zompist bboard

Salmoneus wrote:Useful sentences in duolingo:

Tá an fear sa chuisneoir (I think, may be getting it wrong) = The man is in the fridge
Grossvater ist nicht mein Vater (should be eszett) = Grandad is not my father

I feel fully equipped to travel in Nightmare Ireland and Creepy Germany!

The German sentence is entirely logical, and so to my mind typically German. The Irish one though, I agree, is just a little disturbing. But then given some of the crazy things the Irish are known to get up to ... like there was this guy who hitch-hiked all around Ireland with a fridge. And no, I don't know why he did it, but it was on the telly, so he got his five minutes of fame.

Dude, Tony Hawks did not require 'five minutes' of fame! He's the voice of the food dispenser in Red Dwarf! [And general semi-known English comedian. He was on Grumpy Old Men a lot, I seem to recall].

I don't know why everybody remembers the around-ireland-with-a-fridge thing. To my mind, playing the moldovan football team at tennis was a much better idea...

German dative pronouns? Scary. And/or risqué. It's all "I play with her cat", "she plays with my animal", "we run to the house" "a man is following us!".

Still better than Irish. Found the first example sentence where discussion has had to be prohibited by the administrators: the Irish version of "I am not wearing any clothes." [Which come to think of it I don't know how to say. So maybe it was just 'I don't have any clothes'. Ní éadach agam? Oh, I don't know.]

Favourite false cognate: the Irish word for 'jersey' sounds very much like 'guernsey'...

Continual amusement: people being constantly unable to understand how Irish could distinguish the simple and continuous present. "But on the French course they said that these weren't distinguished!" "- that was in French". "but in the German course as well, they said there was no difference!" " - yes but that was in German" "I don't understand how a language could have different expressions for these things" " - you're saying that in English, a language that itself has different expressions for these things!" - it's like people just think there's one generic Foreign out there...

Salmoneus wrote:Still better than Irish. Found the first example sentence where discussion has had to be prohibited by the administrators: the Irish version of "I am not wearing any clothes." [Which come to think of it I don't know how to say. So maybe it was just 'I don't have any clothes'. Ní éadach agam? Oh, I don't know.]

Perhaps Níl (aon) éadach orm? (More colloquially: Níl snáithe éadaigh orm "I haven't a stitch on".) Remember, ní is the negative copula while the negative of existence is níl (< ní fhuil). Cf. Ní héadach atá orm. "It's not clothes that I have on".

linguoboy wrote:

Salmoneus wrote:Still better than Irish. Found the first example sentence where discussion has had to be prohibited by the administrators: the Irish version of "I am not wearing any clothes." [Which come to think of it I don't know how to say. So maybe it was just 'I don't have any clothes'. Ní éadach agam? Oh, I don't know.]

Perhaps Níl (aon) éadach orm?

Possible.

Remember, ní is the negative copula while the negative of existence is níl (< ní fhuil). Cf. Ní héadach atá orm. "It's not clothes that I have on".

Damnit, got ní and níl the wrong way around.
Níl éadach agam would still meaning 'I have no clothes', though, wouldn't it?

Salmoneus wrote:Níl éadach agam would still meaning 'I have no clothes', though, wouldn't it?

It would.

Salmoneus wrote:
Favourite false cognate: the Irish word for 'jersey' sounds very much like 'guernsey'...

The Irish 'geansaí' sounds like that because it's from "gansey", a type of sweater/jersey which originated on the Channel Island of Guernsey. It's not a false cognate; it's a borrowing. The English word is the one with more drift.

I happen to know this because one of my other areas of geekdom is fiber arts. :)

Neon Fox wrote:

Salmoneus wrote:
Favourite false cognate: the Irish word for 'jersey' sounds very much like 'guernsey'...

The Irish 'geansaí' sounds like that because it's from "gansey", a type of sweater/jersey which originated on the Channel Island of Guernsey. It's not a false cognate; it's a borrowing. The English word is the one with more drift.

I happen to know this because one of my other areas of geekdom is fiber arts.

Ha! Whodathunkit. And apparently 'jersey' is also indeed derived from the Channel Island of Jersey. That's... delicious!

I started the Italian course a couple weeks ago. Probably should've done it before doing the study abroad in Rome, but better late than never, eh? I can never motivate myself to learn languages, so having an app which effectively plans a schedule for me has definitely been helpful.

Salmoneus wrote:Continual amusement: people being constantly unable to understand how Irish could distinguish the simple and continuous present. "But on the French course they said that these weren't distinguished!" "- that was in French". "but in the German course as well, they said there was no difference!" " - yes but that was in German" "I don't understand how a language could have different expressions for these things" " - you're saying that in English, a language that itself has different expressions for these things!" - it's like people just think there's one generic Foreign out there...

I remember years ago being at a friend's house and watching the American version of the Amazing Race or some kind of reality show like that and there was this couple in a taxi in Thailand and they're racing across the city and the guy is shouting "rápido, rápido" at the Thai taxi driver. There were other instances of him trying to use his high school Spanish with Thai people but I can't remember specifics anymore. You know, because all brown people speak Mexican.

Imralu wrote:There were other instances of him trying to use his high school Spanish with Thai people but I can't remember specifics anymore. You know, because all brown people speak Mexican.

