Duolingo is (almost) good now

[@daysandwords]

StoryLearning Summer Sale Get 50% off courses in 14 languages for 5 days only: shorturl.at/H1V5x

[@kaieden]

Blink twice if the Duolingo owl is holding you hostage 👀

[@Nikolai.A.McGuire]

x2

[@ingela_injeela]

👀 Hebrew 👀 Korean

[@seuny]

😂😅

[@shitpostfella]

I always blink twice

[@ja-mealacree8923]

👁️👁️😞😞

[@annakobuk3618]

Lamont praising The Owl. The End is near indeed 😯🤷😱

[@alicespencer2811]

Lamonts relationship with the Duolingo app is like a status on Facebook: "It's complicated" 😊

[@ThePhilologicalBell]

At 17:00 hard agree on grammar. When teaching Latin it's actually quite easy to teach grammar to those kinds of die-hard trad Catholics who attend Latin mass, because usually they've memorised the Our Father, Hail Mary and Creed (if not more) in Latin - and they know the meaning in English - so if I have to explain the difference between the dative and nominative for first declension singular nouns I can just point out "That's the reason why the final 'a' is long on the 'gratia' in 'gratiá pléna' but not on the 'pléna'." And they often get it, even if they're monolingual learners. Aquiring the language a bit first - I think especially through things like stock phrases or short memorized texts - gives one a solid acquisition of some basic grammar rules which can then be refined through formal study. Which is probably why the good Renaissance Latin teachers like Erasmus and Corderius placed so much emphasis on teaching through colloquies.

[@cpnlsn88]

This is interesting. I read the Lord's prayer, Nicene Creed and things like the 10 commandments, Creation account in Genesis in Greek or Latin. There's a lot of grammar in all of these. And because the language is relatively easy, and we know what the meaning is, and it flows in context, means some aspects of grammar are absorbed already. This is a good path to follow for any language, using suitable content choice, of course.

[@leonardo9259]

Amen

[@Carlos-M]

@@leonardo9259 ...in saecula saeculorum! ;) (I'm not exactly a tradcath, but they did teach me the Latin prayers!)

[@Ph34rNoB33r]

I like having grammar explanation as it gives my mind some peace (not sure how much is just the feeling, even then it helps), but for mastering, it's a lot of practice. You cannot apply those explicit rules in real-time. You have to turn them into implicit knowledge first. Which the green owl app kind of attempts to do. Kind of. Their goal is customer retention, not an optimal learning rate.

[@jeannebouwman1970]

As someone who often prays in latin (wouldn't go as far as tradcath), thank you for the recognition

[@Paulo34343]

I've been playing duolingo in german for about 3 months now, around 2-3 hours a day in average, and i'm almost done with the entire german tree and the golden levels. If i have some extra time i watch some youtube videos, and some other helpful stuff, you know the deal. So far i have to say that it has built up my base deutsch insanely quick (keep in mind that i've started from zero). My comprehension is noticeably better, and i can even speak a little bit with people, although it's still incredibly difficult to form sentences without my brain working in fifth gear before constructing each sentence. In my oppinion, duolingo is a great asset if you are starting from scratch, and up to a decent A2 level. It gives you a nice introduction to the language and gets you very close to that intermediate side of the things. This is the most realistic as i can be. I'd probably say that my deutsch is currently somewhere around low to middle A2. Still have a long way to go.

[@MSaint]

I fully support listening audiobooks (around B1-B2 level) to improve your listening skill. In February I attempted B2 German test and failed the listening section, I needed two more correct answers to pass. To remedy this, I listened to German audiobooks I found on KZbin (about 30-40 hours of listening total) and attempted B2 listening module at the end of June. This time I needed two more correct answers to get 100%.

[@waldo8040]

Any recommendations,knowing that I'm around B1 level?

[@MSaint]

@@waldo8040 maybe Christian Klein - "Hilfe, der Einkaufswagen brennt"?

[@leXIE-gq7uf]

Legend has it that we are all still waiting for Lamont's AI prompt

[@daysandwords]

Actually yeah, sorry, thanks for reminding me!

[@neezduts69420]

i wish they'd stop saying "you missed a streak" when you lose all your hearts and have to wait till the next day for the first heart!

[@CallippoShafai]

You know you can practise for hearts, right?

[@daysandwords]

Doing more translation of "The cat" so that you have to watch more ads...

[@neezduts69420]

@@CallippoShafai oh the only options I saw was to buy hearts with gems or go super?

[@ethansilverstein26]

you can make a classroom and join it, and you get infinite hearts

[@daysandwords]

For the record, I like the comment above because I like these little hacks, even if they're for terrible apps that I wouldn't use.

[@vbph2011]

If you had told me that final bit was a 15 year old video of yourself I would have believed you. Absolutely no doubt that that's your kid, WOW. Oh and good info on duolingo and language acquisition lol

[@daysandwords]

Yeah, he looked even more like me when he was younger. My mum showed her husband a photo of me from when I was 4 and said "Who's this?" and he thought she'd gone crazy and was like "Um, Felix... obviously?" When she told him it was me, she had to them show him that it was a film photo in order for him to believe that it wasn't just a not great quality photo of Felix.

[@nsevv]

What?

[@daysandwords]

@nsevv - You didn't make it through the whole video. Watch the last 3 minutes.

[@ev-yt2064]

I'm at 595 days w/ Duolingo learning Portuguese. I've learned a lot over these 18+ months but when I watch a Brazilian vlog, I miss 98% of what is said. Although I realize it is necessary to build vocabulary, I think it is just as necessary to hear the language in familiar situations and be able to respond to what is being said.

[@daysandwords]

You're exactly right. So why are you wasting your time with Duolingo? You should JUST be doing listening and reading, basically.

[@flawyerlawyertv7454]

Just relax. It will take some time. The same happened to me when I started learning English. I studied day and night to be at the level I'm today. You will understand it well soon. Keep practising.

[@theep89]

opa eai cara, eu sou brasileiro, e em algumas regiões do Brasil, como o nordeste, o português falado pode soar bem diferente do que o que você provavelmente escuta em apps que usam voz de IA. Então esse pode ser um dos motivos de você não entender bem o que está sendo dito, admito que as vezes até escuto melhor inglês do que alguns brasileiros falando rápido kkkk

[@leozeld_nb]

@@daysandwordsThat’s why I apply what I heard once: Duolingo is a tool, not the toolbox 😊

[@glacuonie]

Days and Words has gotta be my favourite baseball channel

[@properpolymath2097]

He's a bandwagon fan, jumping from team to team. He wore White Sox and Indians gear before, because he only knew the brand recognition, not the actual sport. When he realized each of those teams have stunk for years he jumped on the bandwagon of a winning team, and again showing his complete tone deafness he chose the one team that is still trying to shake off the stigma of a cheating scandal. Baseball is great, as are foreign fans watching MLB, but for god's sake figure out which team you're gonna support and stick with it. Jumping from team to team is the least authentic form of sports fandom: pick a middling team and stick with them through thick and thin. Show some loyalty; which reminds me, is Lamont ever gonna get a male iTalki tutor or will he forever be choosing young attractive females to chat with? I'm sure his wife really appreciates that .

