Are the Swedish lessons abandoned?

[mahlerrd]

Has anyone heard of a single time where any issue with lesson content has been fixed in the last year in English learning Swedish?

I come across the same sentences** over and over again with slightly wrong hints, missing hints, completely wrong hints, mucked up voice***, and other problems. I report them, but nothing ever changes. Some issues are so obvious that even with a quick look it would be obvious there is something wrong.

Many have discussion going back years complaining of the same issue. More often than not, though, they are newer questions with no discussion.

** I assume that sentences are diagrammed/hinted once, and that pool of sentences gets pulled from depending on need, so that if for instance a hint was wrong and got fixed, that sentence would have the fixed hint anywhere the sentence showed up.

** August. In August 2022 the voice got faster and now has maybe 1 in 10 or 20 where it is just too jammed together. Was this a "my progress" thing, or did it speed up for everyone in August?

[Corinnebelle]

The Hebrew course was made years ago and hasn't changed for years. It suffers from some of the same problems.

[SansEspoir]

I'm currently working on making the Swedish course Legendary when I have enough lingots, and haven't ntoiced too many issues. My main problem is that they are very strict on accepted translations, and aren't as relaxed about it as the norwegian or danish course, for instance. So I have to remember to tell myself there is only one acceptable translation, and it should be as accurate as possible.
They are generous with the typos, but not the words they prefer, even though one word could have several different translations.

[Explorer]

I'm currently working on making the Swedish course Legendary when I have enough lingots.

I recently found out that legendary levels are free if you have less than 10 lingots. So don't worry if you run out of them.

[SansEspoir]

Ooh really? Because I've been told before by duolingo to wait until I have more or buy super... Which obviously won't happen after the snake introduction

[mahlerrd]

"Snake" being the new one size fits all path? Hadn't heard it called that, but it fits. I should hang out here more to catch the gossip.

I am not a huge fan of the new path, but I don't find it as bad as some folks make it out to be. My biggest problem with it is that before it switched me I tried several times to do the "hover" method (which is the dumbest name), and it does not suit me well. I like to work on a single topic at a time. But of course the new path forces me to hover because hovering is built in. It hasn't been as bad as I feared, but I did prefer the slight bit more control over what I was going to do in the old way.

Also, legendary- I am still stuck! I was 100% legendary on the old path for where I was, but when I transferred over I think I got moved too far ahead. There are three units that when I transferred were set as completed but not legendary. I tried the first legendary star but didn't make it to the second milestone and bombed it completely. "What even is this word?" I have been practicing but practice is worth so few points I am loathe to do it too much. Still, I am getting close I think. (There is another thread here on that topic)

I need another way to practice at times.

[SansEspoir]

Yeah, it's refered to as snake here and on reddit from what I've seen.

I find it rather horrible. It doesn't give me enough repetition (I prefer going gold before moving on to new content), and then suddenly throws me in deep water with new stuff. Level 4 and 5 is gone, and have become the new legendary, it seems. The conversion was also bad, it threw me way too far ahead on the italian path, and when I tried to catch up via more repetition, it only gave me 5xp per lesson no matter how often I did it, so I didn't know where I was or how to catch up. Gave up and restarted it, and still not loving it. Even though the content so far is easy, I do notice that the course feels stressed because it moves on quickly rather than giving me the repetition I feel I need. I will stick to the internal page as long as I can, and if it ever fails I hope duome will continue to be able to make me do the old tree via the progress page.

Yeah I had the norwegian course legendary too, before the update, and then they suddenly removed half my progress there. Yet another annoying thing about the path. But I saw here, or on reddit, some people had scrolled down to the last tower and gotten a test (for gems/lingots) that then restored it, so at least it's fixable if you care what the snake looks like at all.

[mahlerrd]

Level 4 and 5 is gone, and have become the new legendary, it seems.

Ah, this makes so much sense to me and it explains my current difficulties.

Also completely agree with you that the repetition is not adequate. I hadn't identified that as the problem until you mentioned it.

One last thing I noticed: the personal practice feels like they are spitting in my eye. It is largely filled with all the lessons that have wrong hints (that's why I got them wrong in the first place!) and lessons where I have to transcribe Swedish into English but the voice is indistinct or muddied (and there is no "slow" button for those) so I have difficulties.

