itt: stories of yr attempts to master tongues via DUOLINGO

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

I never knew this French word for penguin, manchot.

Pingouin is more common.

i turned on two languages i've studied before, german and russian, and took the test-outs for them to unlock more than the first lesson in each course. although i only have ~three years of college russian from twenty years ago that is severely atrophied, i was still able to unlock more of the language for that than for german, in which i can read some philosophy tentatively (because of the limited vocabulary—the newspaper or novels are more challenging), because i learned only to read it grad-student style, not to speak it, and am terrible at genders and articles and basic conversational sentence structures ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’d like to learn German next. I can’t even read philosophy in it, but I can hack through math texts with a dictionary. I end up in Germany pretty often too, so I’ll get rl practice.

Don't *think* you will have too much problem with German grammar, but you get much less vocabulary
coming from English than you do for French.

12 minutes to reset.

And I'm through!

I am legend.

Good job!
You finished #1 and kept your position in the Diamond League

it's all downhill from here

Don't I know it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCRZZC-DH7M

How many XP are you getting a week, roughly? I've been coasting in Amethyst league for months as 200-300 XP is my norm.

700 or so?

Euler, I found an French to Italian grammar book I bought a while back that I can recommend to you of you'd like.

Also, would you guys like to know how many XPs I got last week in order to achieve my first place finish? Warning: not for the faint of heart.

reggae mike love (polyphonic)
2y ago
Duolingo is a great way to absorb language basics and grammar rules, but once you have that stuff down and are in the mode of adding vocabulary I found it kind of inefficient.

Sure, I'd be happy to hear the recommendation.

That seems right about Duolingo, but I really just want the basics. I'll never write like Victor Hugo, but I've hacked together my own weird style.

Yeah, I still use it a lot, but that statement is a worthwhile caveat in the face of the temptation to view it as one-stop shopping.

The book I am recommending is Le Robert & Nathan grammaire de l'italien. My francophilia has waned significantly over the years, but man they sure seem to know how to write a dictionary or a grammar book.

Nice. We have a number of student Robert dictionaries around the house, since they've been required for my kids, who are just in regular French public schools. (& boy do they love ribbing me on my French.)

That's good, it means they are picking up the cultural cues and fitting in!

We've been here six years now (plus they spent another year here about 5 years before that), so they're fully integrated now.

Yep, tell us how many XP you needed to back the Diamond #1 slot. I'm sitting down in preparation...

6650. Guy behind me had 5550 but at one point his weekly running total was on the order of 9000 XP.

Ooft, amazing! I might see if I can at least get up to the Diamond League in the next few weeks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TYv2PhG89A

If I look at my XPs in the past week I had two days at about 740, two near 1110, two near 1480, the other is not showing, you can do the math.

My toughest competition this week did 4500 XPs last week.

But he’s already got 2200 today.

Came to post: un sac, una borsa

Nice

I caught up to that other guy after he went to sleep and then some but feel a little strange about it. We’ll see what he does overnight.

an endless game of tit-for-tat

Like Danny DeVito and Richard Dreyfuss in Tin Men.

Euler did we do
la torta, le gâteau
yet?

No but it’s another good one