dEhiN's Language Log

[dEhiN]

De rien ! Faut pas trop penser à l'anglais. En français, pour attribuer une œuvre à son auteur, on utilise « de ». Alors, par exemple, on peut dire « une pièce de Molière » ou « un film de Dreamworks ».

Merci pour l'explication!

C'est la même chose au portugais. Aussi, je diraits c'est plus "website of" quie "website from".

Ça a du sens! (Em português, posso dizer "tem razão" neste caso?)

Eu cheguei de fazer um pouco de Duolingo português e teve a pergunta "Qual é o seu carro?" para traduzir em inglês. A resposta correta é "Which (one) is your car?", mas para eu, diria "O que é seu carro". Por que os dois "qual" e "o que" funciona neste caso?

Je viens de faire un peu de Duolingo portugais et il y a eu la question « Qual é o seu carro? » pour traduire en anglais. La réponse correcte est « Which (one) is your car? », mais pour moi, je dirais en portugais « O que é seu carro ». Pourquoi dans ce cas, les deux « qual » et « o que » marchent?

I just finished doing some Duolingo Portuguese and one of the questions was "Qual é o seu carro?" to be translated into English. The correct answer is "Which (one) is your car?", but for me, I would ask that in Portuguese as "O que é seu carro". Why do both terms work in this case?

[Dormouse559]

Je viens de faire un peu de Duolingo portugais et j'ai eu à traduire la question « Qual é o seu carro? » pour traduire en anglais. La réponse correcte (ou, plus répandu, « La bonne réponse ») est « Which (one) is your car? », mais pour moi, je dirais en portugais « O que é seu carro ». Pourquoi dans ce cas, est-ce que les deux « qual » et « o que » marchent tous les deux ?

Aux corrections de dEhiN, j'ajoute :

C'est la même chose au en portugais.

[dEhiN]

Pourquoi dans ce cas, est-ce que les deux « qual » et « o que » marchent tous les deux ?

So, this is the second or third time now that I wrote a question in French without some form of "est-ce que" and you've corrected me. I was trying to figure out why I kept doing that, when I know about "est-ce que" and have used it plenty of times myself. I think it's because currently Duolingo French uses the (as far as I understand it) extremely casual form of questions, "tu viens du Mexique?" instead of the still-casual-but-less-so form of "viens-tu du Mexique" or even the formal-and-I-guess-in-writing-proper form of "est-ce que tu viens du Mexique". In this scenario - writing on a forum like UniLang - does it matter which form I use? Am I really making a 'mistake' when I write "pourquoi dans ce cas, les deux mots marchent" instead of "pourquoi dans ce cas, est-ce que les deux mots marchent"?

[dEhiN]

Duo update time! This indicates an increase in a skill level or language stat.

French
Section 1:
Level 3/5 - Basics 1, Greetings, Basics 2, People, Travel, Family, Activities, People 2, Family 2, Restaurant
Level 2/2 - Present Tense
Level 1/1 - Flirting, Christmas, Idioms
Section 2:
Level 3/5 - City, Travel 2, At Home, At Work, Food, Habits, Shopping
Level 2/2 - Agreement
Level 1/5 - People 3 (1/5 lessons completed toward Level 2)
Level 0/5 - City 2 (2/5 lessons completed toward Level 1)
Language Summary:
Level 12, 4045 XP, 74 crowns

Portuguese
Section 1:
Level 4/5 - Basics 1
Level 3/5 - Basics 2, Phrases, Phrases 2, Food 1, Animals, Plurals, Tu/Você, "A gente", Adjectives 1, Possession, Prepositions 1, Contractions, Clothing, Food 2
Level 1/1 - Christmas, Flirting, Idioms
Section 2:
Level 3/5 - Questions, Colors, Numbers 1
Level 0/5 - Present 1 (3/9 lessons completed toward Level 1)
Language Summary:
Level 10, 2612 XP, 58 crowns

Swedish
Section 1:
Level 3/5 - Basics, Basics 2, Phrases, Food, Animals, Definites, Plurals, Possessives, Pronouns Objective
Section 2:
Level 4/5 - Clothing
Level 3/5 - Colors
Level 1/5 - Verbs 1 (1/5 lessons completed toward Level 2)
Language Summary:
Level 9, 2030 XP, 35 crowns

