itt: stories of yr attempts to master tongues via DUOLINGO

Hello

I finished the French->Italien tree last week, meaning I got them all to level 1. Now I'm going through for level 2. This is a better way for me than focusing on maxing the earlier lessons at the expense of later ones; I get less bored this way.

Passed the 1500 day mark this week. Next milestone is 5 years.

How’s the Italian going, Euler?

Molto buono !

I am working through the tree for the second time. It's a little tougher but I'm making fewer errors than on the first run. The biggest struggle is producing (by typing) whole sentences in Italian, unsurprisingly. I'm happy to have many Italian colleagues with whom I can practice speaking and even writing once I hit that point.

Cool. Years ago I used to post on a Yahoo Italian group which has been on life support and now will finally disappear, thinking of migrating to their new home at https://groups.io/g/Italian, but it is very old school.

I like Italians Mad At Food but that's mostly in English alas

I feel like my current regime in which I mainly focus on Hungarian, using Duolingo in both directions along with some other resources, is really working for me. I can elaborate further if anyone is interested.

Anyway I let myself drop to Obsidian this week. So relaxing. Don’t know quite what the new icon in the app that links to the blog is supposed to be about.

Still loving this staycation in Obsidian League.

RIP Tinycards.

"Molto buono !"

Should this be molto bene? I keep struggling with when to use which. Bene is adverb tho right?

Think so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2xdJiExvUk

It’s actually hard to stay in Obsidian and not get promoted.

I’ve been in whatever the highest one is, diamond?, for some time. I just chug with my 5 or six lessons a day.

I know I’ve got no one to blame but myself, but losing all 5 of my hearts on a single lesson involving concepts I don’t quite grasp yet is absolutely infuriating!

I’m back in Diamond, in a distant second place behind the local crazy.

I'm on android and it seems that hearts & gems have finally arrived to my world.

"We've converted your 14832 lingots to 150000 gems..."

Heh, cool.

I have been trying out the recent Correct Your Mistakes feature and enjoying it somewhat. Also like the new Dutch voices.

Flevoland is de beste provincie van Nederland.

dat had je gedacht!

Ha, is that where you are from?

lol - nee joh

So I have been delving into the two Semitic languages on Duolingo and neither course is great. They have different, almost complementary problems.

Check it out, in Dutch you apparently have a word for water (besides “water”) that comes from Yiddish, “majem.”

Ah, it is Bargoens, another new thing I just learned.

Weird thing in Arabic when the mīm almost disappears after a lām, like in المنتج, although it didn’t do if just then.

Finnish has a weird thing I haven't seem anywhere else. In negative sentences there is a negative verb that is conjugated and then the regular verb is the same for all persons.

huh weird

I've finished my second full run through the French->Italian tree. onto a third

Cool.

My year end statistics page ended up being in Hungarian, since I do the reverse tree of that language so much, given that the regular tree is so problematic.

After multiple iterations of the Ramp Up Challenge it’s back to the one I like best

I don't know what that is, probably just something not in the module I'm doing.
thinking of adding French->German, not sure if that would interfere with my continued French->Italian. But the latter is now in the stage of improving what I already know rather than teaching me new things, and so it's become a bit less fun. Not gonna drop the F->I of course, but it's getting easy now. I know that'll change when I bump up from red to whatever the next color is, and probably also in the latter stages of even this color.

German sufficiently different from Romance languages that it might not mess you up.

Anyway came to say that maybe it’s just novelty and I haven’t quite completed it, but so far this little Finnish course is so much more enjoyable than the Hungarian course.

Who knows why I like this Finnish course so much right now, perhaps it’s just the honeymoon phase, but it just seems light and to the point, as opposed to the insane Hungarian course.

Finnish would be fun to do.

I signed up for + finally, on a 60% off promotion. Started French->German as a result, since I'm bound to make tons of errors. In my French->Italian training I can roll pretty much indefinitely, unless a lot of direct & indirect objects are involved. I'm ok enough with those in French though not top, but the order's a little different in Italian, and I haven't yet puzzled out all the rules for when it's le / lì etc. I could check a grammar page but that defeats the fun of Duolingo for me, which is pattern recognition. When the time comes to give a talk in Italian I'll do that work, but first we gotta get through the pandemic.

In recent times I have been better at not looking at the hints, which is one advantage of +.

How so? When taking the tests I guess?

Knowing that I will complete the lesson and won't have to restart.

ah right! it's still new to me

Also the iPhone app how has a Review Your Mistakes feature which is especially useful.

think it's on the iPad app too, the broken heart no?

Yes, the broken heart.

I try not to let it get above ten.

Sometimes I will start a lesson, get the broken hearts up to ten, abandon the lesson, switch to broken hearts and then go back to the lesson.

I was swithering on getting plus on this 60% off - do you folks who have it reckon it could be worth it at this decent discount?

I am a heavy user so I say yes, but don't want to strongarm anybody.

One thing about this kind of self study: I sometimes think it would be nice to have a study buddy- either here or off the board- studying the same language at the same time at the same level, but usually it doesn’t work out that way. Ultimately it may be too much to ask. But there is something to be said about studying in parallel with others- I study my language(s) you study yours, we compare notes every once in a while- that does seem to be helpful imo.

My pace is pretty steady but can be disrupted and I would prefer not to have the stress of letting down anyone but myself. I do enough of the latter already.