Have you traveled with Duolingo recently?
Calling all Duolingo travelers - we’d love to speak with you!
The product team at Duolingo is interested in understanding how you use Duolingo when you travel. We are curious about many things, including: - Have you used Duolingo to learn a language for travel? - Who were you interacting with in a foreign language while traveling? - What were the most invaluable tools you needed for travel? - How did Duolingo affect your experience traveling?
You do not have to be a regular Duolingo user, and you do not even need to have great answers to the questions posted above. You just need to be willing to spend about 30 minutes of your time talking to a member of the Duolingo team on video chat or on the phone. It's our chance to get to know you better and your chance to give us some feedback (over video/phone)! We are available on May 19, 2017 (Friday), and May 22, 2017 (Monday) through May 24, 2017 (Wednesday). Please sign up using this form: https://goo.gl/forms/DiEvTxay63q6SLg13.
We’ll try our best to speak to as many people as possible, but we may not be able to select everyone due to time constraints. However, if we do end up talking to you, we’ll send you (by mail) a very special token of appreciation from Duolingo for your time :)
Thanks, and we look forward to chatting with you!
Once again, sign up here: https://goo.gl/forms/DiEvTxay63q6SLg13
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I plan to use Swahili when I go to Tanzania to help in orphanages and teach people English. I haven't gone yet, but I am really excited.
Asante sana Duolingo timu ya Kiswahili!
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I hope you have fun and do well there. It's very kind of you to do a thing like that.
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I plan to just go myself and take anyone who wants to help along with me and I don't belong to a church. I might hold a fundraiser to buy things like water filters and other necessities to help them out. It won't be until many years from now after I graduate from college.
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It is okay to be proud of your religion, but the way you worded it sounded rude. I was open enough to tell you about my beliefs and still respect yours. I don't mind but if you said that to someone else, it might offend them, and I wouldn't want that to happen to either of you.
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i am so sorry, i was not saying that i was proud of my "religion" , i was not saying that at all!! and i am glad that you shared that with me! :)
this is very interesting reading about Hinduism, extremely enlightening, thankyou. It sounds extremely respectful and inclusive.
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I really haven't decided. Probably all over. Help where it is needed. Of course, I won't just go to Tanzania, but I want to focus on that country.
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I hope you have tons of fun when you go! That's a really cool thing to do : )
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I travel with duolingo on boats
Because I live on a peninsula
I travel with duolingo on trains
My Local is a West Highland Line
I travel with duolingo on buses
There is free WIFI on to Glasgow
I travel with duolingo on planes
Because I travel often to Europe
I travel with duolingo alone
and there it comes and talks
French, German or Polish
Such is a lovely duolingo life
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Hi:
I feel that there are two questions in one so let's split them up.
- Have you used Duolingo while traveling and has it been easy to use while on the road?
The answer is yes. I have used Duolingo while traveling domestically and internationally. I never have performance problems unless there is an issue with the connection. I was able to even practice while in China, to my surprise. Other than some minor hiccups here and there, the experience using the application is the same as I am at home. I use the mobile apps while on the road being that I seldom go to a internet cafe (is that still a thing?) so the desktop program is used when I am home, hotel or remote office.
- Have you been able to apply what you learned in Duolingo while traveling?
The answer is also yes. However being that I am spending most of the time learning Norwegian, it is not that I have had a breadth of experiences that I can tap in. We went to Oslo last year while I was mid course. It helped me to understand signs, order a coffee in the plane and get the gist of travel brochures that were not written in English. Although most people in Norway speak English, sometimes foreigners that work in the services industry will only know their native language and Norwegian. It happened a lot at the hotel and it helped me to communicate with them when English was really not a practical option. The most remarkable event was at time that I had to order in a Burger King and the cashier seemed to be from the Middle East, so I had to use Norwegian to place the order. It was not smooth and easy, but at least my burger came out without mayonnaise.
