itt: stories of yr attempts to master tongues via DUOLINGO

Rosetta Stone for Vietnamese was ok, used it for a while. They didn't provide any explanation of concepts, in order to make it totally immersive, which was super frustrating for stuff that wasn't intuitive

I cannot recommend italki enough if you actually want to be forced to speak aloud and figure out what you would likely talk about in another language. When I lived in Lyon, so many French people were like, "why do you know this word?" I kept saying L'INTERNET!

HI DERE

This cross-training/laddering definitely challenging and useful, not just a novelty stunt.

How's yr soft mutation, mark?

lol i "took a break" before xmas and have not yet got back on con ngựa as they say in vietnam

Just made up a bad bilingual joke and am feeling compelled to post it here.

Doesn’t quite work though, so never mind, I guess

Okay, it was something to do with someone offering Steve Martin chocolate covered ants in Paris and Steve raising his hands and saying “Fourmis”?

« Fourmis? »

Almanca dilinde artık %35 oranında akacılığa ulaştın!

I am augmenting my Duolingo practice of Swedish in two ways in 2018:

- signing up for MHz Choice, an Amazon Prime channel that offers tons of international TV shows with English subtitles for $7.99/month; they have tons of Swedish crime shows
- reading Swedish crime novels with a dictionary close at hand; I've been able to find cheap paperbacks on eBay

Cool. Maybe you should start standalone thread for that. But maybe not

Anyone else still doing this? Also, what’s with the crowns?

I'm not doing it at present. My wife's been doing German though. I'll ask her about the crowns.

Oh I see

Yep, still using it. Currently on a 590 day streak and have finished both English to Spanish and Spanish to English courses. It bores me, but I can't stop now!

Sí, todavía lo estoy usando. Actualmente tengo una racha de 590 días y he terminado el curso de inglés a español y tambien el curso de español a inglés. ¡Me aburre pero no puedo parar ahora!

so close!

"también"

Okay, I see the purpose of the crowns is to add more material, but with its implementation two useful features seem to go missing from the iPhone app:
1) when simply reviewing, it doesn’t tell you anymore what skills you have improved
2) When clicking on a skill it no longer gives you the list of weak words

Wow, randomly checking in German I see that one of these Crown levels has 30 lessons.

Abs. Obs. 4, Level 3

Are these actually new questions or is this just a different way of counting the same old questions, I wonder

Perhaps this new format will inspire me to finish the last ten leaves of my Turkish tree

¡Gracias ∞! Normalmente no recuerdo los acentos perfectamente, necesito practicarlos más.

I got the Crowns feature a couple of days ago and it looks like it could be just what I was needing to keep going on Duolingo after finishing both forward and reverse trees. Will see how it goes as I switch to revisiting the Spanish tree for the first time since starting and finishing the reverse.

Was wondering about that myself for trees I had long ago completed and left, asking myself whether the crowns just a way of putting a positive spin on the similar old process of keeping the tree gold. Perhaps that little semantic shift is enough to motivate. Seems like at least they finally got rid of the funny Fluency percentage.

Three leaves to go in Turkish

Slowing down, perhaps due to some Zeno’s paradox effect.

Wonder if I will be able to say Zeno’s Paradox in Turkish when I reach the end.

I will be able to say “owl” though, if not “golden owl.”

Oh good. This might be what I need to go back and redo all of French and Spanish again. The big crown on the right is how many lessons you have done in total?

Something like that. Each leaf goes up to five crowns, afaict

I went into one leaf of German and pushed onto level 5. Didn’t really see much new material, I have to admit.

Still wondering how it will let you know when you need to review

Unless you have five crowns, that is

Got up to level five in the first 5 categories on the Spanish tree. It seems like there are a couple new words but not really much added content, especially considering how many exercises you have to complete to get to level 5. So far the best part is that as you level up the voices speak faster.

Ah, haven’t noticed that.

Or did I?

Two Turkish leaves left

Altın baykuş var

Now to forge ahead on the Turkish to EnglishGerman tree

I'm at no more than level 3 anywhere on my Swedish tree, even for levels where I'm shown as having passed milestones. So I'm starting over at the beginning, basically.

Three seems to be a default inherited high level, wouldn’t necessarily call it “(just like) starting over.”

This release seems to have fix some annoying problems with offline progress being lost. *Fingers crossed* that this is indeed the case.

Also what do you mean by “levels where I'm shown as having passed milestones”?

Peeked at my French tree, which I haven’t looked at in ages. Seems like there was recently a lot of modification, for some leaves I don’t even have level 0 completed now. Sill have La chouette d’or at the bottom though

Oh but I completed two lessons and it sent me right to Level 2

Seems to be a new leaf called Gallicism

Okay, one more thing. On most trees, for those lessons I had placed out of I was assigned three crowns, whereas for other lessons I had to work at one by one I got one or two crowns.

Some explanation of these kind of things here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/26739837 in particular....

"We went one step further and actually used how many times you’ve seen the words in a skill and how many times you got those words right to determine whether to place you at Level 1, 2, or 3. Since levels get harder as you go up, we didn’t feel comfortable placing anyone at Level 4 or 5, since the old system didn’t give hard enough exercises to place into these levels. Of course, if you already know the language very well, this may not be the right level. But, it is still more challenging than what was offered before."

Thanks. Had seen that but needed go reread more carefully. Interesting that that spaced repetition, which seemed to be the shibboleth, or perhaps the backbone of this and other systems, has now been pushed way into the background. In my experience, it works great until it doesn’t, so that’s okay I guess.