Romanian
Section 1:
Level 3/5 - Basics 1, Basics 2
Language Summary:
Level 6, 535 XP, 6 crowns

[dEhiN]

(I broke up this update into two posts because it was getting a bit long)

These past 5 days or so I haven't done nearly as much work on Duo per day as I did in the first 2 weeks prior. In all honesty, some of the work I have done has been in part due to the weekly leaderboard competition and wanting to stay at the number 1 spot. Fortunately, the competition hasn't been stiff, but every so often one or two of the others in the Gold leaderboard will gain some XP and that drove me to do more lessons or practice sessions.

As you'll see above, I took the Clothing skill for Swedish to Level four. I didn't intend to; after I took it to Level three, I felt that the clothing terms were sinking in more but I still needed practice. I think I may have tried to do some practice sessions, but those sessions seem to favour words that the Duo SRS algorithm determined need refresher. It's funny though, because for French and Portuguese, there are quite a few words from previous lessons that are on overdue status according to Duo's SRS algorithm, yet I don't see those words coming up in any lessons! These overdue words are words I've learned when I was active on Duolingo in years past, so I understand why they're overdue. But I would have thought that in all the lessons I've done to test out or bring all my current skills to Level 3, those words could easily have been incorporated.

Anyway, overall, I am finding Swedish is getting a little easier. I have a better grasp on the clothing terms, and I don't recall the colour terms being too challenging. I did however do that skill at about the same time I did the Color skill in Portuguese, so right now both sets of colour terms are jumbled up in my head. If I see a colour term in Swedish/Portuguese, I will recognize it and (most likely) remember its English meaning, but if I have to go from English to Swedish, there's a good chance I'll have to look it up. The Portuguese terms are fresher for some reason. I am also finding the Swedish Verbs 1 skill a little tough. Verbs in Swedish are fairly easy in that there's no conjugation for person or number, so the same present form is used. However, I feel like in the 5 lessons that comprised the skill, there must have been something like 15 to 20 new verbs? Part of the problem is that I recall feeling that the lessons didn't have much repetition for the new verbs. Normally, when doing a lesson in a skill for the first time, the sentences will incorporate the new vocabulary, and then repeat that vocabulary (sometimes in the exact same sentence) several times. So, let's say a lesson has about 4 new terms. Between the 15 questions that comprise a lesson, you will probably see each new term at least twice if not thrice. With the Swedish verbs, I was lucky to see a new verb repeated twice in a lesson.

[dEhiN]

I also found Romanian a bit of a slog. I didn't do anything for Romanian for 2 days and then had to do a few practice sessions to refresh my memory. Once I managed to get through the 5 lessons for the Basics 2 skill the first time, it wasn't too difficult to repeat them to bring the skill to Level 3. The good news is that throughout all the practice and lessons, I found myself getting a firmer grasp on the patterns used to form the definite from the indefinite for both masculine and feminine nouns. However, I'm not sure if there are any patterns for forming the plural from the singular. From what I can gather, I think some of the rules are the following:

Fem. indef. to Fem. def.
1) Words ending in <ă> have that changed to <a>
Ex: femeiă -> femeia, fată -> fata, apă -> apa (woman -> the woman, girl -> the girl, water -> the water)

2) Word ending in <e> have <a> tacked on
Ex: scrisoare -> scrisoarea, carte -> cartea, cafe -> cafea (letter -> the letter, book -> the book, cofee -> the coffee)

Masc. indef. to Masc. def.
1) It seems like all masculine words, regardless of ending, get <ul> tacked on
Ex: bărbat -> bărbatul, ceai -> ceaiul, ziar -> ziarul, suc -> sucul, meniu -> meniul (man -> the man, tea -> the tea, newspaper -> the newspaper, menu -> the menu)

