yet.
Goals:
[flag=]es[/flag] ➜ C1 (DELE)
[flag=]de[/flag] ➜ B2 (Goethe-Zertifikat) / C1
[flag=]sv[/flag] ➜ B1/B2

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Re: Duolingo

Postby language learner » 2012-09-30, 15:08

I still cant understand how trasnlating sentences will make me learn anything

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Re: Duolingo

Postby Sebastian. » 2012-09-30, 18:25

Reinder wrote:I took some lessons just like you do on sites like Livemocha and after that they got me to translate a few sentences.

Remis wrote:I'm currently about halfway into the Spanish course

Ok, so the site has lessons, I wasn't aware that it worked like that. I might just have to check it out for myself then.

How good/comprehensive are the lessons vis-a-vis other online options such as live mocha?
Are they designed with a total noobie in mind, or must you bring some language knowledge with you?

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Re: Duolingo

Postby kevin » 2012-09-30, 20:27

Just try it out?

I registered and at the first sight it looks quite nice. I wasn't really planning to do any Spanish, but considering that I'll stay a week in Barcelona in November, refreshing some of it probably can't hurt... (No, thanks, I'm not going to start Catalan now ;))

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Re: Duolingo

Postby ceid donn » 2012-09-30, 21:11

I like this site a lot, although I've completely been slacking this past week. I'm at level 7 with the German and level 8 with French. I'm Ceid-Donn there.

I find it helpful because it makes me review stuff that I should know for my level but just don't use very much, so it gets rusty, like gender of nouns for animals or how to conjugate a verb in plural, 2nd person informal, which with German I almost never see.

Since I know the grammar, I think the things that might frustrate a beginner aren't as bad for me, but I understand kibo's complaint about the real world translations. This is especially problematic when the group consensus for a translation isn't very good, or if your translation is equally acceptable yet varies too much in exact wording from the group consensus.

All the same, I confess I have quite often translated things pretty poorly simply because they give you a sentence out of context and sometimes it's hard to figure out the context without translating the entire article.

I would suggest people just take the translation part with a grain of salt. It's a chance to make the mistakes that every learner needs to make, and to practice reading and vocabulary. Don't worry too much if you haven't learned the grammar yet. Just try and move on. It will all come together as you progress.

As for the lessons, I think they're pretty good for such a new format. They give you the chance to review and practice as much as you want, and whenever you do the Practice +10 segment it automatically gives you the words you've studied the least. There's a few problems they see to be working out, but mostly I've found the lessons enjoyable, easy to do and quite helpful. I hope they add more languages soon. Swedish and Japanese would be awesome. Swahili too, but I won't get my hopes up for that!

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Re: Duolingo

Postby ceid donn » 2012-09-30, 21:16

Sebastian. wrote:How good/comprehensive are the lessons vis-a-vis other online options such as live mocha?
Are they designed with a total noobie in mind, or must you bring some language knowledge with you?



I don't know what live mocha is like, but I think someone who is a relative beginner can do this. They break things down into small, easy-to-do segments. They also have a forum where people can ask grammar questions and get further help if the lesson material isn't clear to them.

EDIT: I just signed up on livemocha for Indonesian and looked at what they have. Yes, Duolingo has a very different format and does not include an option to chat with native speakers, sadly. Livemocha supports many more languages too. I suspect though for Spanish, French or German the two sites could be used to compliment each other.

