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- The minutiae of beta (UPD)
The minutiae of beta (UPD)
Hello! Привіт!
I just want to summarize a few current questions, reports and issues with the course. And throw in some do’s and don’ts that could smooth out the beta testing process.
Here is what’s coming up so far:
- Missing audio. This was a surprise for us as well. It turns out, for courses with human recorded audio DL usually has around 2500-3000 sentences recorded. Not sure why. We have 3,805 sentences in our course. There are still about 800 sentences to record. I already received all these sentences from the developer and this is another to-do for us. Do not report when the audio is missing! It’s taken care of. UPDATE: The recording is scheduled. By the end of September Ukrainian audio should be complete.
- Typing in Latin. This is a strange thing, but many of you noticed you can enter romanized letters and the sentence will be accepted. Might look easier, but I wouldn’t make it a habit. The first Cyrillic course is on a test-drive. This was not planned to work that way and will not help you with learning at all. So, please do not suggest xto tam, tse moya sestra etc.
- Explanations missing. Tips and Notes already contain some rules but some are yet to be added. Do ask questions. You can always clarify in Sentence discussions (Thank you all who help with explanations!).
- Commonwealth English reports. Ok, we know DL is using AmEng. But yes, I accept your endless reports for “mum”. Just stop creating three similar reports for EVERY mom instance!
- Freewrite reports. Thank you for your constructive and relevant suggestions there. That helps! Do that!
- Wrong pop-up hints. This is another work in progress. DL has its standards here. Please, do report if the hint is confusing.
- Keyboard questions. It seems for some it is still an issue. Please check these links and see what works best for you (I collected some of the finds from different posts. Thank you those who posted them)
1) http://www.phonetic-ukrainian.yluhovy.com/Phonetic_Ukrainian/Ukrainian_Phonetic_Keyboard_Mac.html
2) https://www.duolingo.com/comment/7687358
3) http://www.shklar.org/keyboard-vista/ http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/add-language-keyboard
So far this is it.
Дякую and good job learning Ukrainian! Keep it going!
54 Comments
"Commonwealth English reports. Ok, we know DL is using AmEng. But yes, I accept your endless reports for “mum”. Just stop creating three similar reports for EVERY mom instance!"
Heh, I think that might have been me...each three times...
Sorry, but actually, there are some parts that do accept "mum" and some parts that don't. But I hope that's all fixed.
I've been trying to train myself to type mom while it's still in beta ;p because usually it seems to accept mum as a typo but I don't want to risk it!
I noticed that some places it accepts an alternate for some words and others it doesn't where it seems like it should. I think I've reported those I've spotted.
The numbers skills seem to only accept the written out English, where in other courses they accept numerals. Obviously only for the English side, just because English speakers don't need practice typing out ninety ;)
Some of the English versions of sentences are strange/unnatural. Again, I've been reporting when I've seen them.
I also noticed that in at least one sentence, it expected a translation of female students, and marked simply "students" as wrong, which doesn't seem to track with other courses where it's differentiated in the target language but not in English. Again, I think I sent a report.
I love the course so far! Really amazed that I'm understanding so much, given that I'd never learned any of the alphabet until starting the course and have no experience with any other Slavic language. That's all thanks to the fantastic course y'all have created! (I mean, I'm struggling to remember everything, but I felt that way with Dutch when I had to learn when an adjective ends with -e or not, and now I don't even have to think about that rule, so I have hope I can become likewise comfortable with Ukrainian's rules!)
Two small things for Tips Notes:
In Food 1, there's a typo. It says tranzitive instead of transitive. I like the new spelling. :P
In Instrumental, in the second to last line in the examples, shouldn't there be a з before братом? (But if not, why?)
EDIT: and the line above that says "at" when I think you mean "eat."
Here's how to use real (non-phonetic) Ukrainian keyboard on mac:
- Open the keyboard settings in system settings
- Open the "input settings" tab
- Click on the plus in the lower right corner and add the ukrainian keyboard
- Click on the Shortcuts tab to the left of input settings
- Change the "input sources" shortcut to option-space instead of command-space.
- Open the "Keyboard" tab. Select "Show keyboard & character viewer in menu bar
- Now you have a little flag in your menu bar. Click on it and choose "show keyboard viewer
- Hit option-tab to switch from English to Ukrainian. The keyboard viewer shows the new layout.
- This isn't a phonetic layout but it's probably better to learn the real layout anyway.
- The keyboard viewer floats on top of the browser window so you can always see it.
when you first learn some words there are pictures. Do you plan on speaking the word when someone clicks the picture?