The not-so-good news it that I'm having a challenging time remembering Romanian verb forms. The first few verbs that Duo teaches for pretty much any language tree are to be, to have, to eat, to drink, to write, and to read, and, while I almost 100% have the present forms for to be and to have down, I'm not so sure of the other verbs. It's funny, I'm finding to eat a real struggle because the verb forms seem a little lengthy and intermix the placement of <ă> and <â> depending on the conjugation, but for French, Portuguese and Spanish the verb to eat was quite easy to learn. I'm actually more confident with to drink in Romanian than to eat. I also thought I was grasping the general pattern for person and number verb endings in Romanian, but just when I think I've gotten it, I get a question wrong or find the way I thought the form is spelled is wrong! I wish Duo Romanian had verb tables, but perhaps this is where I need to write out (on here) the verb forms using Wiktionary or look them up on Verbix.

ETA: I'm still having trouble with the word o in Romanian, which is the feminine indefinite article. I'm getting better, but sometimes I still read it as "the" because of Portuguese influence, even though I will recognize the Romanian noun that follows it as feminine and I of course know o in Portuguese as the masculine definite article. I guess it's the definite-indefinite difference that's throwing me off?

[Dormouse559]

So, this is the second or third time now that I wrote a question in French without some form of "est-ce que" and you've corrected me.
[…]
In this scenario - writing on a forum like UniLang - does it matter which form I use? Am I really making a 'mistake' when I write "pourquoi dans ce cas, les deux mots marchent" instead of "pourquoi dans ce cas, est-ce que les deux mots marchent"?

You know, I probably jumped the gun there. Part of me wants a little more structure to the questions I added est-ce que to because both have quotations as subjects, but I can't say that that's more than personal preference.

I was trying to figure out why I kept doing that, when I know about "est-ce que" and have used it plenty of times myself. I think it's because currently Duolingo French uses the (as far as I understand it) extremely casual form of questions, "tu viens du Mexique?" instead of the still-casual-but-less-so form of "viens-tu du Mexique" or even the formal-and-I-guess-in-writing-proper form of "est-ce que tu viens du Mexique".

Inversion is generally more formal, while est-ce que is pretty neutral.

[Osias]

Aussi, je diraits c'est plus "website of" quie "website from".

Ça a du sens! (Em português, posso dizer "tem razão" neste caso?)

Eu diria "faz sentido".

Eu cheguei de fazer um pouco de Duolingo português e teve a pergunta "Qual é o seu carro?" para traduzir em inglês. A resposta correta é "Which (one) is your car?", mas para eu, diria "O que é seu carro". Por que os dois "qual" e "o que" funciona neste caso?

A princípio eu diria que "qual" é o correto. Mas "O que é seu carro", mesmo soando estranho para mim, não está errado, é algo como "what kind of thing is your car". Mas eu acho que um nativo que tente dizer espontaneamente "what kind of thing is your car" vá dizer "O quê que é o seu carro?".

[dEhiN]

Eu diria "faz sentido".

Ahh, sim! Eu esqueci esta frase.

A princípio eu diria que "qual" é o correto. Mas "O que é seu carro", mesmo soando estranho para mim, não está errado, é algo como "what kind of thing is your car". Mas eu acho que um nativo que tente dizer espontaneamente "what kind of thing is your car" vá dizer "O quê que é o seu carro?".

Obrigado! Então, muito embora as duas frases existem, elas não têm o mesmo sentido. Misturo ainda quando usar "(o) que" e "qual" para as perguntas.

[dEhiN]

I'm not going to do a Duo update, but I just did a ton of Duolingo today! It's currently 04:00 for me on Monday morning, and since Sunday late afternoon / early evening, I've amassed 1012 XP in Duo! I hadn't done any Duo yesterday when I woke up about mid-afternoon, so I started with a practice session to continue my streak. I was in the Gold league last week, and although I was still in the lead, the second place person was only 200 XP or so behind me. For me, the Duo weekly leaderboard competitions end at 19:00 on Sundays, so I did about 109 XP in total to secure my lead.