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Thank you Duolingo Team!!! I discovered Duo in April 2016. Had travel plans to visit Italy in Sep/Oct 2016. Worked diligently. Finished my Italian tree and kept it golden.Lost my streak at the end of August. Things got busy with work, travel, etc. Did not follow up with my practice and in April 2017 decided to come back to Duo. I am on my 32 day streak now. Working on turning my tree golden again and also doing the inverted tree (separate account).
Duolingo has provided me with the confidence to carry on conversations in Italian. It was absolutely wonderful applying what I've learned during my trip to Italy. My understanding of Italian programming of my choice has sharpen greatly.
This is a note of appreciation to the amazing Duolingo Team for offering me the opportunity to learn the languages of my choice. You make the learning process so much fun!
Whenever I visit the various threads of Duo Discussion Forum, I feel so inspired by all the participants who are working on not only one, but so many languages! With deep appreciation
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I'll be travelling to Finland again this December. My dream is to be able to travel there with duolingo one day!
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In the meantime, I guess Swedish is the only alternative :-) https://www.duolingo.com/comment/5759266
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Virtually all Finns (and Swedes) speak flawless (or, in the worst cases, good) English, so it's very difficult to get the opportunity as a tourist to attempt to speak to them in their own language at all if they come to have the slightest suspicion that you're an English-speaker. The best thing to do is to pretend to be a native speaker of some other non-germanic language you have a reasonable faculty in, but which the average Finn or Swede is much less likely to know...
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Does sarcasm count as a non-germanic language? Not that I'm fluent in that :P
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I sometimes just reply them in Spanish. :-). (although some of them also known Spanish though!)
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I felt so good when we travelled to a different country and there was a sign saying Cambio moneda. My daughter had never heard of Moneda, but I was so happy to tell her that it is currency. She was looking for Cambio Dinero., thanks to Duolingo I can read and understand Spanish quite well.
Great questions. I've been using Duolingo as my primary resource for learning Spanish over the past year. (I've also been using Yabla - another great resource.) My motivation was simply to learn a language that's beautiful and that's spoken by so many people around the world (including the US, where I live). Then we decided to vacation in Asturias this summer - partly because northern Spain seems like a really cool place, but also to have a chance to speak Spanish every day for a few weeks with lots of people. Iremos en tres semanas. ¡Estoy muy emocionada!
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That sounds awesome, I'm jelly lol.
Though it's "vamos en tres semanas." Future tense is used more conservatively in Spanish. It's similar though in English to how we say "I leave on Friday," or "I'm leaving on Friday," only "I will leave on Friday" will sound weird in Spanish compared to being accepted English.
¡Fue absolutamente increible! We returned earlier this week, after 17 entirely wonderful days. I spoke Spanish a lot every day (not many people in the north of Spain seem to speak English), and it worked really well. I feel as though my Spanish got a lot better, and - probably even more important - my confidence improved dramatically. Everyone seemed to understand me and all the interactions were successful (in shops, restaurants, museums, etc.)
We loved it so much, we've already booked a trip for next summer.
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1) I'd really like to have an option to use Duolingo offline (it can be limited to a certain number of lessons downloaded before the trip, but it should work without Internet connection).
2) When I went to Germany, I was less than 2 months into the language on Duolingo. So I found out that I could make myself understood, but in response I would invariably get a stream of fast German that I couldn't make sense of - which was of course very funny, but also kind of frustrating. On a positive side, I could understand signs and some written info in stores, etc. - that was helpful.
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There is a version for android users that you can pay for and get lessons offline: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/22202238
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Thanks, I've read about it. I don't have an android device though, hope Duo for iOS gets this feature soon.
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Yea, it would be fantastic to have more speaking/listening training, kind of like how SaySomethingIn does.
http://www.saysomethinginwelsh.com/pdf/crossing.pdf (scroll down to "Speaking and Listening" if you wanna skip the rest of the Great read)
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I visited quebec in the past 5 months, and I could understand so much French. Thanks Duo!
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I pretty sure that the French that Duolingo teaches is standard French, it's really similar to Quebecois French, so that standard French speakers can usually understand about 60% of Quebecois French. However, Cajun French from Louisiana is a little more different, so you can't really understand much of that type of French because there are some substantial differences.