Thanks a lot for your great work! As for me, everything is OK. It was a great pleasure for me to start learning Ukrainian today with the help of your course.
I don't know where else to report this, so I'm putting it here:
In Present and Future Tenses Ukrainian verbs conjugate (change by person), but do not have gender. So looking at a verb in the Present or Past Tense you will not be able to tell whether a male or female person is/was performing the action. Here is an example with the verb їсти – to eat in Present and Future Tenses:
I think that the "past tense" in the middle of this grammar note should read "future tense"
Corrected. Thanks a lot! You can create a topic Troubleshooting Tips&Notes if you come across such mistakes, typos etc.
I didn't find such a topic, so mentioning here: the tips and notes for Numbers 1 mention age using Dative case at the bottom, but the chart column says Genitive (or rather Gen)
1936
Hello; I just tried a placement test, but after finishing it duolingo again gives me the choice to start from level 1 or to do the placement test... (And no, I could not possibly have failed all the questions on the test since I am a native Ukrainian, albeit a Russian-speaking one; thus I expect verbal understanding and UA -> EN parts to be nearly perfect, with most glitches being in the EN -> UA parts).
Is this a bug in beta?
Thanks!
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I know this seems a wee bit soon, and I'm not expecting it right away, but does anyone know a rough estimate when the app version of this language will be posted? And thank you for all of the hard work put into Ukrainian!! I've been stalking the hatchery page for the last two months daily to see when it would be released!! :D
It will be available in app after the course go out of beta https://www.duolingo.com/comment/8755551
I'm not sure where to ask this, so I'll just put it here.
Are you guys planning on having a sticky of a more exhaustive collection of topics on Ukrainian grammar? I know a lot of the newer languages out of beta slowly built these up, and they are very helpful; "tips and notes" can only get us so far.
Regardless, thanks so much for the course! I've actually been hoping for it since I joined DuoLingo. Hopefully now I'll be able to converse with my grandparents instead of only being able to use a handful of phrases and smidgeon of vocabulary.
Hello! Where would I suggest edits for "Tips & Notes" ? For example under "Food 1. Nominative and Accusative Case" I would change the bottom where it says:
молоко(milk) вино(vine)
to:
молоко (milk), вино (wine)
I believe вино is "wine" the drink and that a typo reads "vine" (the plant), I would also add spaces around parentheses and maybe a comma to clarify what the English word is translating, but the typo is the most necessary correction. :)
I would also love to help with table cell spacing if I can in any way...you guys rock!! :D
Are you going to have going have buttons to click for the Cyrillic languages, because I only have a Latin keyboard.
thanks for the advice, I found a way to use Chrome for the keyboard. I can't install any keyboards to the PC, because it's not mine.
Keyboards are pre-installed on any Windows/Mac PC... you just have to activate (install) them. You don't need admin/root privileges or anything like that.
I have a suggestion that I don't think you've covered. I've noticed that the newer courses all seem to have this problem, but:
Every single question should have full audio. I should be able to play the audio of each sentence and individual word, ad nauseam. See the French, Spanish, and more commonly used languages on this site for how to do this.
I agree. That would be a lot better. But only TTS (synthesized speech) can give you that. This audio here is real voice recorded. We didnt find a decent engine for Ukrainian. And recording or even editing/cutting up almost 4000 sentences into separate words... Well, beta would have arrived a little later))
Не знайшов окремого топіку для відгуків та помилок, думаю доречно це написати тут. Урок "Food 2. Accusative Case". А ще декілька разів бачив слово "м'Ясо" з великою літерою "Я" після апострофу, але відразу не зарепортив.
P.S. Дякую всій команді модераторів за те, що ви робите!
Намагайтесь одразу репортувати. "Other reports" - тут можна пояснити проблеми, такі як даний випадок з м'ясом..
- 2567
About the keyboard: have you considered something like translit.net? I don't think learning a keyboard layout is necessary for learning the alphabet. For people who don't need to type Ukrainian on a daily basis, installing a Ukrainian keyboard is a huge annoyance (same goes for any other language of course). The browser plugin can help, but it's inconvenient.
I am fluent in Russian and use exclusively translit.net for typing in Russian, simply because I rarely have the need for it. I also use it for the Ukrainian course in Duolingo. You should consider making this built-in (with the help of the Duolingo dev team).
- 2001
Thank you. I always struggle with a Russian keyboard layout when typing in Russian, so I may give this a try.
I have downloaded the chickenlip keyboard and it is amazing. It's good for people used to a qwerty keyboard, because the cyrillic alphabets that come already within windows had me totally confused as to which letters were which. Thankfully, using the phonetic one really helped me and I would advise others to do the same instead of going with the windows keyboard.