What do you mean by
I will stick to the internal page as long as I can

? Is there some trick to get around some of this still?

[mahlerrd]

Oh wait, I do know of some things in have plenty of repetition on.

"Citron", "läser", "hundar" and a few other items from the first few lessons. I get them over and over and over. Almost every "matching" lesson has 4 out of the 5 be pulled from a group of about 10 words from very early on in the course. It is tiring and more importantly is not helping me learn the new words well.

Frankly I wish I could pick what kind of lessons to do. I think they are trying to make the practice hub do that, but nothing useful is on Android yet. While I understand their motives and the way they are trying to teach, sometimes I wish I could just spend 15 minutes doing the audio-match lessons or the word-match over the vocab in the lesson.

[Corinnebelle]

[mention]mahlerrd[/mention]
I will stick to the internal page as long as I can

https://www-internal.duolingo.com/learn

[SansEspoir]

Ah, this makes so much sense to me and it explains my current difficulties.
Also completely agree with you that the repetition is not adequate. I hadn't identified that as the problem until you mentioned it.

It really feels like they just made this decision in order to please some new design dude who had never actually used the site/app as a learning tool before, rather than something they did in order to "make learning better", as they claimed.

One last thing I noticed: the personal practice feels like they are spitting in my eye. It is largely filled with all the lessons that have wrong hints (that's why I got them wrong in the first place!) and lessons where I have to transcribe Swedish into English but the voice is indistinct or muddied (and there is no "slow" button for those) so I have difficulties.

I've found the socalled personalised practice to just focus on things I feel like I master in italian. By now I know "io sono, tu sei" etc. What I have been struggling with is how much things change based on who does it, like "io mangio, tu mangi, lei mangia" etc. In "scandinavian", and english (which some scholars apparently claim should be considered scandinavian), it's easy. I eat, you eat, they eat, we eat" and so forth. But do I get to practice that? No, I get "io sona una ragazza" (I am a girl) a million times over.

What do you mean by "I will stick to the internal page as long as I can"? Is there some trick to get around some of this still?

Yes there is
As [mention]Corinnebelle[/mention] already mentioned, it's works via this link, for now. https://www-internal.duolingo.com/learn When this site failed last week or something, it also worked via the DuoMe progreess page. For you, that link is https://duome.eu/mahlerrd/progress

Oh wait, I do know of some things in have plenty of repetition on.
"Citron", "läser", "hundar" and a few other items from the first few lessons. I get them over and over and over. Almost every "matching" lesson has 4 out of the 5 be pulled from a group of about 10 words from very early on in the course. It is tiring and more importantly is not helping me learn the new words well.

Exactly. The snake-path just seems to repeat the first lessons over and over and over, without much learning being done.

Frankly I wish I could pick what kind of lessons to do. I think they are trying to make the practice hub do that, but nothing useful is on Android yet. While I understand their motives and the way they are trying to teach, sometimes I wish I could just spend 15 minutes doing the audio-match lessons or the word-match over the vocab in the lesson.

Yeah same. I feel like I need to practice more on some completed lessons, but not others. They have taken away my choice to do that, because they seem to want everyone to get the old tree to level 1, then 2, and so forth, which is how they originally designed it. But then many neurodiverse people found out they learned better by going gold here and there any everywhere. which then caused new users to be confused about the best way to learn, rather than finding their own way.

I also hate that they don't streamline between ios, android and website, because it seems a lot of the frustration is coming from android and website users, whereas the ios users are more like "I don't mind it so much now that I got used to it" a few months in. And I've seen it explained that it's because they focus more in ios, because ios users pay more. That may be so given the price of those damn things, but their original mission was to help people learn for free.
I understand that server costs aren't cheap, so I've said before I don't mind the ads. But I've actually turned my adblocked on on their website now, rather than off, because of this update.

[mahlerrd]

Oh, perfect, "internal page" meant "internal to Duome". I should have realized that.

because ios users pay more.

I pay them as much as they will let me pay them; I have the family plan, and frankly can't get any of my family to actually do any lessons even though they keep saying they will, so basically I pay for 5 people and use one.

