Do You Speak A Second Language?

Yeah.

The reverse tree, as people call it, seems to be a popular advanced option, as rob describes.

Ah thanks. I see that people also do something known as laddering.

This might be handy for Phil and others: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/19825381

That being a list of the Swedish lessons along with their word lists. Did you come across this sentence yet, Phil?

Island är en ö.

Huh. Island is a country.

No, I haven't seen that yet, but it says "Iceland is a country."

It's an island as well

I just remember this whole thing from school whether you're 'in' or 'on' somewhere, whether it's an island or a country or something. On and on and on it went, and I can't remember whether you're on or in Iceland...

Gotta say the Tips and Notes are useful if sometimes spotty. The ones for French are particularly well done.

I finished my Spanish tree on Duolingo last week. The golden owl is pretty impressive. I still have to strengthen a lot of the skills and there are a number that I don't actually have a real handle on at all, despite being able to complete them on the app (in particular the subjunctive, the multitude of past tenses, imperative, conditional), so a lot of work to keep me going on Duolingo yet.

I'm 4 weeks into my Spanish class too and it's going well - I'm way ahead of it grammar-wise, but the speaking and listening experience is useful and it's a fun couple of hours each week.

Still not made any concrete plans for a Spain visit this year yet unfortunately and our calendar is filling up. Really hoping we can get over, even if it's just for a week to visit family.

Good for you. In fact your post inspired me to finish my French tree, which I had been lingering over the tail end of, just to see the elephant owl.

Also, I read the various pages about the Fluency Shield and ultimately agree that it is mostly an annoyance.

Being doing this app for about two months now. Will try to come up with a concise post about my results.

Offline feature is buggy.

Have gotten to the point where I can piece together articles on sydsvenskan.se. Apparently an old man was found dead in the customer bathroom of a food store in Malmö this morning.

paul joseph watson was right

B-b-but Phil, what about the story about the crocodile and his gang of reptiles?

sonned in a Balto-Slavic linguistics beef
http://www.kortlandt.nl/publications/art264e.pdf

http://gregreflects.blogspot.com/2014/12/how-to-make-gold-duolingo-tree.html?m=1

English isn't my native language, but I learned (learnt? feeling slightly self-conscious here tbh) early in life. Funnily I don't really remember it being much of an effort, beyond feeling really pleased with myself whenever I yelled out bon mots like NO IT IS A CAT which I still use in regular conversation today.

I actually feel self-conscious using my native language now, because the only person I ever really conversed with with my father. I don't speak it very often now and on the rare occasions I do, I really beat myself up if I make a mistake.

wait are you a new poster or an old poster with a new name? or other?

Me? I'm a new poster, I only found this place a few days ago

Oh ok that's unusual
How did you find us?

I read Freaky Trigger and I ended up on its wiki page. I went down a rabbit-hole of links and here I am!

Also I'm here to astroturf for 4 Non Blondes

wait are you a new poster or an old poster with a new name? or other?

― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Monday, March 13, 2017 12:10 AM (nineteen minutes ago)

So now you have to pony up lingots if you want to test out (now relabeled "Skip") of an individual leaf of the tree.

....and now Japanese is available.

This is fun: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScNGbQseoYKGciA2JcPZgwFmQ7K6Ide2CM2DkZB-5Chxbk5ag/viewform

ha that is neat

favourite blend: questicize

That was awesome. I should have kept a copy of my answers

ha that is neat

favourite blend: questicize

― i n f i n i t y (∞), Friday, June 30, 2017 10:43 PM (two days ago)

Word!!!

eautiful

http://making.duolingo.com/how-we-invented-a-new-way-to-teach-one-of-the-most-difficult-languages-to-learn

aw man i was trying to focus on just my irish and french, but now p tempted to try japanese

Duolingo didn't have a Japanese course already? Or did they redo it? I've been doing the Vietnamese Duolingo to build my vocab since the start of this year (supplementing my lessons) and I'd love to hear about how they put the course together, like that explanation for the Japanese course. there are some concepts in Vietnamese that I think Duolingo does not teach very well and probably could use a new approach

based on my frustrating studies of Japanese, I'm more curious to see how Duolingo implemented their course than try to learn the language again

I'm doing Duolingo Japanese and it is Ok, not brilliant.

The Good
Learning Hiragana
Learning basic phrases

The bad
Sometimes it uses the wrong pronunciation eg. 中 is pronounced なか when the hiragana card says ちゅう
Often it doesn't pronounce syllables at all when you are assembling sentences from syllables
No explanation of grammar at all

I'm doing that, Busuu and skritter whilst looking up points of grammar and getting somewhere.

Japanese is app only so far, no desktop- it is still hatching- and therefore no grammar yet.

How far along are you in Irish, jim?

I worked on Duolingo Japanese during May and June, in preparation for spending July in Japan. I agree with Ed on the good, while the bads are common to other Duolingo languages and thus part of what you're paying for. My main cons for it are 1) it doesn't help with speaking (unlike the French module, even if its speech recognition is corny to null) ; 2) not enough kanji for the common expressions introduced early. Hiragana is super important but irl Japan uses more kanji than Hiragana I find (acc to a Japanese friend, kanji give a bit of distance between speaker and object spoken ; it makes speech something like more formal, less vulgar).

Wondering how far along you two went with the Japanese tree.

Japanese is app only so far, no desktop- it is still hatching- and therefore no grammar yet.

How far along are you in Irish, jim?

― Barkis Garvey (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, August 4, 2017 5:36 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not very, 1899 xp. I'm enjoying it because it's legitimately extremely challenging to me. i am thinking of going to scots gaelic classes in the autumn and thought as they are fairly closely related it might help me a little to have some vocabulary and pronounciation

I stopped just past the second checkpoint. I'll pick it up once my next Japan trip is booked (hopefully this fall)

About to hit the second checkpoint. Wish me luck.

not very, 1899 xp. I'm enjoying it because it's legitimately extremely challenging to me. i am thinking of going to scots gaelic classes in the autumn and thought as they are fairly closely related it might help me a little to have some vocabulary and pronounciation

I guess the term is "verbnoun."

Or "verbal noun."

About to hit the second checkpoint. Wish me luck.

About to hit the second checkpoint in Duolingo. Planning to be in Japan at New year and don't want to be wholly reliant on E again.

I like busuu because they get real live users to check your speaking and writing as well as doing voice recognition. I've been correcting a lot of russian's English to earn brownie points with the system - not free, though.

Hm, seems like busuu has a free aspect as well, is that part too easy?