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Re: Duolingo

Postby Remis » 2012-10-01, 1:27

Sebastian. wrote:How good/comprehensive are the lessons vis-a-vis other online options such as live mocha?
Are they designed with a total noobie in mind, or must you bring some language knowledge with you?
Dude... Livemocha is like a cheap, even worse version of Rosetta Stone, or in other words not even a course; it's more of a vocabulary generator for Romance and Germanic languages.
Anyway.
Yeah, I started duolingo Spanish with no formal knowledge of Spanish at all. The grammar isn't explained in the actual lesson, but there is an explanation of varying length (depending on complexity of course) on the bottom of the lesson page. It's worked quite well so far.
ceid donn wrote:EDIT: I just signed up on livemocha for Indonesian and looked at what they have. Yes, Duolingo has a very different format and does not include an option to chat with native speakers, sadly. Livemocha supports many more languages too. I suspect though for Spanish, French or German the two sites could be used to compliment each other.
But the problem with livemocha is that it doesn't even attempt to teach you anything except for isolated words. It's virtually just an engine for learning vocab and finding speakers of the target language, the latter of which it actually does very well.
I hope they add more languages soon. Swedish and Japanese would be awesome. Swahili too, but I won't get my hopes up for that!
According to the creator, Portuguese will come in the beginning of October (so right around now. Hopefully!), Mandarin is underway and will probably be released late 2012/early 2013, and then Japanese will be released after that. They're also working on Italian, if I remember correctly.
Remis Kalvan | art / ˈfɛɪsˌbʊk | L1: [flag]no-nb[/flag] L2: [flag]en[/flag] reading short stories in: [flag]it[/flag] [flag]es[/flag]

TAC 2012 [flag]ja[/flag] [flag]la[/flag] ([flag]es-mx[/flag] [flag]non[/flag])
Of immense interest: [flag]grc[/flag] [flag]akk[/flag] [flag]egy[/flag] [flag]ar[/flag] [flag]mt[/flag] [flag]ga[/flag] [flag]eu[/flag] [flag]pl[/flag] [flag]prg[/flag] [flag]nah[/flag] [flag]qu[/flag] [flag]nv[/flag] [flag]zh.Hant[/flag]
Wanderlustin' for [flag]ain[/flag] [flag]ka[/flag] [flag]mn[/flag] [flag]cy[/flag] [flag]af[/flag]

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Re: Duolingo

Postby miae » 2013-08-30, 23:20


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Re: Duolingo

Postby Halfdan » 2013-08-31, 6:04



Not necessarily Japanese, but something noteworthy.

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Re: Duolingo

Postby miae » 2013-08-31, 11:16

Halfdan wrote:Not necessarily Japanese, but something noteworthy.
Japanese has been mentioned quite much, along with Mandarin. And the colours of the picture in a tweet kind of resemble the Japanese flag. But of course, I'm only guessing here. What do you think it's coming?

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Re: Duolingo

Postby Halfdan » 2013-08-31, 15:55

miae wrote:
Halfdan wrote:Not necessarily Japanese, but something noteworthy.
Japanese has been mentioned quite much, along with Mandarin. And the colours of the picture in a tweet kind of resemble the Japanese flag. But of course, I'm only guessing here. What do you think it's coming?


I'm not sure. I've seen Turkish mentioned a lot too.

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Re: Duolingo

Postby mōdgethanc » 2013-09-01, 5:40

A white egg on a red background? I don't get it. If the colours were reversed, it would clearly be Japanese, and if the text were yellow it would be Chinese, but I don't understand what they're implying with those colours. I doubt it's Turkish.
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Re: Duolingo

Postby johnklepac » 2013-09-01, 6:24

My money's on Japanese.

I joined a few days ago, did a bit of Spanish, and am focusing on German with it. I don't really like having to recite words after seeing them in a sentence once (especially long ones like Entschuldigung), but I suppose that's part of the method. Y'know, without suffering their work would just be social work.

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Re: Duolingo

Postby miae » 2013-09-04, 18:40

On Aug 29th they posted this:
Image

And today:
Image

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Re: Duolingo

Postby Halfdan » 2013-09-04, 18:47

I think it's hinting at their "user-added language feature" that they've been talking about. I still haven't a clue as to why the background is red and not, say, green.

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Re: Duolingo

Postby Prowler » 2013-09-05, 1:17

Is it just me or does it look like a Khan Academy-like website for foreign languages? :hmm:

If that image truly means that they're adding other language soon then it's probably Turkish or Danish, based on the colors, at least. Although I don't see much of a point of adding those for now when there are still bigger languages left.


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