Coming October 9th: the Duolingo Language Incubator
On October 9th we will introduce the Duolingo Language Incubator, a way for the community to create language courses. With your help, Duolingo will soon be available in every language -- Chinese, Japanese, Russian... maybe even Elvish. All 100% free.
At first, you'll be able to build courses to learn English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese from any other language in the world. And before the end of the year, it will be possible to create courses in all combinations of languages.
Duolingo: for the people, and soon, BY the people.
583 Comments This discussion is locked.
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This is awesome news! One question, will there be more advanced lessons as well, for the languages you already have available? For instance, in Spanish, there are only 1571 words, and for German, possibly 2000, and according to my question here, how fluent are people once they graduate or finish the course, not a lot are totally fluent. So in other words, will there be a way to increase your language skills to the next level even after one has one the current "skill tree"?
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Actually, no one becomes totally fluent right after Duolingo... unless they had been using other sources and speaking with natives.
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You'll mostly need to improve your vocabulary somehow - from my experience, 1571 is way not enough
Most people say you'll need 2,000 to 2,500 words to be fluent in any western language (I don't know about asian languages) And of course you are nowhere near fluent if you don't speak, speak and speak!
In order to speak like a native, one must learn on the order of 8,000 words at least, and with asian languages 2000 words are needed. However, asian characters are harder to learn, especially once past the 200 word mark. In addition, language learning becomes self-sustaining after a while.
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You are painting a pretty grim picture for no reason. Why make it sound harder than it is? Hard numbers and statistics aren't actually of any practical use in this subject. You can say that a native would be able to understand 8000 words in their native language, but that is far and away beyond what is needed for comfortable conversation. You are also assuming that anyone actually needs to speak a second language like a native. Of course they don't. I have have met hundreds of people who are not anywhere near close to native English level, but I have had better conversations with them than I would ever have with someone from my home town, my home town in England, my home town where apparently every one is taken to be fluent in English, even if they barely speak it themselves :P. In fact when I think about it, of all the people that I have ever had good times with in my life, if I were to narrow it down to those who spoke fluent English, then I would have disqualified 5 out of ten of them.
And since I am in the mood to be belligerent, There is no 'Asian' characters. There are Chinese Characters, and that is it. Even Japan, the only non Chinese country that still uses Chinese characters, calls them Kanji, which is equivalent to the native Chinese word Hanzi; And 2000? That is the bare minimum. But you don't even begin to put such a large number in context until you understand how they work, and before you do, fretting about how many there are is pointless. There are very basic systems that make it easy to understand how they work, and of course using them every day strengthens that. If you want to learn 2000 Chinese glyphs, of course you can, do you think Chinese people are somehow blessed? You don't even have to if you think it is too hard. The biggest misunderstanding everyone swallows is that you even need to learn them in order to speak Chinese (or Japanese for that matter). 70 odd years ago, half of china was functionally illiterate, and I am pretty sure that did not stop them talking to each other. How old where you when you learned to read and write? Would you say that reading and writing contributed to your initial steps in learning your own language? Or is understanding the fundamentals of the language a prerequisite of being able to abstract that language into weird symbols written on squashed and bleached trees using a plastic tube filled with carbonated oil? I am pretty sure we all spoke to each other fine before all that came along...
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Actually I like the article, and it is sound advice. And I have already won the prize for most obnoxious person in the discussion anyway, so don't worry :) .
But I do think there is a giant vacuum where entirely 'audio only' instruction should be, especially when you are talking about teaching languages with devilishly hard to learn scripts like Chinese, and to a lesser extent Hindi, Arabic etc. For one thing, if you try to read words you have never heard before, you invariably bludgeon them to death - it goes for English too, with its wilfully illogical spelling. However detailed and painstaking any writing system is, it is still only a very blunt symbolic representation of a sound with infinitely more depth than we usually write down, and only very well practised readers are good enough to extrapolate the words from the page with any degree of speed, accuracy and finesse. Something that we mysteriously take for granted and expect anyone to be able to learn in a few days.
Despite already being pretty much geriatric already, tape courses are 'New' compared to the history of language instruction, and very much undervalued. I think there is a lot of unexplored potential in that route. I thought German was a completely impenetrable language before I stumbled across a copy of the Pimsleur course, and now I read Deutsche Welle almost every day to get another perspective on things. Learning a solid foundation of what the language sounded like was much more important to me than trying to muddle meekly through a textbook. If I had had to do it the other way round, I wouldn't be here arguing what a relief it was, that I could study without being hunched over a dictionary. Now I could go rock climbing if I wanted to... and indeed I did... I also operated dangerous machinery, prepared food, cycled 40 miles to get a taste of Dutch, and entertained myself three stories high while cleaning the leaves from the gutters listening to Russian. A week or so later, and being able to read it came easy as pie :) ета было хорошо! You can re purpose massive chunks of time with this method, yet even most audiobook courses seem to doggedly cling to the old written exercise book paradigm, and yes it works, but I also can't wait for them to realise it is archaic. It's the wrong way round. It only dominates because until the 20th century, that's what we had, we also had to walk uphill both ways to school and back etc. I have without one shadow of a doubt learned more about languages in my spare leisure time than I ever learned in the mandatory hourly, weekly, 'we do it because we have to' lessons at school.
My only disappointment with Pimsleur is that they need to record about 8 times as many hours of it...and also not make it so strait laced... and characterless... and slooooooooooooow.... which I have to write or I sound like one of their nauseating testimonials :)
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@chilvence
They have followed those children while they grew up, something that is explained in the article. Here is a link to the institute that published the study this year: http://www.ioe.ac.uk/newsEvents/89938.html
It was rude of me to just say "Yes" and mention the link. I have altered my first comment to include what the article is about. It wasn't meant as an attack, just to post something positive about language acquisition. Maybe you took the article wrong because we have a different idea about language learning. Ideally you would like children to learn more than "Mummy Daddy I want this I WANT IT" as any animal can cry about what it wants. Being able to express themselves helps children understand that they are not the centre of the universe which is important if you want people to be able to understand each other.
Here is another recent study on that subject: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/342/6156/377.abstract
Sorry for taking your discussion as an opportunity to talk about reading and language even if that is what these forums are for. I hope you still found the articles interesting.
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Well, pardon me, that sort of derails half of my argument (even though it is still a perfectly valid point for everyone else :)
But anyway, the point I am trying to get at is exactly the same as you have just made yourself. It doesn't matter how many words you need to learn, once you get past a certain threshold is becomes easy and even self sustaining. I only got sour because when you say a simple number like '8000' you make it sound much more difficult than it is. Numbers don't have any context, and the people that are asking the questions aren't asking for the statistics, they are asking for reassurance!
I am not trying to paint a grim picture on purpose. It is true, however once you get past the first 1000 or so learning the rest is easier. Oh- and one more thing- I am a native Chinese speaker. I only know about 1000 so I feel awkward and misplaced when I talk to my relatives who only know Chinese.I was 2 when I learned how to read my first 100 words. In China, that is the age you learn to read.
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Actually, I prefer it if you just ignore me as well... I had a particularly large amount to drink and I thought what I was saying was making sense. I actually agree that you need to learn way more than 2000 words to be fluent, I don't know why I came off so against that; but I still think it isn't very productive to focus on the numbers. Once you get past a certain point, it becomes much easier to learn new words, so while the first 2000 involve hard work, the next 15000 just involve patience and exposure...
对不起!
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"Would you say that reading and writing contributed to your initial steps in learning your own language?"
Yes, reading helps to improve vocabulary and ability to make sense of the world. It also improves math skills and is of larger influence than parents with a higher education.
Haha, c'est la vie.
What you said did make sense, like word lists being arbitrary, but was in the wrong conversation. :P After learning a basic amount of words talking and reading will indeed get you the rest of the way. It's far easier to learn "passively" by just looking up new words as you go along rather than reading dictionaries. I like the number too though because if I know 2000 according to Duolingo (for finishing German I think), and the total amount needed to be reasonably fluent is 8000, then I'm a quarter of the way there. That's pretty cool, especially as language learning has less "You are here on the fluency path" signposts and more "Oh cool" moments when you realise you can understand a song which makes it hard to keep studying if you rely on external feedback.
I am very sorry if I have misled any of you. I will tone down the 8000 words comment.
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Lenkvist, that is nice, but the study is about 16 year olds. Of course reading is going to refine your vocabulary, but I think the point I was getting at is that it isn't a pre-requisite. I was also talking about initial acquisition. I am pretty sure I knew how to say "Mummy Daddy I want this I WANT IT" before I was able to read Dr. Seuss :)
Ignore chilvence, they're simply being difficult for the sake of it.
@chilvence A person asked how many words one needed to know, and studies say around 8000. While it's true you don't need to learn it by wordlists, that's another discussion entirely and 8000 is the answer.
Also, Kangi is not Hanzi. While Kangi did start off from Hanzi, they have diverged and aren't exactly equivalent. Kanji in Japan didn't undergo the simplification of Chinese for one thing, (If we're being technical "The simplification of Mandarin", Mandarin being to China what Hindi is to India. A language of the area, not the language.). Kanji have been created and removed, the two writing systems have evolved separately, and simply saying they're the same is incorrect.
For a few old sites, try http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t14464.htm paying attention to the difference in words between Alice in Wonderland (a children's book) and Oliver Twist (classic/literary fiction). http://www.robwaring.org/er/what_and_why/er_is_vital.htm is the link they go to at the end, and it again states the magical 8000-9000 number. If you prefer statements to numbers then try the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), conveniently simplified over at Deutsche Welle. http://www.dw.de/common-european-framework-of-reference-for-languages/a-6529726
Language is like any other skill though, it needs work. If you want to strum a guitar while singing badly to impress drunk people, then only need to know a few notes. If you want to perform on stage with Alan Banks, might need to know a bit more. A person asked how fluent one would be using words as an example, and the answer is "You'll need another 6000 or so words to become fluent". A more constructive response instead of simply disparaging the 8000 number, would have been to note that after daily conversation and newspapers stop being challenging, you start reading, writing down words you don't know and looking them up in a dictionary. When you reach the point where you can comfortably read your favourite genres then that's your word base learnt as a native would. People who read Classics and/or Literary Fiction will need to know a few more, Tolstoy and Shakespeare not being Meyer by a long shot. If you want a number though, it's 8000. And if you want to scale up faster than a native (5 years of passive learning, 12 years of schooling, 3 years of university, we can improve this), then use a flash card style program. Something like Anki would do the trick.
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That's interesting, where did you get the 8,000 figure? Either way, trouble is, it highly depends on the way you count, e.g. weither you count every "little" Word (of, from, as, but also I, he...) and weither you count the meaning of the root of the word -"morpheme" or however it's called- or not (kind alone vs kind, unkind, kindness...)
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In this thread we seem to be limiting fluency to vocabulary, which is understandable since you can't be fluent without vocabulary. Given that, I would like to point out that in Western languages, approx. 1100 words constitute about seventy per cent of common conversation. The next 1000 words add about ten per cent. The 1000 common words after that add another 5 per cent and so on with diminishing returns. Of course, as Oliwia75 points out, that is the word itself including all variations of spelling, pronunciation, tense, conjugation, placement, agreement etc.