When the weekly competition ended, I was put into the Sapphire league. Unfortunately, I started doing lessons at about 19:30 my time, which meant I had to play catch-up. The Sapphire league was pretty intense last night; I tried doing several lessons and practice sessions but kept making mistakes due to a feeling of pressure to go quickly. I realized that I could so some French and Portuguese Duo Stories to help me quickly get XP. Eventually though, I decided to wait it out until overnight as my current sleep schedule sees me awake all night and asleep all daytime. I did get 169 XP in total before stopping. At about 22:00, I checked Duo and saw I was in 4th place. I started doing lessons and got another 119 XP before midnight. Since midnight, I've gotten 615 more XP for a total of 903 XP in the current competition! And all of this, since about 19:00 last night!

Now, I didn't do all of it on new lessons. In fact, I think I only did 1 lesson in Swedish, 6 lessons in Portuguese, 8 lessons in Romanian and possibly 5 lessons in French. Though, the Romanian and French lessons weren't new per se, they were more bringing existing skills to the next level(s). As I mentioned above, I did some French and Portuguese stories. While I normally don't keep track of the stories I do, and while I also haven't really done many stories so far, I started doing them as a way to quickly get XP and in the end, found them a good source of reading and listening practice. I did about 12 French stories and 9 Portuguese stories. I also did a lot of practice sessions for Romanian, French and Swedish. I only did like 2 or 3 practice sessions for French, and possibly 4-5 for Romanian, but I did a lot for Swedish. In fact, at one point, I did something like 10 sessions straight for Swedish, and possibly did around 15 or more in total! I actually feel like all that practice has really helped my Swedish, and I'm thinking I might slow down on the new lessons for Swedish this week to focus more on practice sessions. My hope is to basically drill into my head all the vocab I've learned.

[dEhiN]

Duo update time! This indicates an increase in a skill level or language stat.

French
Section 1:
Level 3/5 - Basics 1, Greetings, Basics 2, People, Travel, Family, Activities, People 2, Family 2, Restaurant
Level 2/2 - Present Tense
Level 1/1 - Flirting, Christmas, Idioms
Section 2:
Level 3/5 - City, Travel 2, At Home, At Work, Food, Habits, Shopping
Level 2/5 - People 3
Level 1/5 - City 2
Level 2/2 - Agreement
Language Summary:
Level 12, 4384 XP, 76 crowns

Portuguese
Section 1:
Level 4/5 - Basics 1
Level 3/5 - Basics 2, Phrases, Phrases 2, Food 1, Animals, Plurals, Tu/Você, "A gente", Adjectives 1, Possession, Prepositions 1, Contractions, Clothing, Food 2
Level 1/1 - Christmas, Flirting, Idioms
Section 2:
Level 3/5 - Questions, Colors, Numbers 1
Level 1/5 - Present 1
Language Summary:
Level 10, 2913 XP, 59 crowns

Swedish
Section 1:
Level 3/5 - Basics, Basics 2, Phrases, Food, Animals, Definites, Plurals, Possessives, Pronouns Objective
Section 2:
Level 4/5 - Clothing
Level 3/5 - Colors, Verbs 1
Level 2/5 - Questions
Language Summary:
Level 10, 2499 XP, 39 crowns

Romanian
Section 1:
Level 3/5 - Basics 1, Basics 2, Phrases
Level 1/5 - Food 1
Language Summary:
Level 7, 838 XP, 10 crowns

[dEhiN]

Since I've been told I write a wall of text each update, I'll try to keep this short. I think all the work I did on Sunday burned me out a little. Since Monday, I've done only a few lessons or practice sessions per day. Next week, I'm going to start back up an online program I started in November to get into IT Support work. I'm a little worried because when I did the first 2 courses in the program back in November and December, I wasn't doing Duo. So I could binge-study basically. However, next week Monday is when I plan to start course three, and I'm not sure how to juggle that and Duo. Most likely, I won't be able to worry about the leaderboard competitions anymore. That's partly why I would like to finish this week as first in the leaderboard again. I'm still in first place but the others have been catching up. I guess ultimately my focus should be on my own learning, so even if I get knocked off first place this week, it's not a sign of my abilities or something. For next week, one plan I thought of was to focus mainly on the IT course, but make sure I do at least one practice session per language each day. This way, I keep my streak going, and I also get a small chance to practice any vocabulary that I might be forgetting.