Duolingo

https://duocon.duolingo.com/

Just watched 5mins and they're doing maths lessons too now.

maths lessons too now.

When you've learned how to tell people that your mother has four sofas and five telephones then it makes sense to consider the fiscal implications of such egregious repeat purchasing.

I think they are doing music at some point as well.

I guess now you can solve Fermat's last theorem over breakfast before arranging some aphex twin for brass band on the commute to work. Then tell your friends about it in arabic.

Perfect isn't it

You could, unless you are like me and have a brick for a brain instead of a sponge for learning new languages.

Have you seen the new 'max' features like 'explain my answer', 'role play' and 'video call'?

Neat, but is it £20/month neat 🤔

Nah, not noticed those. I pay £80/year and can speak fuck all other languages so I'm not sure it's the best investment. I like 1 on 1 lessons would be better though a lot more expensive.

I used it a fair bit for a while, think i was on a 250’ish day streak but then stopped after various account opening problems on a different phone. Looking back as a language learning tool it was pretty poor - very odd sentences (nobody ever needs to say Paul is eating the rice, I am drinking juice, in Irish), and never really covered useful things like numbers or days of the week. Can’t really see the point of a maths one.
One on one language lessons are more expensive but I use Italki which is cheaper than in person lessons.

I guess they use the silly sentences to teach how you create the sentences and how you change word endings (in Spanish and Polish at least). I'm on 1600+ days currently and know fuck all. :)

very odd sentences

Yes, I looked to brush up some french after lots of positive things people have to say on Duolingo, and after taking the 'what level are you' tests, my first proper sentence was to learn "On Sundays I am a newspaper".

Deleted it after that.

I stopped when it tried to teach me all about school and university before how to ask for an understand directions.

I think the use of sentences with unexpected subjects / construction is a fashionable learning technique. Dunno what research there is to support it.

I'd assumed it was done so you focused on the how verb endings and sentence structure worked rather than memorise a whole bunch of standard sentences - it forces you to think a bit more when the sentence is non-standard? Most of what Duolingo uses in sentences is pretty useless but knowing how sentences fit together mean you can makes heads and tails or stuff.

Could just be they're fucking tired of writing "how much is a beer?" in 400 different tenses.

on r/duolingo there is a large FAQ which looks to have a lot of input from the Duolingo team. CBA reading it all, but some of you might find it useful.

I understand the scepticism on duolingo, I too got tired of the girl eating an apple in Spanish after three weeks. But have been doing Japanese for over a year now and I find it quite entertaining/refreshing learning this (in my surroundings) obscure language/writing. Not useful: can complain about dirty toilets. Useful: can explain I still live in a cramped appartment with lots of bikes.
Shame is though, a Japanese person will never tell me I'm pronouncing it wrong.