You can hold a job, drive a car and generally engage in modern life with a lot less than 8000 words. You will even be regarded as fluent in the language. You will be able to read People magazine but not the Wall Street Journal. You can drive the car but not fix it. You will know what an accountant does but not how to fill out even a simple tax return. You will understand what a politician is saying but not what he really means. But you will be fluent.
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Fluency is an interesting concept in itself. Of course it is not limited to the vocabulary, but in this case the conversation started over once you finish the Duolingo tree, what are you still missing to be fluent, and obviously vocab is one of the answers.
I completely agree with northernguy, you need way less than 8,000 to be considered fluent in a given language, as you will manage to go around a word you don't know using other words -- using a convolution. And you cannot set a college guy as a reference, as for one thing he is not representative of the population, and for the other thing he will not be using on an everyday basis most of his vocabulary. Here you are tackling another concept: bilinguism, which goes way further than being fluent, is closer to "speaking like a native" and is really hard to achieve.
I have many bilinguial friends (and I am myself), and we all agree even though we were raised using 2 languages, we do not have the same knowledge of those, as we actually built a great part of our vocabulary from experience, in school, in college, at work etc. Hence there is no way we could have learned every single word in both languages. Best example ever: a friend of mine was born and raised in Poland, then moved to France right after graduation. She is not a native French speaker, but she confessed to me she has the biggest trouble speaking in Polish about her work - and obviously no trouble at all in French, which she masters perfectly now.
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groditz writes correctly that the average college grad knows about 17000 words.
But the average college grad does not use 17000 words in ordinary conversation. Many of the 17000 words the econ/commerce grad knows are not the same as many of those understood by physics majors. And neither of those specialized vocabs are likely to come up in a meeting with his daughter's grade one school teacher.
Fluency is a slippery kind of concept but I think a college grad level is bit of a high bar.
"Here you are tackling another concept: bilinguism, which goes way further than being fluent, is closer to "speaking like a native" and is really hard to achieve."
Bilingual means speaking two languages, but it ascribes no level to those languages. Generally speaking bilingual means speaking two languages passably, if you speak more than that you will usually be described as a polygot. Fluency on the other hand is a level descriptor, so "speaking fluently" is akin to native speaking; being able to use your language and use it well.
As to you and your friends, you need to remember that language is a skill. And like other skills, if you don't use it then you won't be as good. Your Polish friend who hasn't used Polish in years will be a bit rusty, just like a guitar player who hasn't touched a guitar in years. All your Polish friend needs to do is speak it for a month or so and they'll remember how it works.
The average college grad knows 17000 words: http://iteslj.org/Articles/Cervatiuc-VocabularyAcquisition.html
Please note that I said 8000, not 17000. Half a college grad's vocab should be enough.
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Newtonwren: I agree with the fact that a language is like a skill that you have to practice. However, regarding bilinguism, I have read so many articles from linguists on the subject that I would simply say we don't have the same definition. Their community actually keeps fighting over the very definition of bilinguism would it be in terms of meaning or of number of spoken words - yes they like figures too!
Either way, chilvence is right: the important thing is just to speak good enough to be able to express properly your ideas, I'll agree to that! Though it does sometimes go with the extend of your vocabulary... ;-)
http://www.langcen.cam.ac.uk/culp/CEF_sa_grid.pdf
How many words do you think you would have to know, to pass as fluent (by C2 standards) in the EU self Assessment Grid?
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@ Daclick: I'm currently preparing a C1 exam and believe me, it's not just vocabulary, it's way more than that ;-) But I would definitely say 8,000 is close to their referential!! Bear in mind these frames are very academical... I'm realizing these require to be way more than "fluent" and at the same time, they include very few colloquialisms. So I think you can make it with a very "theoretical" knowledge of the language.
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I am not sure about sure numbers, but as a rule of thumb, it take a person an average of 7 years to become truly fluent in a language. It makes sense, no? As children we became fluent around seven. We knew number colors, directions, and how to build and read complicated syntax. Vocabulary leads one nowhere, if one can not build a coherent sentence from jump, street, from, bird, from, the. Without an understanding and time-vocabulary, however lengthy, is useless.
Right, grammar is important too. Vocabulary is your blocks, grammar is the glue that holds everything together.
Not really korean is the most easy to learn with only 28 charecters in its alphabet.... I am 16 and i studied korean since 2012... Korean has helped me alot
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YES! Advance modules for current languages is coming soon!!
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Advanced skill trees would be nice. I don't want to go out on a limb here, but some branching from the main tree to give a thorough grounding in special interest areas at a lower level of ability would also be great.... for example, a branch which gives you a firm grasp of vocabulary and phrases for a niche subject like (say) Formula One racing, would allow you to listen to native commentary, read the papers and websites and join in on forums and chat to natives with a similar interest, which I think might give you the confidence to jump into the wider language community that more quickly.
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Oh, absolutely!
I don't really know how easy this might be to code (my gut says: far too complex to be easy), but I would love to be able to work my way through a certain subset of things first, and have the examples for other things using those skills. And I'd like to see vocabulary separate from grammar to some degree... I could see three lines, Vocab and Grammar and... Syntax? I mean "Animals"/"Clothes" and "Past Tense"/"Imperative" and "Prepositions"/"Conjunctions" sort of sets.
So say that I went over and drilled on the Past Tense - because for me this is always one of the first tenses I strive for, because it assists in reading fiction (as Present Tense does not). Then my example sentences could be in the past tense.
Or say that I got a firm grasp of Family Members and Animals, so when it moved to Prepositions all the example sentences would have a good variety of people and creatures to be placed near each other. This sort of reinforcement is something I thrive on.
But even having just a side set of vocab related to a certain subject would be nice, as you say. I'd like to have a set of Fantasy vocab, and maybe one of Cooking/Recipe vocab. Having some sample recipes to read would be awesome.
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On a related point, it'd be really interesting to start gathering some information on what people should be capable of if they get all the way through the existing Duolingo courses.
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I think Duolingo is great for someone like me who wants to read and write German rather than talk it. Furthermore, I have found that practising with Duolingo and keeping my German Skill Tree up to date has improved my German much more since I have completed the entire German Skill Tree - that is when learning really commences!
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I'd say it's impossible to be fluent using only duolingo. It's a great way to start, but no where near where you should stop. I recently put my hopes of learning German aside to study Spanish, since I will most likely be staying in my area for a few years (mostly a Spanish-speaking area). Also, Spanish is much more commonly spoken in California than German. Duo offers me the chance to get a firm grip on my Spanish skills, but I would be nowhere near as good as I am without the help of my friends who are helping me. I already have short conversations with them in Spanish. The thing is, while Duo is amazing, it can only take you so far. You still need to speak (like, actual conversations) with native-speakers, read, and write constantly to become fluent.
And also, to those of you interested but don't know where to start when it comes to your language learning, especially now that there may be way more languages coming sooner than we thought, here's a tip that I've found useful:
Pick a language that is heavily spoken in your area. At first I chose German, but no near me spoke German. My reading skills were decent, but in the end, I was making slow progress. So I set it aside and learned Spanish. My friends helped me in a heart beat and now I can even roll my R's! I also believe learning your second language is the hardest. I've never actually had to learn a language before.
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I am from California and still learning German, I find myself having to practice with Germans over the internet however.
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Don't get me wrong, there are ways to speak to natives, like through the Internet. But personally I don't like trying to speak to people over the Internet on things like Skype or whatnot; however, if you like it, go for it! Everyone has their own learning abilities.
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I've found duolingo to be a good tool in helping me learn German - but there is a lot more that it can't teach you. For example, it doesn't include slang or regional variants of certain words. These are things that you could learn from the internet but are generally better to learn in the language's homeland. The other thing I find here is that you get used to hearing the voice that is used - which is quite electronic and sometimes very different to how people would actually speak. In that drawn out way what I'm basically saying is that real world experience would be the next step after completing Duo.
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I agree, there's no substitute for real world experience. However, Duolingo has helped me further along in learning Spanish than anything else I've tried so far. Maybe this new feature will allow users to help each other learn more slang and other non-traditional aspects of languages.
I have a book called Hide This Italian Book (http://www.amazon.com/Hide-This-Italian-English-Edition/dp/9812466533) which is small but goes over a lot of idioms, slang, even how to talk dirty. It's the kind of stuff not taught in typical textbooks, etc. I'd love to see Duolingo add modules for this kind of knowledge.
with language incubator people could make lesson for different dialects, although yes it would be better to go there
http://www.fluentin3months.com/speak-like-the-irish is a wicked clever article on exactly that. It also points out that the way you pronounce/structure things may show where you are from ...but is that necessarily a bad thing?
If listening comprehension is a problem then find TV and music in your target language. 30mn a day with that does wonders for your vocabulary and comprehension, and current pop music will be very basic and similar to the language that's currently in use. Traveling to the country is still a great idea to solidify your knowledge, but you can get a long way before that.
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Oh yeah I know - I listen to a lot of German bands already and have a few tv series and films just in German. It is good for that but I find it's very easy to slip out of that frame of mind when I'm in England because the rest of the time out of studying I am surrounded by English speakers.
That's what holidays are for. :) Or finding an area nearby with the target language. Second or third generation speakers will have some idiosyncrasies that you won't find in the homeland, but it's still useful.
Mildly related, can you recommend any good tv series?
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I actually lived over in Germany earlier this year. Just for 6months but it was a really good way to get used to the language. I must admit I ended up buying series like CSI and Bones in German. The dubbing is very good. My plan is to go back over early next year an intensive course so that I can work over there ^^
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Slang doesn't seem like the major thing lacking in Duolingo... that would be no practice whatsoever in communicating your own ideas or responding/listening to text more than a sentence long. Language is communication after all.
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It may be helpful if there was a feature for a student to interact with a native speaker. For example, a Spanish speaker wanting to learn English can practice with an English speaker wanting to learn Spanish and vice versa.
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From Alexander Aguelles:
The maddening thing about these numbers and statistics is that they are impossible to pin down precisely and thus they vary from source to source. The rounded numbers that I use to explain this to my students I usually write in a bull’s eye target on the whiteboard, but I don’t have the computer skills to draw circles in this post, so I will just have to give a list: 250 words constitute the essential core of a language, those without which you cannot construct any sentence. 750 words constitute those that are used every single day by every person who speaks the language. 2500 words constitute those that should enable you to express everything you could possibly want to say, albeit often by awkward circumlocutions. 5000 words constitute the active vocabulary of native speakers without higher education. 10,000 words constitute the active vocabulary of native speakers with higher education. 20,000 words constitute what you need to recognize passively in order to read, understand, and enjoy a work of literature such as a novel by a notable author.
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20,000!?!?. I see I have a little bit more work to do.
Excellent post. Thx.
