Suggestions for the Danish Course
Please post all your suggestions here, it will make it easier to keep an overview :)
Thank you
Greetings from Team Danish Dynamite
70 Comments
When I type a noun with the wrong indefinite article, it marks it as a typo (eg et løve is marked as correct with a typo). As gender is pretty important, shouldn't we be marked wrong for this?
It think it's good that they don't mark this wrong when you're just starting out. Maybe they start marking it wrong when you're farther down the tree?
Nah, it is quite important to learn the genders. You are marked wrong in any other language here, except for the ones currently in beta. But we will get a way to fix this soon.
I actually disagree. Compared to most other aspects of learning danish, getting the gender correct is not very important as it has basically no impact on how understandable the sentence is to others. I think marking it as a typo is sufficient, at least for a while until you get more advanced.
Could you add "Underwear" to the clothing section? It's not in any of the courses, and it is really an important word.
Hi, Is it possible to include the "Words" and "Immersion" section in the Danish course too? In other courses like French, and German I've seen that there's a dedicated tab/section for the learnt words, sadly this is missing in the Danish course. Cheers!
I second that! After finishing the tree, one would like to dive into 'Immersion' to keep improving. :)
I am missing that too. I learn vocab also by writing down and rereading and it would be so much easier with having a "word" section then trying to find the different words in the different course sections.
I've noticed that all the courses teach "I'm sorry", but none of them teach "I forgive you". Would it be possible to add this to the Danish course?
Good idea! I will write it down for next iteration of the tree. That one is fairly simple in Danish, and I will give it to you right now too: tilgive (forgive), it consists of two parts: til (for) and give (give). So it is almost like English, except you add an -r. This makes it: Jeg tilgiver dig.
Maybe It'll come later in the course, but I'm missing the speaking exercises! And these seem so important for Danish especially. And sadly, beta-courses do not get added to the app. :-(
Unfortunately we will probably not get speaking exercises for a long time. From what I know Dutch do not have them either. I read that they are working on adding the beta-courses to the app. :)
Ah, that's really too bad. Guess I'll just have to go pester real Danes with my pronunciation and see how much they understand >:)
Haha, I have offered to do Skype sessions or Google hangouts with people who are interested.
http://persephonemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/uexc_attach/heathers-ltp.gif
You are like the nicest person ever.
i would love to do the skype talks.... is that in the evening? I'm working full-time but i would love to spend time in the evening on practice my pronouncation. :-)
hej allesammen!
I have completed 16 categories of the danish course within the last 3 days so far and the more I completed the more I noticed I could understand the danish exercises a lot easier than translating the english into danish. So I was thinking about what reasons that might have. Every day I write danish to my boyfriend (very simple things) to learn more.
The more categories I finished, the more I noticed that there are indeed far more danish to english exercises than vice versa. This is by no means a bad thing. I just often feel that it would be useful to practice some more translating english into danish.
So my suggestion would be to add some more exercises for english to danish.
btw. I'm aware creating all this takes a huge effort and I'm by no means demanding anything. This is just my personal opinion that I got from doing the course. The course really helped me a lot so far and I'm really grateful for it. You guys truly have done an amazing job. I wouldn't have guessed the course would be in such a good shape in early beta stage. Well done.
mange tak :)
With regard to the fact that there are more danish to english exercises, I have found that this is the case with other languages too. I'd rather have more english to danish because it helps with the spelling. But I do think it is a duolingo thing in general.
But when you get far enough along, you could try the reverse course of Danish to English to practice that. (Mouse over your name at the top, click on settings, click on Learning Language, click on the down arrow inside the blue circle to the right of "I want to learn Danish" which is from English and Oh NO! I can't find it! Did they really make the Danish from English first? It seems as though most of the others started out as English from foreign language. My apologies! But I would think they will make the reverse course if they haven't already.)
as "allintolearning" pointed out this is indeed because almost everyone in denmark already speaks english to a high level, especially those 35-40ish years old and younger, and thus Danish-English would be quite unnecessary.
now I wonder if I should join the development team and help contribute towards the requests you express.
Sorry, they had one for every other language that I am learning, but let's ask if it is coming. Usually whichever course is first, the reverse is made after they are done with the first and this one is still in beta so I guess it won't be right away if they do make it, because it is not even in 1st phase of incubation. http://incubator.duolingo.com/ Perhaps too many people in Denmark already speak English? I hope one of the contributors helps us out here! If they don't plan to come out with the Danish from English, then I agree with Marinia that they should have enough of both translations in the original course. The randomness of the exercises sometimes works against us.
I'll suggest that you to include the FAQ or Faq wiki or https://www.duolingo.com/help in your sticky thread. Perhaps even add it to your immersion (when it becomes available). It will probably save you from answering a lot of repetitive questions, especially considering that this forum is new. People will learn to use it properly.