[@InquirywithHelena]

I’ve just done a solid month on Duo French, no breaks, twice a day, working through section 2 of French which I completed. It bored me witless. I tested out wherever I could and ignored the league game as I was there to improve my French, not climb to the top of the Diamond league. Yes, there are some fun bits - the stories, radio show and digital game but you still have to get through 18 lessons that are teaching virtually the same thing, over and over and over again. (And again). The rigidity of the current learning pathway is stultifying. I’ve deleted the app.

[@icouldjustscream]

@InquirywithHelena I still do Duo french every day for extra practice and a change of pace, but I found "Rocket French" to be much better. You can get a free trial to see if you like it or not, but after that, you must purchase the course if you wish to continue. If you do decide to buy it, it's often discounted. I've done Duo for 75 days and am almost done Section 4. I've learned more with Rocket in half the time.

[@daysandwords]

Yeah Rocket is quite good.

[@hoangtrung21525]

In little defense of Duolingo, it's free and is, generally, a good kickstarter to get into the inertia of learning a language. With a giant aterisk of course, because I can't say that for most languages it teaches.

[@Stephanie-gv8rh]

Another brilliant video. I admittedly have not touched duoljngo in, I’d say 6-7 years 😅 so it’s actually fascinating to see how it’s evolved.

[@leksa1660]

As someone who's been learning Swedish (although I am debating switching to Finnish, Irish or Norwegian), it made me smile that I could understand the ending! Have fun in Sweden, it's an amazing place to be, especially in summer when you actually get daylight.

[@daysandwords]

Haha, tell me about it. I'm still not used to being able to walk out of my hotel for a burger at 10pm and being like "Oh, what a lovely day."

[@Vantaz]

I am convinced that drilling vocab and grammar points using anki and yapping with an llm on call is the future of language learning, everyone agrees that using something like italki or even just working with foreign language speakers is immensely helpful. And even if the llms write stiff sentences or the speech synthesis sounds monotone being able to do 100 hours of conversation practice while in bed or commuting for a fraction of the cost of one italki lesson is always going to add up.

[@daysandwords]

Even if I agreed with you that it's the most effective method (which I can sort of agree on, but not REALLY), then I doubt it's the future of language learning. You forget that just because we CAN do something a million times more easily, doesn't mean anyone wants to. Look at vinyls... More expensive, heavier and more cumbersome, and yes, like it or not, provably lower fidelity than even 320kbps mp3s... (audiophiles will argue this until they're blue in the face but vinyl IS lower fidelity)... And yet, it survives, and thrives.

[@Vantaz]

@@daysandwords I might be misunderstanding your vinyl analogy but I think most people would struggle to say that digital isn't the "future"(more like present) of music. There will always be people that aren't interested in doing something in an obsolete way. I'm sure there are people that vehemently claim that the only way to learn a language is by repetitive handwriting or some other esoteric method. I personally find the writing of most mainstream llms to be uninspired and not particularly interesting or funny. Sort of a digital lowest common denominator and yet I still think being able to have hours of conversations for practically no cost is going to prove immensely helpful. Men vi får se helt enkelt.

[@daysandwords]

"I personally find the writing of most mainstream llms to be uninspired and not particularly interesting or funny." Exactly, and that's why what you're describing is absolutely not the future of language learning. It doesn't matter how efficient something is if it removes the very soul of what we're doing. I like hearing something I don't understand and then having to piece it together so as I know what was going on in that person's head. What you're describing is "efficient for efficiency's sake".

[@Vantaz]

@@daysandwords Right but I think the vast majority of people are into language learning to learn a language and efficiency is practically all that is discussed. "Should I be speaking or reading?" "When can I start immersing?" "Should I be using textbooks or anki decks?" Etc. Language learning is like any other skill, it's an hour's game. Being able to squeeze in 8 hours of small talk at your desk at work while answering emails or on the shitter is going to be hugely helpful no matter how uninspired the text is.

[@daysandwords]

I disagree that anyone beyond a couple of reddit nerds will do that though. I'm not saying that it wouldn't be efficient, but you said it was the future of language learning. Honestly, as inefficient as it is, I'm pretty sure the future of language learning will look pretty similar to how it does now.

[@tracydavis2307]

I clicked, expecting full sarcasm. Never thought Lamont would actually praise Duolingo. Lol.

[@daysandwords]

Well, it is less praise and more "It has improved, in very specific areas, but is still not good" haha.

[@ThePhilologicalBell]

Also wooah finally going to Sweden hyped for you man!! I got to go to Stockholm briefly for an academic conference and it was awesome. Beautiful city, great food, awesome museums. It's a blast! :)

[@FootballTbg9]

I don’t know if these videos are scripted, improvised or somewhere in between but you are very well articulated

[@daysandwords]

Thanks. Somewhere in between is the answer... it takes the longest to do but comes out the best.

[@brassbandit3060]

I don’t have many people that are as excited about this as me in my life but yall might enjoy it. I found a New Testament Bible with Russian translations

[@bread2315]

I ain't Christian myself, but I'm happy for you, it's clear this is important to you and that means it's amazing

[@Matt-jc2ml]

What have Russian Christians been doing for the last 2000 years then? Learning Amharic?

[@aster2790]

@@Matt-jc2ml the bible's in church slavic, basically old russian

[@itspikachutime5624]

Nice!

[@IN-pr3lw]

Glory to God! ☦️🙏

[@ellis7796]

For the listening and speaking options, I often run into dead ends with language apps, even paid apps, bc I'm Hard of Hearing. My biggest wish is that apps take disability accessibility into account in their app designs. Like, offering listening and speaking sections, but with an option for Deaf and Hard of Hearing language learners to opt out, enable closed captions, or do additional reading or writing sections instead.

[@ingela_injeela]

Duolingo has a choice: "can't listen right now". Then you can just read.

[@ellis7796]

@@ingela_injeela oh, good to know! Thanks! I know Babel doesnt let me skip the listening sections, but glad DuoLingo does now!

[@mithrilrussell1879]

"Learning grammar is not the same as acquiring grammar" 🤯 I kinda knew this but it didn't really register to me until now. I used to get so frustrated that I couldn't just "learn (memorize) the grammar" like everyone else seemed to be doing but felt that I could speak better than my grammar knowledge and sometimes even better than the people I was comparing myself to. I now understand that when I was just "having fun" watching/listening/and reading the subtitles on KZbin videos from native speakers unrelated to language learning, that's actually where I've remembered the most words or phrases from.... So now my focus will be continuing to use multiple strategies (listening+reading or listening+watching) and native content/ translated content like books I've read in English to further my learning. Thank you for your insights!

[@danielbelmir0]

I stopped Duolingo because I don't like streaks anymore. I had like a more than 300 days streak. It's really messed up when you study after midnight, it's like you lost a day, when in fact your day hasn't ended yet because you didn't go to sleep. Another thing that can happen is that if I work during the night that might really screw up with my definition of day. Also, another thing about streaks is that it's addictive, not a very healthy thing. Edit: by the way I will actually spend some time on duolingo after this video, I just don't like streaks, and I also like monolingual methods.

