Duolingo

[krait]

I started Duolingo!

It seemed like a good way to practise both the languages I know a bit of, and then in a wild fit of optimism I started on Russian as well.

(It's a running joke of mine that I ought to learn Russian because it becomes relevant to my life about every third fandom. Yuri on Ice, CA:TWS, Eroica Yori Ai o Komete...)

In the languages I'm not starting from scratch on, I'm cruising right along!

My main complaint is that between Russian and Japanese I feel like there could be a much better balance with introductions. The Hiragana lessons are dragging on e n d l e s s l y (I already know this! Why didn't the placement test ask this, so I could skip it?!) but Russian so far hasn't shown me how to pronounce or write a single letter. The "Alphabet" section launched straight into Дима, это Тим without bothering to so much as list the alphabet! What is this nonsense.

There needs to be some kind of swap system so I can trade some of these neverending hiragana lessons for a Russian alphabet overview. :D

Comments

[ursula]

I've been doing Duolingo Russian on the flakey setting, where you turn off your sound and tell it you can't say anything right now, and do everything at level one, where you just put sentence words in order. The alphabet sections worked OK for me because I already know some Greek, and most of the letters match up. But I also looked up Cyrillic on Wikipedia when I needed to, and I think you should allow yourself to do the same!

(Even in this desultory mode, I have learned enough that I can usually guess whether ecreet is posting about math, cats, or both, which feels like an accomplishment.)

[krait]

I have looked up Cyrillic on Wikipedia before, actually; months ago I copied out the entire alphabet, but some of the pronunciation "explanations" were not explanatory enough to give me a clue. (Look, I never said I was good at languages; I just like them.) It's only having that much background that's even letting me take a stab at the Duolingo version now!

It's just so much worse in contrast to the HIRAGANA WITHOUT END happening in my other lesson, where seriously, I know this, please let me move on and not have to go through a 76-letter alphabet I have already spent months of my life on.

[ursula]

I hear you on Hiragana without end!

I guess I just... find Duolingo more satisfying because I cheat constantly? That is, I mouse-over words to get the glosses, and look things up on Wikipedia or Google Translate when I need to, and eventually things sink in. (If I wanted more active, as opposed to passive, knowledge, I'd probably have to drill forms outside the app, as well.)

[krait]

With hiragana it's just so tedious!

Like, if they asked me to just say it, I might not mind. But Round 447 of Match The Hiragana is just... a lot... of... clicking. Tediously clicking... everywhere... all around the screen. And I'm on a laptop with a touchpad. My wrist cramps and it just takes so much time for, again, something I already know. And I don't feel like I'm making progress, so it's not rewarding.

At the very least they could throw katakana in the mix; I'm a little shakier on that it and it would pass as hiragana practice too if you're matching between the alphabets as well/instead of matching to English.

I'd totally cheat, except that I don't have to cheat on hiragana, they could wake me up from a sound sleep and ask me what is the character that looks like a little e on its side and I would answer without even thinking.* Let me go on!

Meanwhile I'd like to make some Russian alphabet flashcards so that I can drill outside of Duolingo, but they haven't bothered to teach me the alphabet, so that's a bit tricky.





*Hiragana learners, this joke's for you!

[bluebaron]

Sometimes my Duolingo will let me test out of specific sections, but I'm not sure if that's the case in all languages, I have not learnt Japanese at all. I'm glad you're having good language-learning times though!

[krait]

It has a "Test Out of 4 Skills" button on the Japanese course tree! But it's past the Hiragana section, and involves not only sentences but Actual Kanji, so it is the exact opposite of what I need - that's what I want to be learning, the stuff that comes after the hiragana I'm stuck in! :D Maybe they just didn't imagine that anyone would know hiragana coming in, but that seems a baffling and counterfactual assumption to make...

On the other hand, with Too Much Japanese Alphabet on one side and Too Little Russian Alphabet on the other, my German progress is coming along nicely. :D

[extrapenguin]

I tried using it to study Chinese. I quickly gave up when it became obvious that the Chinese course didn't want to teach me what the words mean...

[krait]

Ahhh, so the Chinese course and the Russian course were designed by the same people, is what I'm getting from this. D:

"Look at these scribbles! Now guess the meaning of the sentence!" Excuse me, I thought this section was titled 'Alphabet'...?

[extrapenguin]

"Look at these scribbles! Now guess the meaning of the sentence!" Excuse me, I thought this section was titled 'Alphabet'...?
LOL! Yeah, sounds like the Chinese course. Except the Chinese course had questions like "Which of these hanzi is pronounced gāo?" and okay, sure, but I want to know what the words mean!!!

[luthien]

I used Duolingo for practice when I was studying German a few years ago, but I think you're going to notice holes in it if you use it by itself. It's really useful for practice, but I found that going to classes and having a human teacher was essential for explaining the grammar properly.

Good luck with Russian! It has seven cases, iirc. Having four in German was bad enough! *g*

[krait]

Ahahahaha, seven cases, I am doomed! German's quartet are bad enough. :D

But hey, its alphabet only has 33 letters, in contrast to the 76x2+1945 of Japanese. :D That has to be worth something, right?

[dragonlady7]

I did DuoLingo Russian before my trip to Central Asia last year and it was incredibly frustrating.
Apparently if you go to the full site there are more explanations, but the mobile lessons? It was 100% "here is shit you do not know and that has not been explained. Attempt to figure it out from context. Go!" And since I was doing it on my phone, and not on a computer, I did not have access to any explanations at all, and would resort to using Google Translate on my work computer to try to figure out what the lesson was supposed to be about and therefore what I was supposed to be learning from the random pattern-matching exercises.

I knew 0 Russian for my trip, it turned out. DuoLingo was not worth it, in that example.

[krait]

Well, I'm on a laptop (I'm too old-fashioned to have a phone that Does Stuff), so that's a bonus, I guess.

But yeah, as I mentioned above, the Russian is spectacularly bad about this. Дима, это Тим - Duma, eto tum? Shouldn't the 'Alphabet' section actually mention, y'know, the alphabet? As in, what the letters look like and how to pronounce them?

German is probably bad about this as well but I have much greater facility with German (and they only appear to have four vocabulary words; if I have to write das Maedchen again I might hit something) so it's not as apparent. It did kinda boggle me that they dinged me a point for putting the article with the noun, though - that's how I learnt genders (a thing Duolingo has yet to mention!) and that's pretty much how everyone learns genders, AFAIK. You don't just say "Junge," you always say "der Junge" or you'll never remember later! But it dinged me for answering "der Junge" for the prompt boy.