itt: stories of yr attempts to master tongues via DUOLINGO

https://status.duolingo.com/

All Systems Operational

So I have some kind of advanced/super-geeky/OCD approach to this app I have been using recently if you want to hear about it.

i want to hear about it

Okay, so if I want to go fast, I go over to the League Table and hit the Purple Lightning Bolt for the XP Ramp Up Challenge. More often than not I can tell what section it has me working on so then I can go back to the tree and do lessons- more slowly, since no time bonus, but yes accuracy bonus- from the corresponding leaf in the tree.

i didn't even know there was a purple lightning bolt

I don't get one on the web or android app.

i don't seem to have one either. there's a barbell that seems to generate practice questions in a similar way on the main page, not tied explicitly to any lesson, but it's not timed.

https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/37695355/XP-Ramp-Up-Challenge

I used to get a double-XP bonus that I could activate for free in the store every Thursday and would last for thirty minutes, doubling the XP for whatever lessons I did in that time, but it was a similar kind of test feature and only around for a few months for me.

Oh yeah, I would get that too

I used the purple lightning bolt twice today (ON IPAD) to get a bit higher in my tier. I gather these tiers are specific to language1->language2 ? ie if you're doing English->Portuguese the rankings are different than those for French->German ?

I can buy double XP bonuses with gems, which I have a lot of, because of all my progress from five years ago that got converted to gems in the meantime.

Tiers have nothing to do with which language(s) you are studying. You can click on any other individual of the fifty in your cohort, or yourself for that matter, and see what they are studying to confirm this.

ah ok thanks! which tier are you in? I am in the ruby tier, looking at a promotion to the next tier in a couple of days if I keep up the good work.

I am in Diamond League, in which the only Achievement left is to finish first, which is highly likely for reasons I can explain if needed.

Note that within each League I believe it is random which fifty people you will compete with each week.

huh ok. nice! I've only been doing this again for a month now.

Liking this new thing when you level up and it gives you extra points and tells you which ones you missed and are reviewing.

Can’t remember which language you are studying now, Euler.

I am doing Italian, from French.

Studio italiano.

And are you finding it easy or challenging?

Easy. Between French and Spanish, both the nouns & the verbs are pretty familiar already. The grammar is also pretty similar. I haven't gotten into any tenses but the present yet, though. Conjugations in the present are mostly regular so far too (except for être and avoir, ha I don't know the infinitives of those verbs in Italian, though I know the conjugations). As usual with Duolingo, you get a pretty fractured understanding of things, but that's even easier when I already know other very similar languages.

i was racking up XP like crazy for like 2 months and then suddenly got super bored with trying to max out my lesson-levels at 5/5 for the checkpoint i've gotten to (which is the method i'd settled on, rather than always going ahead—i tested into the next checkpoint a while back, but haven't been opening up its new level-1 lessons), so now i'm at risk of being demoted from wherever i'm at, pearl league iirc, unless i do a bunch this weekend just to stay in the running : /

it would be a real boon if the subsequent lesson-levels weren't such a repetition of the earlier ones.

Yup

I study Sanskrit and Arabic to improve my mind.

For me racking up lots of XP usual comes from useful review which eventually turns into not-so-useful review and then just gamification whirlpool spin.
.

Right now I am at the top of my Diamond League. I had been up by a few thousand points and now I am up by a several hundred points but I noticed that the guy in second is capable of putting in multi-thousand days on the weekend, if not using a bot to get the points for him so it is kind of pointless of me to try to hard to postpone the inevitable and keep up with him.

I only get the units to level 2 before I press on. But I am not very far: only on present tense verbs 2, a few steps below the 2nd castle.

I've done a few lessons at level 3 & they seem to be a bit more difficult than the earlier ones? More like the lessons it occasionally drops that it offers at a higher difficulty. They're harder in that they don't always have a word capitalized so you don't grok automatically the first word; and they more often force you to type full sentences in the new language, definitely the hardest thing for me to do (and a reason I should do more time on desktop probably).

Easy. Between French and Spanish, both the nouns & the verbs are pretty familiar already. The grammar is also pretty similar. I haven't gotten into any tenses but the present yet, though. Conjugations in the present are mostly regular so far too (except for être and avoir, ha I don't know the infinitives of those verbs in Italian, though I know the conjugations). A, but that's even easier when I already know other very similar languages.

As usual with Duolingo, you get a pretty fractured understanding of things
This is totally otm, even if I force myself to read the tips and notes, etc.

yeah I know that eventually I'll have to look up some conjugation tables etc but for the moment I like the feeling of hacking into a new language like I'm going into some jungle where I only periodically can see the forest for the trees. it's how I've learned all my other languages!

I’ve actually found Wiktionary surprisingly useful for certain languages. Some people have really gone to town in there setting things up.

I use https://www.linguee.fr a lot for figuring out turns of phrase in French that I don't know.

Yeah, linguee is really good too, especially good for certain languages.

This Diamond League showdown going exactly as expected.

I just got a bunch of the earliest lessons up to level 3, should be promoted easily now. It's helping to reinforce genders in both languages, something I constantly need. When I'm giving a class, I frequently end up asking my students the gender of words that I've either forgotten or never knew. Unfortunately for me, genders don't always match up between my three romance languages. Il topo, la souris, par exemple.

Yeah, that is indeed tricky and confusing.

The best way is to memorize the gender upfront, but it doesn't always seem to work out that way.

So my leaderboard rival, as expected, pulled up to the bumper and leveled up so now he is only a few hundred XPs behind me. I assume as the deadline looms he and his bots will drop whatever XPs are needed to pull ahead.

well I'll never be a native speaker so people don't think that much less of me when I bobble a gender orally. in writing I always check when I'm not sure. there are too many words to just memorize things, instead through living the language it becomes intuitive.

Yes, exactly.

Unfortunately for me, genders don't always match up between my three romance languages. Il topo, la souris, par exemple.

Keep coming across this interesting thing
Les fruites = la frutta

Some more gender changes
la glace, il ghiaccio or il gelato
le gril, la griglia

Yes on all of those! They are recurring duolingo favs I guess

Keep coming across this interesting thing
Les fruites = la frutta

And finally let’s not overlook
Le tigre, la tigresse ; la tigre

Another singular plural thing they discuss in that tip/note:
la pasta; la pâte, les pâtes

More gender switches:
la nourriture, il cibo
le papillon, la farfalla