Do You Speak A Second Language?

ha that is neat

favourite blend: questicize

― i n f i n i t y (∞), Friday, June 30, 2017 10:43 PM (two days ago)

Word!!!

eautiful

http://making.duolingo.com/how-we-invented-a-new-way-to-teach-one-of-the-most-difficult-languages-to-learn

aw man i was trying to focus on just my irish and french, but now p tempted to try japanese

Duolingo didn't have a Japanese course already? Or did they redo it? I've been doing the Vietnamese Duolingo to build my vocab since the start of this year (supplementing my lessons) and I'd love to hear about how they put the course together, like that explanation for the Japanese course. there are some concepts in Vietnamese that I think Duolingo does not teach very well and probably could use a new approach

based on my frustrating studies of Japanese, I'm more curious to see how Duolingo implemented their course than try to learn the language again

I'm doing Duolingo Japanese and it is Ok, not brilliant.

The Good
Learning Hiragana
Learning basic phrases

The bad
Sometimes it uses the wrong pronunciation eg. 中 is pronounced なか when the hiragana card says ちゅう
Often it doesn't pronounce syllables at all when you are assembling sentences from syllables
No explanation of grammar at all

I'm doing that, Busuu and skritter whilst looking up points of grammar and getting somewhere.

Japanese is app only so far, no desktop- it is still hatching- and therefore no grammar yet.

How far along are you in Irish, jim?

I worked on Duolingo Japanese during May and June, in preparation for spending July in Japan. I agree with Ed on the good, while the bads are common to other Duolingo languages and thus part of what you're paying for. My main cons for it are 1) it doesn't help with speaking (unlike the French module, even if its speech recognition is corny to null) ; 2) not enough kanji for the common expressions introduced early. Hiragana is super important but irl Japan uses more kanji than Hiragana I find (acc to a Japanese friend, kanji give a bit of distance between speaker and object spoken ; it makes speech something like more formal, less vulgar).

Wondering how far along you two went with the Japanese tree.

Japanese is app only so far, no desktop- it is still hatching- and therefore no grammar yet.

How far along are you in Irish, jim?

― Barkis Garvey (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, August 4, 2017 5:36 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not very, 1899 xp. I'm enjoying it because it's legitimately extremely challenging to me. i am thinking of going to scots gaelic classes in the autumn and thought as they are fairly closely related it might help me a little to have some vocabulary and pronounciation

I stopped just past the second checkpoint. I'll pick it up once my next Japan trip is booked (hopefully this fall)

About to hit the second checkpoint. Wish me luck.

not very, 1899 xp. I'm enjoying it because it's legitimately extremely challenging to me. i am thinking of going to scots gaelic classes in the autumn and thought as they are fairly closely related it might help me a little to have some vocabulary and pronounciation

I guess the term is "verbnoun."

Or "verbal noun."

About to hit the second checkpoint. Wish me luck.

About to hit the second checkpoint in Duolingo. Planning to be in Japan at New year and don't want to be wholly reliant on E again.

I like busuu because they get real live users to check your speaking and writing as well as doing voice recognition. I've been correcting a lot of russian's English to earn brownie points with the system - not free, though.

Hm, seems like busuu has a free aspect as well, is that part too easy?

DL just gave me
あさごはんはいつもパンを一まい食べます。

In Hobby 1, which is where my brane finally brakes.

Because the sentence structure starts getting mildly complicated.

Turned on the Japanese keyboard last night. Not going to tell you how long it took me to type that one sentence.

Too bad Momus isn't around anymore to help us improve our Japanese. Oh wait.

You know, there are some apps specifically to learn Kanji, used to use one called imiwa? years ago, hasn't been updated in a few years though, don't know which apps that are still being maintained are good.

I passed the year mark on Duolingo just the other day. I'm just about keeping up my streak, but am mainly concentrating on a weekly class and, having found an excellent teacher, I hope to add a bit of one-to-one tuition later this year to accelerate things before we head to Spain for a couple of weeks in January.

RIP 中島春雄

Wondering if we should start a thread for Japanese Learners, or find out if one already exists, although I didn't find after a quick search. Am somewhat reluctant to do so, since this language has defeated me before and am afraid to jinx the rest of you.

日本語は話せます 🇯🇵

Still curious what else Euler did to improve his French a part from DL, I mean aside from living and working in France.

a part
You see what I did there?

Nothing else!

As a linguistics person I constantly click on this thread hoping for a discussion of linguistics topics, but it's just about people learning languages, which is a different thing. Can we have an actual linguistics thread? Are there any people interested in discussing linguistics?

Think we should ask mod to edit the word out of the title. There is at least one other thread that is more about linguistics, but maybe you are already familiar with it: A Foreign Language Vocabulary Thread: In Which We Look For Things That Have A Different, Non-Cognate Name in English/French/Spanish/German.

Just talk.about linguistics itt then ffs

There is another linguist, f. hazel, who posts on the other thread a lot, so it seems like that is a better place for it.

Years ago this thread was in fact a rolling linguistics thread, these days it has shifted focus to learning second languages... perhaps we should ask mods to reassign the [rolling linguistics thread] subtitle to the foreign language vocabulary thread that James Redd linked? Linguistic discussion on ILX seems to usually arise as a secondary exchange about some linguistic-y topic that has sparked more general interest, centering the linguistics aspect usually leads to silence.

I just started reading a book called Thinking with Demons by Stuart Clark which is about witchcraft in the middle ages, but the entire introduction so far has been about framing the topic correctly in terms of philosophy of language. Which surprised and delighted me, since I mainly bought it as an excellent book about witches, not linguistics!

The other thread title is so long, and it is not quite a [Rolling Linguistics Thread]. Maybe we should just append [+Linguistics] or something like that.

I'd like top complain that the linguistics language learning thread has got bogged down in semantics.

heh, just change one of them's title to [+linguistics +continuant -tense]

wow, xpost of a semantics AND phonetics joke

Hey, take it over to the [Trilling Linguistics ThRead]

I just started reading a book called Thinking with Demons by Stuart Clark which is about witchcraft in the middle ages, but the entire introduction so far has been about framing the topic correctly in terms of philosophy of language. Which surprised and delighted me, since I mainly bought it as an excellent book about witches, not linguistics!

further evidence that we are twins

*huggles*

How about just calling it The Standby Hermeneutics Thread?

Game of Phones?

A+

further evidence that we are twins

yes and we need to start developing our psychic powers thereby!

Has anyone taken, or worked with, the more formal, certificated Duolingo language tests?

Wazzat?

It's basically their play to generate direct revenue from learners - providing a quasi-formal certificate to you if you pay $49 and pass a test. It has started to take off in the US with universities, apparently.

They do it with English, definitely, and possibly other languages but i'm not entirely sure how extensive it is yet. It seems to be the direction they're going in, though.

Ugh