General Language-Learning/Duolingo Thread

[Chevre]

We've been discussing Duolingo in Sitechat for a few days so we thought to start a thread! (especially since one of the achievements requires you to get friends )

For those of you who don't know, Duolingo is a neat language-learning program/app that covers several languages! It's based on daily practice and review.

My Duolingo name is kittymaster9000 and I'm on a 17-day streak in Japanese I also dabbled a bit in the spanish and italian ones, but have fallen off the wagon

Post with your hot updatesies and discussion about any sort of language-learning!
GreenLiquid is awesome

[Annadog40]

I was on a 21 day streak in Spanish and had a successful club named "El club" the group notifications woke me up in the middle of the night. I lost my streak during vacation.

[Aristophanes]

I just changed my name to Aristophanes in it! =D

I do french, like, when I remember every week or two

Edit - it keeps changing back to sheehc as my username. Add that I guess.

[N]

I'm currently on a 75 day German streak! I think I once had a 400+ day streak in Swedish, though.

My username is probably nfromms. I'll add some people if I can figure out how.

[Majiffy]

Fuck Chevre took my name

[vonflare]

Fuck Chevre took my name

if my name is Fuck Chevre

does that mean I took your name?

[Errantparabola]

would be cool to extend this to general language learning thread.

[Raskolnikov]

OOOOU a thread I like

I was learning french and hungarian like I kinda want to for like maybe two months at a slow pace but then a week ago I noticed japanese came out of beta for weeb web (for some reason the web one took longer than the app version) and went full inner filthy weeb mode on that the past 5 days. When I get to the point where I can start incorporating mango and animu things should hit critical mass (still not a weeb)

the official story is that naturally as the hardest language so far (holy moley hiragana katakana and kanji) the challenge makes it the most intriguing whereas what should be easier (french) is kinda boring tbh

on an unrelated note probably never going to learn russian but a week ago spent like 2 days looking at the cyrillic alphabet on wikipedia and practicing pronouncing things written in it for funsies (mostly names)

[fferyllt]

This is relevant to my interests.

[Creature]

Yeah, used to use that when I was learning english, but then it was basically just "keep your percentage up" and got tired of it.

tbh haven't tried other languages.

[Equinox]

My username is Nameraka.

I used it a few months ago to learn some Spanish and review whatever French I forgot from high school (je ne sais pas français), but I stopped when I forgot a day and the imperfectness of not making a streak bothered me. I should pick it up again.

[Zulfy]

I forgot about this. Had some sort of streak in German, might pick it back up. Was also doing Portuguese but it felt like a game of touch-the-cognates more than actual learning.
I'll look up my name later.

Tangentially, if anyone would like to practice their Spanish speaking I'd be glad to help.

[Zulfy]

I stopped when I forgot a day and the imperfectness of not making a streak bothered me. I should pick it up again.

What bothered me was all the effort it took to get that bar to say 100 percent or whatever after not attending for a week.

Also this thread sorta nationalizes my chauvinism since the guy who made the app also made Captcha and was born where I was born.

[Keychain]

Ooooh language learning!

I was trying to keep up my French with Duolingo for a while after I stopped studying it formally, but got kind of bored of it because I was trying to remember words for topics I had exactly zero interest in.

I didn't realise they had Japanese now. I loved learning Japanese, it's such a cool language. I just took the placement test and got level 5 so I haven't forgotten absolutely everything over the last couple years it thinks I know my hiragana hahaha. I'll see if I can get a streak going.

My username is now Key.chain and anyone is welcome to be my friend! It seems you can create clubs, as well. That might be an idea.

[Xiao Long]

I've heard bad things about Duolingo's Japanese course, but I haven't used it myself so I can't say for certain.

If anyone is really serious about learning language, Anki is probably the best thing you can use, but there's not any gamifying in it. Memrise is pretty good too, if you like the whole "streak" aspect of things.
Not trynna shit on Duolingo though, just figured I'd give some other good resources as well since you said it's a general language learning thread.

[Raskolnikov]

Oh yeah the course is very rough/undeveloped still from my experience and occasionally I'd get like the same one or two questions repeatedly but like I'm not picky, might check out aniki though ty as it's probably significantly more efficient at least for the courses still WIP in duo.

[HolySpiritTurtle]

I used to do Japanese on this until I forgot about it.

[Xiao Long]

Oh yeah the course is very rough/undeveloped still from my experience and occasionally I'd get like the same one or two questions repeatedly but like I'm not picky, might check out aniki though ty as it's probably significantly more efficient at least for the courses still WIP in duo.

Anki is great in that it's spaced repetition which is pretty much the best way to learn a shit load of vocabulary in a short time. You can also completely customize the cards in your decks. But since it's a flashcard software, you need to have something to supplement the grammar stuff, which I suppose Duolingo would suffice. I personally used Genki and Tae Kim's grammar guide.

Use whatever will keep you learning, though. Something is better than nothing.

[Chickadee]

I tried Spanish for a while a couple years ago. I didn't last long. I got bored.

I did however find local classes and started learning to sign. That has really peaked my interest. I'm much more of a visual person, so I think a visual language really just clicked with me on a more personal level. Plus the deaf culture is insanely cool.

[Errantparabola]

How far along are you, Chickadee?

[Chickadee]

In ASL? I can hold very basic conversations. I had to stop taking the classes because of money. I want to get back into it.

In Spanish? I can't remember. It's been too long. I know how to say "Hello, how you you?" "Very good" "I do not speak Spanish" and a few colors.

[Chickadee]

My grammar is ASL is not great, but i know a good bit of sings, and honestly, fingerspelling can get someone a long way.

[Annadog40]

I can finger spell and ask people for their names.

[Errantparabola]

Yeah, ASL. I'm also learning.

[Chickadee]

I can finger spell, introduce myself, tell you about my family, I know some animals but I'm a big rusty on those. I know how to sign some common household items/rooms and such. I can tell you where I live and such, ask for or if you need help.I know all my colors, and a few signs for various foods. I can count/sign pretty much any number (fuck the entire 20's...they can all just go to hell). I know some other stuff too.