Well, the flag does look like the same one when Dutch first came out...
I'm really struggling with the audio. I just cannot make out what is being said. Never had this problem with any of the other courses I've done here :(
It takes a little getting used to. I really recommend listening to the slower version (turtle icon) a few times, sounding it out yourself and then trying the faster option. Also I like to put in the phrases in the Google translate tool and have them read it back to me as their TTS is a little easier to listen to at times. Good luck!
I'm Danish myself and just want to do the course to help point out things to be corrected. A lot of people have mentioned that the voice is hard to understand and I'll have to agree. Not only that but some words are pronounced completely wrong (ex "Undskyld") I'm in no way trying to be rude or diminish all the hard work the Danish have and are doing, I just want to help the course be as good as possible. Other than the voice and pronunciation issue I think the course is absolutely brilliant. Well done guys, and thank you for spreading our lovely language and culture across the globe (and internet)
I don't know how to type the pronunciation out but it's pronounced like this :) http://www.forvo.com/word/undskyld/
I am having so much fun learning Danish so far, thank you all for your hard work! :) I've noticed in other courses that along with the links "activity," "discussion," etc. there is a link to "words" that links to all the words one has covered so far in the course and there is also an option for flashcards. Is this something the Danish course might have in the future?
This will be added later, right now we are mostly focusing on vocabulary and sentences :) You have to be able to walk before you can run, right? :)
Would it be possible to, just for now, upload the vocabulary list in a simple pdf file or something similar? Then we can at least study the vocabulary the old-fashioned way, with a piece of paper and a pen!
I understand that it's not easy to manage a course, but I do agree that I miss the "Words" tab. It's been really hard to remember all the words without this.
Would it be possible to have it play the danish translation when you translate from danish to English? sometimes it feels like it goes too long without hearing the pronunciation.
What do you mean? I am fairly certain that if you are translating a Danish sentence it will play the audio.
Sorry! I mean't when you translate an English sentence into Danish. There were a lot of questions like, "The turtle is eating an apple" or something. And it would have you write out Skilldpadden spiser en aeble. (. . I think that's right)
And I was wondering if there was a way to have the audio play when it lets you know you did it correctly.
Yes, after checking my answer on the "Translate this text" (English to Danish) and on the "Mark all correct translations" pages, I almost always click on the "Comments" link, even when there are no comments, so I can listen to the phrase stated in Danish to help train my ears. I wish for an audio button to appear after I click "Check" to make it easier to listen to the Danish rather than the two-step process I have to use now. (As Marinia has noted, all languages appear to work the same way -- I am simply adding my voice to request this feature in duolingo.)
I discovered by accident that the translate pages with the radio buttons offer audio if you click on the radio button twice. Before finally selecting the right answer, I often double-click on all the radio buttons, just to hear the Danish pronunciation. I was wishing for this for a long time and found it by accident.
Hej! I don't know if all the branches of the Danish tree are set in stone, but I find myself wishing that there was more vocabulary in some of the branches. For instance: I am working on clothing right now, and there is only a small set of words to learn. I found myself wishing the same thing with animals.
I also wish there was another section of common phrases, although maybe the types of phrases I'm thinking of (how's the weather?; how are you?; etc.) will be taught in other sections.
I understand not throwing too much vocabulary at us learners at once--perhaps I am just greedy and want to devour as much of this language as I can! :D
You have to remember that we have to create sentences for the vocabulary, and as early as you are in the tree there is not a lot of options. It is difficult to actually create sentences without it getting tedious. There is a lot of vocabulary in the tree, I promise. We might extend it in some places for the next version, but for now this is what we found suitable :)
That makes perfect sense. Thanks for the reply--I hope I didn't sound rude. :) I am just excited to learn so much, but I realize that there is tons of work that Team Danish must put into it. Like I said: I am greedy, but I know I must continue down the tree. XD
Thank you for everything you do for this course!
Hej! Thanks for the course, I'm really enjoying it a lot. I'm just wondering why are there so many declension differences in the list of words in the little box for the different lessons. As I am trying to write down all the different words as I go along, it can be confusing when I write them with different declensions and try to decline them wrongly when I try to use the words in different contexts.
Tak!
Hey! I'm glad you are enjoying it. But I don't quite understand your question? Which declension tables are you talking about? Do you mean conjugation tables? Could you give some examples?
For example, the list of words in the box for colors lesson 1 is "rødt, hvidt, gul, blå, sorte, grøn, den" where some of them are declined for common, neuter, and plural cases. Not really the conjugation or declension tables.
Ah I understand it now. We have no control over those as far as I know. You shouldn't use those to gather which words you are learning nor their inflexion, because you'll end up confusing yourself. For instance "den" is an article, while the others are colors/adjectives.
