Swahili now listed as in beta...
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Can anyone access it through the sign-up page yet?
Edit: now available for me; however, there appears to be no audio working yet.
Edit 2: this is explained in the latest update, which appeared subsequent to this post.
21 Comments
Yay! Your link shows up as error 404 for me though.
edit you changed the link, now it works.
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Links fixed now.
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The Swahili forum is now open: https://www.duolingo.com/topic/942
Guess it's going into beta today.
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They probably decided to release it without the sound, since that's what's been keeping it in the incubator. They'll add it when they get it.
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Interesting post by the team themselves: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/21048288
It's there in the list when I click Add a new course. Woot :)
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audio is missing for me as well. almost thinking this was a mistake....
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Wow! Good job Swahili Team! And congratulations for studying this beautiful African language... It's a beautiful day!!! =))
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Cheers to the first Niger-Congo language ever in Duolingo!
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I thought the sound is what we were waiting for. I'd rather have waited longer and gotten the audio.
This way everyone has the choice. Those who'd rather wait for the audio can do so, and those who'd rather start without it can do that, too.
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It seems the language has a simple orthography, which makes it easier to learn its pronunciation rules, given the fact each letter/grapheme would hardly represent more than one specific sound... If you check the first skills pages you'll see explanations of those rules.
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I think one particular hiccup is that Swahili has implosive consonants, which approximately no one doing it has any clue how to produce as a part of speech. Apparently English speakers imitating the sound of water being poured from a bottle make such a sound, but I'm definitely looking forward to hearing it in the words.
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Vietnamese has several implosives, too; they are really not difficult to make. They are not constrastive with plosive stops in either language, anyway. Start with /ɓ/, which is the easiest, and you'll quickly get a feel for what your glottis should be doing for stops further back in the mouth (essentially, closing just before the release).
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Ah, I see Wikipedia mentioning [ɓɔɪ̯] as a realization of "boy" in southern US English. I also seem to be a ɠ person for the pouring water sound, so I guess I'm half the way there already :)