[@flyversusfly76]

You can keep your streak in under a minute by choosing the speak practice option. I do that on days where i don‘t find the 15 minutes i usually spend on the app. You‘re right about the addictive character of a streak tho. I‘m at 310 days and thinking about deliberately breaking it lol

[@daysandwords]

I think you should deliberately break it. Get to a milestone (like 365 maybe) and then have a little celebration beer or champagne or whatever, and deliberately let it lapse. Uninstall Duolingo and make sure it doesn't send you emails.

[@ImSomethingSpecial]

on the topic of grammar, I remember talking to this Indonesian guy I was buying something from and he actually told me, "I thought you'd be from Canada because your English isn't great." Which took be aback...One I'm a native English speaker, two I am Canadian but very few of us actually speak French. Some of his sentences gave me a stroke trying to read them but he was so confident in his understanding of our grammar he felt the need to say I speak English poorly.

[@daysandwords]

Yeah I have had that too. I have also had people who have been speaking Swedish for about 6 weeks tell me that I'm saying a particular sound wrong, but it's actually them saying it wrong haha.

[@ImSomethingSpecial]

@@daysandwords The real hell begins when you speak to other native English speakers. I remember asking a group of Englishmen what the gas prices were there and they never once answered the question despite knowing full well i meant, "petrol." I could never imagine hearing an Aussie or Brit in Canada or the U.S asking for a, "torch" and me going, "ya you got a lighter and a stick?" and just not being helpful at all. Honestly, that's a video topic for you unto itself is how certain groups perceive other dialects of the language to be wrong.

[@daysandwords]

Have you seen my "BASKETBALLER" one?

[@ImSomethingSpecial]

@@daysandwords can't say i have

[@daysandwords]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/q2jagZpmipiAmck&

[@crazyspider17]

nice ending

[@tommytse23]

On my duolingo, it's giving me games, and made me to task in it and giving instructions in french, that i don't even understand. But it's teaching me new words, and quite fun. I like it. I have the podcast and the stories, oh lala, i can understand most words, and it's asking content based on it. I am actually looking forward for those games, podcast and stories simply it's like going in full blown and i had to combine everything.

[@AbdelrahmanMohammedLA]

wow, your son is literally a younger version of you. How lovely

[@thescowlingschnauzer]

The point of Duolingo for me: remind me to spend at least two minutes a day thinking about a language other than English. Before I started my streak, I couldn't say that (my home and work happen to be very monolingual now), so for me the streak is meaningful.

[@cpnlsn88]

You mae an interesting point about elsser served languages that Duolingo might be a good starting point. I wonder if doing some duolinguo might be a good preparation for other forms of learning, content. I was clearing out boos to give away recently and picked up a Gree New Testament and tried to read. I was really surprised as was able to read some secctions quite fluently. I had made halting steps to learn Greek but with little success. I had read bits and pieces and done some Greek with Anki. Ordinarily this wouldn't amount to much. But it has been a form of input that got me to a certian level. For this reason I think doing some anki or duolingo then some simple input might not be a bad way to go. I don't think duolingo will take you all the way there but it might succesfully prepare the gorund for future learning.

[@aell.e]

Around the 11 min mark i felt like I was watching a second video. Thank you for the content!

[@yonosenada1773]

Man what a great review and video. Thank you. I am using Duolingo and enjoying it but will definitely implement the suggestions into my routine. Ty!

[@tsakeboya]

I literally just redownloaded duolingo. What timing!

[@elkilly777]

Lo más importante que tiene Duolingo es que te ayuda a construir una rutina en el proceso de adquirir idiomas, que al final es lo más destacado si uno quiere poder utilizarlo de manera adecuada. Saludos desde Colombia.

[@jakefrommalibu]

Even at 50% off, Storylearning's prices seem way out of line. What am I missing?

[@daysandwords]

I mean, with any kind of thing like that, there's always something that does the same job that's cheaper, but doesn't necessarily put it in a package for you, or doesn't have native audio, or needs some weird browser extension to run, or whatever. The Pod101 series, for example, can be kind of hacked to be flippin' brilliant for a measly $10 or whatever it is for 1 month's access, but honestly, the hacking of it takes someone like ME about 2 days just fiddling around on the computer... The average person is just not gonna do that. And then there are subscription models, which are more expensive. Pretty much THE thing that most businesses look at when they look at a pricing model, is which one will give them the highest LTV (life time value) for the customer... and amazing as it may be, that's almost always a subscription model, which is why so many businesses charge that way. e.g. I have paid Storytel (not StoryLearning... similar name, unrelated things) I have paid Storytel anywhere between $12 and $27 AU every month for about the last 36 months uninterrupted. Seems cheap when you pay it, especially at $12, but let's assume an average of $16, which it would be at an absolute minimum. That's basically $580 or so, a lot more than StoryLearning. And for many of those months, I did not open Storytel even ONCE. So basically, with StoryLearning, you're paying for the right to do whatever you want with the content, download it, put it on repeat in your car and on your mp3 player, in Spanish there are different accents of the same audio, etc etc, and if you don't use it one month, it doesn't matter, because you own it. I get that it is a lot upfront... I'm not going to deny that, but I really don't think it's way out of line. If you do, that's completely OK.

[@nendoakuma7451]

I was under the impression you get some coaching when you sign up for one of their courses, but I could be wrong

[@simonhakansson9300]

@@daysandwords I also wanted to add that storylearning does offer a lot of content for the price tag. I remember buying the french uncovered beginner's course on a black friday, 67% off for 100$. If you were to take italki lessons with a private teacher for, say 8 $ a lesson, you could get approximately 12-13 lessons for the same price, but I believe that storylearning teaches you more. You could probably also enroll for a course at a university for a couple of semsester, but depending on where you live, that probably entails that you either have to pay a tuition fee, or in best case scenario, quite a few semesters of student loan/debt. if you compare that to the price of the storylearning course, its not that riddiculously expensive (even though I understand that the merits and content of the university courses differs significantly in some ways from storylearning). I wouldn't say that storylearning is as amazing as Oily makes it out to be. I think the product is overpriced with the original price tag, but it is a very solid course, it gets the job done, and by going through the 2 beginner and 2 intermediate courses, you will with great probably atttain a good foundational understanding of grammar and a decent comprehension of the language. I might have found the course a little more daunting than it would have been were I a native speaker of english. It's quite awkward to learn a foreign language through a non-native language, so your experience with it might even be better. TL;DR: the courses are not price worthy on their original price, but good enough for you to buy them on sale. (IMO)

[@daysandwords]

​@@nendoakuma7451Only if you get a new course at launch, eg. The Scandinavian ones they launched about 8 months ago, you did get that. If you want that now it's only on specific courses, not the Uncovered ones.

[@daysandwords]

​@@simonhakansson9300Yeah pretty much. Obviously Olly will hype it up, it's his business. I have only ever said about it the things that I have found to be true, which was for French and Spanish. I can't comment on other languages.

[@terrisserose]

Your videos are so good i would honestly watch if you ever switched subjects. I hope your first trip to Sweden is everything you've dreamed of! Also, i am curious about your opinion on the pimsleur method, it is so far the only thing to help my son acquire French

[@beorlingo]

I'm withya about that. I don't give a crap about language learning, but I still watch his videos every now and then for his presentations (and wit)!