A buddy of mine almost did this the first time I took him to Little India. I don't know how much of it is skin colour and how much is simply the fact that, in his experience, if someone serving you food talks to you with a heavy accent or in broken English, they're overwhelmingly likely to be a native Spanish-speaker. (He moved to Chicago from LA and grew up in Texas.)

So, we're all agreed: Duolingo is great?

Bryan wrote:So, we're all agreed: Duolingo is great?

The pattern of this thread may mirror my own findings: it's really fun at first, and then you stop.

I did it diligently every day, in two languages, for a month or two, and then had to miss a couple of days unavoidably, and never went back. Well, I've tried once or twice, but not gotten back into it. For me, at least, it relies on constant use: the 'streak' thing pushes me to not let this be the day I break the streak, but once it's broken there's less incentive to start again. And because everything (understandably!) goes back to unlearnt when you miss a bit of time, it becomes more daunting as you have to go back through what you did before.

I've also - going back again and redoing the early modules - not found very much retention - but to be fair I'm no good at vocabulary retention in general.

I might have to check out Duolingo for German because after just 1 German course my German is clearly lacking. For Dutch I use Wallangues which is sponsored by the Belgian government. Technically you just need a Belgian address to use it (which I have but if you're interested I don't see what would prevent you from faking one). They offer Dutch, German, English, and even French (the site is all in French since it's for Wallons). The German course is terrible. I did really well in comprehension and bad in production (surprise, surprise) but the course they offer to fix my low ability to produce is severely lacking. The Dutch course is great on the other hand and I use it a lot which isn't too surprising since most Wallons are using it to learn Dutch (or English I suppose but obviously I didn't try the English course).

Salmoneus wrote:

Bryan wrote:So, we're all agreed: Duolingo is great?

The pattern of this thread may mirror my own findings: it's really fun at first, and then you stop.

I did it diligently every day, in two languages, for a month or two, and then had to miss a couple of days unavoidably, and never went back. Well, I've tried once or twice, but not gotten back into it. For me, at least, it relies on constant use: the 'streak' thing pushes me to not let this be the day I break the streak, but once it's broken there's less incentive to start again. And because everything (understandably!) goes back to unlearnt when you miss a bit of time, it becomes more daunting as you have to go back through what you did before.

I've also - going back again and redoing the early modules - not found very much retention - but to be fair I'm no good at vocabulary retention in general.

To be fair, I love DL: but I do kind of agree with you. Since I broke my eight month streak back in June, due to Summer hols, I haven't gone back.

I think DL is good for getting the basics -- up to A2? -- in a language.

You can't get up to A2 with an app that practices your vocabulary. You could do it if you're also speaking the language and using Duolingo to reinforce and introduce new vocabulary.

finlay wrote:You can't get up to A2 with an app that practices your vocabulary. You could do it if you're also speaking the language and using Duolingo to reinforce and introduce new vocabulary.

Yes, Finlay, an app that has no way for you to converse with real people in real situations clearly can't bring you up to A2-ish in all aspects. You will indeed have a severely "spiky profile". This is obvious to everyone... And it's this level of pedantry that makes me leave this board every time I post, like, twice.

P.S. Rejoin DozensOnline!

That's still going?

I started using Duolinguo for German and Polish, but mostly for Polish which I am progressing in quickly. The Polish one is in beta mode so the grammar descriptions are lacking but otherwise it's good. They need some sort of final test after each chapter because these case endings are not sticking much except when it comes to recognition.

Also with the German one there's a thing that says you are such and such % fluent in German now, and then you can post it to LinkedIn. That's gimmicky because one, no you're not, and two as if that means anything on your resume...that you took some online German, but you are not 40% fluent in German, no way. Especially since the site has done nothing so far to require spontaneous oral production.

linguoboy wrote:

Imralu wrote:There were other instances of him trying to use his high school Spanish with Thai people but I can't remember specifics anymore. You know, because all brown people speak Mexican.

A buddy of mine almost did this the first time I took him to Little India. I don't know how much of it is skin colour and how much is simply the fact that, in his experience, if someone serving you food talks to you with a heavy accent or in broken English, they're overwhelmingly likely to be a native Spanish-speaker. (He moved to Chicago from LA and grew up in Texas.)

It might just be that he's only studied spanish and naturally spanish = foreign language. I live in texas and took german in highschool and college. There've been a couple of times I almost spoke german to someone asking me a question in spanish (which I don't speak), because I've been trained to respond to non-english with german the past half decade.

Apparently Duolingo's Welsh course is only a few weeks from launch. I'm looking forward to this as I will hopefully be starting Welsh classes next week.

For those who don't know Duolinguo's app requires at least iOS 7. So if you have a first gen iPad like me and can't go higher than iOS 5, you're screwed.

Viktor77 wrote:For those who don't know Duolinguo's app requires at least iOS 7. So if you have a first gen iPad like me and can't go higher than iOS 5, you're screwed.

You can use Safari to use the web version, or use a laptop/desktop.

dyolf wrote:

Viktor77 wrote:For those who don't know Duolinguo's app requires at least iOS 7. So if you have a first gen iPad like me and can't go higher than iOS 5, you're screwed.

You can use Safari to use the web version, or use a laptop/desktop.

I do hehe, but my laptop is currently undergoing an exorcism for giving me constant BSODs.

finlay wrote:That's still going?

Err.... yeah! Dozenalisms is the HOTTEST thing in town. Seriously, it's going very well.

http://z13.invisionfree.com/DozensOnline/index.php?