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I wouldn't worry about the 20,000. That's passive vocab. Stuff you can recognise but not actively use. I'm reading German novels (with the occational help of a dictionary) and understanding words and grammatical forms far more complex than I could hope to form myself at the moment. Focus on the 2,500-5,000 and you're there. Using things like Anki (or other spaced repetition flashcard programs) you can (with a little dedication) learn 20-50 words a day. That means within three months it is possible to learn 2,000 - 5,000 words. DuoLingo is great for the grammar, but get hold of a 'top 5,000 words by frequency of use) list and you'll be getting towards being fluent.
(by the way, don't be fooled by my level 3 German.. I've been living and working in Berlin for 9 years and am converstionally fluent - ie I'm comfortable going to parties where people only speak German. I learnt most of my German at work and on the street so my grammar is kinda wonky - hence starting the course from scratch)
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The Statistics came from here: http://www.streetsmartlanguagelearning.com/2013/02/how-many-words-does-average-native.html
and this is a really fantastic article on language learning (it's focused on spanish, but it's applications are general)
http://howlearnspanish.com/2010/08/how-many-words-do-you-need-to-know/
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The learn Spanish link was excellent. I liked his discussion about determining what it is that you want out of learning another language. In my case I knew from the outset I wanted proficiency in reading non-fiction. I had no interest in investing the required time necessary to also become fluent in speaking French.
That has changed so that now my focus is on learning French so as to learn more about learning. (if that makes sense to anyone) EG: the previously mentioned Anki can be used to learn just about anything.
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Isn't the idea to go and translate real-life texts on Duolingo after you complete this course? Then your vocabulary will grow naturally.
2000 words is enough to be able to explain yourself by describing the words you do not know in terms of the ones you know, or to use a single-language dictionary. Native users of a language have a larger active vocabulary, however, and the passive vocabulary of an educated person counts several tens of thousands. Try this test out: http://testyourvocab.com/
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Nice test. Good link. Students who take the test should note the average results from all test takers is skewed higher by higher average scores obtained by people who take vocabulary tests online. Individuals who see their score a little lower on the scale than they might have anticipated can take comfort in knowing that the scale would be much lower, and their results correspondingly higher on that comparison, if it considered all English speakers.
It is worth pointing out that the more obscure words tend to come from fiction rather than non-fiction. If you don't read a lot of fiction you will score slightly lower.
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Yep, fun test (although more of a survey than a test). Northern guy has an important point, which they seem to neglect to mention on the site! Also, it really depends on how strict you are being with yourself. I only ticked words where I was certain I could give accurate definitions. I think the results would be very different if it were an actual test (say, requiring you to choose between multiple choice options). But, it intrigued me enough to look up some of those words I was uncertain about!
It would be great if you made a discussion for this. It was a lot of fun. :) 31,200 was my estimate (I read a lot of fiction). http://testyourvocab.com/result?user=3361303
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I would give esperanto a go if it was on here just for fun, I don't like the lernu website that much :(
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Same here! I wished for Esperanto learning page like Duolingo for a while. Despite of knowing basics of the language it was hard to move on with just those lernu materials.
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I'll agree - I've given Lernu a stab twice or thrice, but I've been far happier practicing on Google+ and through correspondence courses. I'd definitely go hog-wild about an Esperanto tree..
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Here too! Great news, hope it would be faster introduced to build your own courses. That will probably take a while.
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But let's all be honest - it's better if time is taken to ensure that it's the best product possible rather than moving for a rapid introduction of something less than superb, no?
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It's now on the Incubator !!! http://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/eo/en/status
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I do think that Esperanto should be one of the last languages, because it isn't used as much in real life as Chinese, Japanese, or Russian.
Con langs should be the last focus of Duolingo.
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I think you're entitled to your opinion, but if there are folks willing to work on it... who are you to say that they're wrong?
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I am not saying that they are wrong, but instead I'm just giving some food for thought. If they want to learn it, more power to them!
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Having studied basic Esperanto almost before studying any other language, I'd say it gave me a fantastic foundation for studying languages in general. It's very simplified so it doesn't take so long to catch onto basic structures, grammar, etc. The language learning skills then let you take off more quickly when learning other languages, especially European ones (in my experience). I wouldn't put too much effort into gaining fluency in it, but I definitely find it useful to learn to some degree!
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Even though Esperanto only has around 2 million speakers, and it is mainly a verbal language, apparently it is not too hard to learn and similar to English, so it may be useful to know a few phrases.
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Duolingo actually has the power to increase the number of Espo-speakers substantially.
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I just don't want Duolingo going the way of Khan Academy. In my opinion, Khan Academy was much better when it was just him making the videos. It seems to cluttered now.
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Salman Khan certainly knows a lot, but he can't bone up on everything. Why shouldn't he get other people who know their subject to help him? Anyway, I use the Khan Academy mainly to revive my study of maths. So most of the videos I look at are by Sal. I am always amazed how he can explain so much and keep his enthusiasm, whether he taking about simple arithmetic, integral calculus or linear algebra.
how do you plan on mitigating the inevitable disagreements that will occur about the proper translations of things in user-created content?
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My wife is Korean and definitely wants to volunteer to work on the Korean for English learners once the functionality for English to other languages comes live. And we live just down the street from your offices :)
Meanwhile, and until I can start Duoing Korean, I guess I'll get back to my Italian studies!
Oh, and thank you Luis and the entire Duolingo team for your work on Duolingo. it is a great tool and it has helped me stay motivated and to get further in a language than any language course has ever been able to get me.
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Awesome! I really hope she helps.:) Korean is the language that I want to learn the most by far.
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Tell your wife I said thanks. I've been waiting for a Duolingo Korean course!
Luis seems to be a very cross-disciplinary (not cross and not disciplinary) guy. In addition to being a linguist, he is an advanced computational strategist, has advanced experience in user interfaces and plays a role in the Industrial Design department at Carnegie Mellon University. By reading between the lines I have deduced that there are some pretty sophisticated algorithms used to filter and direct the vast amount of data flowing into his user created system. TechnoSurrealist's question on disagreements reminds me of riding on a washboarded dirt road and how my Jeeps shock absorbers smoothed out the ride. It would really be interesting to look under DuoLingo's hood and see how the system actually operates. Marshal McLuhan, Canadian philopher of communication theory, was famous for saying "The medium is the message." I think "the DL learning system is the message." For example, ahve you noticed how you can not cheat? How many fo you have jumped over to another site's translating system to check on a word? Raise your hand if you have done that. I felt guilty until I realized that the effort to "cheat" was in itself burning the usage or word into my memory. Carnegie Mellon ahs a great robotics department run bya guy named Red Whitiker (SP?). I went to see him talk about his robots. The first point he made was that great robots are 95% software cleverness and only 5% mechanical genious. In the "Wizard of Oz" the Wizard appears as a giant head made from smoke and fire and only later do we learn that the Wizard is but a harmless elderly illusionist. However, the Wizard gives the Scarecrow a diploma, the Tinman a clockwork heart and gives the Lion a medal, proving that they had what they wanted all along. You may have noticed Luis' system already awards a diploma and the medals. I am just waiting for the clockwork heart.
I get this picture in my head of an ancient, wise secretary who works for the Jade Emperor in the Celestial Heaven, oh, about 28,000 years ago. The Jade Emperor has given the lowly secretary the task of translating a conversation between the Rooster and the Dog. Well, this particular secretary, his dog is not so good, so, every time he runs across a yelp or a growl or bark he doesn't understand, well ... into the giant vortex he must go and along the never ending path, He must wander through the elements and across all directions of the compass and perform an audit of the language through the land of the dog and asking every dog he meets what that means ... well, he's never going to forget what ArrrGrrFnmpf means for the rest of his life.
wow. please remove your lips from his anus so he can keep improving DL! thanks!
(just kidding buddy!)
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do we have to use the user created lessons because i would rather use your lessons :D
You would have to wait 10 years to get a lesson for the language you want to learn.
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I believe vaati112 may mean, will the lessons currently available remain available, or will the existing languages also go over to user created lessons? In which case, I agree, I like the Duolingo system as it exists for the languages already on here, and I hope they will still have them available along with the user-created courses.
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the user created lessons are actually more accurate i would guess, because they are made by users who speak the language everyday, thus making it more realistic and up-to-date
Except it'll be created by people selected by Duo (at least they'll have to pass a test. A Duo member explain this somewhere. Sorry I don't find where), as far as I understood.
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I'll be more than happy to help you with moderation of Russian courses! Looking forward to it.
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Hi Luis! I have a couple of questions. What do you mean by moderators, also what do you mean by they will be vetted by us? If you could pease explain that be nice! Grazie Luis
Perhaps moderators should be required to maintain a minimum work level in immersion, as this is "helping", and mods might also be required to maintain a minimum level of activity, (not less that "x" amount of skill points accrued each week). Just sayin' :-) Mods might best be assigned on a probationary basis, and unusually skewed percentages of UpVotes and DownVotes that any mod presents in reports on them should be closely watched. I mean, the Mod could be doing something innovative ... or might be feeling a little ... well ... cranky.
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It's been done quite well in the Immersion section so far, I think. Or did you have something else in mind?
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Wow, I can't believe this is going to be real. Hopefully it works out for those who want to learn more difficult languages. Luis, will Duo's traditional languages continue to be updated and improved by the Duolingo staff despite these changes? I'm sure I'm not alone when I worry about an inevitable stagnation in the development of the languages currently offered here.
Thanks a lot to all of you, the devs for this awesome site and of course, this motivate to keep reaching levels on Duolingo.
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Korean seems like such a cool language. If I ever learn a fourth, I think that's the one.
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Large dispute regarding flags just resolved between me and younger brother!
Agreed! Until I saw this comment I thought Sitesurf WAS the French moderator...
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Sitesurf really should be hired. His/ her gender is a mystery to me... EDIT: mystery no longer -there is a link to her facebook page. I'm ashamed I kind of assumed she was a man - sexism is clearly still thriving...
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Yes it is. Most moderators are male, Sitesurf wasn't interested and olimo is less active lately (for excellent reasons). Of course you need people to be interested, but maybe Duolingo could try to balance the gender distribution among moderators.
Edit: Sorry for causing any misunderstandings. A further clarification may be found in the comments below.
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There can only be an equal number of male and female moderators if there are actually females who are worthy of becoming moderators being willing to become moderators.
Sitesurf is more than worthy of becoming one, but she declined. That doesn't make Duolingo sexist at all.
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Thank you for sharing your opinion. My comment "Yes it is" was a reaction to Thoughtdiva's comment that "sexism is clearly still thriving..." It wasn't my intention to call Duolingo or anyone sexist as I don't see much use for calling people names. Culture is way too complicated for that.
You are right in mentioning that one needs capable females willing to become moderators, but that is also what I mentioned in my first comment. I merely wanted to draw attention to the imbalance to leave it up to staff members to decide whether it's an issue or not.
Thank you again for taking part in the discussion section. You seem to have slightly misunderstood my intentions, but your comments have allowed me to clarify my position to prevent any future misunderstandings. Good luck with your learning!
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I see. I'm sorry I took your comment the wrong way. I agree that gender equality is important. I mean we can't force people like Sitesurf to become mods, but I'm sure there will be others soon enough that are worthy of that honor. Especially since the course creation tools are coming and there will soon be a lot more mods (According to Luis there will be mods for each language).