Back in January I visited Poland, and was in the north of Poland in a town called Torun where Polish people go on holiday, so not many people spoke English. Thanks to my pidgin Polish solely from Duolingo, we managed to get by fairly smoothly! In summer 2015, I was in Cologne, Germany for a week and my Duolingo German helped me so much in conversing with locals! Shortly after, I worked in Disneyland Paris, and while German tourists generally had good English, there were a couple of instances where I was the only employee in the shop with any German, and so I was put in charge of taking care of the German tourists, all thanks to Duolingo!
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I recently visited Italy. Even by doing small amounts of Duolingo, it helped me so much! Thank you Duo!
Me.....I use it everywhere, I tend to catch myself using Spanish sentences and words instead of English. But I enjoy every second of learning a language. Happy learning everyone!!! :)
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since I moved to France its quite crucial for me to know French ( obviously), I found that practicing with Duolingo has helped me, I cant really speak yet but I can understand most things what people say. Its great!
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I'm going to a different contintent for the first time in my life thanks to Esperanto, which I mainly learned with Duolingo.
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hey, how come you can already do the japanese language course? :0 I was looking for it but couldn't find it.
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You can read more on the incubator page (google 'incubator duolingo' and select the Japanese course), but it's because I use the app for iOS. They are teaching it in a very good way, as far as I can tell from the little I've learned so far. Kudos to them!
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I always use duolingo when I travel. Especially to refresh my languages in advance.
Spoke to Edwin today, awesome guy!
Looking forward to seeing free Duolingo goodies arrive at my doorstep =]
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I completed the English from Chinese course whilst in China. It was quite helpful, despite being in the wrong direction, and I picked up from it a few new grammatical patterns I wasn't aware of.
Perhaps by the next time I visit there will be a Chinese from English course...
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Just went from Canada to Australia and had to "trick" my smartphone so I would not loose my streak. What I had to do was to complete my duoLingo for the current day then change the timezone to the new time zone where we were going, and immediately do additional lessons in the "new" time zone. My girlfriend didn't change time zones on her smartphone and ended up using her Streak Freeze. Hopefully there could be programming done to accommodate this issue. Other than that we live and travel in at least four different countries (Mexico, United States, Canada and Australia) and have not had too many issues.Great work duoLingo!
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I'm Italian and reciently found out that I have a cousin in Italy. October of 2016 we spent 33 days in Europe. We had dinner with my cousin and his family. Between their broken English and my broken Italian we understood each other fairly well. We spent a week in Milan and DL help out a lot.
I also travel to Northern Michigan. It's hard to do Duo there because I don't have good cell reception at my cabin.
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I have used it while traveling, though not extensively. I would have found a unit on specific foods useful for people with allergies. Communication was sometimes difficult trying to explain I could eat a hot pepper, but not a bell pepper.
I completed the form, fingers crossed =]
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I'll enjoyed many Duolingo benefits when traveling. Since my reading ability far surpasses by speaking levels, it often the written word that I use, but what a joy to be able to read menus, signs etc.
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Not really, when I tried to cross the border, I was informed it was for iOS only...
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I hate that on mobile, you have "hearts." Not only is mobile learning more difficult, but you get punished for not having access to a PC. I understand you can 'buy' more or something and that's how y'all make money, but there's got to be another way.
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I don't have hearts yet on mobile, but if they give it to everybody I hope there is an option to disable it!
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IOS and online. However, I have had Duolingo for many years. Maybe it just tests this on newer users? Also, I have not updated Duolingo as that might give me the hearts too.
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I have iOS as well, and the hearts have been there since I downloaded it in January. It's not on PC, which makes me glad. I hate the mobile version.
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I will be using Duolingo as a compliment to my classes when I go to Japan and Spain next year for college. ^^ It is great in combination with Rosetta Stone and college classes.
