Greek on Android and iOS!
Greek is now officially available on Android and iOS devices! Breaking news, but very encouraging, too.
I think I speak on behalf of the whole Greek team when I say thank you. And this isn’t just for the new learners, but also the ones that have stuck around since the beginning of this course. Thank you for all your patience, support, feedback, reports, comments and kind words. Thank you for making this course better. We literally couldn’t have done half as much as we already have without you.
Now, for those of you who might have trouble with the Greek keyboard on Android or iOS devices, here is a quick guide:
For Android:
Settings -> Language & Keyboard -> Android keyboard -> enable Greek
(Each time you want to type in Greek, press the small 'Globe' button next to the spacebar -or the button that corresponds to language switching- on your Android keyboard. Greek should be available.
If a simple press doesn't work, try holding the globe button pressed.)
For iOS:
Full instructions here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202178
Also, a small disclaimer. There are still a lot of things to be done, fixed and improved. We are currently working on some main course issues. The course is now available on the app, which means there might be quite a few new learners, which means more reports, comments, questions and feedback to be processed by the mods. So thank you in advance for all your patience. Happy learning! ^.^
(Oh, almost forgot. Greek keyboard for Windows or Mac here https://www.duolingo.com/comment/17509582 You’re welcome.;))
31 Comments
Hey guys, I'm a programmer/math geek by nature with a Greek roommate, and this is my first post on Duolingo! :) I'm taking a break from the programming life to teach English abroad for a few months in a Spanish speaking country, and I was basically looking for an app to drill me in Spanish grammar when I stumbled across DL three days ago. I just finished my first golden tree (ES) and I'm super impressed with the work you've done.
I've had the Greek keyboard enabled on my Android phone for a few years now (I send an embarrassing number of math texts with delta-epsilon proof sketches), and between that and my Greek roommate, I thought I'd check out the Greek course.
Not exactly an issue, but just a curiosity I noticed was that when I did some exercises where an uppercase Greek letter corresponded identically to it's Latin-alphabet equivalent, the app only sometimes accepted the response.
For example (not actual app examples, but you'll get the idea):
"Write the English for μ". On Greek keyboard types 'M' Correct!
"Write the English for ζ". On Greek keyboard types 'Z' Incorrect!
"Write the English for ζ". On English keyboard types 'Z' Correct!
Obviously, if I'm supposed to be writing in English, I should use the English keyboard. If I'm supposed to be writing in Greek, I should use the Greek keyboard. When I follow that convention, no problem.
Nevertheless, the behavior was kind of interesting. Without knowing the specifics of the app code, my clueless first guess is that there's a UTF-8/Unicode mapping hiccup happening somewhere. Not really a big deal, but might be worth looking into if it happens on other people's phones too.
TL;DR: I'm a new user, I think Duolingo is awesome, I possibly found a quirk in the encoding/char set. Thanks guys!
Hey there ^.^ Personally, I think there's no encoding issue, but it might actually be our fault.
I think I've got an idea of what you're talking about, because at some point there was a number of reports about Duo not accepting the learners' translations, even if they matched the best translation (also known as the blue stars in the incubator) perfectly. Well, it turned out to be a typing mistake of the one that originally added the sentence, since the first letter of the sentence was typed in let's say English instead of Greek.
For example, Το κορίτσι ξέρει ελληνικά wasn't accepted, because T in 'Το' was in fact an English character in the incubator translation. This is definitely a 'in-a-rush" kind of typo, because I myself get a bit distracted sometimes when I type something on my PC. I've got Eng on keyboard, want to type something in Gr, don't really notice so until the second or third letter that's lowercase (because the uppercase seems Greek but lowercase is different), so I backspace on the lowercase, change the keyboard back to Gr, but don't really change the uppercase letter. xS
I do hope I was clear enough for you to understand what I mean :P Point is, this is probably not the system's fault, just some uppercase letters that need fixing. So if you come across any such cases, or remember any actual sentences and the skill you found them in, please do let us know so we can fix them. ^.^
Also, I'm really happy to know you're enjoying our course, as well as Duolingo in general. ^.^
For sure! And thank you for such a nice (not to mention quick) reply. Once again, Μπράβο!
Waiting for Russian, Polish, Hebrew, Vietnamese, Welsh, Hungarian, Greek, and Romanian. ヽ(ಠ_ಠ)ノ
I'm really sorry to hear that the kindle app is not keeping up with the updates like the Android and iOS devices do, but honestly, I just have to say, this "ヽ(ಠ_ಠ)ノ" just made my day (my pretty eventful day) , and I'm not even sure why. I laughed quite a bit. Thank you. xD
but we just got esperanto from spanish, which is something anyway. it seems they are not adding new languages but are adding further combinations. At least it isn't abandoned altogether but I hope they will add the newer languages at some point. greek is on my to do list, and I prefer the app as my typing is very slow and typo ridden.
Ongratulations to the Greek team! Thank you for all of your hard work making this beautiful language available to us.
Thanks . I Just got the Greek added to my key board. You directions were helpful
Yes! Thank you for this information! I have been going crazy trying to figure out how to pass the first unit as none of my phonetically-typed words were accepted and I was about to give up. Now I'll be able to continue my Greek studies :-)
We're so glad to hear that you didn't give up on it! Happy learning! ^.^
Don't worry, I intended on correcting my typos after I posted the discussion ^.^ (I was in a bit of a hurry.xD)
It's still saying that it's not supported on iOS - does that mean we should delete and re-add Greek?
Have you updated the app? According to the official incubator announcement, the Greek course is available for Android and iOS devices, in the latest version of the app. ^.^
...but nothing on Windows Phone yet. I am very disappointed that it's not getting released for Windows Phone at the same time as the other apps. It's not like there are any special issues to work around.
Hi, I love the course, just a quick comment: „which colour” equates „what colour”. I keep being penalised for that... Big, big thanks for all your top notch work!
What color--->Out of all colors.
Which color-->The available options have been narrowed down and somebody asks "Which color out of the available ones?".
There are many discussions about whichever question you might have, you can find them by clicking the search symbol at the top of the page in the Greek Discussions main menu. Please try to ask your questions under the respective sentence so that you too can read other users' comments and also indirectly provide info to learners by having your own questions answered. Thank you!
