Duolingo Journey of Panya Mnyenyekevu…

[panyamnyenyekevu]

[I edited the title in order to post my future duolingo “achievements” on just one thread rather than start multiple threads in this subforum.] [I’ll hopefully add to this thread if and when I make it to the next milestone of 2,000 days.] Posted to the “official” duolingo forum.

https://duolingo.hobune.stream/comment/56483809

A little sloppy and maybe a little silly but i don’t care. It was hard enough to just put forward the effort to make a post.

[Deleted User 114]

1000 days! Congratulations!

(For some reason, your post is not showing up in the "New" section, at least for me. I can see your post by clicking on the link, but other than that, I can only see two other posts in the "New" section.)

[panyamnyenyekevu]

Thanks so much, Jacko. Regarding it not showing up, could it be because I posted it in the Swahili section and you are looking in another section? At any rate, I’m ok with it being overlooked. At least you saw it.

[Deleted User 114]

Yes, I was looking in the “Duolingo in English” forum, that must have been why I didn’t see it. Well, congrats on hitting a 1000 day streak!

[Fnirk1]

I have seen your post, and upvoted it.
I like your spirit.

I too love the Swahili course, but I'm not that far.

I too like to try out a lot of courses, even with different base language.

[panyamnyenyekevu]

When I was in high school I took Russian. It was a public school too! When I was in college, I took Arabic. I was the only student in that class! Even so I was never a serious language student. Even now, my approach is seldom “serious.” But when I was in college I was inspired by Russian and Arabic to create my own alphabet for a language I wanted to create. I have done little work on that over the years but it’s always on my to-do list.

I have always wanted to be a polyglot (polymath too). I feel duolingo brought me a lot closer to this goal.

My niece and nephew were enrolled in a language immersion elementary school. That’s apparently an ideal approach since children’s brains are said to be primed to learn language, less as we grow older. I really wish we would teach all our kids to be polyglots. Perhaps we could achieve a future of peace this way.

Thanks for reading it and upvoting it. With jacko’s feedback in hand I switched the forum for it to the one that is apparently more noticed, hehe.

[Corinnebelle]

I saw your post on Duo! Nice. I gave you a lingot!

Congratulations!

Twiga, chui, tembo, simba! Have you ever read Paul White's jungle doctor books or fables? Got a lot of African language in them, I learnt some animals and expressions there although they aren't all swahili, I think he speaks a dialect too.

https://archive.org/search.php?query=cr ... lton Hume"

https://archive.org/search.php?query=cr ... 1910-1992"

[panyamnyenyekevu]

Haha Corinnebelle, no i haven’t! Love that you could list these animals. I shall look at these. Thanks!!

[Deleted User 279]

Saw your post in the Duoilingo forum. Love your personality and congeniality - even when addressing a rather negative comment.

(Please list your self-help techniques here....)

Congratulations on your 1000 days and blessings for many more days to come!

[panyamnyenyekevu]

Paul I started typing a response to this and then I kept typing and typing. One long paragraph after another. Then something weird happened so I decided to save my writing, work on it and reply to you later.

For now, just this: I think the most important thing we can do, as a language learning community, is inspire and encourage each other. These positive responses to my effort have done that for me and shown me that I am doing that for others. I’ll say a lot more tomorrow! [edit: some time perhaps, rather lol]

[panyamnyenyekevu]

(And in typical internet fashion i failed to paste what i copied and will have to start over. My parents are coming over for dinner tonight so i need to prepare for that but tomorrow, I’ll get back to this.)

[Corinnebelle]

Haha Corinnebelle, no i haven’t! Love that you could list these animals. I shall look at these. Thanks!!

Habari!

[panyamnyenyekevu]

Mambo! Asante. Umeshindaje?

[Corinnebelle]

Mambo! Asante. Umeshindaje?

Jambo! I'm afraid that's about the end of my vocabulary. Although I do remember some words for clear out and also shut up! The kind of things you learn when you're a kid from the missionary book.

I nearly said Habari mzee! But then I looked up mzee and it means an elder. I figured with you having parents it wouldn't fit!

