Duolingo Experiment: Swedish (Karavinka)

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Karavinka
Duolingo Experiment: Swedish (Karavinka)

Postby Karavinka » 2018-01-18, 8:53

Level 1 / 1 Day Streak.

This is a log of my lazy attempt at Swedish.

I decided to try this little thing I've heard over and over about. My general mistrust towards language resources and particularly those in app forms aside, if so many people are going gung-ho over this there must be something good about it.

I wanted to give it an honest try. Because - well, you never know until you try. And for that I will need to pick a language I haven't studied before in my life. And since I'm lazy and I don't want to make too much effort, I wanted to stay away from the ones that are too alien. Swedish seemed like a good option. Sorry that I can't show more enthusiasm; I was like "eh, all right, why not."


My first impressions:

It doesn't seem to teach grammar explicitly. This is a plus on my book, and the reason why I haven't deleted it already after five minutes. I want to see sentences and figure out patterns myself. The language they use is a bit too simplistic, but I guess it couldn't have become popular unless it gave this kind of baby-step approach at first.

Hearing the words repeatedly is certainly a plus, though that's more like a requirement in the modern computerized language learning market, right? But the built-in dictionary for each word is a nice bonus. Saves time, especially when forgetting words become a problem.


What is my plan for this thread?

I'll deliberately limit myself to Duolingo for Swedish. I want to see how effective (or ineffective) this is as a language learning method, and I want a clean set of (experiential, subjective and anectodal) data for myself, to see what this method can do. I'm not going to supplement this with Anki.

The workload "Insane" is actually what the app suggested me. I'll keep it that way so long as I don't find it too overbearing. I'll do my best to keep the streak going until I finish the Swedish tree, and then see what it did to me as a complete beginner. I don't know how long this might take, a quick googling suggests it takes a couple of months for some, while others report it takes a whole year to finish a tree.

And I'll note some random observations. Maybe about the language, maybe about the app itself, as I go on. Let's see how this goes. When you spot errors, please do NOT provide too much explanation. Just pointing out "this is not right" is good enough. I want to think about it, if it's my fault or Duolingo's fault, and see if I can correct myself later.

- Basic word order: SVO.
- Present tense verbs are the same for all persons in singular.
- en/ett indefinite article before the noun. Since man and kvinna share the same en, ett must be neuter.
- definite articles -en/n come at the end of the noun for masculine and feminine at least.

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Re: Duolingo Experiment: Swedish (Karavinka)

Postby Luís » 2018-01-18, 9:25

Karavinka wrote:It doesn't seem to teach grammar explicitly.


At least in the web version, they do have some grammar notes to go with every lesson (or group of lessons).
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Re: Duolingo Experiment: Swedish (Karavinka)

Postby Karavinka » 2018-01-19, 9:05

Day 2

I don't really seem to understand this. The max level is 25 and I'm already 4? It seems the level has little to do with the tree completion.

I tapped the very first node "Basic 1", which showed 0/3 activities to do. OK, I completed it again. And again. Now it has 3 crowns, and shows me there are 0/9 activities to do. How many crowns can one obtain from one node? Is there any point completing them?


Luís wrote:
Karavinka wrote:It doesn't seem to teach grammar explicitly.


At least in the web version, they do have some grammar notes to go with every lesson (or group of lessons).


Ah, I see. I'll try to ignore if I come across them. At least it doesn't sound like it's an integral part of it.

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Re: Duolingo Experiment: Swedish (Karavinka)

Postby Luís » 2018-01-19, 9:15

Karavinka wrote:I don't really seem to understand this. The max level is 25 and I'm already 4? It seems the level has little to do with the tree completion.


It has to do with experience points (XPs). You earn them everytime you complete or review your lessons.

And it's not linear, but rather sort of exponential. For instance, you only need about 100 XPs to go from Level 3 to Level 4, but you need 1000 XPs to go from Level 11 to Level 12 and 4000 XPs to go from Level 24 to Level 25.
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Re: Duolingo Experiment: Swedish (Karavinka)

Postby kevin » 2018-01-19, 9:50

Karavinka wrote:
Luís wrote:At least in the web version, they do have some grammar notes to go with every lesson (or group of lessons).