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Sorry, it wasn't my intention to call Duolingo sexist. Cultures may contain gender imbalances and I think it's useful to draw attention to that. Not with the intention to force a certain point of view on other people, but to show that there can be different points of view on a single subject. Being able to think from different positions helps people to think critically for themselves.
My intention was not to have people agree with me, but to talk about something they might not have thought about before. That might help to start a conversation in which other strong arguments are made. The argument that moderators need to be capable is a good one from which the conversation may continue.
For instance one could continue with a question like "is it more important to have a gender balance or is an imbalance acceptable if the quality of the chosen moderators is certified?". Another question could be "is it possible that some capable moderators are being overlooked because of an unconscious imbalance in attention between genders?".
Those are just some things one could think about and as it may be possible to have more than one answer to a single question. Sorry for taking your small comment about sexism this far. It was a good comment and my intention was to give you something more to think about as your nickname may suggest an interest in exploring different thoughts. Thank you for writing your comment. Hope you have fun learning!
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Well, you are exactly right that I like thinking about things like this. Affirmative action is a tricky subject! I also find it interesting to reflect on my own human biases. It's nice that such profound and interesting discussion proceeded my joking comment about myself :)
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Awesome! So before we are flooded with all kinds of courses, good and crappy ones, let's gloat with that private, intimate atmosphere of Duo we have now, with only 9 courses, all provided by the almighty Duo staff, and only 10 milion of polite users. It's going to be many more soon, I presume!
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My concern is that if Duolingo gets involved with too many languages the quality of each one will go down. Maybe I'm going against the grain but I feel that focusing on a few and maintaining the excellence is a better strategy.
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I see the potential in this incubator to help keep dying languages alive. Hopefully some people out there will make courses for endangered languages like Cherokee or Chulym, or courses for dialects, which are dying out in favor of standard language.
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This is what should happen. Navajo should also be a course on Duolingo because Navajo speakers have been declining.
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I'm confident that the Duolinguo folks already have a plan for this, but on the off-chance that they don't: I'm a volunteer at LibriVox (www.librivox.org), which has a bunch of talented people who read large quantities of text for fun and release it for free. I don't think we have all the languages mentioned here, but we have several native speakers of quite a few (Dutch and Indonesian, for sure).
I would think that the same software that listens to our voices, during our lessons when we record ... to determine if our pronunciation is accurate, could be used to examine the pronunciations of users. For example, users who had attained a certain language level and number of skill points in that language might be good candidates to provide "DuoVOICES" for users to enjoy. So the software would listen to that user's record functions within the lessons in which the user works. Or, a competition could be held and users could be alerted this was going to occur, and to start putting their best foot forward when recording within lessons. (One would need a good microphone especially, and a pretty good soundcard and would need to make sure they engineered their voice well).
So many parameters and things can be done to prepare DuoUSERS who might have the best accents and pronunciations, to perform to their best ability. And then they could be "listened to" by duolingo's software, and the software could then start inserting those "best pronunciations" into the lessons, and the same feedback form we have now, could provide even more refinement in selecting the best pronunciations and articulations of the lesson material. The software could then merge voices, and sample and resample and create the ULTIMATE computer generated voice, for every language.
Ultimately, some of the finest articulations and pronunciations of many languages could be made available, including the user's choice of a male voice, a female voice or high or low voice and many variations on that theme. Really, when a site has as much raw data pouring in as duolingo has, and will continue to aggregate at increasingly exponential levels, the data will become available to do these things.
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This scares me, because I know the audio comparison is quite poor in Duo. There are many times I KNOW I'm making a mistake, but Duo misses it, simply because i use the correct rhythm of the wording.
The higher the level you go in duolingo, the more strict and demanding the record "listening" functions become. In the lower levels and lower mid levels, the "listener" is set to a lower thresh hold. Very much like Rosetta Stone where one can change settings to increase the accuracy of the listening software, the same thing happens in duolingo, and yes, sometimes duolingo gets some things that seem wrong, but I think there are probably an equal number of logical reasons for this as well as "fault" or error on the part of the software.
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Ah, I wasn't actually aware of that, thanks :)
If it's indeed tiered maybe that makes sense, but for me that's worse, because I'm never sure if it's Duo's voice itself that's wrong, or the voice recognition software :D
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I'm guessing that the people who make the courses can program in the orthography so Duo can read it. This doesn't work in irregular languages like English or French, but in those cases, each word can have its pronunciation typed out in X-SAMPA.
Come to think of it, learners should be able to read respellings in X-SAMPA or IPA or something so they know how the word is meant to sound.
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Amazing!!! Thank you Duolingo for being the best ever language tool! How will you deal with languages with have different alphabets? I guess on the mobile apps keyboards for those languages can be added but what about the website? Anyway, brilliant stuff. Can't wait to learn Russian! :)
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This question comes up repeatedly in some form or another. Here is a copy-paste of how I responded in http://www.duolingo.com/comment/647903 :
I doubt Duolingo would construct romanised courses for Russian, Japanese etc. because (as I have been lead to understand) their business model centres on providing free training for their for-profit crowd-sourced translation business, and real websites are printed in the native scripts. All things considered, this isn't necessarily a major obstacle.
I have been typing in Japanese (as often as the need arises) for over two years. I use a Linux-based application called "Anthy" which converts Romaji to Kana and Kanji (with an arrow key menu to scroll through and select what I intend to write, when there are multiple homophonic possibilities). Pretty much all modern OS's can be configured with similar tools, and instructions for enabling them can be found here: http://www.localizingjapan.com/blog/
I know that Pinyin to Hanzi inputs can be configured just as easily, and I would be very surprised to hear that aren't similar tools for Hangeul. Duolingo could integrate tools like this into the website itself, but I imagine that it would eat up a lot of bandwidth and cause (more) lag for the users; far better to guide users through setting these tools up on their own machines, since they will want to use them for other applications anyway. In any case, the first few lessons on the tree of any exotic-script-language would be devoted to learning to use the input mechanism.
As for variant keyboard layouts, conversion stickers can be ordered from many suppliers for about $1-3 dollars each. You can add and switch between layouts through your particular OS's input options. If I were to start learning a language like Russian or Greek (with its own alphabet and standard keyboard layout), I would probably buy a USB keyboard to convert for the purpose. How Duo will deal with Cyrillic, I am far less certain.
On a side note, I have been using Programmer Dvorak ( http://www.kaufmann.no/roland/dvorak/ ) as my keyboard layout for many years, and I simply can't bring myself to imagine how people type in French or German without these ("`^'éüçß) keys on their keyboard. I know Duo has the point-and-click "buttons", but still...
I have my computer set to use accented characters when I hold down right-alt. Right-alt + e makes é. Right-alt + s makes ß.
In Ubuntu Linux 10.04, select the System menu > Preferences > Keyboard. In the Layout tab, click Add. Select country: United States, then Variants: USA International (AltGr dead keys). Click add, then select USA International (AltGr dead keys) in your list and click Move Up to make it your default.
I got the instructions here: http://spanish.about.com/od/writtenspanish/a/dia_ubuntu.htm
If you're using a more recent version of Ubuntu (like I should be...), click the gear icon in the upper-right corner of the screen, select System Settings, then Keyboard Layout. There should be something in there, but since I don't have it installed right now I can't check.
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This is actually possible to solve for computers with normal keyboards in a modern web browser. Take a look at the input field for Google Translate and play around with the input icon bottom left for a few different languages.
http://translate.google.com/#ru/en/%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B2%D0%B5%D1%82
It still means that Duolingo has to implement it properly and can't just steal Google's code, but it is a minor problem compared to how it was a few years ago.
That would be interesting, although my buddy from Belgium who recently got back from SA said that it's not too different from dutch.
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Yes, Dutch was the mother language of Afrikaans and the two languages are much the same, but also different. Baie dankie en onthou die biltong en wildsbobotie as jy dalk kom. ;-)
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I think it would be interesting to have an Afrikaans and a Dutch course, and then testing against the two languages, as for new learners it may be quite difficult to differentiate between some of the words. :)
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Yes, I would like to do Dutch again. We did Afrikaans-Nederlands in our last two years at school, and I would like to do Nederlands again. I am not sure if many people would be interested in Afrikaans though, but one never knows. There are a number of differences between the two languages, but many of the words are the same. I have found that Afrikaans speakers understand Nederlands fairly easily, but Dutch speakers tend to struggle with Afrikaans I really don't know the reason though!
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It really is a different language! However, if you're native dutch, you'll understand most of it.
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I think people who are concerned shouldn't be, at least not too much. Duolingo's system uses crowd-validation as good as anything else out there. If the people at Duolingo think that they have a system that can handle this, I believe them. This is exciting news.
I've been looking for this for so long... Thank you guys, you all are awesome!
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Thanks KaiEngle for contributing to the Dutch course. I'm watching this one with interest. Have a lingot for your efforts :)
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I hope they are open to Celtic languages. I would be willing to contribute to a Gàidhlig version.
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Irish or Scots? Can't wait to start Irish could do with a leaving cert saviour right now :)
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Great news! I would be glad to help people learn Russian and Ukrainian languages.
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Thought it would be this. Great stuff guys!
Norwegian to several, here we'll go!
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This is what I was expecting, but I feel a bit teased. They're only releasing other languages to the five existing ones first? How long do we need to wait for other languages to be added? I'm absolutely dying for Esperanto and Russian.
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I think a lot of people are misunderstanding what's going to happen on 9 October. They're "only" releasing the tools for the community to add languages, which is awesome, but it will most likely be months after that before useful courses begin to appear. The initial two months or so will essentially be a beta testing period during which the tools will only be available for making, for example, German=Italian or French=Portuguese while the DL team chases down bugs and other issues. By the end of the year they'll make the tools available for use for every language combination conceivable, but again, that's only the beginning of the process. Once the tools are available, It will probably take months for courses to be developed by the volunteer teams and curated by the moderators (which will have to be vetted by Duolingo). I think that anyone who is expecting an entirely new (to Duolingo) language to be available before late winter or early spring of next year (and even then only in a alpha or beta state) will be sorely disappointed.
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Sure, that makes sense. But the sooner the process starts, the sooner the lessons for different languages will be viable...and at least the process will start very soon. Also, it does say the first step will be the ability to learn the available languages from any other language in the world -so I assume there will be lots of very rough attempts at creating lessons from 9th Oct -but they probably won't be accessible until much later, I guess...
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Yah, however the system is going to work, being anxious for the next step isn't misunderstanding it. And they've never said anything about how the trees would be released. Assuming they're going to wait for an entire tree to built and double checking it before release would slow down the process a lot, and I can imagine a lot of languages where users would only build the first few parts of the tree, but that's not to say they wouldn't make those smaller trees available as well. They're releasing the tools for building trees, but any talk about how they're releasing those lessons is just speculation.
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Esperanto is now on the Incubator !!! http://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/eo/en/status
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This is awesome now we can feel even more like part of the duo team! Now we can have like 1 million people working on making new languages instead of less than 50.
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Russian, Chinese, Greek, Dutch, Japanese and muuuuch more!