[panyamnyenyekevu]

Yes, well, I’m 49 and my parents are in their 70s and in good health, with active minds, and a good sense of humor. I’m lucky. They just moved right up the street a little over a month ago. I served them a sort of tuna-salmon melt pancake sandwich, fried artichoke hearts and some boiled carrots with butter. We watched a 1959 film by Robert Bresson called Pickpocket together. Thanks for interacting!

[Corinnebelle]

Yes, well, I’m 49 and my parents are in their 70s and in good health, with active minds, and a good sense of humor. I’m lucky. They just moved right up the street a little over a month ago. I served them a sort of tuna-salmon melt pancake sandwich, fried artichoke hearts and some boiled carrots with butter. We watched a 1959 film by Robert Bresson called Pickpocket together. Thanks for interacting!

That's great! Fancy meal! Sounds like you enjoyed your evening!

Do we have to worry about putting our ages on here? I know you can put an approximate age without giving your exact age. On the other hand Duome is probably safer than Duolingo as far as hackers. I don't know what the rules are here either. It may be what your comfortable with!

[panyamnyenyekevu]

One absolutely should not feel obliged to talk about anything personal on here and of course no one should feel obliged to disclose their age. (Was that your point or did you mean something else? Personally I am not afraid of being known for who I am on the internet. I had a twitter account with my actual name, photo and city on it once.) Yes, I love when my parents visit, esp. because they so appreciate my attempts at cooking and entertainments. lol.

[Corinnebelle]

One absolutely should not feel obliged to talk about anything personal on here and of course no one should feel obliged to disclose their age. (Was that your point or did you mean something else? Personally I am not afraid of being known for who I am on the internet. I had a twitter account with my actual name, photo and city on it once.) Yes, I love when my parents visit, esp. because they so appreciate my attempts at cooking and entertainments. lol.

Yeah, I just wondered if we should be concerned about that.

[panyamnyenyekevu]

Just wanted to note that someone replied to my post that love is a universal language in response to my speculation that mathematics is the only truly universal language. “Although a cliché” I think we many of us need to hear it right now, at this moment of historic uncertainty, and more generally, we all need to feel it and give it. As vital to life as food, water and shelter. Love should be at the center of all efforts to communicate. I’ll be back! [edit: I feel like a fool for posting this because it seems so unsophisticated and unclear but I hope it’s somehow still meaningful]

[Corinnebelle]

Just wanted to note that someone replied to my post that love is a universal language in response to my speculation that mathematics is the only truly universal language. “Although a cliché” I think we many of us need to hear it right now, at this moment of historic uncertainty, and more generally, we all need to feel it and give it. As vital to life as food, water and shelter. Love should be at the center of all efforts to communicate. I’ll be back! [edit: I feel like a fool for posting this because it seems so unsophisticated and unclear but I hope it’s somehow still meaningful]

Talking about mathematics some people counted time differently! Of course this doesn't change mathematics but it's interesting not everyone thought like us! I heard they had an eight day week in China at one time. The French tried 100 minute hours. Babylonians divided the day into 2 hour time periods.

The Indic day began at sunrise. The term hora was used to indicate an hour. The time was measured based on the length of the shadow at day time. A hora translated to 2.5 pe. There are 60 pe per day, 60 minutes per pe and 60 kshana (snap of a finger or instant) per minute. Pe was measured with a bowl with a hole placed in still water. Time taken for this graduated bowl was one pe. Kings usually had an officer in charge of this clock.

In so-called "Italian time", "Italian hours", or "old Czech time", the first hour started with the sunset Angelus bell (or at the end of dusk, i.e., half an hour after sunset, depending on local custom and geographical latitude). The hours were numbered from 1 to 24. For example, in Lugano, the sun rose in December during the 14th hour and noon was during the 19th hour; in June the sun rose during the 7th hour and noon was in the 15th hour. Sunset was always at the end of the 24th hour. The clocks in church towers struck only from 1 to 12, thus only during night or early morning hours.

The Islamic day begins at sunset. The first prayer of the day (maghrib) is to be performed between just after sunset and the end of twilight. Until 1968 Saudi Arabia used the system of counting 24 equal hours with the first hour starting at sunset.

This is also the Jewish tradition from the Bible.

