itt: stories of yr attempts to master tongues via DUOLINGO

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.

the french tree got completely made over about a week before the crown system took effect

Thanks, maura.

This Dutch continuous tense is interesting .

moved to Portugal in late September and have been doing my best to learn Portuguese:

- Completed all the Duolingo courses (didn't reach 100%, but it seemed to me I finished the game)
- Had private classes, 10 lessons, 60 minutes each
- Read all the Harry Potter books in Portuguese (as ebooks on my phone, easy to look up words using Linguee)
- Spoke a lot of Portuguese with new friends

Where am I now? I am able to read a novel, currently reading "My Brilliant Friend" in Portuguese and I can follow the plot, although there are of course many words I am unfamiliar with.

There's a big difference between reading and verbal communication though. Yesterday went to a restaurant to celebrate a friend's birthday, conversation was all in (Brazilian) Portuguese and if I was to put a number on how much I was able to follow, I dunno, I'd probably say somewhere around 75%. I understand what they're talking about, most of the time also what they're saying, but the details often escape me - especially if I don't pay close attention (and I find it surprisingly easy to zone out when listening to a foreign language). And I still feel quite limited in my powers of expression, telling stories is a big challenge.

All in all, ~6 months in I feel I'm doing pretty well. I did not know any Portuguese going in, but I've always been good at learning languages and I had a good grasp of Spanish and French before attempting Portuguese (similar grammar, lots of similar words). I hope to reach fluency within a year, but let's see how it goes. Learning a new language is truly difficult and any ad/book/course that promises to teach you a foreign language in a month is an obvious scam.

Yup

Yeah it’s a journey

I’ve been working up a Japanese branch up to level 5 to see what would happen. There’s no new content to speak of and I was about to give up when, half way, through level 4, it added typing in kana as a test type.

Good in theory but frustrating as Duolingo inconsistently understands kanji, so it fails you if you use them. Not knowing that いえ is 家 so that いえの掃除をしてください is corect, while 家の掃除をしてください is incorrect, is pretty poor.

Have you found a Japanese course yet that you really like yet, Ed? I tried busuu for a bit but then soured on if.

Also came to say that I have been doing that thing of going from the target language back to English which has ended up being more useful than expected.

For one thing, Duo’s encouraging words in a foreign language sound so sweet:

5 op een rij!
Goed gedaan!

Dat is juist

Perhaps a topic for another thread, but there is some kind of amusing ( and not “bemusing”, also a topic for another thread the one about frequently misused words and the language mavens they hurt) feeling of discovery when one finds that a word from an alien or invented language in sf is actually just a repurposed foreign language borrowing, such as the vodsels of Under the Skin or the baans of Viriconium.

Goed gedaan James, ga zo door!

Dank je wel, LBI!

Les afgerond!
161 dagreeks
Je hebt je dagelijkse doel bereikt!
Verder

Note that the “dagreeks” includes any language, doesn’t mean I have continuously studied Dutch all that time

Kies een kist als een beloning voor het behalen van je doel.

Prachtig!

Je bent een kei!

Dutch is kicking my ass atm. Serious uphill struggle after I was doing so well : /

What lesson are you on now?

I wanted to try out the reverse-learning method discussed here, but there's no "English for Swedish speakers" option, which is disappointing.

xpost I'm currently on "Sep.Verbs". It's more that Dutch sentence structure twists my brain in knots. I'm a native English speaker.

Don't most Swedes speak some English already? Maybe there's just not much need for basic instruction at the Duolingo level.

Have you found a Japanese course yet that you really like yet, Ed? I tried busuu for a bit but then soured on if.

Also came to say that I have been doing that thing of going from the target language back to English which has ended up being more useful than expected.

― We’ll Take Chanhassen (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 27 April 2018 11:50 PM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Working through Genki and using Memrise and the genki apps for Flashcards.

I see.

My understanding of the speakers of the three closely related Scandinavian languages is that they all mostly speak two languages, their own language and English, while they look askance at their immediate neighbors and their strange pronunciation,and they don’t really quite get why anyone wants to learn a foreign language especially their own, so extrapolating only a little it’s not surprising they wouldn’t bother to make an English language course, anybody who is anybody already speaks English.

Best encouragement is in Hungarian, where for every correct answer it says “Helyes.”

My understanding of the speakers of the three closely related Scandinavian languages is that they all mostly speak two languages, their own language and English
so far so good

while they look askance at their immediate neighbors and their strange pronunciation
languages are mutually intelligible (some linguists consider them to be only dialects), Danish pronunciation being the "weirdest" and hardest to understand across languages (there have been quite a few famous tv sketches picking fun at Danish)

they don’t really quite get why anyone wants to learn a foreign language especially their own
it's certainly a... surprise that anyone without a strong connection to Denmark would like to learn such a relatively useless and (because of the pronunciation) extremely complicated language, I mean if you really want to learn a Scandinavian language why not go with Swedish which at least has regular pronunciation, but anyway learning a foreign language besides English (usually German) is mandatory in primary school and in addition most high school students will study Spanish or French, these days languages like Japanese, Chinese and Arabic are also taught at many high schools

Okay, actually went there and started doing reverse Japanese to English. Very challenging but instructive.

And now that I have told you guys this I have broken the spell and don’t have to do this anymore

Danish pronunciation being the "weirdest" and hardest to understand across languages

My wife, who speaks German, tells me she has an easier time understanding spoken Danish than spoken Swedish.

that's interesting! working in an office with Norwegians and Swedes I'm used to being told how weird Danish sounds - and from studying many different languages myself (German, French, Spanish, Polish, Turkish, Hindi, Arabic) I can confirm that the distance between written and spoken Danish is quite impressive and not wholly unlike that of Arabic :P - but would be nice to throw a few Germans into the mix and hear their thoughts

cultural ties between Denmark and Germany are probably stronger (German was the royal language for centuries iirc) than those between Sweden and Germany, and I believe a lot of people in Schleswig are bilingual

I do believe this passage from wiki to be rather otm:

Danish has a very large vowel inventory comprising 27 phonemically distinctive vowels,[4] and its prosody is characterized by the distinctive phenomenon stød, a kind of laryngeal phonation type. Due to the many pronunciation differences that set apart Danish from its neighboring languages, particularly the vowels, difficult prosody and "weakly" pronounced consonants, it is sometimes considered to be a difficult language to learn and understand,[5] and some evidence shows that small children are slower to acquire the phonological distinctions of Danish.[6]

Een taal is nooit genoeg.

Ik zal dit jaar tweetalig zijn

Je hebt goed je best gedaan en hebt er 10 op en rij goed.