And an update: matching seems to have all of a sudden started to be over half new words, and they are mixing up the "old" words more so it isn't the same 10. If they stick with this, it will be fine. Coincidence that they are doing this right after I mentioned it? I am sure it is, but it is still something that makes you go hmmm (To quote C&C Music Factory)

And the scholars are wrong. English is sufficiently different if only from the view that it isn't a V2 language. But they are probably living in their own little scholastic bubbles. Verb second is still vastly confusing to me - the simple cases are fine and easy enough, but the less simple cases are baffling, and discussion on them seems to start with "subjunctive clauses" and go downhill from there. . I am a technical professional and while I have excellent grammar (when my phone isn't autocorrecting my prose into nonsense) I was never good at diagramming sentences. Not even School House Rock can help me tell an adverb from an adjective.

I did recently realize that Swedish had some things I recognize from growing up in very rural very southern 1970's Ohio, namely that it sometimes phrases things like my Kentucky neighbors do. "Jag lär mig svenska" is literally "I learn me swedish", that repetition of I/me reminds me a lot of Kentucky, and it isn't the only phrase those thoughts pop up in.

[SansEspoir]

No, the Internal site is on duolingo.

And here's one of the articles mentioning this theory. Although he seems to compare it more to norwegian than swedish. I have since since several articles discussing this topic. And some seem to agree, some to disagree. It's an interesting debate none the less.
https://partner.sciencenorway.no/forskn ... ge/1379829

[mahlerrd]

https://partner.sciencenorway.no/forskn ... ge/1379829

Thanks, I have that link bookmarked as reading material for some upcoming down time I have. Sounds fascinating, though I am sure their criteria is different from mine.

No, the Internal site is on duolingo.

Oh, sorry, sometimes I forget Duolingo even has a web site because of how awful I found it to use most of the time and how some things I do twice a day in the app aren't available (or weren't last time I checked - the early bird and night owl chest to double points).

This is only partially due to the web site itself (oh my gosh, so many clicks with the mouse ), it also involves that I am a non-gaming IT professional that has worked from home for 5 years and has only the minimal sound system on my PC to catch a meeting or two.

But for now it is off to go blow snow. 8" (20cm) last night, and another foot (30cm) coming in the next few days. (All US->metric conversions done poorly in my head)

[mahlerrd]

Sorry, I should have read this closer:

In "scandinavian", and english (which some scholars apparently claim should be considered scandinavian)

I see the point in the article and cannot argue with it. Somehow I was thinking... Well I no longer remember exactly what I was thinking, I just had a broken thought and it leaked out. My apologies.

[SansEspoir]

Haha no worries

I have generally prefered the duolingo website because I hate typing on my phone, and don't really give a shit about XP or any of the other things the app prioritizes. The only benefit is that a phone is more convenient to carry than a laptop, so when out and about, doing a lesson was no big deal. This snakepath update has kind of ruined that for me.

[mahlerrd]

I cannot "not care about" the points.

If Duolingo at any time presents how I am doing against other people, my ADHD cannot easily disregard that information. I can try, and in trying I can soften the effect, but I cannot remove it.

I am about done with paying them $$ each year, if I could only find some alternative that was actually effective.

And don't get me wrong I am happy to pay the money. I only complain that it is twisting me into competitions I do not want and cannot disregard. I wish I could pay money and be allowed to TURN OFF the other junk. I do not need to be "incentivised" to learn. As it is I pay money to be constantly warned about how I am only barely catching up to some other folks.

[SansEspoir]

You can turn off the notifications, and even leagues, I think. But yeah, I'd pay too if they actually were teaching languages rather than just giving a bunch of translate-commands.
And now without any explanation either, as the path has taken away the notes.

[mahlerrd]

And it appears they've taken away the classes too. I saw some that looked interesting last fall, but hadn't had a chance to investigate further. Tonight I did, and found that Dec 8th they said they were killing the classes as of Jan 18th.

sigh What exactly is Duolingo doing?

Oh. IPO was August 2021. I guess they're concentrating on optimizing revenue now, not teaching.

[Basler Biker]

Maybe not entirely ... it seems there has been some update, since the snake was introduced.

viewtopic.php?p=75309-swedish-from-engl ... its#p75309
and
viewtopic.php?p=66460-swedish-from-engl ... its#p66460

BB