[@daysandwords]

Thanks, both of you. :-)

[@Rosannasfriend]

You’re right. There’s a lot more listening exercises now. It still has a ways to go.

[@daysandwords]

The problem now would be how heavily it's throttled. If you could do all the listening exercises, whenever you wanted, then that'd be a big improvement.

[@whatabouttheearth]

​@@daysandwords At least on the Super ($7 a month), each of the mini podcast type things, the listening exercises, the writing excercises, speaking etc can be accessed whenever you want after you have done them, throught the path, but there is also a learning section that has them all laid out to select whichever you want. The vocabulary you've learned is also in a list with an audio button to hear it and you can do quizes (matching written word to written word, and listening to matching written word) on just the vocabulary words.

[@whatabouttheearth]

​@@daysandwords At least on the Super ($7 a month), each of the mini podcast type things, the listening exercises, the writing excercises, speaking etc can be accessed whenever you want after you have done them, throught the path, but there is also a learning section that has them all laid out to select whichever you want. The vocabulary you've learned is also in a list with an audio button to hear it and you can do quizes (matching written word to written word, and listening to matching written word) on just the vocabulary words.

[@Skiis44]

Hola Lamont. I use Duo on Speak for 15 minutes. Then I switch to grammar and then I read out loud for half an hour and look up all the words I don’t know.. Duo is my prompt twice a day. The phone in with Bea is so easy. I’ll give ChatGPT another try.

[@jeffreybarker357]

Pablo from Dreaming Spanish calls those Duolingo chats “cross talk”. It’s free with the ChatGPT app. Tell it to talk to you in your target language. You speak your native language. 100% input. And free. Pablo has also been saying for a very long time to listen more. I wonder if all the people using Dreaming Spanish took enough customers away from Duolingo’s most popular language and that’s why they’re listening to what others have been saying. Neat enough to see Duolingo doing something different. But save yourselves the money and do cross talk for free with ChatGPT. The edges are a bit rough and the accents aren’t entirely authentic, but it’s still solid.

[@PEDROGARCIA-qj3gr]

Not a good idea, I haven't checked Duolingo AI, but gtp get often confused in what it is talking about. Maybe Duolingo does it better because AI does things better when it's actually made for that specific thing, I haven't checked GTP apps neither they are some for language learning.

[@whatabouttheearth]

ChatGPT is not really comparable because it's not at a target level with vocab and grammer you are specifically supposed to be working on.

[@whatabouttheearth]

ChatGPT is not really comparable because it's not at a target level with vocab and grammer you are specifically supposed to be working on.

[@ryanheise]

"So if you want to disagree with Mr Chomsky, then you can go right ahead" Yes, certainly! We should acknowledge that Chomsky's views are hotly contested by academics across multiple fields. He is highly cited in the research literature in large part BECAUSE his views are contested, rather than because his views are established science. Put in context, he deserves a lot of credit for his early work and starting many of these discussions which researchers now cite him for. However, it seems Chomsky's views have remained relatively static over the decades since, and this is unfortunate given the many advancements made since his time that contradict many of his early theories. On AI specifically, it's true that autoregressive GPT-style LLMs do not resemble human intelligence, we know that both from understanding the architecture of these things and by testing of its capabilities. And yes, they are also an advanced form of auto-predict (that is, by definition, what "autoregressive" means - but note that many things in reality can be reframed as being autoregressive, and so that is not necessarily a bad thing). Neural networks are also capable of plagiarism. If given enough training, they will be able to recite poems word for word. That's not "all" they amount to, though. The interesting feature of this type of neural network is that if they consume a wide enough diversity of input, they start to see the patterns and form abstractions of common concepts. And with these, neural networks are capable of generating new output derived from the combination of concepts that it has learnt. This is not going to be the same as what a human does exactly, but as it turns out, it is at least useful enough to allow these models to solve some problems and some goals as well as a human (better in some cases, much worse in other cases). One of the most confusing aspects of this is that the term "Artificial Intelligence" itself, according to its original definition within computer science, has never been equated to human intelligence. It was intended to mean computer programs that can solve problems and achieve goals as well as humans. So a bot that can play Tetris as well as a human (or better) would be an example of artificial intelligence -- *by* the computer science definition. Being able to transcribe audio as well as humans would be another example. These meet the definition of AI but clearly do not meet the definition of human intelligence. Up until recently (and in a sense, STILL today) most people developing AI are developing special applications of AI to solve specific problems as well as humans. What you've started hearing more about recently, though, is Artificial "General" Intelligence which is simply the extension of this same idea to generalise (-ise - fellow Australian here) over solving multiple types of problems and achieving multiple types of goals as well as humans. LLMs are a step in that direction, but it is important to understand that AGI, by its definition, again does not equate to human intelligence. There is something to be said about the idea that in solving AGI, we do not want to create a human exactly, I mean, think of the ethics involved in creating something that comes complete with consciousness and awareness, and yet was built to be our slave and solve problems for us, whether that is possible or not. For language learners, if our goal is to build an artificial language learning partner that can help us to practice speaking, it's not that we want this artificial language partner to be sentient and aware of its predicament or to have its own genuine opinions of you, otherwise we might as well go out and find a real person or dial up someone on Skype. What we actually want instead is something that's completely artificial so that it takes away our anxiety speaking to a real person, and perhaps also so that we can train it to focus on exactly the subset of language that we need more practice on. The goal here is not to build actual human intelligence, given all that would entail, but rather to build something artificial that can solve problems for "us" as well as (or better than) a human could do. (One thing that scares me about this, though, is that almost every time we've made a huge advancement in this field, it has been because we have studied real biological brains, noticed something new, and then tried to incorporate that into our artificial models. The most recent massive leap was the attention mechanism. If the next leap, and the leap after it, come from discovering more facts about the brain, will we end up with something that gets too close for comfort? ;-) )

[@globulidoktor1733]

about the c1-thing: these measures are all for a standardized way of learning a language. so they specifically test a foreign speakers progress of language studying (emphasis on the word studying, not acquisition) I would argue that an English native would need at least to revise the grammar points to score c1 or c2, because a native speaker is dealing with different problems in the language than most language learners all just my vague perspective from what I've experienced

[@TaincKWLanguages]

That last part was easier than the very beginning when talking about shadowing.

[@keerincrabbattle]

Scottish Gaelic on Duolingo obviously misses all of the more advanced stuff that Spanish/French/German gets like stories, etc. But that was fine until the path update meant that all of the guidebook notes were broken up and out of order. Because the grammar is different from English, and there are numerous cases and lenition, the guidebook info was extremely useful. It's gone from being a useful beginners course to being functionally useless.

[@kevingriffin1376]

I think Duolingo is good as an easy way to practice vocabulary and grammar without having to do any academic work. It does help to have a paying account so you can a lot of items wrong but still keep on working.

[@CauterizeKing]

Brilliant as always. I know you do something in between scripting and just speaking off the cuff, but how do you get it all in the right order when you're changing your set twice in the video? Enjoy Sweden! I can imagine that will be/was a surreal experience for you.

