itt: stories of yr attempts to master tongues via DUOLINGO

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.

Na und?

So I read about some other product called LingQ today.

LingQ no doubt allows you to go a lot further, but the interface seems kind of noisy and distracting, to me at least.

But really came to post: when willl Duo add Icelandic?

In any case, now speaking random phrases out loud in Danish

Hello, thread that I killed. Came to see that the Linguee dictionary seems to have a login feature, wonder what that actually does for you

Hungarian course for English speakers kind of a joyless slog. Reverse direction much more manageable.

https://www.duolingo.com/comment/19937675/Has-anyone-finished-the-Hungarian-course-and-reached-level-25

It’s like they took that Monty Python sketch to heart

Brand new Hindi course looks really good though. So far web-only, not on apps yet.

(thread is dead)

(Oder besser gesagt: kaputt)

(must get back on this, maybe when the heat is less and the book is out)

(The book? Do tell. Oh wait, don’t want to jinx)

(due out september: and mentioned elsewhere on ilx but i am wary of spamming too aggressively)

(Cool)

Nice! Good luck with it.

I'm still persevering with Spanish on Duolingo, but it's so rote nowadays that I've little to say on the experience.

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

look forward to trying the Hindi one!

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