itt: stories of yr attempts to master tongues via DUOLINGO

Before it was only the former, and hard, Legendary review was only for the Level Owl Statues.

I like the new interface as well. The order feels logical and I like how each unit includes some new material, some practice, and a story. I could get all those from the old interface but realistically I was likely to do a lot of stories and hardly any practice. I've actually gotten back into Duolingo since it changed over, after being stalled for a long time.

What language are you studying, Lily Dale?

I really don’t like Match Madness.

Past a five year streak, which means I have been doing it even longer but
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCRZZC-DH7M

I got a special new fiery icon for my phone with the new upgrade thanks to my streak. Makes it all worthwhile.

Congrats on passing the five year mark! I'm a mega long termer too. Always wished they'd give free 'plus' or whatever they call it nowadays for truly mammoth streaks.

belated xp - mostly German. I've been trying to learn it off and on for years.

Just started Duolingo for the first time last week (portuguese), is there any instruction at all in this app?

I guess I'm enjoying the quizzes, but is that all it is?

Each unit comes with a little guide you can click on with some very basic grammar rules. Other than that, you just learn by working through sample sentences. It is instruction, but there's not a lot of explanation of what you're learning and why. I found it helpful to use a German textbook alongside Duolingo so I could get a better sense of the grammar.

I can provide a link to where the Portuguese tips and notes are preserved these days in a few.

But in general it’s good to use some other kind of reference or book as well.

Ok, thanks, that's kind of what I figured, just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something...

JRB, would love a link to any tips!
I'm doing fine for now, but hoping to get to more complex structures soon where some grammar explanation might come in handy...

Here you go:
https://duome.eu/tips/en/pt
https://duonotes.fandom.com/wiki/Portuguese

I really like this book called Modern Brazilian Portuguese Grammar, by John Whitlam. There is a newer edition in recent years. Kind of expensive but there is a sale now, was 30% off now 20%, I believe. For me the caravel has probably sailed Portuguese-wise since, while I have some passive knowledge, I get too much confusion from other related Romance languages. There’s a reason people end up speaking Portuñol/Portunhol. But who knows, maybe I will watch Girls From Ipanema on Netflix and be reinspired.

Wao! Thanks so much, that's exactly what I'm after...

That book looks great, I really need a reference with all the rules in it... there's plenty of examples available just reading blogs, watching videos, listening to podcasts, etc...
Yeah, kinda pricey, but not too crazy for language textbooks I guess...

Anyway, thanks again!

I recently have been working on Esperanto (again) so I just came to say: Feliĉan Zamenhof-tagon!

Still plugging away at this, but finding Clozemaster and Drops more useful in a lot of cases.

This new Mistake Eraser has trouble keeping count.

It still amazes me how far along I can be on some trees and still not really feel I know anything.

I wish I could interest at least one of you in Scottish Gaelic.

...Started another thread and did get someone interested.

In other news, trying out a new app now, Falou.

Not sure about Falou, it keeps dissing my pronunciation, saying I said what I didn’t say.

But what I really came to post that the illustrations in Drops are getting really detailed. Some of the pictures of plant life herbs and spices approach museum piece 19th century Voyage of the Beagle level artistry, maybe even up there with Jean-JacquesJohn James Audubon himself.

Major upgrade on Clozemaster app!

https://www.engadget.com/duolingos-max-plan-offers-ai-tutoring-for-30-per-month-203625446.html

$30 a month seems pretty expensive for the functionality on offer.

Meh

On reaching a 2400 day streak, Duolingo has finally given me free Super... for three days.

If it wasn’t for certain courses like Scottish Gaelic I might finally give this up.

Looks like they may be removing some courses, although if you are already enrolled you are grandfathered in.

Got given another few days of Super last week for a streak milestone. At the higher levels of the (Spanish) tree the unlimited hearts are useful as I can still occasionally lose all five when doing a few tougher lessons back to back (ones where most of the lesson is free typing full sentences in Spanish from English using subjunctive and other more tricksy bits of grammar).

Revisiting Catalan for some reason.

We will see how long this nth honeymoon lasts, but right now I am enjoying terms like “vestit espacial.”

For one thing the tts voice has improved slightly so as not to be jarringly staticky.

Just learned about this:

https://www.upc.edu/slt/ca/recursos-redaccio/dubtes-frequents/dies-hores

2. Per referir-se al dia en curs.
Avui som dimarts.
Avui som a dimarts.
Avui és dimarts.

Good news: this new Words vocabulary trainer
Bad news: closing courses such as Guaraní and all non-English Esperanto courses

I sprung for Max last week and it’s not a major upgrade on Super but the AI chat bot is quite fun and the ‘explain my answer’ feature intermittently useful. The latter seems like something that should be baked into any course as standard, tbh.

I’ve recently completed a year-long experiment to see how far I could get in Spanish only using DL and no other study tools, with progress tracked against a third-party spoken Spanish assessment and it has been effective to a point. I’ve gone from CEFR A1 to a solid B1, which is, more or less, what DL claims it will do.

Yes, I can believe it. Don’t want to play for Max though.

Today I have reached a 2001 day streak. More and more I rely more heavily on other apps. I will continue to use this one as well, despite various misgivings I have accumulated over the years.

This is kind of interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnPBoh0W0M0

Somewhere along the line male and female tts voices were added to the Irish course which makes it that much more appealing.

FInally hitting the Duolingo wall in every language and may heed the siren song of Steve Kaufmann and try LingQ.

Went back to Duolingo after a gap of months and found to my horror that you can no longer use the keyboard to type in the web version, you're stuck with the word bank.

O RLY?

Sorry. Are you sure that’s true, sometimes there’s a magic button somewhere hard to notice.

I hate the web interface with the heat of a thousand suns though so very rarely use it.

It's really completely gone. There used to be a "use keyboard" option, but they took it away except on maybe one question per set. It's awful.

Terrible. Maybe it’s time to try Clozemaster or Glossika.

Please remind me again which language(s) you are learning?

German mainly, though I teach French and I like to assign Duolingo to my students as homework. I don't require them to spend much time on it, and they can go at their own pace, but it's been a good way to give them some general practice time and the chance to see more vocab than we can get through in class.