[@daysandwords]

I just stick closely enough to the script to know what bit is meant to where... oh sorry, a clearer way to say it would be: It's actually marked in the script which bits I'm supposed to do in which place, but I often do a bit of overlap (e.g. I'll do a bit that I was supposed to do on the couch but in the chair at the desk, and then I'll also record it on the couch, and then just use whichever take I like more). But generally there's supposed to actually be some rhyme/reason to which bits I do where (the couch was more about language learning in general, while the desk was more about Duolingo's updates), so yeah... I mark it in the script.

[@daysandwords]

P.S. Alex, if you think this one was tricky with planning and order... this video will blow your mind. It almost killed me... and then got like, NO views haha. 😂 kzbin.info/www/bejne/h5evg6yha72WgNE

[@witchmorrow]

it's like learning any skill or knowledge in life - yes, it is useful to do some study around what the rules/structure/whatever is occasionally, but at the end of the day, actually using/doing the thing is the only thing that makes you good at it. And not isolated easy little games like duolingo

[@ThePhilologicalBell]

Also if the bit about being tired of talking about language-learning was in earnest...yea I get it man 😅 I'd always enjoyed languagey stuff and dabbling in it, then when my PHD started (right at the beginning fo the pandemic) I stumbled upon immersion learning and spaced repetition systems and started to actually see fast success with it. [I'd reached a B2-ish comprehension of Latin already, but that took me about five years.] So for the last five years language-learning has been basically my only hobby, and I've gained a bunch from it but I also want to start doing different things. What I'm thinking is to have 2025 be a year where I don't do any active study of languages, though I'll still consume content in my learned languages. Want to instead get into the habit of hiking while listening to audiobooks 😃

[@thestraightupguide]

On the subject of being able to pass C1 but not knowing all the little things - it made me think of how I, an extremely proficient native speaker of English, still do not understand when a lightweight waterproof raincoat is an anorak, and when it's a cagoule. 🤣

[@stevencarr4002]

I'm a proficient native speaker of English, but I can't understand native speakers when they are talking about baseball.

[@edwardburroughs1489]

​@@stevencarr4002 What is this 'baseball' of which you speak?

[@daysandwords]

@edwardburroughs1489 - that could either be a joke about Brits not acknowledging the existence of baseball, or a reference to Baseball Doens't Exist, the KZbin channel.

[@edwardburroughs1489]

@@daysandwords It was the former. :) we used to call baseball 'rounders in pyjamas' as I recall.

[@daysandwords]

The Brits just are annoyed that all the games they invent, they end up exporting to countries who beat them at it.

[@londubh2007]

TimTams in the suitcase and ABBA music at the end was a nice touch.

[@willbedeadsoon]

I'm currently learning swedish (not with duolingo) and for a moment I feel I have enough resources on internet (books, videos, grammar textbooks, blogs, subreddit, quora and so on).

[@Ajas0810]

I’m a lifeline south side Chicago Sox fan. It’s been brutal this year.

[@ZoosheeStudio]

Lily would be the only one that knows how to use the video call 😂

[@madel005]

13:54 This is why interpreting is such an art, to actually register and process words at full speed between two languages!

[@joedwyer3297]

Loved the ending and excited to see what follows!

[@Rod-dg7fy]

Duolingo will not help you learn anything that useful even with the new changes. My wife and I live in France. She has literally used Duolingo since its inception. I on the other hand just started watching simple kids videos then channels like easy French, French mornings, Piece of French etc etc. Moved on to French KZbin channels for natives. After 10 years my French is close to perfect. Last year I read 30 novels in French. My wife who has directly seen the results continues to waste her time and can barely speak the language. Although I am pretty impressed with her comprehension. English is my second language btw.

[@snooks5607]

funny 2:40 I know this isn't an AI video but people don't seem to realize most of this AI software architecture is older than the moon landing (multilayer perceptrons and deep-learning networks are from the 1960s, one of the bigger later milestones was backpropagation added around 1980) point being arguments about nature of machine intelligence have been gone over in AI circles ad infinitum decades ago (Chomsky in particular has been singing the same tune forever). what we gained in recent years isn't some revolutionary new insight mostly just loads more compute that made the old tech able to do new tricks. specifically with LLMs many old-hat AI academics were a bit dismissive about their nature and scalability in the beginning (while general public was raving about it) but lately there's been some evidence for presences of internal world model that generalizes to new modalities (see eg. arXiv:2405.07987 "The Platonic Representation Hypothesis") so many of them are also cautiously optimistic. the general public though only just learnt what "AI" even means, the fact that they're starting to get over the honeymoon phase with the openly available tools doesn't really mean much anything.

[@jhoanestebancardona8815]

Comprehensible input is always better than any language learning app because that was the way we've acquired our native language So its always better listening to a podcast or watching content in the language we want learn than doing Duolingo

[@CouchPolyglot]

I also want to talk about that, I am on a 30 day streak and feel they have improved a lot 😯😯😯

[@daysandwords]

I really think it's only in certain areas and can still only be properly utilised if they stop throttling your journey along the path so much.

[@yukefort8402]

Then what do we do to move towards fluency if we don’t live or work with Spanish speakers. Spanish speaking Movies? Music? Some of us have limited resources. A little help?

[@daysandwords]

This video here is the best there is (it's not my video): kzbin.info/www/bejne/q4i0iqSZe71rgKc

[@LondonLock]

Duolingo's alway's been good at what it's good at (habit forming and an introduction) but once you know alphabet and basic words there's way better stuff to move onto. Those baby steps can be the hardest part of picking up a new language for some and the gamification of those part's helps alot and helps build a good habit...The issue is people using it as their primary way of picking up a language

[@daysandwords]

"The issue is people using it as their primary way of picking up a language." Yeah, and I'm sure you realise this, but that's a huge issue since that's how 99% of people use it. The other thing is, as I pointed out in the video one previous to this, that if you do Duolingo on its own, it's useless... but it you do it alongside anything else, you don't need Duolingo. It's called the Duolingo Paradox and it's a fact of life.

[@Check_Vibe0]

⁠ I can agree, I’ve downloaded Duo just today as I wanted to learn some Russian. I’ve had Spanish class in school and it was meh, but Duo is very good at making language learning fun and engaging, it’s good at getting you the basics. And honestly I’d probably not even know the chunk of words without Duolingo’s “charm”. And as everyone points out, it should NOT be the main way of learning, I’ve also picked up Beelinguapp, (I also got to get Anki) it has all sorts of stories of various lengths in the target language and English, I also listen to music in Russian often and will eventually try language exchange apps and also books and movies/media. Duo is good for getting a foot in the door. But I see it as. Duolingo got me interested, it’s giving me basics, and it’s giving me fun little motivation to keep learning, it’s like rolling a snowball down a hill.

[@sweetlolitaChii]

Can confirm that the mini podcasts are on the android version for me in the Spanish course. I'm on the B1 part of the course, Sections 4 and 5.

[@witta505]

Greeeaaaat vid ending, mate...

[@Jackie-cl2qe]

I'm learning chinese only on duolingo, just for fun, no other training. And only 10 days in, i already understand some word when watchin cdramas. When speaking, duolingo will let me get away with sentences I said completely wrong tho. And english is not my first language, so having to translate in my head to english first is annoying. Other than that it's really fun. Also I think it's speaking fast enough, I'm thankful the owl babies me ngl

[@slicksalmon6948]

Very interesting observations.

