Languages

Three different clicks, and yes, they are difficult to master as an adult with no prior training in the language. But so are many aspects of other languages as well. Georgian has more letters than English, and around a half-dozen of them are multiple consonants together (dz, kh, etc.) which is fun when 3 or 4 of them come together in a word!

The way we’ve been taught to do the clicks is the Sesame Street method, where you pronounce both sides of the word, then a little faster, then a little faster, until you’re pronouncing the word without a break in the middle.

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Does anyone have any tips for getting used to Korean pronunciation? I can pronounce individual words from hangeul, but it seems like half the consonants just disappear when you start stringing words together in a sentence, and I can never figure out if I’m supposed to say the ㄹ in 닭 for example.

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I’m merely a hobbyist in Korean, but I think the voicing when used at the tail of a syllable like that depends on the next syllable’s initial consonant. So in the case of of 닭고기 the is voiced and the bleeds into the next one, while in the case of 닭도리탕 the isn’t voiced, but the is. The ”four letter” form of syllable construction is an aspect of Hangul that I never learned very well so take this with a grain of salt.

ETA: this is actually a pretty good explainer:

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That makes sense, but whenever I listen to a Korean person say it at natural speed (I am always amazed by their speed; they say in a second what I spend ten seconds reading out), it feels like either the ㄷ or the ㄱ disappears too. I gotta stop relying on text to speech and start watching Korean dramas with Korean subtitles to get a feel for it.

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Ok, I thought it was weird when one of my lessons this week started talking about the witch (die Hexe) and what she likes to do. :scream: This makes me glad I’m not into the leagues, though. :thinking:

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so, last night I read Asterix et la Transitalique, which is about a Chariot Race in Italy. (Not as good as the original comix, but I’ve already read those in translation)

The villain of the piece is a masked rider called Coronavirus.

The book was published in 2017, before COVID-19 took over the world, and Coronavirus referred to something like MERS or SARS.

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Goddamn tourists.

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I was super into the leagues for a while to where I was doing things just to get as much points as possible rather than trying to learn. It’s hugely addictive and they do a really good job with gamification. But lately I’ve become pretty disillusioned with Duolingo and the quality of its lessons - I’m there to learn, not get imaginary internet points. I’ve also given up on the leagues and have plummeted in standing as a result, and, whatever, I’m cool with it.

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While on the topic of poor quality lessons, Duo loves to pull shit like this with Japanese:

For whatever reason it sometimes splits up/combines things in the word bank in weird ways. In this case the は is a particle and should be on its own and the こ should be 強い but written the way it is, it makes it look like はこ is a word of its own. It’s just confusing and unnecessarily difficult to parse.

It serves no useful purpose other than making mistakes much more likely to occur.

As far as I know this only happens with Duo’s Japanese lessons.

Also Duo has basically given up trying to teach anything anymore in Japanese. Every time I advance a level, it’s now just “here’s some phrases…. remember them”. And then it pulls shit like this with zero context or explanation:

This was a complete WTF moment because up until this point there wasn’t a single lesson or mention about the informal “plain form” which is more or less “hey remember all those rules we’ve been teaching you for the last 25 lessons…. just throw them all out the window.”

And then there’s shit like this:

Which… just… why? What practical purpose does this serve? And this sentence is really difficult to grok.

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The word for strong taste is 濃い (read “koi”), so 濃すぎます means “too strong” in this context. At a certain point, Japanese becomes harder to read without kanji than with.

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I say that about the odd exercises for writing German phrases in English. The “correct” response tends to be something no native speaker would ever say. If I heard someone say what the system seems to want, I would be surprised.

In German, it seems to be stuck on travel, tourism, shopping, and dining. The vocabulary choices for shopping and food seem to be based on teaching specific sounds more than phrases that make any sense. For example, it spent a lot of time on suit jackets, T-shirt sizes, cake, and fruit salad. :woman_shrugging:t4: I prefer the stories, but now access to them is difficult. They also eliminated going through each one twice, in slightly different ways. That was very helpful in remembering new phrases, so of course it had to go. :frowning_face:

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This is precisely why having the kanji would have been useful. Not this weird and nonsensical crap they pulled here. It doesn’t happen often but when it does it’s absolutely infuriating. (Also Duo has been using 強い up until this point as “strong” in this context “strong wind”, etc. not yet introducing 濃い which may be a reason it didn’t show the kanji which is still dumb in the “let’s give you a syllable for a word we haven’t taught you yet in this weird way and not show you the kanji because we haven’t taught you yet” sense.)

I really hate how the stories have been gated. I’m almost to my first story on the new path and it’s taken almost six months to get there. With the old tree they were there almost immediately.

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Tbf, cake is an important part of German culture…

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Gotta prepare for lots of Apfelkuchen und Apfelschorle before my first trip!

rosario dawson apple GIF

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Godfather 2__If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked a Cake

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Has anyone here studied two non-native languages at the same time? If so, did it work out well or was it too problematic to continue? I’m currently learning German, while maintaining French and Spanish through conversation group practice sessions.

Now I’m considering adding Italian. That’s something I can already understand, but not speak or write (aside from musical and food references).

Excited Tom Hiddleston GIF by Marvel Studios

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Anyone who has been through a Lithuanian school program would qualify. The first foreign language is compulsory starting from grade 2 (age ~8), the second starting from grade 5, and then for grades 11 and 12 you can choose to stay with the two, drop down to only the first, or even start a third. For me, English was the first, Russian the second, and I dropped Russian on grade 11. Didn’t learn a lot of Russian, but that’s not because it was too overwhelming.*

I wouldn’t call using Duolingo “studying” (at least, not with the level of effort I’m putting into it), but I’m currently juggling between Ukrainian, German, Hebrew and French courses while occasionally going back for a quick practice round in Polish or Latin that I’ve completed previously. I have very modest goals for each of these (basically, being able to read just enough that I wouldn’t be entirely dependent on machine translation), so that also helps keep the mental load light. If anything, learning many languages actually makes it easier - you become more aware of the commonalities between them and see how they fit together.

* It has to do with the weird status of Russian language in Lithuania. Throughout the Soviet era, Russian was compulsory in schools, so all adults who went to school before 1990 are reasonably proficient in it. There is also a sizeable minority of native Russian speakers, especially in the cities. This creates situations where a single classroom might contain some kids who speak Russian natively at home, some who pick up the basics from playing with Russian friends or watching Russian TV, and then there are some (like me) who get to start from scratch in grade 5. And the school might think that hiring a native Russian speaker as a teacher is a good idea, even if she never learned to speak Lithuanian properly because hey - all Soviet-taught adults speak Russian, so why bother? That was not a good learning environment.

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