Ah, I see. I'll try to ignore if I come across them. At least it doesn't sound like it's an integral part of it.

It's just notes related to a skill that appear below the lesson selection in the menu of that skill. You can read them or ignore them, your choice.

It's interesting that you actually prefer the "figure it out yourself" approach. That doesn't work for me at all, it feels horribly inefficient and tends to frustrate me.

Karavinka

Re: Duolingo Experiment: Swedish (Karavinka)

Postby Karavinka » 2018-01-20, 7:18

Day 3

Level 6. Let's make this a Tagesbuch. Is it dagbok in Swedish? ...I made a blind guess and Google Translate confirmed it. Awesome.


- Pojken, Flickan, Barnet. en/ett → -an/en or -et.
- Jag, du, han/hon/det, vi, ni, de. De sounds a bit strange, as if it's pronounced like don.
- Irregular plurals, as expected.
- Regular plurals seem to take -Vr form so far.
- Negative: inte, placed between the verb and the direct object. Not sure if this is nicht or kein.
- Genders cannot be assumed from German. Das Buch in German, but en bok in Swedish. This is a really, really bad news.


Luís wrote:
Karavinka wrote:I don't really seem to understand this. The max level is 25 and I'm already 4? It seems the level has little to do with the tree completion.


It has to do with experience points (XPs). You earn them everytime you complete or review your lessons.

And it's not linear, but rather sort of exponential. For instance, you only need about 100 XPs to go from Level 3 to Level 4, but you need 1000 XPs to go from Level 11 to Level 12 and 4000 XPs to go from Level 24 to Level 25.


Makes sense, actually. I feel like grinding in a 1980s JRPG.

kevin wrote:
Karavinka wrote:
Luís wrote:At least in the web version, they do have some grammar notes to go with every lesson (or group of lessons).

Ah, I see. I'll try to ignore if I come across them. At least it doesn't sound like it's an integral part of it.

It's just notes related to a skill that appear below the lesson selection in the menu of that skill. You can read them or ignore them, your choice.

It's interesting that you actually prefer the "figure it out yourself" approach. That doesn't work for me at all, it feels horribly inefficient and tends to frustrate me.


Absolutely the other way around. I will forget and need to review the same thing over and over if I was simply told of the rules; if I made sense out of it, I am much more likely to retain it. It feels horribly inefficient and it tends to frustrate me to use a grammar-translation textbook.

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Re: Duolingo Experiment: Swedish (Karavinka)

Postby Car » 2018-01-20, 10:29

Karavinka wrote:- Genders cannot be assumed from German. Das Buch in German, but en bok in Swedish. This is a really, really bad news.

If even German and Dutch don't always share them, you really can't expect German and Swedish to do so. Just a tip: Use the definitive forms to learn the gender, at least based on my experience with Norwegian, it works better that way.

If you dislike learning grammar rules, you might want to try out LingQ. Sure, there are some courses on grammar, but you can choose which courses to take.

It's Tagebuch, BTW.
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Re: Duolingo Experiment: Swedish (Karavinka)

Postby Karavinka » 2018-01-21, 6:15

Day 4

I completed the very first node to the max level. I just wanted to see how long this could go; maybe this will get better later on as there will be more sentence patterns and vocabulary.

But while it can be repetitive and boring, I can see some value in it. It's doable when I'm still in half slumber in the morning. The video gamer side of me wants to see 100% completion, but I think it's going to be more prudent if I spread and do multiple nodes rather than focusing on one single node at a time.

Car wrote:
Karavinka wrote:- Genders cannot be assumed from German. Das Buch in German, but en bok in Swedish. This is a really, really bad news.

If even German and Dutch don't always share them, you really can't expect German and Swedish to do so. Just a tip: Use the definitive forms to learn the gender, at least based on my experience with Norwegian, it works better that way.

If you dislike learning grammar rules, you might want to try out LingQ. Sure, there are some courses on grammar, but you can choose which courses to take.