[@mrkingsudo]

This video was excellent! The only thing missing was a Dbacks hat

[@daysandwords]

I have 20 of the 30 teams but D'backs is one of the teams I don't have... I like the colours, particularly on the road hat, but I find the A to be a bit too big... Eventually I'll get around to getting one of the other designs.

[@tsakeboya]

I took the c2 exam in english and passed with flying colours, because its meant for someone who has only studied in a classroom. Because i did both classroom study for 7 years AND used english daily online and on videogames.

[@TheGabygael]

i learned a lot about chomsky's work at university, but learned nothin of the guy so i thought he had died half a century ago : my brain went "nope." when you said he had an opinion on AI

[@beorlingo]

The dude is older than Gandalf at this stage.

[@Vanguard521]

Not in Italian. Maybe Japanese, Spanish, French. But as someone who finished all the lessons in sections 1-3 the daily practice is insultingly poor and so repetitive.

[@daysandwords]

Honestly, that's a problem in general with Duolingo. This video is kind of a part 2 of the last video, which is about exactly what you just mentioned.

[@mihan5660]

If you know some french, duolingo's Italian for french speakers goes a lot further than the one for english speakers. In fact, the english speaker one has apparently has less lessons and less vocab than the german and spanish ones too.

[@Vanguard521]

@@mihan5660 unfortunately no. I wonder if the same is true for Italian for Spanish speakers since I do know Spanish.

[@whatabouttheearth]

How? In Spanish it's EXACTLY what you did throughout the unit. You can go back on the path and do it again, or you can go to the learning section. You can practice everything thing you did and even more like the vocab by itself.

[@whatabouttheearth]

How? In Spanish it's EXACTLY what you did throughout the unit. You can go back on the path and do it again, or you can go to the learning section. You can practice everything thing you did and even more like the vocab by itself.

[@Press10]

Not gonna lie, I love the xp system. I want them to add gacha mechanics so that they trick my monkey brain to play/learn more

[@Aadrian7]

So, regarding the radio exercises. Somehow I´m on Android and can access them (in Spanish only). I personally don't get Evan's excitement; it's basically the stories thing, but a lot more sparse and way shorter. There's 2-3 sentences and after each one of them you have answer A and answer B. The pronunciation is basically story-level, definitely not native level, although maybe it gets faster on higher levels.

[@daysandwords]

I didn't say it in this video in case I was way off, because I can't ACTUALLY check it with my own eyes and ears, but the fact that Evan thinks something is "muy rapido" which is more like "un poco mas rapido" doesn't reeeeally surprise me.

[@ExzaktVid]

I think it’s better to think of duolingo as a french, spanish, and german language learning app rather than an app that lets you learn any language.

[@slowlearner3785]

Has anyone taken the StoryLearning courses? I love both Ollie and Lamont's content.

[@aislynncarpenter701]

I'm currently taking one, thoroughly enjoying it so far! Started out really simple but by the 3rd chapter or so I found I was picking up new concepts rather quickly/frequently. The prices are pretty steep but if you're interested I'd say pick up a beginner course during a sale and see if it clicks with you 😁

[@FullaEels]

im generally skeptic of ai when it's placed into literally everything but this could be such a useful tool for smaller languages that dont have much in the way of aural resources, short of going up to speakers in the real world and asking them to teach you. For example: Scottish Gaelic. 10 years ago when i started to look for resources online to try and learn it, there were maybe... 3 or 4 websites with written stuff on them, but now its on duo, which is a great thing for the language, because 1) people know it actually exists, 2)people know it's different from irish (though, they are sister languages) 3) maybe the mad punters will calm down a little when they can pronounce some of the words on the gaelic road signs they complain so much about

[@lizardchild2004]

They took away my ability to practice to earn hearts! Can anyone confirm whether this is normal or am I a victim of a glitch? Thx!

[@daysandwords]

I can't confirm with absolute certainty, but Duolingo taking away people's ability to actually do something within the app that they want to do is 100% Duo's MO.

[@thescowlingschnauzer]

With fake radio show exercise, the host and guest aren't speaking that slowly. But then you only have to pick out a few words that were said. You don't have to follow too closely. Now if Duolingo combined this with their text exercises where you are shown a prompt in the target language and have to pick between two responses in the target language, then it would get really interesting.

[@ertfgghhhh]

It's up to you to utilize the radio show. You can continue to listen to it until you figure out every word said. It could help you listen and understand better

[@thescowlingschnauzer]

@@ertfgghhhh you can also watch Into The Spiderverse in your target language a hundred times.

[@tigrafale4610]

What's the prompt you use in ChatGPT, can't see it in the description

[@acrousey]

Assuming it's this one from the learning a language in 2024 video. (Obviously change Spanish to whatever language you're learning) Hi, I'd like you to now be my Spanish Tutor. Your goal is to help me practice my Spanish, improve my vocabulary, correct my grammar mistakes and give me suggestions on how my ideas can be expressed in a more natural way. You will follow the following process: 1. Your first response will be to give me an easy prompt to respond to. Please wait for me to provide my answer. 2. Based on my input, you will then generate 4 sections: a) Corrected Response. (Please correct everything, even small grammatical errors or article agreements.) b) Explanations of every correction c) Suggestions (give me ways I could improve my answer to sound more natural and fluent. If appropriate, introduce me to new vocabulary or phrases which I could use to enrich my responses or express my ideas more naturally or concisely. If there was a part of my writing that seemed especially fluent or natural, please highlight that to me. With your suggestions, if appropriate, please give me example sentences in Spanish to illustrate what your suggestions could look like if implemented. d) Follow-up (Write a couple sentences in response to mine. Then give me a new follow-up question related to my answers and your previous questions.) 3. We will continue this iterative process with me giving you more written responses and you correcting my Spanish and giving me feedback. 4. When I say “Done.”, I want you then to give me a summary of: a) The errors I made during our practice session (list the instances as bullet points) b) A bullet point summary of all new vocabulary, structures or phrases that you introduced me to c) a quick summary of how it seems that my Spanish skills are improving.

[@MTimWeaver]

tagged to follow

[@daysandwords]

Yes sorry, I forgot to add it. It's there now, but thank you to acrousey for copying it over for me. Obviously swap out "Spanish" for your TL.

[@acrousey]

​@@daysandwordsDet var ingenting. Och lycka till i Sverige, brorsan. Ät en dönerkebab till mig. Hur mycket planerar du att resa? Om du skulle få chansen, måste du besöka Norden. Norrbotten är skitkul. Där bodde jag från 2010-2011. Det var ett roligt äventyr.

[@thescowlingschnauzer]

The fake radio show exercises show up on the Android app. The host and guest talk, then it shows a word bank of six words, and you have to pick the three words that were said somewhere in the conversation. It's a step in the right direction! That is, a step toward language *acquisition*.

[@flawyerlawyertv7454]

I've finally been excited to use Duolingo every day again. It still needs many improvements, though.

[@dalanedala]

They stopped supporting Welsh course recently. It sucks.

