Duolingo

[higgins]

Completely offtopic, but is anyone here using Duolingo? I've been using it to brush up my (never really mastered) Russian and it's working better than expected.

In any case, my duolingo handle is pommelstrike. Add me if you want more friends to keep motivated.

[dysjunct]

I'm an on-off user. Same name as here.

I noodled around with Spanish for a while but started learning Esperanto last year when I was on paternity leave -- couldn't go out and game really, but needed something intellectually stimulating. It's super fun, easy, and the community is great.

[higgins]

I'm an on-off user.

dysjunct is now following you on Duolingo.
Skill points: 14407 (14017 more than you)

On-off, huh?

[dysjunct]

Well, when I'm on, I'm really on.

[hector]

I've not used it much myself; largely because I came across a different language learning thing online that's very, very different, but unfortunately doesn't do many languages, and only one of them is particularly popular among language learners. I used it to learn Welsh, and I've found it really, really useful. It's called SaySomethingIn, and it is audio only. You get an English prompt, and you give a response in the language you're learning, then you hear the correct answer from native speakers (the pause button is useful here - the lessons are all mp3 files). You spent about half an hour per lesson doing this, with the occasional pause in the middle where you're given a new pattern or piece of vocabulary. You don't learn a wide vocabulary using these lessons, but you learn enough that you can spend a week only using that one language (with a little bit of miming, talking around a subject or simply pointing at an object and asking what it's called), and what you lose in terms of having a wide vocabulary (which you can always pick up elsewhere - I hear there's this pretty decent site on the web, but I forget it's name ) you gain in being able to relatively easily use what you do know. I've heard the course described as Michel Thomas on steroids, so if you've heard of those courses, then make of that what you will.

Currently they do Welsh, Spanish, Manx, a little bit of Dutch, a little bit of Cornish and two lessons of Latin, with the most developed courses being the first two, though they have recently developed a tool to speed up the process of creating a course (the Manx course is the first course to use it, and as a result it does have a few minor issues to sort out). The intention is to also use that tool to make courses in other languages (in part because it'll mean that Wales might see tourists who do speak Welsh but don't speak English, making the language more useful for businesses, and in part because it just opens the business up to a wider consumer base). They did have an English course and a Welsh course through the medium of Spanish and a Spanish course through the medium of Welsh, but those have been taken down until they can be replaced by something better.

Prices vary based on language, but are fairly low and are in Stirling by default so for most of you will be even lower than usual . Welsh is the cheapest, at £5 a month with the beginners' course being available for free, simply because the makers of the course are Welsh and they want to make it cheap and easy for people to learn the language, while Spanish is a bit more expensive (I believe it is priced per five lessons instead of having a subscription, with the first 5-10 lessons being free) because they actually want to make a profit. Not sure about the others.

Edit: Oh, and they use dialog based listening practice sessions which play at double speed, with the intention being that after a while, you'll get used to the double speed and will have an easier time understanding people who speak quickly naturally. They're also ambitious (read: nuts) enough that they're aiming to provide sufficient material in each language to give the 4,000 most commonly used words. I have no idea whether that has any shot of actually working, but it'll be interesting to find out...

[higgins]

That's a neat system. Kind of reminds me of the Michel Thomas method a bit, except Thomas also builds on word associations. Too bad it's so limited language choice wise, but in the Welsh niche, I don't think they can be beaten, as I don't think I've seen another Welsh audio course, period. Not that I've looked, but still.

[Korbel]

Maybe I'll try to learn some Spanish? "Korbel" is not available (how do they have so many Korbels?), I'll use "Korbelo"

[higgins]

(how do they have so many Korbels?)

Don't get me started on how many persons are called Krzysztof Dąbrowski.

[hector]

The guy who created it was heavily inspired by Michel Thomas's Spanish course - he'd put a lot of hard work into learning to speak Welsh after many failed attempts to learn other languages, then he learned to speak Spanish with the Michel Thomas course and a weekly trip to the pub with a Spanish speaking friend. He's very much of the opinion that the most common methods of teaching a language just don't work, and that they are far more to blame than any deficiency on the part of the student. Given that I speak Welsh to a reasonable standard, that it took me about 18 months (which includes a six month gap and a few one-two month gaps), and that after five years of learning French in school I still couldn't speak the language, I'm inclined to agree.

Edit: as to the language limitations, hopefully they'll be able to start adding more languages now that SSIBorg is working - they still need a few people to record the lessons in any given language, but it automates the script writing to some extent, allowing the focus to be on the content rather than each individual sentence (which, given that there are around 100 sentences for you to say in any given 30 minute lesson, is time consuming work to ensure that there's the right mix of old and new material, both from the current lesson and the previous lessons).

[EinBein]

I would love to learn Icelandic. Anyone happens to have a course like that for this great language?

[higgins]

I would love to learn Icelandic. Anyone happens to have a course like that for this great language?

I'm sure there's some. Memrise app has Icelandic, but I've yet to try that app out myself.

Korbelo now has more skill points than you (pommelstrike).
Skill points: 2090 (1680 more than you)

Ho-ho-ho, someone had a day off.

[Korbel]

Ho-ho-ho, someone had a day off.

That's how you learn languages!

OK, i was just toying with some leveling English tests. I tried to reset this, but it looks like I can't. And I can't remove this course from my account. I'm sorry, I didn't expect that. Here's what I'm going to do: I will finish the first part of the Spanish practise, deactivate my account and create a new one. And than start Spanish again, taking a test instead of learning the first part again.

With one test you can easily get 2 or 3 thousand points. Well, I had some fails, like answering "how long is the river" instead of "what is the length of the river"

And what about my Spanish? Because that's what I'm actually learning. So, I think I had something like 150 XP points. It's fun, I know some words already and I like it! I'm learning it from Engllish, obviously. From Polish you can only learn English.

But you can learn Polish from English - maybe you should try, guys?


PS. OK, Henri, my new nick is Korbello

[higgins]

With one test you can easily get 2 or 3 thousand points.

I took a Russian shortcut, too. Got 270 or something to that scale. It's good that they don't force you to go through the extreme basics if you have some understanding of the language.

[Korbel]

Turns out that I'm Murumemm, aka the Mother of Meadows. A socialite, of all things. Who would have thought?

You are Murumemm, dysjunct is Murumemm, I am Murumemm. Socialites - no wonder we want to learn languages

[higgins]

You are Murumemm, dysjunct is Murumemm, I am Murumemm. Socialites - no wonder we want to learn languages

That's an outstanding observation! Kind of makes you take those test results more seriously.