You can also quickly press left shift and left alt together on a windows to change keyboard input from latin/cyrillic. It's what I've been doing!
I was really looking forward to learning a slavic language, so this course is awesome. Thanks for your hard work!
Sorry, but it's all we have now. There is no proper Ukr. TTS engine so we had to record the sound. It was not a professional studio job and I had to manually clean up every audio file for noise reduction. The quiet sound is the cost for that editing.. I believe it is still ok for most speakers (even better for headphones).
"Complex Sentences" lesson 3 is missing. On phone it tells me to reset my session and on the website it just sends me back to the main page.
Thanks for all the work. Sharing Duolingo with my Dad because of your work. Thanks again
you need to add an on-screen keyboard like you normally do with the umlauts, because right now, in order to answer each question in the correct language, you have to go to settings and change the language each time you have to change scripts in order to answer.
What OS are you using? In Windows XP and up, that I know of, you can go into settings and put in a keyboard shortcut, I'm using left Alt+Shift to swap between languages which works out well enough.
Mac OS is generally a bit behind Windows in usability but you should still be able to use a keyboard shortcut.
EDIT: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH11251?locale=en_US
You can indeed, Space+Command apparently.
EDIT: EDIT:
http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/15173/changing-keyboard-input-language-on-mac-osx
This one has pictures.
i agree. right now im gonna have to wait for iOS version to come out because thats the only way to get the ukrainian keyboard for me. ill have to go back to the website to find information though
You DO need to add a button keyboard for when the users have to type in ukrainian. It may be more work but it would be worth it in the long run. A lot of people just like myself are gonna give up on the course because of our devices, when all the developers need to do, is add a button keyboard as they would do with any other course on DL. It is NOT that different. The other courses don't require us to download a specific keyboard for other letters, as this one does. It is almost exactly the same deal, so I am just asking you to PLEASE add a button keyboard. It would be so much easier for everyone. Thank You, and I hope you consider my suggestion. -CWL
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I don't know if this has already been answered somewhere, but I noticed it silently accepts и when і is used in the original Ukrainian word.
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And it accepts тс for ц, й for і and и, apostrophe for ь, иа/іа/йа for я, ие/іе/йе for є, іі/ии/йй/... for ї, and so on: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/8726406
If you're unsure if you spell words right, I recommend installing a spellcheck dictionary.
When we first start out, i would do two questions and it goes back to the start page, fix this please, 95% done and it may go unfixed
- 2001
I hadn't realized there was any way to enter Ukrainian other than shifting one's keyboard to a Ukrainian one. I must say, though, that I spend more time on other languages than I do on Ukrainian, because shifting between an English and a Ukrainian keyboard is so onerous. I had the same feeling with Turkish, but as soon as Turkish was available on my Android phone, I no longer had that problem, since the characters came up with just a slide of the finger. I know it may be a long way off, but when Ukrainian becomes available on the phone and tablet app, I will spend a lot more time on it.
- 2001
A Ukrainian keyboard is available, but the Ukrainian program on the Duolingo app is not available, as far as I know. They did just put Esperanto on, so Ukrainian is the only language on my Duolingo that I don't see on my phone, unless one needs to do something extra to get it.
As for the keyboard issue some people are having, I have been using keyboard stickers I found on Amazon and that has really simplified things. I only paid about $5 for mine.
I am encountering a lot of situations where the program says my answer is wrong, but shows as the correct one exactly the same answer I've written. The majority of these are in 'type in Ukrainian what you've just heard in audio'.
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Had that as well. You have to install a different keyboard. Try this, it solved the problem for me. https://www.duolingo.com/comment/9969991
There is nothing in that thread that makes sense to me as a solution? I am having this issue as well. I type in the answer and it says it is wrong or has a typo when I have an exact match to the answer. I'm using the standard Ukrainian keyboard on my iPhone, I don't see why that wouldn't work? It worked for the first two and half months of my using the app but now it's gone buggy.
So this is from 8 months ago and there is still audio issues at times.
Also I noticed when practicing french when I click on the words (like word matching or matching the translation to the image) there will be audio for the word once tapped on (at least in the app) but it doesn't do that under the Ukrainian one.
It is because French uses a text-to-speech engine (which can be ran on a whole sentence or a single word) and Ukrainian has real voice recordings for the whole sentences.
Oops! Sorry for making so many reports on things, when it was not accepting the typing. Figured it out now. Also trying to get the keyboard working, since translitteration is not the best way to learn.