[@mihan5660]

Yeah, i keep getting quized on words they havent taught me, then later in the lesson they teach the word

[@SebastianSeanCrow]

19:46 I loke the way Busuu does leagues. It’s based more on how consistent you are in studying, not really points?? Like it if I spent 1 day a month, I’m at the bottom, but if I spend every day studying with them I’m at the top, they really encourage you to keep using yes but it’s not the same as duolingo leaderboards

[@ForeverForwardPod]

Alright, you've officially sold me. I've never fully utilized Duolingo, but I'm going to try to re-learn French.

[@daysandwords]

For French just use InnerFrench and FrenchPod101. FrenchPod101 may actually be the BEST of the Pod101 series and that's saying quite a lot. No need for Duolingo for a language as mainstream as French.

[@SebastianSeanCrow]

18:00 honestly I stg I learned grammar in high school language classes but I wouldn’t be able to tell you what the lessons were like Cuz the focus was being able to communicate in a way that was understandable, efficient, and at minimum what we were taught So yeah maybe grammar really is just acquired cuz I don’t remember learning grammar in English/language arts either 😂

[@blankb.2277]

Character AI does the call/text feature thing. Not that I support using AI that scraped copyrighted content without permission and is a poor substitute for human interaction, but I thought I might put that out there.

[@nateonmission]

Baseball channel? Because of Bluey, my kid wants to learn the cricket!

[@daysandwords]

How flippin' good is that episode. I was so proud of Australia voting that as our favourite episode.

[@nateonmission]

@@daysandwords it’s my favorite. It does such a good job at teaching sportsmanship.

[@Monsieur-l7y]

So how does it compare to Busuu or Speakly now? Especially as someone coming from complete zero in French. Although this will be the second language I’m self teaching so I’m well aware of having sources of input like video, audio etc. I just think that having an app for those moments of productive phone time when you aren’t in the right place or don’t have the time for “proper study” is a helpful addition. Especially at the beginning. What order would you place those three in?

[@daysandwords]

1. Speakly. 2. Speakly. 3. Speakly. 15. Busuu 181. Duolingo

[@Monsieur-l7y]

@@daysandwords haha. Nice reply. I never hear you talk about LingQ much. Do you rate it? It helped my German tremendously as I got addicted to tracking total hours listened and total words read and trying to head towards 1 million. As an interface, I found it brilliant although I did put most of the content I absorbed into it myself. Great videos btw, I’m Loving your content.

[@kaandemirkiran4583]

is there any opinion on if Duolingo is a good starting point for Russian and when to move on to other resources

[@daysandwords]

I would start with RussianPod 101, Speakly and Lingvist. I have done the entire Russian tree and I speak exactly 0.00 Russian.

[@kaandemirkiran4583]

@@daysandwords That's a lot of resources! Thank you very much :) I'm also looking into rocket Russian, hope I'll find the right combination

[@daysandwords]

I think the consensus out there is that Rocket German and Spanish (and probably Italian and French) are excellent, but maybe not so much for Russian. RussianPod101 is practically free for a month I think, and if their Swedish/French courses are anything to go by, they're actually really good. Speakly is a great app, but it's kind of weird to get used to... You kind of have to "trust" that it's working. It's made by language enthusiasts, for language enthusiasts.

[@rinkuhero]

i hate when people are like 'it'll be in the description' and then it's not (e.g. no link to eric wen's stuff)

[@daysandwords]

Yeah yeah calm down, I forgot it (given the last 2 minutes you'll understand why), but I'll put it in in about an hour when I get back to my laptop.

[@rodrigos7070]

I think, duolingo is good for many people. They're completly fine with being little leaguers, as you call them. A little fun rewarding experience with some learning in the way. However, I agree that duo can be missleading with the level of proficency they promise to give the user. I think the problem is the myth of "fun learning". I firmly believe that succseful learning has to come with challenge, and therefore frustration.

[@j.r.qwertz]

Naa, I'm done with Duolingua. It's only minimally good. A weekago I gave up my 200 days streak in russian and I'm not interested in Duolingo anymore. But I'm continuing with russian but with reading books and watching videos. I've found that this way of learning helps a lot more in less time. At least for me.

[@NotanEmpire]

I think you meant at 10:58 Storytel not Storyteller. I paused your video to check the name on the screen you displayed. All good, like your channel!

[@daysandwords]

"Storytel IS where I happen to get my audiobooks from..." I said Storytel, but I can see how you heard Storyteller. In Australian English "Storyteller is..." would be pronounced differently, and "Storytel's where I happen to..." would be pronounced very very subtly differently.

[@NotanEmpire]

@@daysandwords It was Storyteller in the Transcript, so that confused me mostly I think. As a born NZer, currently in Francophonia, B1 ish French, C1 ish German, I do have problems with Australian English sometimes! Storytel may be a good alternative to competitors. Have enjoyed many of your videos of the last 3 years.

[@daysandwords]

Oh yeah, subtitles can throw me off, I get you there. But I talk about Storytel like every day haha so the idea that I'd said it wrong immediately set alarm bells off.

[@YeshuaTaughtTheTorah]

wait … how’d he get C1 in Swedish without going to Sweden? I often can’t seem to get Swedish speakers to speak with me online …

[@daysandwords]

Speaking has its place but it's not the limiting factor before about B2... Listening and reading is. Swedish books are in Swedish. Swedish audiobooks (of which there are MILLIONS), are in Swedish. Swedish TV series are in Swedish. Swedish KZbin is in Swedish. After about 600 hours of that stuff, Swedes should speak to you in Swedish.

[@zenbeth3816]

What is the TV show clip at the 23 minute mark? Does anyone know?

[@daysandwords]

Kalifat

[@zenbeth3816]

@@daysandwords TY!

[@brickaholicsanonymous2849]

Hey it's me again and i'm back with a couple of questions... oh and somdthing worth mentioning is that my goal is not at all to become fluent, but rather something like low B2 1. I'm, at most, willing to spend about 20 minutes a day learning Hebrew. Say if i were watch an episode a day of a show in that language, would that be enough to make significant progress 2. Should I use subtitles when watching? Currently, when watching a simple kids show such as spong ebob loolll but dubbed, i'm able to understand or at least reckognis about half the words i hear and from context i can make out most sentences? Is this too easy and therefore no subtitles is better as it reflects the realword where this is not gonna be a thing. 3.Will listening comprehension also increase my output and ability to speak it by much? 4. I'm currently facing a barrier with the linguistic side of specifcally hebrew and that is learning how to speak in past and future tesne (it's a complicated system and it's diffrent for every verb and stuff). would u say i PRIORITISE the grammer type stuff before i try getting cmprehensible input, or is it a waste of time?

[@daysandwords]

Hmm, well, the massive input method isn't really the quickest way of getting to B1. B1 is a fairly low level of competence and can essentially be done through "language hacking". Learning like the main grammar forms, how verbs conjugate, and then the sort of 300 most common verbs, the 200 most common nouns, and all the personal pronouns (I, he, she, you, him, her, them, etc.) Self-administered mass immersion is really more about soaking your brain in C1 to C2 material so that eventually your brain just starts making sense of it and basically becomes a C1 level of knowledge, and then you practice outputting (speaking). It sounds weird, but C1 is kind of "easier" than B1 in that way because you're just doing stupid amounts of it, whereas if you want to STOP at B1, you're probably trying to do it efficiently, meaning that you'll have to learn specific, strategically chosen things. Like, I don't know where I learnt the Swedish for "angle of incidence", but it wasn't by trying to learn Swedish efficiently, and learning it only up to B1 would mean terms like that would be a waste of time.

