itt: stories of yr attempts to master tongues via DUOLINGO

I've tried most of the alternatives people are suggesting and don't like them nearly as well, and many of them you have to pay for. Duolingo at its best was a genuinely effective, well-organized, free app that made you use the language in sentences rather than just memorizing vocab. It's been getting steadily easier, which is frustrating, but until they took out the keyboard I still liked it a lot.

Duolingo is very addictive in many ways, but after all these years, I am finally at the point where pretty much all my languages are maxed out to where I can’t really advance much and they are either too easy or too hard or both at the same time. Those other alternatives are all configurable in way that makes it more possible to find the sweet spot of real progress.

Steve Kaufmann indulges in some annoying stuff at times but the things he says about language learning usually seem to ring true and LingQ seems to be a useful app so far.

I tried LingQ but it seemed to just be one-word-at-a-time translations like you'd get from reading an ebook. And it didn't seem to know how to handle German compound verbs - it would only let me click on one half of the verb at a time, and of course that would result in a totally off-base translation. So I gave up on it pretty much instantly. Is there more to it?

They have these mini-stories as a way to build up vocabulary and experience the grammar live. They don’t actually teach grammar, he recommends you buy the smallest grammar book you can find.

Then you can make your own lessons or find some uploaded lessons you like. I found some Catalan videos and podcasts I like which is why I wanted to try it. The main thing is that the vocabulary is color-coded so you can easily see which words are new to you and which words are difficult, versus words you know and easier words.

You can also search and list your vocabulary based on the difficulty level.

So it first glance it looks pretty kinky but maybe there is something to it

Ha, hinky not kinky

My anecdotal experience is that when I do it and then go back and use some other software I seem to feel more confident, the other software seems easier and I retain more.

The intention is supposedly to have more material, more repetition and variation.

I like this YouTube channel called CouchPolyglot. I see her, Laura, talking about something called Comprehensible Input with some other language YouTubers and it makes sense to me. Think Steve Kaufmann of LingQ seems to be on board. She speaks German and has lived in German-speaking countries for several years, maybe she has some German instructional videoa.

Well she does but they are in Spanish:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqSBh6kVn0g

Here's SK talking about CI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au4CoCLi1Is

Looking at the German in LingQ right now. Seems to understand the compound verbs.

There’s a ton of stuff available for German in there.

This seems relevant somehow.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/sports/baseball/friends-tv-show-baseball-spanish.html

“The basics you can learn in a classroom,” said Flores, who was interviewed in Spanish, along with most of the players, for ease. “But to speak the language, that comes from here in the clubhouse, on the street or from television.”

Just started using the add your own dictionary search feature to Clozemaster and it is truly awesome.

I may yet wake up tomorrow with an enthusiasm hangover but right now this trick is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-67197462

In addition to all the other apps I may use, I just started messing with something called uTalk.

Still on this jag

I'm back at DuoLingo again after taking enough time off to forget the previous interface. Still working on Spanish and right now "ir" is giving me pain.

Well this is shit

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-08/duolingo-cuts-10-of-contractors-in-move-to-greater-use-of-ai

Yeah, I hate this. I used the paid version, which obviously I don't want to continue to support if they're going to lay people off and, presumably, end up with a worse product. But I also don't want to give it up. Its whole shtick works well for me. Fifteen minutes a day, structured lessons, nagging notifications, etc etc.

Wonder what this will be like.

https://lingonaut.app/

Also wondering if anyone else is following the recent memrise snafu.