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Infernal streak

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SweNedGuy
Belgium

Infernal streak

Post by SweNedGuy »

My 666 days streak is the ideal occasion to post this Langfocus contribution on DuoLingo.

Over 100 million souls possessed (500 million according to Duolingo).

Attaining this on 16/06/2022: Two more sixes in the date with the digits of the year also adding up to six... this is a twice infernal streak. In bowling an infernal strike ;-)

A disclaimer by Paul: In this video I explain why you sometimes encounter strange, creepy, or shocking sentences while using Duolingo!! A lot of people don`t get the joke, but this video is not meant to be taken seriously :)

Speaking :netherlands: :fr: :uk: :es: Learning :de:(B2-) :it:(B1) Image :sweden: :portugal: Image (A)

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Corinnebelle

Re: Infernal streak

Post by Corinnebelle »

Is that why we have a bear talking?

🇺🇸 L1 🇮🇱 Advanced beginner Duolingo levels

Languages without borders, languages bridging gaps, the Red Cross are my heroes.

Cristian
Kiribati

Re: Infernal streak

Post by Cristian »

I don’t think this is true

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Drymice

Re: Infernal streak

Post by Drymice »

on my school account, it's restricted lmao

I'm as dry as a mouse.

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SweNedGuy
Belgium

Re: Infernal streak

Post by SweNedGuy »

A nice coincidence, just for the record: when checking on the bronze streak league (between 1 and 2 years) the below position:
https://duome.eu/bronze/16666
gives you DL users with a 666 days streak.

Speaking :netherlands: :fr: :uk: :es: Learning :de:(B2-) :it:(B1) Image :sweden: :portugal: Image (A)

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SweNedGuy
Belgium

Infernal streak, trees and logs

Post by SweNedGuy »

When to subscribing to Duolingo in August 2020, the main objective was to learn Swedish. With Dutch as my mother-tongue, Swedish is relatively easy to learn. There are more cognates than a native English speaker recognizes. Soon I started dabbling a little into Romanian and Polish, which isn't a good idea. I didn't speak nor understand either of them. Learning one language from scratch is difficult enough as an endeavour for any mortal. I soon logged the Romanian and Polish trees, and there is no trace of them in DuoMe.
If dabbling can be permitted, it ought to be in a language you have at least some notion of.

Eventually I chose Italian (which I once learnt in the early '90's). Refreshing and learning Italian has been welcoming and fun. When continuing Swedish got a bit tedious near the end of the tree, switching over to Italian allowed a 'learning pause' without any streak break. In the mean time, I discovered that it is actually possible to learn a language from my native Dutch. Speaking English and French, the only option was German. I spoke some elementary German from my school days and the initial 47 skill course wasn't a real challenge. The German course was eventually extended to 78 skills, which made me learn something new and refresh long forgotten vocabulary.

Europeans have an inclination to 'laddering': learning a language not from your mother tongue but from some foreign language you happen to speak. Apart from some expats, English is not the mother tongue in continental Europe. Hence, many are 'laddering' by necessity. While cranking up the level of the Swedish tree to gold, there was time for one more experiment: learning a new language from a related one. Portuguese from Spanish seemed to be the obvious choice. There used to be a flaw in the placement test, which allowed skills tested out of to turn gold. This isn't a good idea for learning a 'new' language. Somehow, I needed to deliberately make some mistakes in the placement test to turn the skill level to 1 (dark blue).

I nearly need to apologize for grossing up on crowns with a relatively low total XP count. Learning on the website (instead of the app) partly explains this: the website is stingy on XP: no boosters, no happy hours... Trying to stay in 'diamond' requires avoiding a too competitive environment. Placement tests and chapter transition tests also make a lot of difference: plenty of 'level 1' crowns while earning only few XP. The same accounts for cranking up the crown level after two flawless lessons. This is especially useful early in the tree for a language which isn't completely new to you.

The 'owl gallery' now consists of one L5 golden owl for Swedish, three L3 (red) owls for Italian, German (from Dutch) and Portuguese (from ES). Two more owls are blue of neglect: Italian from French and Portuguese from English. Esperanto and Catalan are 'projects planned or in development'.

Speaking :netherlands: :fr: :uk: :es: Learning :de:(B2-) :it:(B1) Image :sweden: :portugal: Image (A)

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Corinnebelle

Re: Infernal streak

Post by Corinnebelle »

That is an interesting read of your story. Did you find it easier to learn from your native language or from another one?

🇺🇸 L1 🇮🇱 Advanced beginner Duolingo levels

Languages without borders, languages bridging gaps, the Red Cross are my heroes.

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gmads
Mexico

Re: Infernal streak

Post by gmads »

Corinnebelle wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 8:36 am

That is an interesting read of your story. Did you find it easier to learn from your native language or from another one?

From my experience, I'd say it is best to use both languages if possible, as any structures that may not be similar or clear from one's native language, they could possibly be closer to the second, or third, language used as a starting point, or viceversa.

Maybe is not worth the effort, but while most of the target sentences may be the same in both source languages, here and there one gets a few different ones, so, a tiny bit of extra learning material.

Given that we usually start translating, studying a new language based on two other ones might lessen this "translating" process and motivate us to start thinking in the target language.

Finally, it may make the learning process more enjoyable.

🦎  Imagination is the only weapon in the war with reality.  🦎
Antinomy - Imagination

🇲🇽 :us:  ·  :it: 🇧🇷  ·  :ru: 🇦🇪

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SweNedGuy
Belgium

Re: Infernal streak

Post by SweNedGuy »

German and Dutch share over 80% of their vocabulary. For a Dutch speaker, learning German from his native tongue is easy.
The same argument is valid for Portuguese and Spanish. Even though both languages share close to 90% of the vocabulary, the orthography differs quite a lot. You quickly develop a 'predictive skill' of what a word most probably sounds like in Portuguese... but always expect some embarrassing mistakes.

Speaking :netherlands: :fr: :uk: :es: Learning :de:(B2-) :it:(B1) Image :sweden: :portugal: Image (A)

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MoniqueMaRie
Germany

Re: Infernal streak

Post by MoniqueMaRie »

SweNedGuy wrote: Thu Jun 30, 2022 10:15 pm

German and Dutch share over 80% of their vocabulary. For a Dutch speaker, learning German from his native tongue is easy.

Whenever I had contact with Dutch people I was fascinated how easily they switch from their own language to German or English.

for myself: I grew up with a German dialect and was used from my early childhood to understand more than one German dialect. As a child I considered Dutch as just another one of these and not much more difficult to understand than bavarian or plattdüütsch. I never understood the Cologne dialect. When I try to understand anything the Cologne group BAP sings I need subtitles.

Nowadays, since I'm more involved with Romance languages, I have more difficulty with Germanic languages than I used to.

Native :de: / using :uk: / learning :fr: :cn: :it: / once learnt Image / trying to understand at least a bit :poland:

Chrisinom
Germany

Re: Infernal streak

Post by Chrisinom »

In my experience it's not so difficult to switch between languages. I have been involved in several European language projects (Comenius for schools) and was able to switch quite easily between English and Italian. The only problem was that I often ended up speaking English with our Italian friends and vice versa. I only find it difficult to switch from Italian to Spanish since they are pretty close. Also, I get problems after living in Italy for a long time when I want to speak English with a native speaker living there.

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