Duolingo

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Re: Duolingo

Postby OldBoring » 2018-02-23, 20:52

I was frustrated with Duolingo because it didn't accept gonna for going to...

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Re: Duolingo

Postby linguoboy » 2018-02-23, 21:11

OldBoring wrote:I was frustrated with Duolingo because it didn't accept gonna for going to...

That is a really informal spelling. I hardly use it even when texting.
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Re: Duolingo

Postby linguoboy » 2018-02-23, 21:16

Naava wrote:
Irusia wrote:Which Duolingo course is better: Irish or Welsh? I want to dabble in one Celtic language on Duolingo and don't know which one to choose.

Choose Welsh and then we'll both be learning it. :P

I tried Irish but imo it was a bit confusing because they didn't explain the orthography or pronunciation (or if they did, I missed it). They'd also chosen to use real speakers for audio files, and even though that was cool, it meant that you couldn't hear how most of the words and sentences were supposed to be pronounced.

I don't understand what this means. Native speakers? I thought one of the selling points of Duolingo was that all of the speakers were native.

I can't speak to the Irish course since I've deliberately avoided it. Their choice of variety would likely annoy me, since it wouldn't accept the variants I'm most comfortable with, and frankly I'm too advanced of a student to get much benefit.

I had enough of this with the Welsh course, and they actually chose to go with Hwntw (South Welsh), just not the particular mix of forms I learned. Since I've studied the language before, I can't really say how frustrating it is for a newbie. Irusia, maybe you've got some thoughts on that now?
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Re: Duolingo

Postby Naava » 2018-02-23, 22:29

linguoboy wrote:I don't understand what this means. Native speakers? I thought one of the selling points of Duolingo was that all of the speakers were native.

I don't know about the other courses because I've never really thought where the recordings come from tbh. :lol: But when I started Irish, I noticed that many of the sentences lacked the audio file and I wanted to find out why. I'm so sure I saw a comment where one of the creators of the course say they had had a real person to read the sentences and that would explain why randomly generated sentences didn't have an audio file, but it was years ago and I can't find the comment anymore. It's also possible I remember it wrong.

I did find the following comment, though. If I hadn't, I'd be sure I had hallucinated the whole thing by now. :para:

Context: someone complained that they don't understand why the "pronunciation is not provided on every sentence".
idshanks from Duolingo wrote:It's on every sentence for languages which have a text-to-speech engine implemented. There is no compatible engine for Irish (and a few other languages), necessitating the hiring of a voice artist.

The benefit of this is that (at least now that the new voice is implemented) the pronunciation is more true to life than in the other courses using the TTS engine - however, the downside is that as the voice artist has to be paid per sentence, the cost of this simply eliminates the possibility of having every sentence voiced.

From what I've read, however, every word is pronounced in at least one sentence in the course. It's unfortunate, but it's just one of the necessary adaptations that must be made in catering to certain languages.


But like I said, I tried Irish long ago. I wouldn't be surprised if they had changed it after I had given up.

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Re: Duolingo

Postby linguoboy » 2018-02-23, 22:35

It didn't occur to me that they were using text-to-speech on the other modules, nor that any sentences were randomly generated. (I only do the quizzes, so I hear the exact same sentences again and again.)
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Re: Duolingo

Postby kevin » 2018-02-26, 10:16

They don't randomly generate sentences, but the courses only contain those sentences that the course creators explicitly added. And the little that I saw about the tools they are using to create the courses, they have to add all allowed variants manually on each sentence rather than the software understanding synonyms or something. Considering this, I think the Irish team did an amazing job in allowing variation, but it's also obvious that an approach like this must lead to some inconsistency and that your full-fledged dialectal Munster Irish will probably not be accepted.

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Re: Duolingo

Postby aaakknu » 2018-02-26, 19:00

linguoboy wrote:I had enough of this with the Welsh course, and they actually chose to go with Hwntw (South Welsh), just not the particular mix of forms I learned. Since I've studied the language before, I can't really say how frustrating it is for a newbie. Irusia, maybe you've got some thoughts on that now?

