Update time: Before I share on specific languages, I'm going to do a quick, general update. So, this past week I didn't do much language study; actually I basically did nothing! I was completely focused on my online coursework. They're my priority partially because that's my focus for work, but mostly because I'm on unemployment with the government and I only really have it until sometime in May. So, the sooner I can finish any online courses that I think will help me find a good job, the more time I'll have to look for said good job. To that end, I have 2 more courses to do - one more for the professional certificate I've been taking, and another one that I decided would also benefit me. The other one starts tomorrow, so I expect next week to be like last week - focused solely on coursework. I'll probably interact on here for breaks and such, but I'm not sure I'll have the mental bandwidth to do any actual language study.
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- I shared in my response to
Dormouse559 that in order to figure out the word Duolingo uses in French for what they call a
skill in English, I had to start learning a language from French. So, I picked German! I've studied some German in the past, and I'm not planning to seriously study German. It was just fun to do the first few lessons for the German-from-French tree. It was challenging but also enjoyable to have to write my answers in French. Sometimes I almost forgot and started to write in English. (In general, for any writing exercises, I try to use the keyboard instead of Duo's word bank, though sometimes I switch to the word bank to get some listening practice since when you click on a word in the word bank, the audio for it plays.) I found that when I read the activity instructions, since they were in French, I would then automatically go to respond in French. In the spirit of the Duo updates that I used to do, I'm going to post my current stats for German from French. Remember that
this indicates an increase in a skill level or language stat; also, I'm going to write out the French names with the English translations in brackets:
Allemand (German)Partie (Section) 1:
Niveau (Level) 0/5 -
Bases 1 (2/5 leçons accomplis jusqu'au niveau 1) [Basics 1 (2/5 lessons completed toward Level 1)]Résumé (Summary) :
Niveau 1, 29 XP, 0 couronnes (crowns)
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- I was showing my gf how I had started German from French and she wanted to try doing one lesson. This then led me to try Spanish from French. I already have done a bunch of Spanish from English; I have something like almost 800 XP and am on level 7 for the language, however a lot of that is from work done in the past that I invariably reset after a big break. It seems that when you reset your learning progress in Duo, the overall language XP and level stats are still kept. So, while I have all that XP in Spanish from English, I only have something like 6 crowns. But the weird thing is that when I went to add Spanish from French, it was already selected out of the list of languages I could choose to learn (for someone who speaks French). Then, when I clicked on it, instead of what usually happens, which is that you're presented with the option to take a placement test or just start with the first skill, I could only start with the first skill. I did however, scroll down and try to test out of Checkpoint 1 (basically all of Section 1), but in the end didn't go through with it. I started the test and almost finished it. However, I did lose all 3 hearts in the process, and had to look up things on WordReference for confirmation of spellings, etc. In fact, the first heart that I lost, I lost because the question was to translate
bebo agua "I drink water" to French, and I wrote
je bois l'eau, completely forgetting about the partitive article in French since Spanish doesn't use a partitive article! In the end, since I had to confirm stuff and was making mistakes, I decided to stop the test. Instead, I did the first lesson for the first skill. Oddly enough though, while Duolingo will show me that I have two Spanish courses started - Spanish from English, and Spanish from French - I still have the same XP and language level for Spanish. The crowns don't transfer over, so I still have 6 crowns for the Spanish from English course and 0 crowns for the Spanish from French one, but it looks like overall XP and language level are counted globally?! That kind of seems like a cop-out to me, and personally I would rather see completely separate stats for each course. Anyway, as I did for German, here are my Duo stats so far for Spanish from French:
Espagnol (Spanish)Partie (Section) 1:
Niveau (Level) 0/5 -
Bases (1/3 leçons accomplis jusqu'au niveau 1) [Basics (1/3 lessons completed toward Level 1)]Résumé (Summary) :
Niveau 7, 780 XP, 0 couronnes (crowns)
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- Since I don't believe I ever showed my Welsh Duo stats, I'll post them here as well:
WelshSection 1:
Level 3/5 -
Greet 1Language Summary:
Level 1, 29 XP, 3 crowns