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Excellent, now if you could please just add a disclaimer in the general discussion or somewhere visible clearly stating "On October 9th we will introduce the Duolingo Language Incubator...".
Hopefully it will reduce the barrage of topics created asking for new languages.
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It may stay the same or increase, since people will want to ask others to create the lessons...
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This is a Game Changer! and a huge step for humanity and a new era of learning languages.
The very right flag is the Egyptian one indicating the Arabic language. I will be very happy to contribute in its course.
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Grazie, Duo! Now hopefully there will be some kind of rating system to make sure we don't mess this up too badly.
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What do you mean by that? Memrise is a great website for learning vocab and writing systems. Sure, there are crappy courses, but so what? There are awesome courses there too and they are really easy to find. Far easier to find than the crappy courses.
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I mean that Duolingo will be a giant and disorganized mess. I like things nice and straight ( I suffer from OCD ) And I just hope that they will. ( to some extent)
I guess it'll stay as now: one tree for the language XXX learned from the language YYY.
And the incubator, I still guess, will be somewhere users AND (i.e. checked by) Duolingo (and moderators and native speakers/experts of the language) develop it BEFORE tout make it available to every one.
That's what I imagine.
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I don't want Duolingo to become like Memrise also. Memrise is too cluttered and messy to sift through for those good courses.
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They are both very different from each other. Memrise is for learning vocabulary and writing systems, mostly, through the use of mnemonics. Check it out.
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I use Memrise. As mentioned in a previous post it is pretty disorganized. There are lots of courses, some good, some bad. It uses spaced repetition managed by some kind of algorithm.
I'm taking Introductory French which simply presents you with the English word for which you type in the appropriate translation. If you get it right, it plays a sound slice of the word.
The vocabulary repetition is good but is limited to the library selected by the individual who built the course. I haven't the faintest idea whether the French course that I am using is any good relative to other French courses on Memrise as the only way to know for sure is to take the other ones.
I don't care because I'm just supplementing Duo with a little different vocabulary. Someone more with more serious intent might find Memrise a bit frustrating because it is impossible to judge the quality of any given course until you have taken it for a while.
I gave up on Memrise for the longest time because of starting a couple of real losers. Even with my French course, it can be a little strange. I can now use French to refer to meat as being medium, rare, medium rare, very rare and well done. I guess the programmer is equipping me to dine in fine restaurants the next time I'm in France. That is if I go to France, which I doubt, go to fine restaurants while there, unlikely, and decide that I can tell the difference between rare and medium rare meat. Others may well find that is exactly what they want from it.
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Klingon! I see the Klingon egg hatching back there...nice touch, especially for a Star Trek fan! I wish Duolingo great Qapla' with this venture...
(for any geeks who are interested, Klingon is available on Bing Translator)
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I would have wasted a whole lot of time trying to figure out what that flag was if I hadn't seen this, lol. I'm happy they're appealing to their fan bases.
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Will the creators of such language become the moderators of such course?
Polish :)
For this incubator program, I think, I know, there will be a lot of activity among those that want to create Mandarin Chinese language lessons. And it certainly looks at this point like Mandarin will be incubated.
I am going to reach out to the Confucius Institute and ask and encourage several contacts within that program to come onboard and consider being a part of the Mandarin incubation.
Confucius Institute seeks a level of perfect humility within the Mandarin language and I think they would be a tremendous asset to duolingo's incubation of Mandarin.
If YOU know of a Mandarin language organization that you think would enjoy participating in the incubation of Mandarin lesson development, please, consider reaching out to them, send them an invite, bug them on social networks, and yes, spam their email boxes gently and with great humility, ;-)
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I think this might be the key to success of this tool. From what I can tell lots of governments and national organisations like to promote knowledge of their home language, and giving these organisations a ready made tool with serious backing from language enthusiasts is something I would guess that will be grabbed at.
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Great idea- Chinese is probably the language I want to learn most outside of the ones I've been studying for decades already. I've tried the same approach with Mandarin that I've tried with European languages and, unsurprisingly, it's just not as effective. So far I'm finding the experience to be rather humbling.
Many Chinese persons, including Confucius, have said they are humbled by their own language. Top professors teaching in Chinese universities consider themselves to be students of the Mandarin language, as well as masters and teachers. I consider it to be the greatest intellecual challenge I have undertaken for myself and I continue to be absolutely fascinated with the Chinese language, culture and of course the advent of their global prosperity.
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Wow.. congrats on the streak! I have not seen many people over the 600 mark :) It is rather humbling to myself to see such progress on so many different languages! I do hope that you are finding the current progress with the incubator exciting! I know that I certainly do :)
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Thank for bringing the Confucius Institute to my attention. I had never heard of it before.
The first step in learning a language is to get to the level where you can eavesdrop on a conversation and hear something other than random sound and to pickup a newspaper and at least devine the subject being discussed. DL is the first stage rocket that breaks the inertia and gets you up above the lower atmosphere at which point any number of tools become available to you. I am all for advanced modules, but DL's real value is using the omniprescence of technology to push you through the initial learning barriers where so many fail.
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How will we prevent there from being 5,000 courses for the same language? Will you have a "recommended" course for each language? And what do you have worked out for teaching non latin scripts?
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I'm hoping and thinking that there might be one course for each language, and everyone works together to create them.
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Luis said, "We will have a pretty sophisticated moderation system, similar to the one we currently use internally to make our lessons. Also, moderators will be personally vetted by us." No te preocupes.
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You'll get a huge map of languages and you'll be able to place tracks from one language to another.
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Amazing! Thank you Duo, really! I hope Hungarian can make it into this magnificent website! :D
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Én szívesen jelentkezem önkéntesen, hogy segítsek! I gladly volunteer to help this cause! :)
I will not admit how long I was in Budapest and could not order a darn ginger ale. Stupid GY :)
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Yeah, it must be pretty difficult to pronounce those double-letters for a non-Hungarian... But don't worry, learning the exact pronunciation of English for a Hungarian isn't much easier either (for example those nasty "th" sounds or the schwa, which are non-exist in Hungarian). ;)
While I was in Budapest I helped a lot of people there with their English.I Never had a single problem with any of their pronunciation capability's (I am referring here to their ability to make the sounds). Until you pointed it out was not even aware th was missing(And I am very aware of it's absence from helping in some other languages :) . And once I explained Duh! is sarcastic slang for I already know the schwa was a non issue :).
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Hungarian accent is very articulated, sharp (we tend to say a sharp "r" sound, while English "r" is very soft), and usually ignores the fact the English omit/change the last sound(s) of a word sometimes.
I'm not surprised you didn't notice that, though. Most of us (us, Hungarians) have difficulties with English pronunciation (a lot of difficulties), but we tend to learn them in a relatively short period of time. English is somehow a catchy language, when people get used to it, it becomes more and more natural over time.
As a French learner, I can say this confidently that the same cannot be said ever about French language. Now THAT pronunciation is a challenge, honestly. Especially, when you try to hear anything meaningful of fast-speaking listening exercises...
While admittedly my french exposure was limited I never had any of the beginners pain I had with Magyar. I really wanted to speak Hungarian at that time both because of my girl(ex) and I because have never seen a language with more descriptive and imaginative curses and insults. (maybe i just brought it out in her :). I used to love trading colloquialisms.
As far as the r goes i just read an article that made me rethink how I was trying to get students to speak. I keep posting it because it is fresh on mind and thus seems relevant to everything http://www.fluentin3months.com/speak-like-the-irish/...(not spam or anything I am connected to.) I was so focused on American Business Speak when I taught.I really did not consider that if the accent did not interfere with understanding and they were not trying to pass as a native speaker in some certain area it was not really wrong.There are several place in the US where you could not buy an R to save your life. Even parts of NEW YAWK CITY and "Day whan U'se wach ya ka in BAHSTON."
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What does help a lot is just listen a lot to french songs, french radio and so on. even when you don't understand it, it will improve your ability to understand and you will get used to the language making it easier to learn, write, understand and speak it.
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Eeee I'm excited~ I seriously can't wait now. Korean and Chinese, here I come!!! ^^
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You may wish to add a profile picture because you look a bit sketchy without one.
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I think it would be great if there were differentiations between dialects, such as British and American English, Iberian and Mexian and Argentinian Spanish, Québéc French and regular French...
Same with Portuguese and Brazilian.. Dutch and Flamish, and so on. This would also help protect regional/national dialects!
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You may wish to add a profile picture because you look a bit sketchy without one.
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I've been learning German and French, but my mother tongue is Spanish and lately it's been getting harder to do the lessons since I still make some mistakes when translating into English. Will it be possible to pass all of my progress into the Spanish version of the courses?
I can speak Urdu, Punjabi,Dutch and English to perfection. So if you need my services, I will be most happy to help people with these. Further I am learning Spanish now.So always welcome to contact me everyone
Quick question, I want to learn a lot of languages in my lifetime, where is Punjabi spoken?
Punjabi is spokenmainly in Pakistan and India(Asia) and ofcourse all over the world with millions of people who learned the language
I would love to see Duolingo offer a Punjabi course, taught in English preferably :p
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So this is the surprise? Well I'm glad to see that it's getting more interactive. But how do we know who to trust with proper translations? Will there be some sort of fluency test? Like a timed translation exercise before they're allowed to create content in a language they claim fluency in? I guess I just want to know the specifics. This will finally allow me to learn Korean like I've been wanting to do for so long but I just hope it's dependable information. And how will people know not to create duplicate lessons and things that are inappropriate and vulgar? This is a site for people of all ages, is it not?
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Guess what? We're going to the beach tomorrow!
So this is the surprise? Well I'm glad I'll be able to go for a swim in the ocean. But how will I know that I won't get eaten by a shark? Or swallowed by a whale? Maybe I'll get sun-burnt? Or get sand in my bathers? I guess this will let me collect some more seashells but they have to be really good ones, not broken in any way. OMG, what if it's a nude beach?! And how do I know you won't leave me behind when you go home?
Wait, I just thought of another thing... What if there's a tsunami?!!!
Then you might hope with all your heart that the lifeguard chooses to rescue the children and women first.
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I assume something similar to translations (Immersion) these days; multiple people creating similar content, and voting on it.
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I suppose so. Well I'm glad we're using crowdsource to teach the masses but there's gotta be some moderation. Like an approval system. Some way of making sure the content isn't bad information. Though I suppose there's no way to guarantee it.
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If you haven't already seen it, check out Luis' response to another comment above. He states that there will be a sophisticated moderation system to ensure quality, and that it will use moderators that are vetted by Duolingo. It doesn't sound like just any rando will be able to claim expertise and be given the keys to the castle.
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I think they will end up introducing a rating system, so quality lessons will be promoted
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Who will rate? The language learners? How would they know if they were learning incorrect stuff?
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You could use Google translate for a sanity check until you begin to feel more secure.
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I sure hope this works! If only one instance of each new language course is made, pooling the lessons into one, and if each new course uses the same structural framework the current languages use, I have high hopes.
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I am very excited for this, before I got Duolingo I began learning Japanese and hopefully with this language incubator I will be able to continue learning Japanese.
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Am I just a hallucinating nerd, or is that Klingon lurking behind Russian?
