Do You Speak A Second Language?

I stumped up my $49 this morning and took the test. It's absolutely abysmal - the review linked upthread is generous, if anything. You can knock it off in 15 minutes and more than half the test is just identifying real / fake words which, even before you get to the question of how a second-language learner is meant to know for sure that a particular combination of letters doesn't exist in a 200,000-word corpus, is rendered meaningless by the fact that the audio is completely indistinct.

i'm shocked (not really)
sorry you wasted your $49 :(

It is ok. I will expense it!

I am looking forward to getting my score on Saturday.

hahaha, now I want to try! I could probably expense it too.

Think I am just going to stick with screen grabs of my Fluency Shields.

xp, ILX-mail me if you would like to have a go at a different (and hopefully more robust) computer-based test.
.

For (learners of) English?

Yep.

Will you be reviewing your experience in any way, SV, or was it just to satisfy your own curiosity?

I'm following this closely, also because my native minority language consists of just 6,000 speakers right now and is slowly declining. There's a digital course set up last year. I don't think it's very good, but then it's so so hard to get it right imo.

(^^ probably better for a true linguistics/language thread)

I can't really publish anything as I work for a competitor so it was more to get a sense of their approach and how it differs from others.

I should say that I like Duolingo as a fun learning platform - with some caveats. This just feels like overreach.

^this

Ah I see.

It does feel like overreach, though it seems like a logical next step, to take it from 'fun' to something more meaningful in a practical way. My gut says they've a long way to go yet, but I do commend them for trying.

xp

What is your native minority language, LBI?
Are you interested in feedback from native English speakers, SV?

It's B1ldts. It's listed as a dialect, sadly. Linguists have proven it to be a language (there's English reports about that online but I'd have to look for them), but the government needs to formally acknowledge it as such and turned down a request last year (it's all about money, it's cynical).

It's not true that I did nothing but use duolingo to learn French---I'd been fumbling with dictionaries and automated translators in order to read and sorta kinda write-ish French for years, and I was already competent in Spanish. But I'd never tried to learn to speak nor grasp any of the grammar until duolingo. Plus I was bold---after three months of heavy daily duolingo use, during which I moved to France for what was at the time just a one year fellowship, I elected to give my first public presentation of the year in French. My friend @ndr3w G31m@n had given a talk in French here the year before, bc he was like wtf sounds like a fun challenge, and I wasn't gonna be shown up by him! After that with daily interactions in French & lots of professional emails in French I reached a productive level quickly.

Now I need to test at B1 level for my citizenship portfolio here. I took an online one and got C1+ but I need an "official" one.

The data science guy is your friend?

It's listed as a dialect, sadly. Linguists have proven it to be a language

Do linguists regard this as a real distinction?

your friend
Okay, I get it. I actually exchanged emails with him once, about a completely unrelated topic.

No we and our families occasionally hung out when we were both in visiting positions in Paris a few years ago

Are you interested in feedback from native English speakers, SV?

It's more if anyone wanted to do it out of interest / a perverse sense of fun, tbh. This one has been road tested for years.

We do feedback sessions / field tests with native English speakers for new products though (with some form of compensation) so I will bear the ILX linguistics cru in mind if that comes up.

Do linguists regard this as a real distinction?

Linguists would probably say language is more accurately nothing but dialects, and the lines you draw to divide up all those dialects into languages have no objective reference... they are always drawn with respect to some purpose, not always a linguistic one. Linguists define language families based on linguistic features of the dialects (sound inventories, syntax, lexicon) because they're interested in how language works and changes. But people define languages with respect to stuff like establishing or maintaining territory, identity, community, gaining (or withholding) government funding, etc.

It's sometimes hard to grasp since the folk beliefs about what language is are different from how linguists think of language. I'd say people (implicitly, mostly) think of a language as something that exists outside of the mind and each speaker is an instance of the language who uses it with varying degrees of skill or corruption. But a linguist thinks of language as a fiction that is useful for talking about an aggregate of dialects, and the dialects themselves are aggregates of idiolects, each crafted by one person from birth. Which gives a better foundation for envisioning how messy the reality of a language/dialect distinction is. English speakers have a tidy conception of the difference, since English dialects don't vary that much and the leap to other languages crosses a big and obvious gap. But it's a lot more common for a region to have a bunch of dialects with a continuum of small differences and it's not easy to say what "language" they are all part of. Like you have language A, B, C, D, and E and while speakers A and B can understand one another, and B, C, and D can, and D and E can... but A and E can't. Are these dialects of language A, C, or E?

emailed you SV!

f hazel you're gonna wind up doing so much free education its :)

oops that was supposed to say itt
in this thread
haha!

Totally agree with LL, loved reading that Hazel

the folk beliefs
accurate AND charitable choice of words

Somewhat hesitant to reveal to LBI that on a recent vacation I dipped into the DL course of what I presume is his majority language.

Ha, echt? Leuk! How far did you come? Was it difficult for you?

So far just past the first checkpoint. How would you feel if I told I am enjoying it and not finding it especially difficult?

I'd feel great :) That's very good to hear. Are you planning on using it in any other context than racking up DL points? Do you have friends you could speak it with?

I wish

Well, did meet some Brazilians in the neighborhood recently, one of whom is half-Dutch and works for the Consulate, I think. Don't know if I will run into anytime soon, but always good to be prepared, I guess.

Actually already have a question for you. So "een tweeling" is a *pair* of twins? And also one single twin? And you can just tell by context which one you mean, with the first case being the default, or...

Also seems to me that "children" can be translated as "kinderen" but also "kids," but singular is only "kinder," no "kid" afaik.

Sorry singular just "kind" like, um, some other language.

"Een tweeling" is a pair of two people who are twins. It can never be one person of a two people who form twins. You do say 'mijn tweelingbroer' (my twin-brother), but you can't say "ik ben een tweeling" (I'm a tweeling), because that would literally mean you are two persons. Rather, you are part of a "tweeling". If that makes sense.

Children is 'kinderen', not 'kids' (though loads of Dutch ppl do say kids, taking it from English). Singular is 'kind'.

Perfect sense. Thanks!

Digging the Dutch word for clogs.

Other words besides "kids" that look like English: sorry, water.

Looks like we got the word "water" from you, and "sorry" came from us.

Alstublieft

Dankjewel

The two words of Dutch I remember from broadcasting hey Arnold and spongebob to the Netherlands and flanders 15 years ago. (I used to be able to sing the spongebob theme in Dutch)

wat heb jij lekker kontje!

(the expression I learned in Holland some years ago)

Flattery will get you nowhere Euler :)

nu in de bioscoop

My Dutch tree seems to have changed behind the scenes so I only have partial credit for various leaves and have to redo many lessons. Guess it is not a big deal except when I lose health have to switch to another tree to regain.

De schildpadden eten boterhammen

Finished Stressed Pronouns although I can't keep them straight yet

Ja! We hebben geen bananen.