I have only finishe the first skills about greetings, so I cannot say anything about how good the whole course is, but the Welsh course seems to be better than the other ones I tried. I will be able to tell you more about it when I finish at least half of it.
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Re: Duolingo

Postby linguoboy » 2018-02-26, 19:03

Irusia wrote:I have only finishe the first skills about greetings, so I cannot say anything about how good the whole course is, but the Welsh course seems to be better than the other ones I tried. I will be able to tell you more about it when I finish at least half of it.

Da iawn!
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Re: Duolingo

Postby aaakknu » 2018-03-09, 19:18

Irusia wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:I have no idea yet why Arabic is still at 0%, but Hindi is at 90% and Indonesian at 71%! Yay!

All three of those are languages I want to add. :P

Indonesian is at 79% already.

87%
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Re: Duolingo

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-03-11, 3:23

Irusia wrote:
Irusia wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:I have no idea yet why Arabic is still at 0%, but Hindi is at 90% and Indonesian at 71%! Yay!

All three of those are languages I want to add. :P

Indonesian is at 79% already.

87%

Oh, the agony!

Karavinka

Re: Duolingo

Postby Karavinka » 2018-03-12, 14:39

Image

Good job! One last push?

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Re: Duolingo

Postby Luís » 2018-03-17, 20:00

Klingon is now available in case anyone is interested... :P
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księżycowy

Re: Duolingo

Postby księżycowy » 2018-03-17, 23:54

buy’ ngop!

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Re: Duolingo

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-03-18, 2:28

Grrr! Klingon is available, yet Hindi still isn't!! :x

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Re: Duolingo

Postby Ciarán12 » 2018-03-20, 18:12

I don’t know if this is really the right thread, but it’s close enough.
I’d like to hear from anyone who’s actually completed one of the Duolingo courses - how good does it actually make you at the language (supposing Duolingo was your only (or at least primary) method of learning the language)? Are there differences between the courses? (like some take you to B1 level, others as far as B2 etc…)

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Re: Duolingo

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-03-20, 23:35

I find this thread appropriate for that question. :)

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Re: Duolingo

Postby kevin » 2018-03-21, 14:31

I've completed the Irish course on Duolingo, though as you know, it was neither my only nor my primary resource. I honestly don't think it would have worked well as the only resource (mostly because of the lack of grammar explanations; the tips&notes are not nearly as good as GnaG, and that they are part of lessons makes it hard to use them as a reference), but for what I used it, it was useful: Expanding my vocabulary, and doing so in the context of whole sentences. One of the most useful parts are the sentence discussions.

I know that I'm not using Duolingo like they envisioned it to be used, and don't believe in their concept, but as it happens, the tool they provide is still useful enough for my way of learning.

Completing a tree doesn't really mean that you know everything the course contains because it doesn't force you to learn things really well before you progress to the next lesson. But assuming you do, some of the better/longer courses allegedly can get you to somewhere around B1 in reading and writing, others only to A2 or something in between. I think B2 is completely out of reach with only something like Duolingo.

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Re: Duolingo

Postby Saim » 2018-03-21, 14:44

Ciarán12 wrote:I don’t know if this is really the right thread, but it’s close enough.
I’d like to hear from anyone who’s actually completed one of the Duolingo courses - how good does it actually make you at the language (supposing Duolingo was your only (or at least primary) method of learning the language)? Are there differences between the courses? (like some take you to B1 level, others as far as B2 etc…)


Turkish took me to ~A1, but I didn't do any revision of lessons, I kind of did a bit of a speedrun.

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Re: Duolingo

Postby vijayjohn » 2018-04-02, 17:12

Indonesian is now at 94%.

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Re: Duolingo

Postby JonWalter » 2018-04-04, 16:36

Personally I find Duolingo to be a good resources for vocabulary building, and getting a rough understanding of a languages grammar. If you want to really learn a language in my experience just Duolingo doesn’t work too well.


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