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How do!

Started on Duolingo to learn Japanese, so I can be more interactive on my next holiday there. Dunno if I’ve a knack for languages, but I’m finding it very enjoyable.

Anyone else using Duolingo? Or other language education sites?

I'm up to a 1685 day streak. German primarily. Russian occasionally.

I feel like the app is more helpful if you already have some background in the language you're seeking to learn (minor in German from university here.) Learning Russian from the ground up through the app has proven harder.

500 something day streak on spanish. I started out doing Spanish, Hungarian, Norwegian, Ukrainian, Chinese, and German... but had to dial it back because it was a bit much to juggle at once. Focusing on Spanish for now as I have the most familiarity, then going to brush up on German once done, might not go back to Chinese - I studied it for years in college but remember none of it, unlike the German/Spanish. Very interested in the Hungarian, Ukrainian, and Norwegian though.

One of the guys at my club has been learning With the Wagotabi game and doing well.

Even did his first trip over to Japan on his own. So that’s exciting!

831 jajmey tlhIngan Hol vIghoj.

Only started because they had Klingon available. Added polish a couple of months ago, because, well, there are far more situations where I could use polish than Klingon.

I have roughly 800 days on Duolingo and my kids use it too on and of to improve their english for school.
I myself am learning polish (very slowly) because my mother in law is from Poland, I really like the sound of the language and we go there on vacation now and then. So far my reading comprehension is definitly better than my pronounciation. But I'll get there sometime.

Main thing I’m struggling with is sentence structure. But just about to hit my 7 day streak, so plenty time to learn.

Though, have found it sometimes isn’t hearing me right.

Did Duolingo U-turn on their AI usage?

I have no idea.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Main thing I’m struggling with is sentence structure. But just about to hit my 7 day streak, so plenty time to learn.

Though, have found it sometimes isn’t hearing me right.

I've been using it for Japanese for about 3 years. Definitely a challenging sentence structure to pick up and as you get into writing you'll find further challenges. Duo is pretty good at keeping you invested in small bites, but it's probably slower going than something that pushes more repetition. It can kind of breeze over things whether you get them or not. I've been curious if I'd get better results out of Rosetta or something similar but Duo works well enough for a free product for me.

I’ve been scribbling down my regular mistakes, and the spellings and that.

Only been at it a week. I will get there. I will be conversational.

Duolingo is really weak for learning complex grammar, as you never really see a complete declination or rules, it's all just trial and error with random sentences.
So, it works okay for klingon because of its pretty light grammar, but with polish and its different casus I end up guessing most of the time. If I bought some book to use alongside duolingo(well I did for klingon) I'm sure it'd be much more efficient.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Duolingo is really weak for learning complex grammar, as you never really see a complete declination or rules, it's all just trial and error with random sentences.
So, it works okay for klingon because of its pretty light grammar, but with polish and its different casus I end up guessing most of the time. If I bought some book to use alongside duolingo I'm pretty sure it'd be much more efficient.

I think this is particularly problematic for someone who's first language is English, which is grammatically relatively simple and permissive for a variety of historical reasons. Gender outside of sexually-dimorphic creatures is essentially non-existent, for example, unlike most Indo-European languages.

I always struggled with masculine/feminine in French. Years later I learned “stuff just is”. That there is no rule.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The Japanese stuff is coming to me though. And to be honest? I kind of like that Duolingo specifically sometimes doesn’t quite explain things, means I need to figure out for myself.

Though apparently it’s constantly adjusting its difficulty based on results, so maybe it’s just providing The Right Sort Of Challenge For Me.

Still nice to be returning to education, after a fashion, for the first time in 30 years and doing well.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I always struggled with masculine/feminine in French. Years later I learned “stuff just is”. That there is no rule.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The Japanese stuff is coming to me though. And to be honest? I kind of like that Duolingo specifically sometimes doesn’t quite explain things, means I need to figure out for myself.

Though apparently it’s constantly adjusting its difficulty based on results, so maybe it’s just providing The Right Sort Of Challenge For Me.