It's Tagebuch, BTW.


Ah, dang it. It's actually not the first time I got corrected with "Tagesbuch." I must have used the word on several occasions without getting corrected, and it's one of the things I'd have to unlearn. Thank you for pointing that out.

And yeah, I didn't expect it to match perfectly, but finding one so early was kind of sad.

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Re: Duolingo Experiment: Swedish (Karavinka)

Postby Johanna » 2018-01-21, 11:35

Karavinka wrote: - Pojken, Flickan, Barnet. en/ett → -an/en or -et.

It's -en/-n for common gender and -et/-t for neuter actually. If you go by the indefinite singular anyway, not by the stem.

Karavinka wrote: - Jag, du, han/hon/det, vi, ni, de. De sounds a bit strange, as if it's pronounced like don.

jag /jɑː/ - mig /mɛj/
du /dʉ̟ː/ - dig /dɛj/
han /hanː/ - honom /ˈhɔnːˌɔm/
hon /hʊnː/ - henne /ˈhɛnːˌɛ/
den /dɛnː/ - den /dɛnː/
det /dɛː/or /deː/ - det /dɛː/or /deː/

vi /viː/ - oss /ɔsː/
ni /niː/ - er /eːr/
de /dɔmː/ - dem /dɔmː/.

This is how people pronounce them in normal speech, When you read, /jɑːg/ and /dɛːt/ or /deːt/ sort of work as well, but de/dem is always, always /dɔmː/.

Whether det is /dɛː/or /deː/ depends on your accent, I use the former while Stockholmers use the latter. A few other words need to agree on the vowel, like är - /ɛː/ or /eː/ - and med - /mɛː/ or /meː/.

Karavinka wrote: - Irregular plurals, as expected.
- Regular plurals seem to take -Vr form so far.

Yes, common gender plurals generally take -Vr. Neuter nouns that end in a consonant usually have null plural, while those that end in a vowel most often have -n.
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Re: Duolingo Experiment: Swedish (Karavinka)

Postby Luís » 2018-01-21, 18:28

I guess you missed that part where he said:

Karavinka wrote:When you spot errors, please do NOT provide too much explanation. Just pointing out "this is not right" is good enough


:P
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Re: Duolingo Experiment: Swedish (Karavinka)

Postby Karavinka » 2018-01-22, 17:40

Day 5

This feels extremely slow. But looking at it positively: I doubt I'll ever feel the need to revisit a completed node given how much repetition the app demands to finish a node.


barn - barnet - barn - barnen
The definite neuter plural looks same as the common singular. And the null plural, that's always exciting. No idea if it's gender-based or phonetically bound.

flicka - flickan - flickor - flickorna
The definite common plural often looks like -na. Whether -na / -en alternates between based on gender or its phonetic environment needs to be seen.

har ni saltet?
Inversion as yes-no question.

elefanten talar inte
mannen äter kycklingen, inte riset
I'm inclined to think Swedish makes no distinction between kein and nicht, but I'll wait a bit more.

Karavinka

Re: Duolingo Experiment: Swedish (Karavinka)

Postby Karavinka » 2018-01-25, 21:18

Day 8

What happened to Days 6 and 7? There was absolutely nothing to write about. I didn't encounter new Swedish, because the amount of repetition the app demands becomes cruel from Lv 4 to Lv 5 on each node. The first node, Basics, demands 35 exercises in total. Even with "insane" workload -- say, 5 exercises per day -- that would take a whole week to complete just one node with maybe 10 words.

Image

While this is a test to my sanity when I'm fully awake, it's not a bad exercise when I'm half awake and my mind is still foggy, like in the first 3 hours in the morning before I finish a whole pot of coffee. I think Duolingo is better as a morning exercise than an evening one for that reason.

But sometimes all the repetitions and the resulting inattentiveness lead to silly mistakes. After typing "tack så mycket och hej då" dozens of times, it kind of becomes muscle memory of my fingers and I will do this...

