Typing in a wrong language

[olimo]

Sometimes I get so immersed in learning and my own thoughts that I type the same German sentence instead of translating it into English or vice versa: I hear a German sentence in a dictation and type its translation.

Now, I perfectly understand this is my own fault to be so inattentive, but I think it would not be technically hard to compare the typed text with the existing database of answers and if the answer is in a wrong language, suggest the user to type it again in the required language. Would that be possible, team?

[Luis]

We do check if you're typing in the wrong language, but only in the "Listen and type what you're hearing" kind of exercises, since those account for the most mistakes.

[olimo]

Is it possible to also check if the user has entered the same source text in a translation task? I know it is stupid, but I've actually done this a few times %)

[Luis]

We'll put it in the queue of things to do :)

[Brummig]

This has actually got worse. Duo used to detect typing in the wrong language in one direction, but now it doesn't detect this in either direction. This issue is really annoying, and by a big margin is the way in which I drop most XPs. It doesn't help that the clues that the direction has switched are subtle. Is there any chance that this issue could be addressed, please?

[Hankree]

I've had this problem; your suggestion is great.

[FrenchBalance]

Very rarely a part of my awnser is english instead of french and maybe just 1 word it will auto correct sometimes. But most of the time it won't. I would love a feature that would ask you to review you awnser if you typed something in the inccorrect language.

[rocko2012]

I got a message one time about using the wrong language. Duolingo must have already tested the idea. Maybe they abandoned it.

[olimo]

Really? That's interesting. There may be some difficulties that I am not aware of. It would be nice to hear from the team.

[mptmpt]

I have seen that more than once, I happened to translate in english where I was supposed to write in french and vice versa, and there was a warning which was something like "you just typed in english, while you were supposed to write in french. Do you want to give it another try?" and I didn't loose any heart, I just retyped in the correct language (and strangely enough, in at least one case, I lost the heart anyway because of a spelling error). On the other hand, once I was writing one of the very short sentences, in the correct language and I got the same warning... which I had to fix by changing my answer to one of the almost equivalent expressions.

[panda316]

Even me. Instead of translating English sentence to Spanish, I sometimes have written the same sentence. During those times, i have got messages like "That doesn't seem like Spanish".

[olimo]

Weird. I've never gotten any of these but only lost hearts if I typed in a wrong language.

[kaicce]

I have done this before, especially with common Spanish-English cognates. This should be made possible.

[SeaLiteral]

It's also happened to me. Usually I type in the language that I should translate from. But I remember one time I realized I was translating a sentence from English to Welsh instead of to French. It happens especially because the you're taught the same words in different languages.

My solution for now is to take short breaks after I practice one language and before I practice another one. And also to switch keyboard layouts, because if I try to type one thing and get something else on the screen, I will probably notice what I'm doing.

[kovacsur]

I do this all the time and it is incredibly frustrating.