itt: stories of yr attempts to master tongues via DUOLINGO

i wasn't going to try but since they were giving me so many more points i decided to do a little, but the third-place person woke up and made it impossible for me to crack that many points on a sunday night.

still, enough that now i have to compete in a diamond league to not get demoted. : / think i'll wait a day or two and see if i get a shittier league.

What do you mean by wait? Didn't it already assign you a league?

you don't get shown your competitors until you lodge some points during the new week. the screen says you're joining 'this week's leaderboard', but i read somewhere online that given the number of users you are being slotted into leagues at your level only if you begin to score points, not until then. i suppose it could be true that the league you will be joining is already predetermined, though.

trick is supposed to be to wait so you're not immediately vying with ppl who go hog wild on sunday night and ratchet up the competition for the rest of the week.

Right, exactly. You should know what league you are in: it either promoted you, or demoted you or you kept your place. Usually I wait until Monday evening to avoid the crazies but after last week I decided to dive in and try this new thing of looking at past performance. Maybe the best thing is actually to start as late as possible on Sunday night instead of waiting until Monday, then you get a good performance numbers but avoid the more obvious crazies.

Also think maybe some crazies wait until later as well.

Who knows, some may even sandbag on weeks when they know they can’t win so other people don’t see them coming.

Current number one is at 2K XP already

Number two only at 1K

And I’m in fifth with 300 XP.

One thing Duolingo has over most other such apps as far as I know, is that it doesn’t dominate the sound output so one can still listen to music whilst practicing. Actually one can do the same with Drops, but the volume doesn’t seem to be loud enough.

Successfully made it to the Pearl league.

Nice. I made Améthyste.

Well done. I awoke to find the top scorers in on my board with 4K and 3K XP, with the two behind each a little above 1K. Must ... avert ... my eyes.

the french tree got refreshed again and there are like 12 new lessons

I think I still have to same dozen or so new lessons I’ve never bothered to fill in as of yet, didn’t see any mention of new ones, maybe you are A and I am B.

But really came to post that this morning I decided to mess with Hawaiian for some reason and through Drops I learned the local name of the state fish which is kind of amazing.

Top two on my leaderboard now have 19K and 17K XP. Even if I don’t want to try to compete with such craziness it is kind of depressing to even look at, think I will go back to my policy of waiting until late on Monday to restart.

Especially since all their points are from English

i have a bajillion rubies so i have just been buying streak preservers every day and not practicing. might do another one tonight! might take the whole week off!!

i have about 23k xp from two straight months of rather vigorous practice. i don't know how you could even manage 19k in a week! is it like a back to school type situation where they have the guy holding books up to dangerfield when he's on the massage table?

Lol. That’s one for ilx posts with striking imagery

also, that reminds me, if you skip some days at the beginning of the week and use your streak freezes, what is the leaderboard competition like then?

Just downloaded yet another language learning app, with content freely accessible via the NYPL, Mango.

xp well to find out i would have to stop using my streak freezes

Are you just using them through the whole week then?

looks like

i could do it for hundreds of days if they let me

Interesting. I never plan to use ahead of time.

Also came to post that drops just did an interesting update.

Also, what language are you skipping out of again?

And does anyone else click through the little speech bubble pretty much every single time if possible?

french?

Why the question mark?

i didn't know if you mean the other languages i took placement tests for

this is not hooky!! i am in control!!! ni nieu ni maître!

https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/36081770/Tha-balla-aig-an-taigh-seo

*d

Sorry, that is just the forum discussion of that sentence. In the lesson discussion, which I can seem to access directly, there are some frazzled mods complaining about questions from annoying users.

Weird how you can just google certain sentences but other ones you can only see it you are actually doing the lesson. Wonder it’s something in Duo or just Google indexing.

Just found out this morning about a notable polyglot I had somehow never heard of before.

Kató Lomb or Lomb Kató.

Trying to pace myself on the Finnish course to get the most out of it.

So guy at the top of my leaderboard has 30K XP, which includes one 12K XP day. Second place has 21K XP, distant third has 6K XP and I am currently fifth with 2753 XP. Think I may return to my usual practice of waiting until later on Monday to start.

I'm in Pearl league and started late on Monday and only the top two have (just) over 1000 XP. I was too busy to try for a top 10 placing this week, which is a shame as it actually would have been very doable had I bothered earlier.

You can do that next week when you start Finnish.

Less than an hour to go. Calling it quits until tomorrow. Can always review the tips and the recent words in the downtime.

Wonder if and when I will dip a toe back into the pool, venture back into the fray. Maybe I will just follow j.’s streak freeze strategy.

Hey...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxLpEX2bt8w

...and I’m back. They changed the way ramp up thing works.

I'm proud that @duolingo, the most valuable startup in PA, is seen as an inspiration for Pittsburgh. Unfortunately, if the US policies against (extremely qualified) immigration continue, we'll be forced to move jobs (and inspiration) to Toronto @SenToomey @SenBobCasey @billpeduto

— Luis von Ahn (@LuisvonAhn) July 6, 2020

i didn't know that guy invented the recaptcha, seems like the kind of ignominious achievement you'd want to keep to yourself

His right hand man/graduate student/Duolingo co-founder has one of the Great Real Names

No crazy person has emerged on my leaderboard - yet!- and there seems to be only one other participant shaping up to be potential serious competition so I could conceivably win again this week/becarefulwhatyouwishfor

Made pearl league, continuing to ease on down the road