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[FearfulJesuit]

So, I'd heard some good things about Duolingo, and decided to try it out with German. I'm currently about half a week into it, at level 5.

They've got exactly the right idea: the biggest obstacle to learning languages for most people is motivation, so the best way to get them to learn it is to put the language inside a Skinner box and let them compete with their friends. I'm doing the present tense of verbs now, and am hoping to get through the first big section of the tree by the time I fly home for Spring Break on Thursday afternoon.

There are a few flaws, I think: there should be an option for longer or more intense study sessions (personally, I think giving the player four lives is too generous); varying the accent, speed, gender or age of the reading voice would be much better than just having a single newscaster read everything; and a "listen in target, write in native" option would be nice, too. I also think a plain old flashcard section for drilling vocab would be useful for those who choose to partake of it (I know a lot of people really don't like it); currently I'm pairing Duolingo with Anki (a flashcard app which I cannot recommend highly enough).

Overall, though, it's massively better than just about any other software I've seen for language-learning, and it's steadily expanding; there was a dispatch from the dev team tonight that the next languages available to be learned for English speakers are Russian, Polish, Romanian, Dutch, Hungarian and Turkish. (Which strike me as a bit of an odd choice, except for Russian and Turkish; surely people want to learn Indonesian or Hindi first?) But maybe I'll have an excuse to try out Romanian...

Who else has tried it out?

[Sappho]

I've heard of this, and recently several people have mentioned it to me, so it must be gaining in popularity.

I don't know what language I would learn though. I already speak German and I have no use for any of the others... Why is there never Czech? I get why Russian would be added, that's an enormous country. But Poland and Romania aren't that much bigger than the Czech Republic. Hungary is smaller. And no one wants to learn those languages. The Czech Republic is definitely one of the most desirable places to live -- there are tons of immigrants from those countries (and everywhere else in the world) trying to live here in Prague. I've never heard of a Czech person wanting to move to Warsaw. There are tons of people who have a reason to learn Czech. And I could certainly use some more motivation to work on my Czech skills.

In any case, maybe I'll just check out Portuguese for now, since it's the only language I've never studied and it might be interesting...

[XXSockXX]

I hadn't heard of it, looks interesting though.

Apparently new languages can be added by the community, which probably explains the selection - these were finished first.

[Sappho]

I just tried it with German, to see how it works. I'm pleased to see it gives you a placement test first, so you can skip the most basic stuff. My grammar is still good, but there is quite a bit of vocabulary that I never learned, because of the environment I learned in (a high school in Switzerland where I was working). As a result, it put me at level 6, which is really too low. I'm learning words for people, which I already know. But because of the way they check the answers, you really have to be exact, or you get marked wrong. For example, I listened to an audio clip that sounded like "Der ist ein Kind," which is a perfectly normal German sentence. (He/That guy is a kid.) I typed that and it was marked completely wrong because the first word was Er (He), not Der. The start of the audio sounded like a D sound to me. So instead of giving me partial credit, it just takes one of my little hearts.

Then there were problems with the microphone questions. They gave me a ridiculously simple sentence to read (and I have always been complimented on my pronunciation and accent by German speakers). I tried again and again and again, but every time it said "I can't hear you" or "That sounds wrong." I tested my microphone in another program and it worked fine, but the DuoLingo thing just wouldn't accept my answer no matter how slowly or clearly I spoke. So I gave in and clicked "skip" and... it took one of my hearts. The last one. So even though I knew all the answers to everything in this section without even thinking, I still failed it.

So there are definitely some bugs in the system. I finally figured out how to disable the microphone questions, so that won't be a problem in the future, but it will really annoy me when I write something a tiny bit different from what they have as the "right" answer, and even though my answer is also correct, it will be marked wrong. It is, however, a cool way to teach people a language, so I would certainly encourage people to try it (especially English native speakers, who famously refuse to learn second languages - time to change that!).

Maybe in the future I'll try to get some Czech friends together and see about adding a Czech section.

[Descan]

I wouldn't mind a ScotsGaelic version, myself~

[Arx]

Seeing this has reminded me that I want to learn another language-- I'm (obviously) fluent in English, and I have a decent handle on two endemic languages. Which of these languages would be most useful?

[fivex]

Why is there never Czech?

English for Czech Speakers is being made, so Czech for English speakers shouldn't be far behind

[Sappho]

Why is there never Czech?

English for Czech Speakers is being made, so Czech for English speakers shouldn't be far behind

That's actually not necessarily true. It's very different learning English as a Czech person than it is learning Czech as an English person - it's not like they could just reverse the program. Also, almost all Czech people are motivated to learn English, but there's not a huge demand from English people to learn Czech, since you can live in Prague without Czech and get by just fine. Actually, when I tell Czech people that I can speak Czech, most people respond with "Why???." They don't see any reason why an English speaker would bother. Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, German speakers, sure, but not English speakers. Since it would be up to the native Czech speakers to create this program, the odds don't seem too good. But maybe I can get some people together to help create one, using bribes and blackmail...

[Dutchling]

This looks cool. I've always wanted to learn Russian...

Seeing this has reminded me that I want to learn another language-- I'm (obviously) fluent in English, and I have a decent handle on two endemic languages. Which of these languages would be most useful?

Dutch is useful. There are literally dozens of Dutch people who don't speak English.

edit: aww I misread, can't learn Russian nyet.

[Arx]

This looks cool. I've always wanted to learn Russian...

Seeing this has reminded me that I want to learn another language-- I'm (obviously) fluent in English, and I have a decent handle on two endemic languages. Which of these languages would be most useful?

Dutch is useful. There are literally dozens of Dutch people who don't speak English.

edit: aww I misread, can't learn Russian nyet.

Afrikaans is lazydutch, and I'm fluent in it. I can (slowly and slightly painfully) read and understand Dutch, plus I'm not overly likely to go to the Netherlands. On the other hand, I should be able to learn it quite quickly. Edit because I always do this: Never mind, there's a Dutch -> English option, but not an English -> Dutch one.

[Dutchling]

Heh, Afrikaans is hilarious (to listen to or read as a native Dutch speaker, that is).

[Helgoland]

Arx: German is a beautiful language with a great body of philosophy, literature and so on. Plus Germany itself is pretty nice, and - as you already speak Afrikaans, it should be fairly easy for you to learn German, which is archaicdutch (or so I hear).

Otherwise, French, Spanish, and Russian are the obvious choices, I guess.

[Arx]

Arx: German is a beautiful language with a great body of philosophy, literature and so on. Plus Germany itself is pretty nice, and - as you already speak Afrikaans, it should be fairly easy for you to learn German, which is archaicdutch (or so I hear).

Otherwise, French, Spanish, and Russian are the obvious choices, I guess.

I guess I'll take a shot at German then! The body of literature should be helpful, finding books in obscure languages is haaard.

I suspect that Afrikaans will be of only limited help, though, as Dutch and Afrikaans are relatively closely linked -- like American/British English, only more so -- whereas German has some quite dramatic differences to Dutch.

[Tiruin]

PTW: No links to this? (Can't do searchengines well at this moment in time) but given all I read here? Pretty interesting learning European languages.

Is there Latin?

[Arx]

PTW: No links to this? (Can't do searchengines well at this moment in time) but given all I read here? Pretty interesting learning European languages.

Is there Latin?

Duolingo.com

There is no Latin; just Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and Italian.