gemini://bbs.geminispace.org/s/Language

Overall, I am pretty happy with Duolingo, which I've learned to really appreciate, in spite of my initial negative feelings. Ignoring minor UI issues and occasional lock-ups (very rare now that advertising has gone away), the curriculum is extremely well designed. New words and conjugations are introduced in a way that rarely overloads my brain, and the spaced repetition is perfectly worked out for retention. It's a pretty smooth experience -- as you would expect from a company with data from tens of millions of users.

The race to get into higher "leagues" and stay on top is just addicting enough to keep me plowing ahead -- even though it's completely meaningless. But as long as it keeps my competitive side engaged, whatever. I've finished first in my weekly league races 5 times now.

Are my competitors even real people or is the whole thing a sham? Who knows. I've made contact with a couple of people who seem to be real enough, so probably. Leagues (30 people each week) are re-shuffled in such a way that you probably never wind up with the same people again. I am pretty sure leagues are selected to make sure you have a chance to get to #1 if you want to, and most people don't spend much time with the app. Anyway, it is meaningless, like I said.

Now for the important part. This is definitely the most language learning I've received, beating by far the years of school classes and aborted efforts to learn on my own. I am now capable of very crude interaction with my partner (also a duolinguist) -- Me Tarzan style, in present tense, about a surprising range of things -- ants in the cat bowl, a dog eating oysters at an outside table next to a restaurant, making meals, etc.

Now the way I use duolingo is probably a bit different then most people: I spend maybe 2-4 hours daily, doing mostly review excercises, and mostly the speaking ones at that. I move forward just enough to load my brain, then dril, drill, drill. Then a bit more, and back to drilling. It seems to work.

As everyone seems to know, duolingo by itself is somewhat limited. I am finding many resources to supplement my curiosity - translation engines on major devices, YouTube (sadly, as I hate supporting monopolies), and as of yesterday, ChatGPT, which provides really good explanations about subtle differences between various ways of saying things.

My short-term goal is to get enough basics to be able to understand simple TV programming, then use one of the apps based on movies/TV to gain further skills. In the meantime DuoLingo seems pretty good for my needs.

I will be in NYC shortly, where I will have plenty of opportunities to speak to native speakers -- we shall then see if I am actually learning anything or just fooling myself...

I've found comic books and plays to be useful early material, they can be entertaining much earlier than books.

Status Report: 30 days of Duolingo

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