itt: stories of yr attempts to master tongues via DUOLINGO

Think it may turn out to be one of the more useful courses.

I'm very keen to start learning some Basque, but that will be a whole other (non-Duo) kettle of fish!

I did a few lessons in the Catalan course, but the audio was quite poor, some first generation speech generator.

There are certainly some internet resources and even a few apps (I think, I've not tried them yet), but, unsurprisingly, resources do seem a bit thin on the ground, especially if you want to learn from English. This discussion has some pointers: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/13783730 I've found a few additional things (potential online courses, apps), but haven't had a chance to collate them into a list yet.

I'm doing a wine course this month, but hopefully before the end of the year I'll be able to start a little Basque on top of my Spanish. Ideally I'm hoping I can find someone in Glasgow who can give me some basic lessons because I know it'll be a very tough language.

As an aside, I took the Duolingo English Test again last week and my level has dropped 17 points - from 97 to 80 :(

It remains a pretty interesting model for how they could monetise the company going forward, and potentially for how learners of languages other than English could get some ‘currency’ for all their hard work should they extend it in the future, but it’s still the most fundamentally flawed test I think I’ve ever seen.

They’ve professionalised elements of it - there is a browser lockdown for security and the passages of text are no longer copy-pasted from Wikipedia, as far as I can tell - but the most repeated item type remains telling ‘real’ words from ‘fake’ ones, which is a ridiculous way to check language proficiency. Other parts of the test (describe image, gap-fill of text) are so obscure or badly done as to make it extremely difficult for even native speakers to respond properly.

I’d like to believe that the team writing that test has little or nothing to do with the teams writing the courses.
‘Real’ vs. ‘fake’ sounds more like a test for dyslexia than a proficiency test.

Mijn naam is haas, ik weet van niets

Oder
Mein Name ist Hase, ich weiß von nichts.

https://youtu.be/kbgWk5Nl4hw

Hartelijk dank!

Dank yo!

Niks te danken!

Graag gedaan!

En: graag de tekst uit je hoofd leren voor maandag ;-)

Hindi (grammar) notes and tips start one lesson before the first checkpoint and end with the second checkpoint.

So they finally added Tips (&Notes) to the app, although I can only see for Spanish and Chinese. Although App Store says that they also added Tips for French but I can’t find those.

Indonesian seems to have shown up recently

Jaké jsou tvoje cíle?

Finally finished Hungarian.

Waarom zijn de bananen krom?

Dutch Duolingo appears to radiate a definite 70s vibe for some reason:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RyRRjl39rI

Ha! They also had
Heb jij ooit een rechte banaan gezien?

i have been so bad at this for so long

the owl sometimes waves sadly at me from my phone but i ignore

We miss you, Mark S. Do you still want to learn Welsh?

i still want to learn everything! maybe when my book is out in the world and out of my head (just a few more weeks i hope) (i also haven't played the piano all year!)

We haven’t seen you in a while. Take a 5 minute lesson now!

Rome is niet op één dag gebouwd.

Hm, stopped working this afternoon

The iPhone app, that is. Desktop is fine.

Just reinstalled, seems to work again

Snězte tu žábu!

Sorry, what I really saw was just
Snězte jablko!

Ik zag de astronaut in een zwart gat vallen.

For once, I can’t tie a 70s song to that one, but I’m eagerly awaiting Duolingo serving you “Als het gras twee kontjes hoog is”!

arabic launching next year, which I've been waiting for

Nå må dere hoppe i loppekassa!

Smi mens jernet er varmt!

Er du tospråklig?

haha, very good James

Har vi mødtes før?

nej, det tror jeg ikke...

Falsk alarm

Some of the tones are wrong in the Mandarin course which can be slightly annoying. For the most part course seems pretty nice though in its current form.

Started French on dis ting. Never learned another language before (apart from a D at GCSE). About a quarter of the way through - I presume the easy bit. I'm gonna be an expert in talking about dresses and ducks. I'm supplementing my Duolingo by watching Star Wars in French, listeing to l'equipe's football podcast when I go to bed, and I've ordered a dozen Asterix books.

I am still confused about the crowns and new levels but at least I restarted the spanish and french and trying to power completely up again.

In the end think crowns are an improvement on the prior system.

Took a couple of months off but have restarted Swedish. My reading and writing is pretty good, but I would never dare speak the language out loud to anyone.

I prolly wrote about this above, but I studied french for 6 months on duolingo and then did some skype sessions on italki to practice my conversation. By the end of the first 30 minutes I was soaked in sweat.

I want to get back to my Italian tree. It's in bad shape. I've mostly been wanting to work on French, where Duolingo isn't so useful for me anymore - what I really need are more opportunities for conversational practice.

Yeah, for French I really do think you need native French speakers to speak with. Italian and Spanish seem more phonetically intuitive for americans.

I live in a highly bilingual Canadian city, so I'm not exactly lacking native speakers. It's really just shyness/laziness/fear.