Duo out here teaching me the essentials

Comments

• Zagorath@aussie.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The lack of the word “and” in the number there made this parse really weirdly in my brain.

  Instead of “I play with 615 giraffes”, I read it as “I play with 600 15-giraffes”. I don’t know what a 15-giraffe is, but it sounds like it might be an unstable isotope or something.

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  • criitz@reddthat.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Thanks for spelling out why this felt wrong to me

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    • Zagorath@aussie.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yeah, as far as I can tell it’s normal in America to say 615 as “six hundred fifteen”, whereas the rest of the anglosphere would say “six hundred and fifteen”.

      The fact that the line break happened to be right where the word “and” was missing probably made it even harder to parse correctly.

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• _dev_null@lemmy.zxcvn.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I went to a certain military training school with some linguists, and they told me they had face-to-face proficiency tests like quarterly.

  The tests would start with normal benign conversational topics, like one would expect, but then escalate to weirdness from there.

  Things like “Are you more worried about the recent nuclear-waste-being-found-in-kayaks issue, or the ongoing chihuahuas-shitting-out-whole-uncured-meat-products problem?”. The point was to see if the linguist could piece together information from non-standard esoteric shit.

  Those 615 giraffes look like they’d fit right into such a test.

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  • MacNCheezus@lemmy.today ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    TIL DuoLingo is secretly using military tech

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• Gork@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  All I see are math symbols.

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  • f314@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Well, the answer has lots of numbers. So it checks out, I guess?

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• Godort@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I believe these are put in place to actually test your knowledge of the vocabulary and grammar, vs just being good at memorizing the handful of simple conversational samples.

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  • x4740N@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The problem is that it isn’t natural speech

    Realistically who are you going to say that to in the language you are learning

    While you can use textbooks to help it it better to mostly learn from natural speech / conversation because no one speaks in text book speech

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    • dingus@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Idk what in the world you’re talking about. This is a totally relatable sentence that I say all the time. You’re the weird one here if you don’t access to 615 giraffes. Sheesh.

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    • schnokobaer@feddit.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That’s the best part, when you meet people of the language you are learning you can say the odd quirky shit from Duolingo and they’ll absolutely love it. What, you are an apple?? A dog is wearing three pullovers?? More relevant for beginners who can say a handful of stuff but can’t yet hold a proper conversation.

      It’s not like Duolingo is just randomly generated sentences that make no sense either. They are carefully sprinkled in to break up the routine and make it a bit of fun.

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• Seasm0ke@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  What am I looking at here?? Its all Greek to me

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• Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I still love that in the Norwegian course you have to translate something along the lines of ‘I am sitting on the floor crying and eating bread’.

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• pedz@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Today I learned that a giraffe in Greek is a spotted camel.

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• lugal@sopuli.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  This might sound random, especially in this community, but when you create a classroom, you can activate infinite hearts. Nobody has to be in that classroom. It really works or at least worked a few years back.

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• krondo@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Υπάρχουν πολλές καμηλοπαρδάλεις στην Ελλάδα… Δεν.

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• Floshie@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Damn… How do you pronounce it ?

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• aggelalex@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Ωχ! Πώς και μαθαίνεις ελληνικά;

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• x4740N@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  From someone who is learning Japanese (日本語)

  Go and find a online community dedicated to the language your learning and search that community for guides and recommendations because it will get you way better resources than what duolingo can offer

  And you can structure the way you teach yourself that language to make it easier to learn

  It’s better to find resources that you can adapt to your way of learning as it’s better and easier

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  • krellor@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I've been using Duolingo to learn Spanish, and there are a lot of things I dislike about it. However, credit where credit is due, I don't have a huge drive to learn but rather I'm opportunistically learning as I have time for self improvements sake. And for that, Duo does an ok job of feeding me new lessons and slowly expanding my knowledge of the language in a few minutes a day, and it's free. After about three months I can go to a Mexican cafe, get a table, ask about the servers day, and chit chat about my kids, all in Spanish.

    Which, if I'm being honest with myself, is more than I would have gotten self studying.

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    • Kystael@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Exactly, japanese was extremely tedious especially at the beginning but now I know hiragana, katakana, some kanji, how to discuss hobbies, time, directions, about relatives… I 100% agree it’s not the most effective but it keeps me on track while other solutions would not keep me engaged as much. It’s better to do three minutes everyday than 30m for two days and then give up. 148 days streak ongoing

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  • umbraroze@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    There are a lot of people who go "I tried to learn X through Duolingo and failed". Sure, that's probably true, because staring at the app is not how language learning works. Much like 100 years ago, people would have said you can't learn a language by reading a single book.

    Duolingo is great for basics of the language, vocabulary and constant daily lessons. But you always need more. There's a whole language sphere out there. People actually using the language and whatnot.

    I started studying French through Duolingo and about 6 months later I was like "I really need a grammar book and a dictionary, dammit". Year in, I was like "I should try reading news in French and maybe try a book."

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• RickyWars@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Το ροζ αβοκάντο

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  • STRIKINGdebate2@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    The pink avocado.

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