itt: stories of yr attempts to master tongues via DUOLINGO

huh weird

I've finished my second full run through the French->Italian tree. onto a third

Cool.

My year end statistics page ended up being in Hungarian, since I do the reverse tree of that language so much, given that the regular tree is so problematic.

After multiple iterations of the Ramp Up Challenge it’s back to the one I like best

I don't know what that is, probably just something not in the module I'm doing.
thinking of adding French->German, not sure if that would interfere with my continued French->Italian. But the latter is now in the stage of improving what I already know rather than teaching me new things, and so it's become a bit less fun. Not gonna drop the F->I of course, but it's getting easy now. I know that'll change when I bump up from red to whatever the next color is, and probably also in the latter stages of even this color.

German sufficiently different from Romance languages that it might not mess you up.

Anyway came to say that maybe it’s just novelty and I haven’t quite completed it, but so far this little Finnish course is so much more enjoyable than the Hungarian course.

Who knows why I like this Finnish course so much right now, perhaps it’s just the honeymoon phase, but it just seems light and to the point, as opposed to the insane Hungarian course.

Finnish would be fun to do.

I signed up for + finally, on a 60% off promotion. Started French->German as a result, since I'm bound to make tons of errors. In my French->Italian training I can roll pretty much indefinitely, unless a lot of direct & indirect objects are involved. I'm ok enough with those in French though not top, but the order's a little different in Italian, and I haven't yet puzzled out all the rules for when it's le / lì etc. I could check a grammar page but that defeats the fun of Duolingo for me, which is pattern recognition. When the time comes to give a talk in Italian I'll do that work, but first we gotta get through the pandemic.

In recent times I have been better at not looking at the hints, which is one advantage of +.

How so? When taking the tests I guess?

Knowing that I will complete the lesson and won't have to restart.

ah right! it's still new to me

Also the iPhone app how has a Review Your Mistakes feature which is especially useful.

think it's on the iPad app too, the broken heart no?

Yes, the broken heart.

I try not to let it get above ten.

Sometimes I will start a lesson, get the broken hearts up to ten, abandon the lesson, switch to broken hearts and then go back to the lesson.

I was swithering on getting plus on this 60% off - do you folks who have it reckon it could be worth it at this decent discount?

I am a heavy user so I say yes, but don't want to strongarm anybody.

One thing about this kind of self study: I sometimes think it would be nice to have a study buddy- either here or off the board- studying the same language at the same time at the same level, but usually it doesn’t work out that way. Ultimately it may be too much to ask. But there is something to be said about studying in parallel with others- I study my language(s) you study yours, we compare notes every once in a while- that does seem to be helpful imo.

My pace is pretty steady but can be disrupted and I would prefer not to have the stress of letting down anyone but myself. I do enough of the latter already.

Yes, exactly

I have a friend that has more than once started a language that I have put on hold or abandoned and they usually end up outstripping me, at least in the short run.

There is also some aspect of I don’t really know until I try what language really wants to be learned deep inside the Solaris ocean of my mind.

Maybe 2021 is the year to try italki

Drops 90 Day challenge is on.

Let me share my iTalki link

https://www.italki.com/i/DG6EeD

Ah, thanks, but I forgot about that and already signed up earlier.

I am assuming you are using it for Japanese. Do you have a teacher you like? Don’t feel like pursuing Japanese right now, but might change my mind. Can’t figure out how to follow you either, assuming you don’t mind me following you.

Hm, looks like I can follow someone through the posts on the community wall, but not otherwise.

I have a woman called aikiko based in Melbourne, she’s one of many young Japanese in Australia trying her best to dodge going home for ever. We mainly do conversation practice and read magazine articles, it works pretty well.

I’ve never posted anything on the community wall.

Also trying to see the different ways to search for teachers, tried to find your teacher for example but couldn't.

Anyway, tried a lesson yesterday which was kind of interesting, tried to schedule another one for today, but that teacher didn't respond but yet another one did so we will see.

Okay I tried some more lessons. Think I found a really good guy for Hungarian who lives in South America thereby also teaching Spanish and is low-cost that I think I would recommend if someone is interested.

A bunch of these people speak or teach multiple languages, so it is possible to do something like learn a new language and reinforce one you already know with the same person.

I've never tried this. Only japanese.

All I can say though is everyone is crazy undercharging for the effort they put in.

Yeah.

Just compare it to what you would pay for, say, music lessons.

Ed, do you use the italki classroom? Or Skype? Or Zoom perhaps?

Zoom typically, no teacher has ever been able to get the italki classroom to work.

Ha, I think it worked for me once or twice but yeah.

How long of a lesson do you typically do?

Normally an hour, sometimes I regret that as it’s scheduled after work and it can make for a long day.

I’m really using it for general conversation, and my fallback is to have some stuff to read together. Which can still be taxing, still not perfect with kanji.

https://uusikielemme.fi/finnish-grammar/grammatical-cases/the-partitive-case-partitiivi

Hey, so I just finished the Finnish tree.

cool! one run through? how many nodes are there?

I'm in the latter part of my third run through the French->Italian tree. still having more fun with French->German, but I have a lot more context for German in my work, so a lot of words & even grammar are like, oh yeah, people argue about how to translate that word into English from Kant.

34 nodes maybe. Think I will spend some time on this with Clozemaster next.

I hear you about German.

Wirklich!

Just looked at Scottish Gaelic and there was a huge update which seems to have started rolling out in December.

There are a lot more languages with English than with French!

I'm on my fourth round through the French->Italian tree. It's getting routine. This is good, but not always much fun. But I am a devoted student.

I'm probably 1/3 through my first run through the French->German tree. It's very much not routine. But it's more enjoyable now than Italian, because every lesson is an a-ha! moment. It will become routine too I imagine.