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For those who don't know/aren't learning Spanish, he said "I want to learn Russiannn"
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You may wish to add a profile picture because you look a bit sketchy without one @Tzil
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It seems to be a big leap forward, I've been really anticipating the tools since they were mentioned in reddit AMA.
From my point of view, and what I've seen in the Google Play reviews, many Polish people complained about the lack of English course in Polish. Like tons of them, which isn't strange since that's the most commonly learned second language here. I guess it's the same for many other countries as well.
Looks like someone is going to have a boom of new users? ;)
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"For the people, by the people." Catchy motto. This is a really good way to handle the demand of more languages. An iluve Quendi!
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That's amazing news. I am very curious about it and I would love to help with Dutch. I'm a copywriter so I know everything about Dutch grammar :)
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The Dutch course is still in incubation phase. You could help by applying to be a contributer. I'm sure lots of people would appreciate any progress made to the course (me included!) http://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/nl-NL/en/status
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This would be so helpful! And possibly some grammar lessons and specific word practice, might be beneficial for those learning a new language with different speech and language conventions. :)
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Anyone who has been following Duolingo closely knew this was coming.:)
I'm glad it has finally been officially announced though.
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I see what you did there.. you just became too lazy to do the courses yourself ;) Na, crowd sourcing is the way to go. Thanks for the framework!!
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You may wish to add a profile picture because you look a bit sketchy without one.
Um, I've been reading these comments, and do you mind stopping these comments? All they can do is make people feel bad about themselves. You do not need a profile picture if people feel insecure or can't decide! People have the right to make their own decisions. Respect other people.
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I will be excited to see if anyone starts an English to Vietnamese Duo. Lots of Vietnamese people here in Houston.
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Yeeeeeey! That's a wonderful news!!! I can't wait for help! :D now all my 15 languages can work ;)
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Is there going to be a possibility to build a course, say to learn "Mathematical Italian" as target language and English as source?
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I think it would be great to have the ability to create specialized optional vocabulary units, particularly for healthcare specialists, or even travelers who want to be able to express themselves in an emergency. The vocabulary isn't often covered in the typical 1-2k word vocabulary base. There's high demand in the US for Spanish for healthcare, and I think once the way to put in this type of optional lesson or set of lessons, then anyone would be able to put in whatever specialized thing they wanted.
Italian for musicians would be quite popular with musicians all over the world, too- there are about 75 words that I could put in a unit today!
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I think that this is very good idea, since there are so many different purposes and motivations of learning languages :)
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This is a great idea! A lot of doctors would be interested in learning a language just in case a translator isn't available for a patient.
I am tentatively super excited about this!! I was pretty concerned about quality control when I first saw this but now I'm distracted by the realization that this means Swahili lessons may one day be on Duolingo...I would be so happy!
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It's Esperanto. The most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language in the world.
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Read the article. The language was designed so that people could communicate in the simplest possible way. What you are talking about is languages like Klingon.
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There's some truth to this, as, according to the Wikipedia article linked to by Zach1337, there are only 2 million speakers (as a high estimate) worldwide. I think it was a nice idea, but really, I think that if most people are going to take the trouble to learn a new language, they're going to choose something that will be more useful. I am a language enthusiast, but have very little interest in Esperanto. I would rather learn widely spoken languages, or fictional languages designed for form rather than function (J.R.R. Tolkien invented Elvish with the intention of creating the most beautiful sounding language. Klingon was invented to be rather the opposite).
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2 million speakers still puts it in the top 100 languages spoken worldwide. Learning Esperanto as a second language can dramatically increase the time it takes to learn a third language as proved by multiple studies, making it useful even if you couldn't even communicate with anyone, but additionally can connect you to large Esperanto-speaking communities in Europe, South America, and Asia where the movement is biggest, and being able to communicate with those people on equal grounds instead of one party always sounding more eloquent. The only people who disparage Esperanto are the ones who have never looked into it. I am personally very excited about it.
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I think you meant to say "decrease", not "increase".:)
As for the Esperanto detractors, there are many who have actually looked at Esperanto in depth and found it to be flawed and/or they just don't like it. To say that only people who haven't looked at it are against it is wildly inaccurate.
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Yah, I did mean decrease, thanks.
And are you sure about that? Because there are tons of people who look at it briefly and find it flawed, but people who actually look at it in depth come to appreciate it. I mean, one study showed that it takes speakers of European languages anywhere between 1,000 to 2,000 hours to become highly functional in each other's languages, and then Esperanto only takes them about 150 hours. Once you dig into it it's a really impressive language.
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I'd rather focus on a real language which I can use in business instead of Esperanto. Duolingo, please save Esperanto for last and work on real languages.
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It's not about Duolingo decides to focus on. After this it's about the users decide to create.
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Uh, you CAN use Esperanto for business. And also, if DL puts Espo on the website, then it will increase its visibility, and with the passage of time, Esperanto will become more useful. Language is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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It's easier and faster if you, your neighbor, and your hudred other neghbors of a hundred other languages, all learn Esperanto than if they each learn a complicated ideosyncratic natural language. And then what of the heated debates from deciding whose language to use? Here's an idea: no one's language. Esperanto.
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It's an imaginary problem, with an imaginary solution. I don't have any problem if my neighbours speak broken English, and they dont have any problem with me speaking broken [$Language] Both of us have been naturally exposed to each others language throughout the course of our lives that we can muddle through. Out here, everyone naturaly gravitates toward English. In Germany, we all gravitate towards German. In France, French. for our trouble we all get to practice a language that we can actually use in everyday situations. Somehow, no one manages to frame it as some sort of fantasy political struggle.
Now if you want a heated debate about whose language to use, how about no ones language: Volapuk; or no ones language: Ido; or no ones language: Interlingua; Or no ones language: Slovio :P
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Yeah, those work too, but I'm going with Espo becoese it's more popular than the other ones.
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Wow, this thread still alive?
Esperanto sort of reminds me of the Newspeak in 1984. Everything is good or ungood, hell red is probably ungreen. It shirks the challenge of improving methods of language instruction by inventing a whole new artificially simplistic language. If you ask me, such a construct could only have been created by someone who hated learning languages. How can I respect that?
"The idea of Esperanto is: the foundation of a neutral language will help break down barriers between people and help everyone see each other as neighbors. [L.L. Zamenhof, 1912]"
Sorry Dr Z, if I want to break down barriers with my neighbour, I learn their language, I don't just invent one that neither of us understand :P
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Little Question: Will this mean that there will be multiple french courses of varying quality done by various people? Or will it be a simple, one-course-per-lang system? (which I personally prefer, since it would increase the quality)
Simple, I guess. I imagine the incubator will be users creating a tree system for any language (from any other language), including specific skill (as alphabet, signs etc) when needed. etc.
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Does anyone know how the character-based languages like Chinese will be handled on a technical level?
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@MystyrNile : I had my first Chinese (Mandarin) class last week on Monday. What we learned was Pīnyīn
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Thanks. Also, I meant to do i-breve, but they don't have breves on iPhone.
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No, that's a macron. The breve is the one that goes down then up, like this: ĭ. That's just the name of the diacritic though, I said "i-breve" because it was faster than "i with a breve on top of it".
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Oh, and by the way, every written language uses characters. You've probably heard "Chinese Character" only because they aren't technically letters, and "logograph" is a bit technical.
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By the way, if you are looking for alpha or beta testers for any of the new features, count me in...
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It won't be as good as duolingo courses. I hoped to see japanese. I hope it's not gonna be a mess :s
Why not? In fact, instead of courses being made by 5-10 Duo team's members it'll be done by Duo with the help of 5-10-50 (??) Duo's users that Duo team will have vetted before. But at this end it's still Duolingo that make the course. As far as I understood it.
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I definitely can't wait for this! I hope Icelandic lessons get made. I've wanted to learn it for a long time now, but I've had a hard time finding good resources for free. Also, would American Sign Language and other Sign Languages somehow be possible? I want to learn it, but same problem with Icelandic.
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Great News!! I do hope that Duo will continue to expand the trees for current languages in order to accomodate advanced learners. Maybe Duo could also add grammar section for existing languages and allow users to teach languages in fields that they specialised in.
This is fantastic! I can't wait to contribute to the languages I'm the most passionate about! :D
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You may wish to add a profile picture because you look a bit sketchy without one.
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Omg, i'm so excited!!! I used to learn Mandarin Chinese in high school and have always wanted to go back to it, and now I can! This is FANTASTIC! :) I can't wait to start!!
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This is a really good thing. Now I can finally create a course for my mother who wants to learn English but speaks Dutch and Frisian!! :D
Just off the top of my head, I'd love to see English-based courses for Bahasa Indonesian, Icelandic, Russian and Mandarin. Plus, you know, about a bajillion other languages. Such an excellent initiative, this!
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Esperanto is now in the Incubator!!! http://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/eo/en/status
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I recently joined to improve my Spanish and it really works. As a European, the only concern I have is that it is more Latin American than European Spanish.
Moreover, I have some suggestions: -It would be great if more advanced level courses were also offered as well as language for special purposes, e.g. business, legal, medical etc. -Flashcards will definitely help. -Also, It would be great if you could align your levels with some official language level classifications, such as the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, though I know it is a lot of work to do it properly.
Thanks!
It would be great to modify a language course to adjust only certain words to reflect various dialects... instead of having to create a whole new course for Brazilian Portuguese vs Portugal Portuguese, etc.
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That is great!!! I hope you include Arabic language also... I would love to learn it. Thank you so much!!
I have personally been waiting for the chinese module to come out for a LONG time now. I work around a TON of chinese tourists who speak little to zero english. All the french or spanish tourists speak at least some english so the chinese lessons are seriously going to help.
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This will be great!!! :D, I can't wait for Japanese, Chinese and Hindi!! :D あしたはじめます! (This begins tomorrow) :)
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how can i help you?I'm persian and i'll be glad to help other to learning my language.
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Would you volunteer to teach English to Farsi? I know it will be a very popular subject to learn.
GREAT news! Super excited about the Duolingo Incubator. I hope I can help people learn my home language whom ever would be interested in learning how to speak, read and write Afrikaans fluently.
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Japanese is the language I want to see next! I just started using this site and I love it so far. Still not sure what language I want to pick next since Japanese and Korean aren't on here. I'd love to see a Mandarin Chinese (Traditional) to help me increase my vocabulary that I learned while studying in Taiwan for two years.
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I am extremely excited - as a non-native english speaker I missed the chance to learn english on duo lingo. I am somewhat worried about quality of these future courses - trees on the other hand. I hope you will set pretty good controls to ensure we can trust and depend on user created content :)
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I have a demographic question. Are most people here looking to "play around" with 47 languages or are people here to develop some level of mastery in one, or maybe two languages with high quality and reputable training? And does Duolingo have any quality control concerns(n2m resources) as it adds more and more languages? Swahili, Amharic, Zulu, Afrikaans, Akan, Tongan, Norwegian, ancient Greek? Seriously?
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I actually fall somewhere in-between:
There are the four languages I already practice daily, on this site, and I plan to start Portuguese, this weekend. I fully intend to finish the skill trees in all five languages and continue to practice them afterwards.
