Duolingo

[Marah]

90€ is too expensive, it's supposed to cost 70€. But you can find the audio online quite easily.

[Lada]

"English for Russian speakers" Duolingo module is about to come out!
http://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/en/ru/status

I have this friend who is a complete beginner in English and who asked me to help him with it so I'm definitely going to try Duolingo on him.

Why don't you want to try LinguaLeo on him? This is the same as Duolingo only made by Russians for Russians. Well, AFAIK they offer English course for Brazilians too and probably want to conquer the world as the company received lots of investments. Personally I tried LinguaLeo and liked their list of songs and movie parts for learning. I think it suits beginners too.

[Car]

90€ is too expensive, it's supposed to cost 70€.

That depends on the country, but assimil.com or amazon.fr seem to be the best sites to buy it and yes, they do usually sell the audio separately, too.

[voron]

"English for Russian speakers" Duolingo module is about to come out!
http://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/en/ru/status

I have this friend who is a complete beginner in English and who asked me to help him with it so I'm definitely going to try Duolingo on him.

Why don't you want to try LinguaLeo on him? This is the same as Duolingo only made by Russians for Russians. Well, AFAIK they offer English course for Brazilians too and probably want to conquer the world as the company received lots of investments. Personally I tried LinguaLeo and liked their list of songs and movie parts for learning. I think it suits beginners too.

Thanks for advice. I checked LinguaLeo a few months ago and I didn't find it useful for absolute beginners though. What could a beginner do with it apart from using it as an SRS program (and I use Anki for this?)

To let others know what we are talking about: LinguaLeo is a Russian website intended for those who want to learn English, http://lingualeo.ru .

UPD: I just checked it and apparently they do have a grammar course for beginners. I disliked 2 things about it right away:
1) It's not free
2) The grammar explanations and drills (those available for a free preview) do not have audio with them.

[Lada]

I disliked 2 things about it right away:
1) It's not free
2) The grammar explanations and drills (those available for a free preview) do not have audio with them.

Well, Duolingo says that it's a free service, which is not fully true (I haven't used it for a long time, but some things were for money or was it busuu?), the same about LinguaLeo. But the prices should be much better in Russian service, they offered me Golden year account for about 800 roubles, that's about 17 euros. And then, torrents got many books for free actually, any course you like

[Sol Invictus]

Duolingo is completely free, apparently they make money on user generated translations

[Lada]

Translations made by users can be with mistakes, I doubt that it's a good way for monetizing. I'm sure these money aren't enough to pay the bills. The "about" page doesn't work on their site and that's suspicious. However on the "job" page they promise "Competitive salaries".

[johnklepac]

I applied for a position at the Japanese incubator, and they haven't written back, though they said they would within a few days. Ah, well, it was worth a shot. (And realistically, I should've expected a cascade of natives and East Asian Studies majors to see the ad as well.)

[Meera]

I applied for a position at the Japanese incubator, and they haven't written back, though they said they would within a few days. Ah, well, it was worth a shot. (And realistically, I should've expected a cascade of natives and East Asian Studies majors to see the ad as well.)

I volenteered for both Hindi and Pashto in the incubator when it first started and I havent heard anything from them either.

[johnklepac]

I volenteered for both Hindi and Pashto in the incubator when it first started and I havent heard anything from them either.

Huh. Well, that makes me feel a little better. (I also applied when it first started; sorry for not specifying.)

I just bought the Christmas and Idioms skills for German. The Christmas one is tough, but by God, Idioms is impossible. You basically have to memorize whole sentences of mostly unfamiliar words after seeing them once, as well as recite the exactly correct English idioms forwards (i.e. know which English idiom they have in mind given a German one), for any hope of ever beating it.

81.7% of all German articles my ass, if this is what I can expect to find.

[Meera]

I volenteered for both Hindi and Pashto in the incubator when it first started and I havent heard anything from them either.

Huh. Well, that makes me feel a little better. (I also applied when it first started; sorry for not specifying.)

I just bought the Christmas and Idioms skills for German. The Christmas one is tough, but by God, Idioms is impossible. You basically have to memorize whole sentences of mostly unfamiliar words after seeing them once, as well as recite the exactly correct English idioms forwards (i.e. know which English idiom they have in mind given a German one), for any hope of ever beating it.

81.7% of all German articles my ass, if this is what I can expect to find.

I just bought all the lessons, I'm so happy I saved my linglots. I really liked the Christmass one, the flirriting and idioms are so hard though.

[Meera]

They added a course for Russians to learn English. Hopefully they will get their English to Russian course out soon. It's going to take them forever to add more languages for English speakers

[johnklepac]

I just bought all the lessons, I'm so happy I saved my linglots.

Yeah, using them as life preservers seems uncharacteristically cheap.

I really liked the Christmass one, the flirriting and idioms are so hard though.

To be fair, I misspoke. The Christmas one is actually pretty easy; I just kept forgetting the first "h" in "Weihnachten" and being penalized for it.

[Meera]

I just bought all the lessons, I'm so happy I saved my linglots.

Yeah, using them as life preservers seems uncharacteristically cheap.

I really liked the Christmass one, the flirriting and idioms are so hard though.

To be fair, I misspoke. The Christmas one is actually pretty easy; I just kept forgetting the first "h" in "Weihnachten" and being penalized for it.

Haha I find the extra heart thing useless, every time I use one I end up having to restart anyway

[johnklepac]

My translation: "in the entire hospital there is only one doctor"
Correct translation: "There is only one doctor in the entire hospital."

wat

[johnklepac]

Do you all often use the Review function? I make heavy use of it. Today I'm proud because I had 51 61 seconds left at the end, which is quite good for me.

[voron]

The course of English for Russian speakers came out and I feel a bit dissapointed with it. Firstly it has no grammar explanations whatsoever. You're supposed to start doing the translations right away, so if you do not have some previous grammar knowledge or a friend by your side to help you out, you'll probably fail. Secondly the translations are unnatural at times. Like, they consistently translate the definite article "the" as "this" (этот, эта), and we surely don't use "this" that much in Russian.

I'm going to recommend it to my friend anyway and see how much he can benefit from it.

[johnklepac]

Firstly it has no grammar explanations whatsoever. You're supposed to start doing the translations right away, so if you do not have some previous grammar knowledge or a friend by your side to help you out, you'll probably fail.

I hate that. The frailty of my comprehension of article declension in German keeps me from progressing quickly. Although I guess it's my own fault for not looking the little buggers up...

we surely don't use "this" that much in Russian.

Correct English translations of German sentences can be awkward, too, although not as garishly. (One was like "The three women are surely sick." It makes sense, but the word surely carries an awkward stench in general.)

I'm going to recommend it to my friend anyway and see how much he can benefit from it.

They should pay me considering how much I've advertised them.

[Meera]

They added an English course for Turkish and Dutch speakers.

[Koko]

I'm sure this has been asked and answered already, but:

Do you need to know a little bit of the language you want to learn before starting up an account?