Still nice to be returning to education, after a fashion, for the first time in 30 years and doing well.

As much as people complain about the quirks of english, the number one thing I learn from other languages is that they are all full of similar things.

That said, with Japanese in particular I do have to forever remember that October is the 10th month and is rationally named as such in Japanese.

My feeling with polish is that through all the repititions you slowly develop a "gut feeling" for the declination. I won't claim I get it right most of the time, but more and more I intuitively "guess right"

 Pyroalchi wrote:
My feeling with polish is that through all the repititions you slowly develop a "gut feeling" for the declination. I won't claim I get it right most of the time, but more and more I intuitively "guess right"

Then you probably have much more practice or talent than I do.

As a side note: Through Duolingo I got the impression that the difference between "this" and "that" is rated pretty important in english, as they force it on me in one of the earliest lessons in either klingon or polish.
You know, in German noone cares about the difference between the two and I'm pretty sure most of my students don't even know the word "jener/jene" (that) even exists or what it's used for...

I don't think the distinction in English is particularly important. They can be useful fairly interchangeably except I suppose where they're not. It's not all this important.

I will say that learning Japanese has made me hyper aware whenever a dub uses "that over there" though.

Sorera wa koko?

Away from my notebook, so that’s from memory following one week of learning.

But I agree that there are probably much better ways to learn grammar then duolingo. I'm just happy that by now I often can at least guess the topic when my wife and her mother talk in polish. I couldn't join the conversation, but understanding the verb in the sentence and the most important nouns is a good start.

What my old French teacher described as “getting the gist of it”

I think I probably will pick up a “proper” course further down the line. Duolingo isn’t the best for understanding Why That Grammar. But so far it’s doing a fine job making me aware of what I don’t know, which I find helps me focus better. Which means further investment is likely to see a proper educational return.

Yeah, a colleague often shows me tests and exams of our students from her english lessons. More often than not I'm thinking a bit of Duolingo every day might give them some awareness of basic sentence structures (by all means I'm not saying my english is perfect).
You know, not just writing a german sentence with english words. I speak english so well that makes me nobody so quickly after...

Anyone using Duolingo Max? It doesn’t seem to offer much more value for the greater expense. But maybe I’m missing something?

 Haighus wrote:
Did Duolingo U-turn on their AI usage?

AFAIK no. It's why I decided to abstain from it, they replaced their actual translators with LLMs. It fell right into the boycott box with a number of other companies like Amazon. Which is a shame, because learning more languages is good.

Up to 1587 on Spanish, but still a long way off conversational.. I don't think I have the kind of brain that does languages, so kudos to you Dok

The only Spanish I need to know for sure is "X-Men es muy macho".

I stumbled on this video some time ago but it was useful for going over how different apps are good for growing in language proficiency over time. Duolingo is mentioned is a good starting app but not one you would stay with until fluency.

My streak at present is around 2360 something days. I'll be honest, I have given up with it for languages and just do the chess lessons on it now. I found it useful for building a decent vocabulary, but not for grammar. 4 years doing Italian everyday and I couldn't hold anything beyond a simple transactional conversation with my Italian speaking wife, and her Italian grandfather. A year doing Norwegian only to get a 90 decibel 'eh?' from an artist in Olsen when I tried to talk to him about painting. Probably just me as I have always struggled with languages (7 years growing up in Germany and still got a C in my GCSE's), but that was why I wanted to learn.

I think that in due course I’ll definitely get a course book or similar to complement Duolingo.

The basics have been made easy, but if as others have found for different languages the Duolingo Japanese course doesn’t really get you to conversational? I can use it for practice and keeping the basic skills sharp, and a different course to advance me yet further.

I’ll see how I’m doing at the three month mark. If I’m still digging it and progressing, may even consider going for a professional qualification.

I started using it to learn Japanese for my upcoming trip after they did the Genshin Impact collab.

Do you find it sometimes doesn’t pick up what you’re saying? I know my pronounciation isn’t perfect, but there have been times I know I’ve said it right, and it’s not picked it up.