Add to this that I took three semesters each of Latin and Japanese at university and continue to practice both with some regularity.
Finally, my looming project is Czech. I plan to be spending this August in the Czech Republic, and I would like to freely go wherever I like and do as I please without having to rely upon others' ability to speak English. I am also considering the prospects of attending graduate school and/or working in that country at some point in the future; so, I have personal priorities to motivate serious and continued study.
Thus, I am currently juggling 8 languages, all of which I plan to develop and maintain at working proficiency (or better). At present, it looks like it will be a year or so before I consider adding any more. After that, I will be adding languages to the rotation at a rate of around one or two per year.
As for your question about quality control:
Using the metaphor of international travel, I think of language learners as falling into a spectrum from "tourist" (someone with only superficial curiosity, who might explore for a day or two and learn only a few words and features) to "naturalized citizen" (someone who commits to developing a command of the language that is comparable to that of their* native language).
In my experience, some languages (such as those you listed) tend to be tourist destinations far more often than long term residences. Having viewed the massive size and demographic shifts in my university-level Japanese class, over the course of a year and a half, I can say that even "major" languages have high attrition rates.
The reality of user developed courses is that languages with a greater number of highly motivated students will develop more quickly and thoroughly. Personally, I will be devoting my efforts to helping develop the English-Czech and Czech-English courses. I might also lend a hand with Latin or Cajun French. Japanese is sure to have a good crop of people whose expertise and motivation far exceeds mine, at present; so, I probably won't touch it until after it has left the incubator.
Yes, hundreds of "minor" and obscure languages will probably languish in the incubator, never developing more than a few rudimentary lessons. Nonetheless, their is certain to be a few passionate native speakers or people who have strong motivation to learn, such as i do with Czech, and a few "odd" languages may actually develop high quality courses.
*I'm aware of the apparent pronoun disagreement. I prefer the singular "they" to clunky phrases such "he or she" (or having to defend the argument that "he" has historical precedent as a gender neutral pronoun) and believe that it is well on its way to being standard usage.
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Speaking of historical precedent, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Austen, Wilde and the King James Bible also used "singular they", as you probably know.
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I guess everybody will start learning the languages for which he/she has a strong motivation (work, family, friends etc), but Duolingo is here to stay and people will have the option to learn other languages in the future if need arrises ( for example if somebody travels for work or pleasure in another county five years from now, he might spend a couple of weeks before the trip to learn basic things of the language...) Also, given that the popularity of duolingo increases, soon everybody who has access to the internet will know that there is this option, if they need for whatever reason to learn a language (so they might only choose to learn suahili from chinese, why not? There are around 1 billion computers connected to the internet at the moment, i am sure that within this number you can find any crazy language combination needs).
I think that varies as greatly as people vary. I came here to develop proficiency and fluency in translating Spanish and Mandarin Chinese and develop a mastery of translating from or to my native English or either of those aforementioned languages in any direction. I of course love German and learned it as a young exchange student, in high school and in college, so I can't resist exploring the interface here, but, I await Mandarin Chinese with the proverbial "dragon's breath". Rosetta stone is horribly expensive and of course there is no immersion in Rosetta Stone which is absolutely vital to the process of developing proficiency or fluency, IMHO. I think duolingo will surpass Rosetta Stone and really, if Rosetta Stone was forward looking, they would be investing in duolingo and getting a piece of this action.
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I'm willing to help with latin. but: in latin, some words just don't exist, like car and so on. The only problem is that someone just needs to check the mistakes in english:-) ask viaggiatore for Italian!
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Salve! A car in Latin is "autocinetum". (There's a few other words people use too.)
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salve! I know, but that is an artificial additive to a language that is no longer naturelly changing. so, in the end, there is all kinds of latin, but I'd guess the classical one would be the one to choose.
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I'd probably disagree on limiting to classical Latin, but that'd make for a long rant, I'm sure!
I will say that I wouldn't call "autocinetum" artificial - it's a straightforward borrowing from the Greek, so exactly what the Romans would have done. :)
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I understand, but as far as I'm aware noone has Latin as his native language:-) but then again 'what is a living language'?
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Yeah, I think classical Latin would be more useful, although for fun at the end we can have the new words that have been added officially by the vatican. :)
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And all the words used for the hundreds of years of Latin between Rome and the modern day...
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Fantastic news ! Can't wait for the Greek one ! If schools had this resource each child could go at their own pace and still enjoy it too!
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Awesome news! I learned German language with Duolingo for 3 month, that's totally free. I'd like to contribute my skill for other persons who wants to learn a Chinese Language after it is lunched at Duolingo.
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HOORAY FOR JAPANESE !!! I am really curious on how languages with different alphabets will be managed. I mean, for Japanese there we have the romanization systems but for Greek...Russian...there will be a real challenge :)
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I use duo on my phone, so it is dead easy to add the different keyboard layouts. I use different alphabets all the time, just to staple them into my memory, eg all my contacts are written in Arabic, Korean, Russian writing etc. Every time my phone rings, I get a revision exercise! Learning other alphabets is really not as difficult as you think, and many of them have optional keyboard layouts designed to harmonize with QWERTY to make it less of a struggle. There is also ample precedent of transliteration software, meaning you could stick to the latin alphabet if you really really wanted to, but that's no fun...
If you want to learn a writing system fast, what you need to do is learn how to write something with personal meaning, like your name, or your cats name, or your lovers name, or your home street or whatever, just spend the time to figure out how to write it as well as you can in the alphabet you want to learn. Things like that have a great power of fixing things in your memory because they mean something to you, and it shreds away the learning curve because you only need to remember the letters in that one important word in order to recognise them in any other word. Short of Chinese, there are very few writing systems you can't master in a couple of days if you put your mind to it. The only time it's hard is when there are letters for sounds you have never used and you have no idea what to do with them, but that's a hearing comprehension problem not a writing one.
Come to think of it, that actually sounds like a cool starter exercise for duo courses with exotic scripts... ie. just playing around with an on screen keyboard that talks what you type, so you can learn at your own pace.
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Are the user-created lessons expected to be family-friendly? If we're going to include ancient languages, it seems to me that that would include some R-rated material in pretty short order.
We sure wouldn't want a bunch of six-year-olds running around spouting pornographic Chaldean phrases like "Babouh elea masilana."
I'm not meaning the Phases lesson that have been added, I mean something like 'keep it on'
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Not open source yet, according to the announcements the developing team will have the control of the material. We, the users, will be able to contribute, in a crowd sourcing manner, but there is no announcement that the project is going to be open source.
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Brilliant! Capitalize on the language we are already learning/refining here, our native tongue, language we most want to learn/refine, or language we just love the most!
I think every person on Duolingo could thus contribute in the most meaningful way.
This sounds great! I really hope that what they mean by "any combination of language" is both making courses where you translate from any language to any language and where you could learn some languages in parallel (which can be useful for leaning languages with the same roots)
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I would like to know 2 things. - I am currently learning German and Italian. Being a native French speaker and fluent in English, I have started to learn in English. When Italian and German will have courses for French speakers, it would be great to switch my courses from English to French, without having to restart all lessons again. Have you planned such an idea for Duolingo? - Will there be courses to teach foreign alphabets (eg the cyrillic alphabet for Russian or the Armenian alphabet for Armenian)?
Thank you for everything you have done until now!
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I think the answer to your first question would be no, you can't just switch, but you could easily do the tree short-cuts so that you can start from your true level in Italian and German.
I'm super excited for this because I want to learn Faroese, and can't find decent courses anywhere
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Do you think that Duolingo will sync up with LinkedIn accounts? I think it would be great to have a "language development progress report" linked up with people's online portfolios.
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Great!!! I'm so glad that new languages will be available :) Thank you Duolingo!
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It must be interesting to create courses on Duolingo in the languages that don't use Latin script. I'm counting down till Oct 9!
Japanese! Woohoo! xD Are there people who see themselves wanting to work on it?
Okay, who's going to help to create the Sanskrit course? Linguistics students, anyone? :)
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I was hoping someone was going too...I took two years of sanskrit at University, but that is a really difficult language. I wonder if there are lots of people here who could build that tree.
I have a good book on it called Sanskrit: A Complete Course For Beginners (http://www.amazon.com/Sanskrit-Complete-Course-Beginners-Yourself/dp/0844238252/ref=sr_1_16?ie=UTF8&qid=1380906057&sr=8-16&keywords=Sanskrit) and would enjoy contributing what I know from that, however I am by no means at any appreciable level of mastery. For that we'd need to find a professor who teaches the language. I think if we could find one, they'd be delighted to give their niche language greater visibility.
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I am very much hoping someone will do sanskrit, I'd love to learn it. :D
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I wonder if, with all of duolingo's popularity, if Sindarin's grammar will finally be finished?
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That is so awesome! waiting for the big moment! when i am using duolingo, i just can't stop learning. it is a wonderful feeling. thx guys for your wonderful work. i'll share among my friends.
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I look forward to some "advanced" courses. Especially if there is a technical course for words used in various industries. Things that are useful to know if you're looking to get a job, rather than just ask for coffee :P
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I might try to make a calculus language course for people to become fluent in that.
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Great! I can't wait for other languages to come in! Especially for Catalan! ;)
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I really would love to see Farsi to English as one of the courses! I hope someone steps up to the plate to help create this!
I'd love to learn Farsi, my father is Iranian and never taught me (and has no intention of teaching me!) and it's something I really want to learn!
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Yea, my wife is persian. So i would love to learn especially for family get togethers and such.
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exciting I would be pleased to see Ukrainian as one of the languages. I can only hope
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This is such excellent news because it means we can now add African languages!!
This is a course I would welcome wholeheartedly and more enthusiasm than i can express. Although, ASL course would take a truly different approach. Not impossible. I've seen an ASL dictionary online with video for each word. I hope someday DL will pursue ASL.
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This is a great idea - I would love to get access to Japanese or Mandarin (or both). I've studied Japanese in the past, this would be a great way to bring those skills back to the forefront.
Same. I tried studying it in the past, but I gave it up in college because I wasn't understanding the grammatical principles they were referring to in English, so i felt that I didn't have a hope of continueing. I've since learned Italian and am learning Swedish and I've thought for a long while that it would be easier to learn japanese now that I have a better grasp of grammatical terms.
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Would love an Gaeilge (Irish) Course. The language needs all the help it can to keep it going. My Granny was fluent and had to learn English when she was seventeen and now 80 years later not a one of her descendants speak it, it didn't take much for that to happen! We need your help Duolingo! Croí na Teanga!
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A Swiss German course would be really nice because l'm currently learning German but l'm going to Switzerland next year and Swiss German seems really different!
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My understanding is that there is no standard Swiss German. When people speak it you know if they are from Zurich, Basel, Fribourg, etc. So if you know where you're going, you might want to learn the specific dialect. Also, Swiss German is not a written language, kids in school learn standard German writing, but pronounce dialect. Where will you be going?
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I don't know exactly where I'm going right now, I only know it is in the German area. l leave in 6 months and I stay for 10 months, so I guess I will have enough time to understand the dialect when being there , but it would be nice to know a little bit before!
