So does anyone else kinda not like #Duolingo? Like, it’s a nice and easy way to begin #learning a #language and it seems a lot of my friends also use it, the problem is instead of getting real people to do the voices they use text-to speech, which means you often do not get the correct #pronunciation. Like, often you get both a normal speed and a slow speed recordings of the pronunciation to pick from, and the two versions will often use completely different #TTS voices that not only have diffent quality, but also very different #pronunciations despite being the same words or sentences. It seems like the wrong way to learn a language. Also, what is up with the #owl? @actuallyautistic
What gets me into a language quickly is audiobooks & (if you have the time) movies.
There is always a on-ramp, like listening to the first page of your favorite book over & over on 60% speed. Or watching your favorite TV show episode, where you know the dialogue by heart, with target language subtitles & audio.
Then you can progress slowly. Last step is unknown, natively produced, audiobooks/novels/movies/newpapers.
I learned 3 languages (including English) that way.
@actuallyautistic@NeurodivergentBC My OH loves Duolingo, and practices/plays it every day, but Im not so keen because of the weird phrases, lack of grammar explanation and the “game” focus. I used to love Memrise when keeping up my Japanese because it was really clear and more explanatory with video clips etc.
@innervisioner@actuallyautistic@NeurodivergentBC I'm an immigrant trying to adjust to life/language in a new country & despise Duolingo. I like the gamification, but combined with the useless phrases & lack of explanation it's actively harmful to how I learn. I can't intellectually absorb & functionally use the knowledge. It's just contextual muscle memory, like recalling the steps to winning a videogame or something.
i love duo, but like… as a game. it’s something i picked up specifically as like, “fuck it, i’m never going to learn the languages perfectly, i just want to make little dopamine bells go off in my brain when i’m sad.”
i wouldn’t recommend it for “serious learning” but i also wouldn’t not recommend it at this point. i’m contemplating investing in higher-quality materials for learning japanese.
but, 10,000%, the curriculum quality is all over the place. and also the interface quality itself varies based on platform. i use web, android, AND ios and the features for all three are a little different.
some of them have weird volume variations, too, so like i’ll have to constantly turn my volume up & down to hear things.
@NeurodivergentBC@actuallyautistic I don’t know about other courses, but Esperando course is voiced by volunteers from the community. The sound quality is all over the place and occasionally you can hear an animal in the background.
Unfortunately, there are no slow speed voicings, and because they are volunteers their diction can be a little sloppy at times, which can cause confusion between similar phonemes
Add comment