FurbyZeKat wrote: ↑Mon Mar 27, 2023 12:40 pm I won't try Portuguese because I already know a bit from the Duolingo Portuguese course (which I find pretty good, with stories and good guide books).
Hmm, several Portuguese Duolingo story cartoon character voices (Junior, one annoying girl) from the recordings more often sound very nerve-wracking for some stories.
I did a few more Portuguese stories and hopefully I will get back older ones from the LTS project or from those threads listing removed story links.
Compared to very extensive Spanish story sets they seem to have stopped any Portuguese work.
..(...)..
Then this is even better (for Portuguese).
Busuu can be a complement in that case with other more difficult challenge types, reading (full) texts, hearing audio/video,...
Maybe I can say more in the future if if I'm not completely locked out of every Portuguese A1/A2 lesson for a quick review; that's unfortunately the case at the moment with several exercises and grammar lessons / tips in French.
Only want then to find the harder stuff in there and pick that up...
Not sure how slowly they're teaching the Romance basics and Portuguese grammar
(this contraction and preposition or aquilo/isso/isto, naquilo/naquele/naquela, disso/desse/dessa, neste/nesta/nesse/nessa & a, à, para, ao/em/no/na, por, pele/pela,... nightmare)
which Duolingo was teaching step by step, splitted into 1-4 sub skills for each contraction number and associated skills in the correct order with the Portuguese update from summer 2018 from volunteers.
Howevery this old PT course structure (tree) is long gone with the new path/snake.
FurbyZeKat wrote: ↑Mon Mar 27, 2023 12:40 pm
Btw, I'm learning from French, considering their system, I'm assuming that all language course are the same, regardless of the base language.
Yes, I think so.
I stuck to English as the base.
Switched them at least once for a quick test.
That's a Pro for Busuu then, like Mondly.
Different base languages (multiples) but one course curriculum progress in the target language and you can switch back and forth with the source/base language.
Duolingo courses are very different designed (old classic vs new CEFR) and the classic volunteer PT->FR course hardly provides any grammar tips
(it's nice to compare grammar and similarities between two Romance languages, isn't it?).
One day maybe I'm ready for this laddering, but not with removed Portuguese typing on the Web portal. That's half of the fun to be forced to construct PT sentences on your own - without any on screen word bubble hints.
..(...)..
Having to read all written Busuu very detailed grammar tips in Portuguese (as a native) might be a bit overwhelming for me with French, surely for last year, when you start from scratch.
Would be some fun to switch to Portuguese as the base to see the tips written for partial reviews or getting asked Portuguese comprehension questions and seeing longer sentence examples.
..(...)..
The A2 French Busuu course from lesson 40+ still looks kinda intimidating.
The Subjunctive gets taught in B1 section.
But I'm now with "Dr. French Grammar University" and "Fastlingo" apps, so I'm certainly a little better equipped to look up a difficult concept from the outside with external resources.
FurbyZeKat wrote: ↑Mon Mar 27, 2023 12:40 pm
I should try Russian, because I've nearly ZERO knowledge and this would be a real test, but I think it would be a loss of time.
Unlike French/Italian/German/English/Dutch there is no short separate Russian Pronunciation course available.
Do you see any specific pronunciation lessons in the first section?
These were also included in the French course here and there, with videos from teacher (French native speakers), how to correctly pronounce single letters, words (e.g. u vs ou, to drop consonants at the end, liaisons) and example sentences.
However, there at least is a dedicated Russian alphabet course explaining the 33 letters.
I can't view any Russian course content in my account.
FurbyZeKat wrote: ↑Mon Mar 27, 2023 12:40 pm
Did you learn any language as a true beginner with Busuu?
Only French.
But my learning is not complete yet.
But as I said before: You can't compare this with Arabic, Turkish, Asian languages, Russian.
I had 5+ years of Romance basics (with Portuguese) under my belt.
So I was not a "true true French + Romance language beginner" when I started with Busuu end of 2021.
I'm struggling a bit as I lack some French vocabulary, can't easily pick up phrase constructs (from dialogues texts without writing everything down).
My French listening for now surely is worse than my Brazilian Portuguese as it was NOT slowly developed (on Busuu) and too often I fell over the audio lessons.
- The Android Accessibility TTS "Select to Speak" feature is great and I heavily rely on it for single Busuu FR sentences which don't all have uploaded audio files.
- "Hi translate" Android app supports English translations from French and others where FR examples or phrases lack written EN translations.
Nice complement and the OS Accessibility integration mode is also supported so it works nicely within the Busuu Android app
- Simply drag the "Hi Translate" magnifying glass from the left menu (side border) to the target language sentence/word.
Single word tapping and hearing the spoken French words - like Duolingo is doing it - isn't necessarily the worst to start with a language from scratch, to be honest with you.
Without too quickly overwhelming text dialogues, pure audio/video listening, etc. and a quick pacing which only a low-intermediate (= very FALSE beginner) could easier pick up.
Duolingo Portuguese in comparison didn't prepare me optimally for the speaking part in my first 1.5 years (end of 2016 to 2017 and H1/2018).
I really need to try Portuguese (or Spanish) and see how similar or different that Busuu course is from A1 and A2 French.