tlhIngan Hol vIghojtaH!

  • @bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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    7211 months ago

    “Courses” is a strong word for what Duolingo offers. It just shows you flashcards, but never explains grammar/syntax rules. Lingodeer is far superior.

    • @Akuchimoya@startrek.website
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      2111 months ago

      Duolingo does have that function. It’s much more obvious on desktop web, but in the phone app, you tap the notebook icons to the right of the headings. I mean, they’re not necessarily excellent explanations, but they’re there.

        • Clay_pidgin
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          1111 months ago

          They removed the comment section a few months ago too. There were some really excellent explanations in there!

        • WIZARD POPE💫
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          211 months ago

          That feature was never there in the app for norwegian at all. They just added something similar which is basically the review of all the sentences in the lesson. Fucking useless if you ask me.

    • @lugal@sopuli.xyz
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      211 months ago

      The old tree had grammar bits (for some languages only in the browser) but the new one is just bad

    • @boredtortoise@lemm.ee
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      211 months ago

      Lingodeer is a technical mess with popups, banners and lock or crown icons everywhere. There are situations where it just won’t let you continue to the next lesson and the flow inside the exercises is very janky. Turning off the animations helps a lot but it’s nowhere near the ease of use of Duolingo.

    • @zerofk@lemm.ee
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      211 months ago

      The problem with all these alternatives is that the language selection is extremely limited. You want to learn English, French, German, or Spanish? Great, there are a million options for you! But if you go a bit more niche like Finnish or Irish, your options are much more limited. Of course there are ways to learn those languages - and much better ways than Duolingo. But Duolingo’s strength is offering a bunch of them, for free, in one place.

      Note that I’m not trying to defend Duolingo, but rather deploring the lack of alternatives.

    • stinerman [Ohio]
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      111 months ago

      I use Duolingo (and actually pay for it) and I agree 100% with this. The app is primarily about keeping you engaged and on the app. The method is by attempting to teach you a language.

  • ComradeSharkfucker
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    4211 months ago

    Fascinating that Duolingo tries to teach Navajo. The language is incredibly tonal and with sounds not native to most languages. I imagine it’s incredibly difficult to teach through an online service

    • Apathy Tree
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      711 months ago

      Idk how duolinguo works (at all), but if the app can play the sounds for you and judge on your pronunciation, that would be quite enough to do the job. If it can handle mandarin (idk if it can) than any tonal based language is fair game.

      I would think any decent speech to text could do a decent job determining pronunciation, if there isn’t a dedicated thing for that… either it registers or it gets garble and you try again.

  • Smuuthbrane
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    3011 months ago

    I almost found a way to get university credit for learning Klingon. My downfall was that the Klingon Language Institute was not an “accredited” learning institution. I wonder if that’s changed yet…

    • Seven
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      1111 months ago

      Last time I looked it still did a weird mix of American and European Spanish, too

      • @Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1011 months ago

        It had me pick Latin American or Castilian Spanish when I started using Duolingo, I couldn’t tell you exactly how accurate it was though.

        • Seven
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          411 months ago

          When was that? Last time I tried it was a couple of years ago.

          As for the difference, outside of Spain the conjugation of Vosotros (you, plural) isn’t used, but speaking to strangers is much more formal. Also, there’s a lot of vocabulary differences which can be confusing for non-native speakers.

          Good luck with your learning, it’s a great language :-)

          • @Stoney_Logica1@lemmy.worldOP
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            411 months ago

            As somebody who doesn’t naively speak Latin American Spanish but was exposed to it a lot growing up, the “th” sound for some words with “c” (like “gracias”) in Castilian Spanish really disturbs me. It sounds like everybody has a lisp.

            • Seven
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              211 months ago

              It is a lisp, albeit on purpose … to further confuse things in parts of Spain with different languages the shared words don’t necessarily have that lisp!

          • @Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            211 months ago

            About two years ago for me as well, they might have rolled it out shortly after you tried or maybe I was part of some A/B testing or something. But the setting seems to be saved because I’m never given exercises with vosotros in them.

            ¡Gracias! Vivo en California, así que hay mucha gente para practicar hablando conmigo, pero estoy tímido y practico solo con Duolingo por ahora.

            • Seven
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              111 months ago

              Best thing would be to go to a Spanish speaking country for a holiday, once you’ve been forced to use it on strangers you’ll loose your language anxiety and it gets much easier (I live in Spain and work in Spanish, I’m not very good, but also no longer worried about muddling through).

  • Sagrotan
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    2311 months ago

    Language learning apps work only to give you an overview over a language, to look if a language is worth learning. You really wanna learn? Search for someone who’s mother tongue it is in your vicinity and contact him. You’ll be surprised, how much fun that’ll be, your friendly Klingon in the neighborhood, crashing your door in at 3 a.m., hellish drunk, just to show you his new Gagh recipe, or you’ll find yourself as a slave in the fictional world of an obese old creep. Learning new languages is awesome, right?

  • @ReiRose@lemmy.world
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    1511 months ago

    Anyone know a good place to learn Farsi (Persian). Duolingo doesn’t have it yet, if ever

    • @Aldn@lemmy.world
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      611 months ago

      It’s a real shame duolingo doesn’t have Farsi (or none of the other apps I’m routinely using, for that matter). Let’s hope it becomes a thing sooner than later

    • @GhostMatter@lemmy.ca
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      11 months ago

      I used Mondly fully free a few years ago. It was good. I don’t know how it is now.

      I also used Anki flashcards.

    • chaogomu
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      3011 months ago

      That’s what multiple genocides get you. A language rated as Vulnerable in UNESCO.

      Still, there are about 170,000 people who speak Navajo, with about 8000 who only speak Navajo.

      • @BulbasaurBabu
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        611 months ago

        And there are only 2000 fluent speakers of Hawaiian, let’s go colonialism!

      • @bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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        211 months ago

        US: kills all the Navajo speakers

        Also US: “Wow, there are so few Navajo speakers! We should use it as a secret military code!”

        • @Wahots@pawb.social
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          211 months ago

          It wasn’t just Navajo. It was also encrypted/coded in Navajo to make it even more complicated on top of an already complex language. The code talkers were incredibly important to the war effort. The code was never cracked either. Makes me really proud of them for doing such a good (and dangerous) job.

      • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin
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        111 months ago

        Also doesn’t help that Navajo is an INCREDIBLY divergent language compared to basically everything else, even other languages native to North America save those of related languages.

        It’s probably as close to a natlang ithkuil as linguistic science may have ever discovered, so acquiring it non-natively is A TON of work.

        Also I may be confusing it with another indigenous language but IIRC there are some Navajo nation communities in which teaching the language to outsiders is seen as a GRAVE offense.

        You can guess that the course on Duolingo isn’t exactly regarded as on par with their French and Spanish courses. That and their attempt at Hawaiian and the ensuant backlash over how bad both were are partially responsible for why Duolingo has yet to expand into a significant number of new languages.

      • Smuuthbrane
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        311 months ago

        That’s too bad. From some.of.the books it seemed to be pretty close.