First of all, I really enjoy the course and I appreciate and thank the team for finally giving us this course. There are a lot of students in Denmark who could really be helped with their language learning.
Secondly, as a suggestion-it would be nice to include more variations to the translations as I often get wrong answers when I practically enter a correct translation but it is a bit different from the one intended by the system. Another suggestion would be to not get a wrong answer when the user makes a small typo, like missing an "l" or other letter. Especially when after hearing a sentence that you need to reproduce. Danish is particulary hard to understand.
Thank you again and I hope the course will be out of beta soon.
Please, can you set up the pronoun section of the thread collection soon. I really like to have something to refer to in one place instead of flipping through all the lessons to get to the Tips Notes which haven't been as complete as you add more with new lessons. Someone just informed me that "De" is not only "they " but a formal singular version of "you " as well, but would always be capitalized for that use.
You're right, but the formal you is less and less commonly used in Denmark. The few people who still use are almost all quite old, so in a decade or two it will have all but disappeared.
Hi there, thanks for the hard work on the Danish course; I am enjoying it a lot!
I have one question: when you learn a new word, you sometimes only get a noun including the definite article suffix and/or the plural form. It is not always possible to work out the form of the bare noun. For example: having learned 'klokken' and 'klokker', you can't be sure if the bare noun is 'klok' or 'klokke'. Would it be possible to always give the bare noun as well, when you hover over a word?
I wrote something like "My brother's her uncle" instead of writing "My brother is her uncle" and it was marked incorrect. This is a very normal English contraction so it should definitely not be marked as an error. It was very frustrating! However I am still loving this course, so many thanks.
It would be extremely hard for Duolingo to think of every possible contraction for every sentence, although very common contractions like "he's", "I'm" etc. are generally accepted. I would classify your contraction above as appropriate only in very informal writing. If you stick to slightly more formal English you'd generally be fine.
Hello, Danish Team,
I have just studied the possessives and I have a suggestion about the notes.
I'd distinguish two categories:
-sentences where the subject is the one who possesses the thing -sentences where the subject is not the one who possesses the thing
For the first case I'd introduce
min/mit/mine din/dit/dine sin/sit/sine vores jeres deres
For the second case I'd say that they are the same except for the third person singular (he/she/it) where the possessives change to
hans, hendes, dens/dets
For the first category I'd make examples such as
He/she/it eats his/her/its (own) apple (the subject is the one who owns the apple)
for the second category I'd make examples such as
I eat his/her/its apple (the subject is not the one who owns the apple: the subject takes the apple from its owner).
////////////// I think that presenting things this way will make things clearer: people in the discussions seem confused about the difference between "sin" and "hans". It would also group sin/sit/sine together with min/mit/mine and din/dit/dine which are declined the same way and keep hans, hendes, dens/dets apart to be studied on its own. ////////// One thing that is not clear to me is whether sin/sit/sine can be used as pronouns as well or just as adjectives (han har sin/ han laeser sit, etc.)
Thank you for your attention, all the best, Idraote
I Think who make sentences in Danish is NOT seriously make sentences without seance and stupid please be a little bit more clever!
The lesson "present 1" is not well done: - Too many verbs to remember all of a sudden -after hundreds of "spiser" and "drikker" - Words/expressions that are never explained and must be guessed
I think it should be divided in at least two parts (better three) so that one can use strengthen skills to memorise all those new words.
Hello! I started this course and I think it would be really helpful if all the nouns could be presented in the indefinite form, e.g. instead of "krabben", it would be easier to introduce it as "en krabbe", otherwise the only way to know if it is "krabb" or "krabbe" is checking at ordnet.dk. Greetings!
Dear team, I have just started and I am learning quickly. Thank you! I really appreciate all the time and effort that has obviously gone into developing this. It will help me a lot. I do notice that words and sentences that are of use in normal working life are provided later or not at all (yet?). I would like to learn about work-related things: how to make an appointment, how to say Hi in corporate life, jobtitles, office supplies, making compliments or showing in a polite way that things are not going the way they are supposed to go, etc. And also about things like furniture, asking for directions, several kinds of stores, things like tree and garden and fence and so, etc, etc. And also if you have diner: how do you thank the host, call a waiter, pay the bill, stuff like that. And in a store: how do I ask if I may fit something on or if they have things in a different size, etc. If you are developing more, then I would care for these topics.
Thanx again! Team Danish Dynamite rocks!
at the start of the language- as a beginner- it would be nice to have an overview of the alphabet and pronunciation. I am finding it difficult to cement into my brain and understand without this basic stuff first-- I have had to seek outside sources.
I've completed just four skills and Duo is reporting I'm 25% fluent in Danish. That seems pretty inflated!
Other than that, this is shaping up to be a great course.