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If you want to get a taste of Swiss German in a way that you can absorb it, try a 10 lesson Pimsleur course. They mix the regional accents a little (Basel & Zurich), but maybe that won't matter in your case. Pimsleur is just audio, so that may be perfect for you. They may have lessons for download. Some libraries have Pimsleur for free, but in any case a 10 lesson course is not that expensive. Have fun, Switzerland is cool!
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Thank you for showing it to me ! However, the free lesson is not available in Canada, so I had to give them a random Zip code of USA to get it hahaha
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Great if that works. Let me know if the lessons make sense to you, I could always try to find you other resources. Btw I lived in Canada for 10 years, in Winnipeg
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Hi, please could you do an Afrikaans course on duolingo, Half of South Africa learns it in the public schools and I am sure if you created an Afrikaans course loads of them would begin to use duolingo. even for foreigners coming to SA who would want to learn a bit, there are no good free language apps that I can find that teach Afrikaans.
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Great! I hope a Hungarian version will be there asap. I still got plenty holes to fill for this language :) Duolingo helped me filling up the missing spots of my French and German... and English as well.
Awesome work Duocrew!
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YES! JAPANESE! I am TOTALLY SIGNING UP TO THAT FIRST! YAY! #ANIME TIME #Danganronpa 2 #WHOOT! Time to LEARN JAPANESE NEXT MONTH! :D
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You may wish to add a profile picture because you look a bit sketchy without one.
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You may wish to add a profile picture because you look a bit sketchy without one.
So will this allow us to create courses for any language, or just modern languages? For example, would it be possible for me to create a course for the Latin language?
This is good news, as I just started learning Spanish but need to do this from english. Even though my english is also good so I am not having any problem with it. But it will be good if the Dutch language is included as well. I just want to say : this is a TOP site, really one of the best apps ever for me what a great service, making people learn languages so easily and with fun.TOP.Bravo
This sounds like a really great idea, but also a rather scary one. I'm hoping courses will be moderated to keep out any mistakes. I can only imagine what could go wrong if an English speaker builds courses without knowing the difference between "they're," "their" and "there"... D:
Look at Luis post in this discussion:
We will have a pretty sophisticated moderation system, similar to the one we currently use internally to make our lessons. Also, moderators will be personally vetted by us. (citing Luis)
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Will we have to like, get like every possible combination of learning languages from another one? Like, if there is Japanese, and there is (for example) 50 other languages, will we have to make a version to learn Japanese from ALL of those languages?
No big deal when you have 5 million users (who feed back into the development process) and growing.
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This sounds really exciting, but how would you know the reliability of the courses?
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What about Esperanto? Can I put that in (assuming I know it, which I don't)?
Don't see any reason why you couldn't, Lui said from any other language in the world and it's a language in the world. Moreover it's the front flag on the image...
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Is there going to be a course for a language? Or multiple courses for a language?
As currently: one tree to learn the language XXX from the language YYY.
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Yay! I was hoping it was not going to be as cluttered as Memrise is nowadays. Is the Duo team going to allow multiple people to work on a tree?
Now that this will be crowd-sourced--and I know it's hard to imagine now--at some point there won't be enough common words remaining in a language to be added, and things will shift from adding vocabulary... to organizing the massive corpus of words. Unlike Wikipedia, which grows perpetually with new knowledge, the collection of words for each language isn't infinite and doesn't grow or change all that fast. I hope Duolingo staff are planning for this longer-term reality.
Every other language learning system I've used has had a few thousand words at most. They haven't had to deal with this new problem. Duolingo will have new problems to solve.
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Good god, this may mean the duolingo community can create new languages via crowd sourcing...
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This is great guys!!! Thank you, can't wait to start making an English course for Hungarians!
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I have always wanted to learn Swedish, hopefully I can now
I like this decision, sounds awesome! Hope to see the development of Duolingo. Also, I hope someday I can use my first language to type this message. ;D
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This is awesome. I would like to have an advanced skill tree with a bunch of dialogues and conversational stuff to showcase how communication between two or more people in that particular language is done. And I feel that people should just suggest certain languages they want added and have Duolingo make the courses for them. Because the way the setup is currently is alright with me. But if anyone has like additional topics to add or something then it'd be okay to do user created. Just not for the entire language.
Duolingo wants to put every language up, but they don't have the resources to do so at a reasonable speed; hence the idea to let users fill in the content and then have Duolingo hire experts to moderate it. That way you can have entire languages up faster and more comprehensively than Duolingo is currently able to do in-house.
Now that it is Oct9th (where I am, at least) where do we look for the Incubator?
I wonder how hard the other languages are. compared to spanish... pretty hard right??????
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Coming from English, Spanish is way harder than German, Dutch is even easier than Getman, you already know most of Scots, and most Indian languages I'm guessing ar only a little tougher than Slavic.
I want to say thanks to everyone working on making Duolingo better and accessible to everyone. A great free and open community for learning and advancing language skills right at home. Stay good, stay free.
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I am looking forward to learning Spanish from French. Being a native French speaker, learning Spanish from English is a bit cumbersome as I tend to switch to French too easily mosty when I am to translate Spanish sentences into English especially when the English translation doesn't come readily. I presume that it is a common problem for non-native speakers of English.
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I love it! it is much easier now... Also, I am anxiously waiting on Duo-Incubator, to bring Spanish to Portuguese...It'll be easier for all of us, that are Spanish speaker. Thanks for everything DUOLINGO!!
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I just wanted to ask if Duolingo has Japanese and Chinese.If they don't, please put it.
Original Luis' post:
"At first, you'll be able to build courses to learn English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese from any other language in the world. And before the end of the year, it will be possible to create courses in all combinations of languages."
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This is a great idea - I would love to get access to Japanese or Mandarin (or both). I've studied Japanese in the past, this would be a great way to bring those skills back to the forefront.
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Here you have a big group on Facebook (more than 12.000 members!)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/esperanto.grupo/
Jen grupego en Facebook (pli ol 12.000 anoj)
The description there has courses links, youtube courses (e.g. Mazi en Gondolando!), dictionaries, events, jokes group, skype group, linux groups, association pages, corpora, and all you'll need to get in this new and fairer world! Well... new for you, cause it's already 126 years old :D
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I love how Esperanto is front and center, yet we still don't have an Esperanto course....
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I love how Esperanto is front and center, yet we still don't have an Esperanto course....
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Esperanto is now in the Incubator!!! http://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/eo/en/status
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Can you make your own languages and put them in the incubator, like, should the Duolingo developers add another "group" of languages that are made by their users and others will learn it? That would be fun.
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Can you make your own languages and put them in the incubator, like, should the Duolingo developers add another "group" of languages that are made by their users and others will learn it? That would be fun.
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Can you please add Korean?? I've been wanting to learn that language, and Duolingo is the best free language program ever!
how exactly do we do this? its 2016 and I don't see anything about an incubator..
There is one incubator per course. You don't see them because only contributors have access.
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If you people do make the courses i really hope you check over everything and all the lessons. I really don't want to study the language and then find out they have a different meaning, as well as make it the same format you do to learn a language and not just jump all over the place.
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Will all languages be there? And is there really an Elvish language or is it fictional?
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He said every language, so yes, every language. As long as there are people willing to make a course for a language, it can be made.
As for Elvish, it's just as real as any natural language. It was created by Tolkien though. He actually created the languages of Middle Earth before he wrote the stories.
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The many varieties of elvish (quenyan, sindarin, avari, teleri) are not totally fleshed out. He made enough to be able to say a lot and to know what he intended, and fans have vastly fleshed it out
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Hey Luis! You told us that the language incubator will come in October 9th 2013 but today is January 3rd 2014 and we still have not got the incubator yet!
http://incubator.duolingo.com it's here and it's been here since October, and it's working great!. :D
No, some of the languages are not here yet. Strategy is an important part of success. DL is doing a good job of controlling chaos by rolling things out at the current rate. So while the team works very hard to make everything happen as quickly as possible without sacrificing success, the hardest thing the rest of us must do is have patience. I too have been waiting. It will arrive.
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How can this work? The average person is not a qualified instructor. How can user be sure the lessons they are using are correct?
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Clearly, there's going to have to be a vetting process of some kind... perhaps a crowd-sourced rating system to help weight lessons as they're created, with users seen as more accurate getting higher weight to their opinions than users who are seen as less proficient.
How about expert moderators? One framework for everything, with one moderator per language with native speakers filling in the gaps. That way there's no vetting process, no learning style differences between languages, no difference between Duolingo creations and user creations. Just the same homogeneous learning style and quality for everything.
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Don't you think Duo have already thought about that? We will see tomorrow! :)
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Not really, they feel a lot of things rather than knowing logic behind it. Therefore it is sometimes hard to explain to others.
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Duolingo hardly explains anything, perhaps its aim is to make people "feel" the language, rather than to fully understand it with all its grammar intricacies. Having simple natives as teachers actually fits this approach.
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I think often a combination of native speakers from both languages works best to get to the bottom of things.
You should probably say, "Natives who are masters of their own language and have proven success in teaching are the best instructors ever." I know people who spoke English from childhood and died speaking English and were nearly unintelligible the whole time. Nativism is no free ticket to success.
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True, I may have oversimplified my thoughts on the topic. I didn't obviously take into consideration people with no education whatsoever who cannot convey meaning in their own language, but it looks you know what the point was :)
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Well, Memrise can be hit or miss - it depends on the curators in each language, not just the course creators.
The system is constantly scoring users and info from the highest rated users will be the information that is used. So the average user will be ignored until they have learned enough to no longer be the average user.
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he means, other languages for Portuguese-speaking pepole, instead of having everything English-Something
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After someone makes a course for learning French in whatever language you need it in.:)
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There should be a special seal or status flag for the five (six) current languages, as they should be discriminated from the other user created ones!
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"And before the end of the year, it will be possible to create courses in all combinations of languages."
Given the initial phase where anyone can learn English, will there still be a need by the end of the year for an English speaker to learn another language?
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Are you serious? First of all, Duolingo doesn't make people fluent in any language. At least not yet. Second of all, Duolingo isn't going to reach 100% of the people in the world because of certain socio-economic issues. Third of all, not everyone wants to learn a foreign language.
So yes, there will still be a need for English speakers to learn another language by the end of the year. Duolingo won't magically make everyone in the entire world fluent in English. Lmao
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You should really get involve with someone like Assimil or Berlitz and create professional commercial courses. I will be very happy to pay for them.
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The whole point of Duolingo is to provide a high quality language learning service for free so that everyone with an internet connection, be it at home or elsewhere like a library, can learn a foreign language. Note the keyword free. Duolingo has repeatedly said this time and time again.
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I think that would only ruin Duo. The minute we have to start paying for things, Duo will go down hill, for the poor, at least. I'm a teenager and could never afford to pay (or even have a way to) for these courses. If Duo creates commercial courses, I don't have a doubt in my mind that the free courses will soon be forgotten.
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The CEO has said repeatedly that the point of Duolingo is for it to be FREE for anyone to access.
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If they made people pay to use Duolingo...walks away and cries in the corner