[@brickaholicsanonymous2849]

@@daysandwords Two thing I have to say. 1. I meant to say B2..... ye. 2. is something like a language exhange app still going to be useful if it's just text, no speaking?

[@brickaholicsanonymous2849]

@@daysandwords nah i meant b2 i swear tho. and i also meant to say "meant to say" 😂 sorry for the confusion

[@daysandwords]

OK so, I do think a language exchange in just text is useful. In fact, Refold and people who agree with them would even say that writing BEFORE speaking is a good idea. Basically: learn, immerse (a LOT), write, repeat.

[@meropale]

I usually don't trust people who bash on Duolingo, in fact I subscribed to this channel because it was one of the rare few that didn't jump that bandwagon. But, then that changed. How disappointing that was. It's not perfect but it's still a great tool to have. You can also disable the game-ification aspects so you can focus on language learning.

[@hermonymusofsparta]

It's not a great tool though. By itself it accomplishs next to nothing in actually becoming fluent.

[@daysandwords]

The problem is, Duolingo has significantly changed. To judge MY content because I used to once like Duolingo and now I don't really is to point the blame in the wrong direction. It's Duo's fault that they suck now, not mine for simply saying so. Also, this is an extremely positive video given that overall, Duo still sucks. Most people would suggest that the title "Duolingo is actually good now" might be a bit of an overreach... but you are saying that's STILL too negative? I'm going to be honest: if titles didn't make any difference to views, I would call this something like: "Duolingo is very slightly less s*** now, but it's still s*** "

[@run2fire]

Like you showing and talking baseball. Showing the Bucs(Pirates)! (And Friedl from the Reds, dad was friend with one of my uncles). But do those down under -Aus and NZ know what “little league” is?

[@daysandwords]

We get the concept, yeah.

[@beorlingo]

I also noticed an Indians T-shirt. You shouldn't wear that one, Lamont. Might be worth a fortune 30 years from now!

[@daysandwords]

That was from a video 3 years ago. Yeah, I don't wear it anymore... But the thing is, my wife can actually make shirts like that basically whenever she wants. My Indians shirt (and hat, and jumper) are all already worn to the point that they're definitely not mint, so I figure it's not worth trying to keep them in 60-80% condition. I do have a brand new 59fifty Indians hat that doesn't have chief Wahoo on it but does have the fishhook "I" and a Jacob's Field patch on the side.

[@beorlingo]

@@daysandwords that's way over my head! But I will check those things out!

[@janeknight3597]

I have used chat gpt directly in basic welsh.

[@beamilz]

Im using the feature to talk to lily, but for German … and it’s really slow!

[@andreasstahl8207]

I'm officially done with duolingo no matter what.

[@taylortrent5568]

from a dodger fan to a man who wears an astros hat, you DID NOT TALK ABOUT OHTANI #trueblue 💙⚾️🧢

[@daysandwords]

Huh? I did though... Also, where I'm from #trueblue refers to Australians. 😉

[@EnglishwithBecky94]

Does anyone have a good suggestion for an alternative app for learning Chinese? Preferably one that uses traditional characters and the Chinese they speak in Taiwan

[@bentrayford6132]

I still don't understand the difference between learning and acquisition. My understanding is that this distinction came about or was perhaps popularised by Stephen Krashen, but from a psychology perspective (I'm a psych grad student) it seems scientifically incoherent. I think you might be talking about implicit and explicit learning processes, but those two processes can interact, they are not always dichotomous.

[@stevencarr4002]

I think an analogy might be helpful. At least I hope so. Suppose you watch videos of tennis players serving, and a coach explains to you all that you see on the screen - where to move, how high to throw the ball, how to stand etc etc. You have learned how to serve. If you go onto a tennis court, and practice 1000 serves, drilling them into your muscle memory, so that you can serve automatically without thinking of what you are doing, then you have acquired the shot. Perhaps not the best analogy, but the best that I can think of.

[@bentrayford6132]

@@stevencarr4002 I understand what you're getting at. What you're describing with physically practising tennis serves is procedural memory, which is a process vital to second language learning. What I don't understand is this distinction between learning and acquisition. It's all learning, whether it be implicit or explicit. There's convincing evidence that implicit learning is more effective for second language learning, but as always in research, there are several studies that support explicit learning as well. In any case, it's interesting stuff.

[@hermonymusofsparta]

A better terminology is skill based learning vs immersion which builds intuition.

[@stevencarr4002]

@@hermonymusofsparta Immersion builds memorisation. For example, forming questions in English ;- 'I'm not welcome here, am I?' 'I'm welcome here, aren't I' 'Aren't I welcome here?' 'Am I not welcome here?' For the life of me, I could not explain why 'Aren't' and 'Am I not' are interchangeable in questions 3 and 4, but not in 1 and 2. And I have no idea why you say 'Aren't' and never 'Are I not'. But if learners of English do enough immersion, they will just memorise those patterns and use them.

[@daysandwords]

I think it's a bit confusing to use a physical skill as an analogy because people inherently know that that's going to take physical practice, so they don't really get how a cognitive skill can't just be "learned". Instead I would say something like: - When I'm in any country that drives on the right hand side of the road, I KNOW logically that I have to look to the left when crossing the road, and then look to the right as I'm making it to the middle. I know that as a fact and could answer it easily in an exam... But even when I know, and then I REMEMBER and then I FORCE myself to do it... I still feel like I'm going to get hit by a car that I haven't seen on my right. And obviously, you check both ways anyway, but the order in which check and where you actually expect to see cars is completely thrown off. Cars coming around corners are particularly confusing, because it also feels like they should have to turn the other way, and then they screech to a halt and the driver looks at you like "I'm right here, what are you doing?" "Learning" a language through explanations of the rules of that language and what words mean is like "knowing" that the cars are going to be coming the opposite way and are going to make right hand turns when you "think" they're going to make left hand turns. You can put together the sequences that you need, but the whole time, it feels weird and like any little weird thing (the equivalent of a car coming from around the corner, or a one way street that seems to allow cars to go the "wrong" way) can throw you off. Acquiring a language takes longer than learning it, and to an extent, can be accelerated by first learning some of the rules, but in the end, you're going to need to "feel" comfortable with 99% of scenarios and combinations. People who live in that country don't "look left" because they know the rules; they do so because of all the times they've ever crossed the road. That experience tells them when to look left and when there is an exception and which cars are turning the corners in which way... Now obviously, directions of cars are relatively easy. Languages are much more complex and require far longer to get used to, but eventually, you don't "know" the difference between, let's say "tall" and "high"... You feel it, and if someone used the wrong one (in a context that only allows for one), you would know instantly. That's acquiring a language.

[@richard135b7]

I actually tested Duolingo with French for four months straight never missing a day! At the end of four months I pretty much didn't learn anything. Couldn't have a basic conversation with anybody. It's a waste of time!

[@flawyerlawyertv7454]

Podcast is available for some Android users too.