Q: "Thanks and bye"
A: "tack så mycket och hej då"

Of course, this will become a no-no, because the correct answer should be: "tack och hej då"


Yes, it's repetitious. However, it's possible that it's by design. The first three nodes contain:

- Indefinite and definite forms of singular nouns in two genders
- Present tense indicative, including "to be" and a few others
- Basic word order, Subject - Verb - Object
- Negation

Any self-respecting European language would have 3~6 variations in the present tense indicative depending on the number and the person, and the subject and the object may need to be in different cases. There can be more than one way of negating something (a la German) or the negation can be a senseless double negation by default (a la French). The verb "to be" would of course be irregular because that's just what Eurolangs do. Well, most of them. Depending on what language, maybe this much repetition by default makes some sense at least initially.

But for Swedish, THIS. IS. OVERKILL. Maybe I just chose a wrong language.

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Re: Duolingo Experiment: Swedish (Karavinka)

Postby aaakknu » 2018-01-26, 14:18

Your tree looks differently from mine. I do not have those levels indicated for each skill.
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Re: Duolingo Experiment: Swedish (Karavinka)

Postby Karavinka » 2018-01-26, 17:27

Irusia wrote:Your tree looks differently from mine. I do not have those levels indicated for each skill.


Hm, strange. I checked the web version and it looks like this. Maybe this is what you see?

Image

The web shows Food to Plurals are already filled, whereas on the phone I've barely touched them. ...Does anyone have any idea? Does it use two entirely different systems depending on your device but somehow share the same progress? Makes no sense to me.
Last edited by Karavinka on 2018-01-26, 17:32, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Duolingo Experiment: Swedish (Karavinka)

Postby linguoboy » 2018-01-26, 17:28

Irusia wrote:Your tree looks differently from mine. I do not have those levels indicated for each skill.

Me neither. But I haven't even registered. I'm not even doing the lessons. I'm advancing solely by testing out of levels. There's so much repetition in the tests that I can't even imagine what the lessons are like. Like the last one I passed for Swedish literally began with the exact same phrase ("Det är vår") Every. Damn. Time. My autocomplete has memorised scores of new phrases; if I type "Jem" it knows the next word will be "pomidora" (I'm doing Polish as well).

It's so mind-numbing I've found the only way I can stand to do it is by flitting between languages like a clothes moth. Of course, this has its downsides (especially since one of those other languages is Dutch and the false friends between it and Swedish are many and maddening).
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Re: Duolingo Experiment: Swedish (Karavinka)

Postby aaakknu » 2018-01-26, 17:39

Karavinka wrote:
Irusia wrote:Your tree looks differently from mine. I do not have those levels indicated for each skill.


Hm, strange. I checked the web version and it looks like this. Maybe this is what you see?

Image

The web shows Food to Plurals are already filled, whereas on the phone I've barely touched them. ...Does anyone have any idea? Does it use two entirely different systems depending on your device but somehow share the same progress? Makes no sense to me.


I do not have those levels even in the app. Maybe there was an update which I haven't downloaded.
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Re: Duolingo Experiment: Swedish (Karavinka)

Postby Car » 2018-01-26, 20:51

linguoboy wrote:
Irusia wrote:Your tree looks differently from mine. I do not have those levels indicated for each skill.

Me neither. But I haven't even registered. I'm not even doing the lessons. I'm advancing solely by testing out of levels. There's so much repetition in the tests that I can't even imagine what the lessons are like. Like the last one I passed for Swedish literally began with the exact same phrase ("Det är vår") Every. Damn. Time. My autocomplete has memorised scores of new phrases; if I type "Jem" it knows the next word will be "pomidora" (I'm doing Polish as well).

Yes, I take the placement tests and then test out as well. Even that feels so awful that I really don't know why I go back to it from time to time. If I fail to test out of the levels and have to do the lessons, it's even worse. But Memrise also has far too much repetition for me. Makes me appreciate LingQ more despite all the bugs.
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Re: Duolingo Experiment: Swedish (Karavinka)

Postby linguoboy » 2018-01-26, 21:04

Car wrote:Yes, I take the placement tests and then test out as well. Even that feels so awful that I really don't know why I go back to it from time to time.

