this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2023
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Today I Learned

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 8 months ago (7 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Perdonally I've heard a ton of good things about Language Transfer despite not using it myself

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for the recommendation! Difficult to find genuine and good language apps these days that don't cost to much money and or are riddled with ads and intrusive tracking.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Thank you for sharing this it looks great. They’re iOS app requires minimal permissions too which seems to be rare for language apps

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago
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[–] [email protected] 21 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (3 children)

They removed that feature, at least for Finnish.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

You might say that feature is finnished

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 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.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 8 months ago (2 children)

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…

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Try the Khan Academy next time.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

Duolingo probably has an accreditation programme by now, considering most high schools use it.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 8 months ago (1 children)

High Valerian also doesn't have all the ingredients to become an actual language. All I did was translate words in sentences into the language for the show, but Klingon, it is an actual language and has been developed enough that you can call it a language

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago (3 children)

But still no European Portuguese 😠

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago

Prolly more people who want to learn elvish than European Portuguese. Oh, leaderboards

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (3 children)

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 :-)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Wtf is European Portuguese, Portugal is in Europe.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Wtf is British English, England is in Britain.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (2 children)

There's brazilian Portuguese

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Also courses for the language of the imaginary land of Finland.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

I mean come on they call themselves Finnish.

Finnish, finish, finish line. It’s like they think we’re all stupid.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'm waiting for them to add Icelandic

[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago

I'm sorry, they only do real languages.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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?

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (2 children)

i wish they would spend more time fixing vietnamese instead of shit like this

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 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.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Still more native speakers than Navajo.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 8 months ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

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

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Does anyone happen to know of an app or site that is good for learning Tagalog?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The app Tandem (Language Exchange) has Tagalog as an option! It's a pretty cool app. It connects you to native speakers so that they can have conversations with you and help you learn your chosen language.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'm still hoping for a course in Mando'a.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'm unsure if there's enough words for it to count as a full spoken language yet.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Can I put it on my resume?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

I saw a resume with just 'Military Spouse: 27 Years' on it.

You can put whatever you want.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Let me know when they get Phyrexian

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