I conduct B-to-B Marketing workshops (in English) around the globe for entrepreneurs and aspiring exporters. In Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Nicaragua) switching to Spanish every now and then definitely helps to keep the attention span up and create 'raccord' with the participants. Outside the classroom, it feels great to interact with people in the street, at local shops, in the hotel or in a taxi. The only remark I get is that I got contaminated by 'those lazy Andalusians': my pronounciation is somewhat slow and I swallow letters I shouldn't.
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I did a solo hike for two weeks in the french/italian and swiss alps where they mostly speak french in all the villages and it's helped me with finding water fountains and campsites, I hope I can be fluent someday
why don`t you add games to make it more fun and it will reach wider audience.
I've been studying duolingo Swedish for almost a year now, when I traveled to Stockholm these past few weeks my duolingo vocabulary helped me read a lot of random signs and and advertisements. Unfortunately it did little to help me talk with natives. I had to consult other guides just to do basic things like order food or ask for directions. Its definitely been my favorite study tool but is kinda woefully bad for real life conversations.
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You are the second person that I know off that has made a similar comment. The other person made the comment in the Norwegian Duolingo group in Facebook.
Although Duolingo is not meant to be a phrase book, it seems to be a fair suggestion. With that said, one has to watch out on memorizing canned answers rather than formulating your own answers by building on from what you already learned.
My suggestion is to expand your learning by listening to podcasts and reading websites in Swedish. There is a Telegram chatroom for Norwegian learners that I participate once in a while. I am sure that there is one also for Swedish somewhere. I personally listen to the NRK news in the morning and read technical websites in Norwegian. In that way you start getting it the hang of the language.
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Yea, Duo is great for what it's for, but to brush up the other sides of your fluency, you've got to find your own speaking and listening elements. I really like SaySomethingIn's approach of daily listening to local radio, and (as LuisAnaya10 also said), rearranging and constructing your own sentences. When I started learning Welsh, I added a notebook to construct my own sentences and really feel that it has helped me get further in my comprehension. Now that I've found SSI for Welsh, I can get even further.
http://www.saysomethinginwelsh.com/pdf/crossing.pdf
They don't have a Norwegian course, but they give you great ideas on how to craft your own language studies.
Good luck ^_^
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Yes, when I was in Chicago, was able to keep up with Duolingo on my cell phone.
I'm using duolingo so that I can one day travel. I want to go to central and south america. I have a hard time learning languages but with duolingo I'm making some progress. Once I learn enough words to read books it will become easier as I love to read.
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yes, i have recently visited mexico (my spanish was dreadful no one understood me,lol) and i stayed and saw the sights for a few days then left. oh i have been learning on a level 25 spanish account but the account stopped working! ;(
Where can I find a DuolingoFAQ? Check Duolingo's official Help Page and if you don't find what you're looking for there, check out the these awesome Duolingo Wiki guides:
The Wiki's unofficial Duolingo FAQ
Mod or No Mod Guide to Reporting Posts and Incidents
Non-mods pointing out Guideline violations Community Guidelines Clarification
What does the inside of the Incubator look like?
What are some common forum faux pas that I can avoid?
How to best utilize the Sentence Discussion forums
I want to create an XP competition, what should I know?
I would like a new course: What should I do?
All of this and more on the unofficial Duolingo Wiki.
The wiki too big? Getting lost? Just go to Google and type Duolingo Wikia and a search term such as Clubs, or Streak Freeze and find exactly what you're looking for. Or, use a key word in the Wiki's search bar.
Need a moderator or refresher on the Guidelines? Check out this list of Moderators, and this link to the Guidelines, which can be found at the bottom of any page.
Meanwhile, don't forget to practice Internet safety wherever you go online. If you need to block someone, here are Instructions ^_^
Duolingo Wiki
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I wanted to but, the only foreign country i have ever been to is China and I was disappointed to learn that Duolingo has not finished its mandarin or cantonese courses
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I just want to learn French because it seems cool and useful, plus I visit France more than most people.
I'm really just re-learning it because I lost it a long time ago when I was 2.