Nothing is worse than making it all the way to the end and then flubbing the final question, something I did twice yesterday.

It also feels like there's something particularly perverse to the sequence of questions. As I said, they always start out the same. But several times now I've been cruising through a test, feeling good about my chances of passing as I sail over the halfway mark, only to suddenly confront new sentences and words I've never seen in any previous attempt. Then I crash and burn, crying, "Why couldn't you have brought these out sooner?"

Car wrote:If I fail to test out of the levels and have to do the lessons, it's even worse. But Memrise also has far too much repetition for me. Makes me appreciate LingQ more despite all the bugs.

I guess I really need to give this a shot.
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Re: Duolingo Experiment: Swedish (Karavinka)

Postby Car » 2018-01-26, 21:36

linguoboy wrote:
Car wrote:Yes, I take the placement tests and then test out as well. Even that feels so awful that I really don't know why I go back to it from time to time.

Nothing is worse than making it all the way to the end and then flubbing the final question, something I did twice yesterday.

I agree, that happens all the time. If not the final one, then at least close to the end.

Car wrote:If I fail to test out of the levels and have to do the lessons, it's even worse. But Memrise also has far too much repetition for me. Makes me appreciate LingQ more despite all the bugs.

I guess I really need to give this a shot.

Keep in mind that how much material they have varies per language and that the "courses" are created by lots of different people, so it's very heterogeneous. Also, the way they rate their own courses isn't very logical to me. The stuff they list under "Beginner" certainly isn't Beginner 1 material at all, but some of their courses for Beginner 2 are much easier. Actually, so far I like their own ones significantly less than some of the "courses" by other sources and having audio recordings for everything is very nice. French has lots of great material, Dutch less so. One of the Dutch courses actually is good, but whoever shared this didn't bother to correct the scanning mistakes and there are even words missing (or entire pages) in their Beginner 2 material. I've been using it on a daily basis since last August, I think, which speaks for itself. It's just not that great if you're completely new to a language and don't speak a related language either.
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Re: Duolingo Experiment: Swedish (Karavinka)

Postby Karavinka » 2018-02-01, 8:57

Day 15 (Level 11)

Image

Have. Fucking. Mercy. I thought 35 exercises for one node was an overkill. I didn't expect 60. The screen in the middle is so far my favorite sentence out of Duolingo. This might as well be a motto for my life.

There are some exercises that I do like, that is the dictation of writing down Swedish following the audio. Unfortunately they're pretty sparse so far, even between Lv4~5, but this might as well be my favorite part of it, because:

Hästen äter ett äpple
Hon har inte en sköldpadda
En citron är en frukt
Det är nötkött

The boldfaced parts show liaison, and the -t in det might as well be silent. This is something that I'd better get used to earlier than later, and the dictation exercises force me to listen carefully. This is a good thing.



And well, it seems that I am forced to make observations here and there. This might be a defense mechanism, so that I don't get completely lost in boredom.

Vowel changes

The only example I can cite on top of my head is dricker - en dryck. This is sort of expected from any Germanic language other than Gothic, though.

Indefinite article usage

Jag är en man

Johanna kindly pointed out on UL Skype that while this isn't necessarily wrong, the natural usage is "Jag är man" if I want to state my biological sex. That makes more sense in the light of:

Kocken är vegetarian
Han är kock


It seems that, when the copula är is used to describe a property of something, there is no need to use a definite article. On the other hand:

En citron är en frukt
Vin är en dryck


The är is used to provide a definition, where the subject - citron, vin - belong to a larger category, and the indefinite article is needed here. However:

Socker är mat

If the word used for the category is uncountable, then of course there is no indefinite article.

False friends

* middag -- I'm pretty goddamn sure this literally means "midday/Mittag", but it means "dinner."
* en glass is an ice cream, ett glas is a glass.
* mat is not meat, it means food in general. (It most likely is a cognate with "meat", though. cf. Old English mete)
* öl means beer, and das Öl is olja


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