It shall be unto you a sabbath of rest, and ye shall afflict your souls: in the ninth day of the month at even, from even unto even, shall ye celebrate your sabbath. Leviticus (Vaikra) 23:32

For many centuries, up to 1925, astronomers counted the hours and days from noon, because it was the easiest solar event to measure accurately. An advantage of this method (used in the Julian Date system, in which a new Julian Day begins at noon) is that the date doesn't change during a single night's observing.

The ancient Egyptians began dividing the night into wnwt at some time before the compilation of the Dynasty V Pyramid Texts in the 24th century BC. By 2150 BC (Dynasty IX), diagrams of stars inside Egyptian coffin lids—variously known as "diagonal calendars" or "star clocks"—attest that there were exactly 12 of these. Clagett writes that it is "certain" this duodecimal division of the night followed the adoption of the Egyptian civil calendar, usually placed c. 2800 BC on the basis of analyses of the Sothic cycle, but a lunar calendar presumably long predated this and also would have had twelve months in each of its years. The coffin diagrams show that the Egyptians took note of the heliacal risings of 36 stars or constellations (now known as "decans"), one for each of the ten-day "weeks" of their civil calendar. (12 sets of alternate "triangle decans" were used for the 5 epagomenal days between years.) Each night, the rising of eleven of these decans were noted, separating the night into twelve divisions whose middle terms would have lasted about 40 minutes each. (Another seven stars were noted by the Egyptians during the twilight and predawn periods,[citation needed] although they were not important for the hour divisions.) The original decans used by the Egyptians would have fallen noticeably out of their proper places over a span of several centuries. By the time of Amenhotep III (c. 1350 BC), the priests at Karnak were using water clocks to determine the hours. These were filled to the brim at sunset and the hour determined by comparing the water level against one of its twelve gauges, one for each month of the year. During the New Kingdom, another system of decans was used, made up of 24 stars over the course of the year and 12 within any one night.

Ancient China divided its day into 100 "marks" (Chinese: 刻, oc *kʰək, p kè) running from midnight to midnight. The system is said to have been used since remote antiquity, credited to the legendary Yellow Emperor, but is first attested in Han-era water clocks and in the 2nd-century history of that dynasty. It was measured with sundials and water clocks. Into the Eastern Han, the Chinese measured their day schematically, adding the 20-ke difference between the solstices evenly throughout the year, one every nine days. During the night, time was more commonly reckoned during the night by the "watches" (Chinese: 更, oc *kæŋ, p gēng) of the guard, which were reckoned as a fifth of the time from sunset to sunrise.

In Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia, the traditional system of noting hours is the six-hour clock. This reckons each of a day's 24 hours apart from noon as part of a fourth of the day. 7 am was the first hour of the first half of daytime; 1 pm the first hour of the latter half of daytime; 7 pm the first hour of the first half of nighttime; and 1 am the first hour of the latter half of nighttime. This system existed in the Ayutthaya Kingdom, deriving its current phrasing from the practice of publicly announcing the daytime hours with a gong and the nighttime hours with a drum. It was abolished in Laos and Cambodia during their French occupation and is uncommon there now. The Thai system remains in informal use in the form codified in 1901 by King Chulalongkorn.

The Vedas and Puranas employed units of time based on the sidereal day (nakṣatra ahorātram). This was variously divided into 30 muhūtras of 48 minutes each or 60 dandas[citation needed] or nadís of 24 minutes each. The solar day was later similarly divided into 60 ghaṭikás of about the same duration, each divided in turn into 60 vinadis. The Sinhalese followed a similar system but called their sixtieth of a day a peya.

Source: Wiki and the holy Bible

It sounds confusing! Sorry it's so long, it was just interesting!

[Meli578588]

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[panyamnyenyekevu]

[mention]Meli578588[/mention] thank you so much for the very kind words. It’s a tremendous privilege to have time to devote to learning languages and I just hope that I can continue this journey and show up again on this thread after 2,000 days with a hopefully more coherent and grounded approach to understanding language. In the meantime, I feel inadequate to discuss this journey and frankly somewhat embarrassed by how little I actually do know!

[snicclas]

That was a nice read, thanks. I noticed that you hit around 5000 xp daily, may I ask how much time do you invest into duolingo? I use duolingo on the desktop web and noticed that the xp i earn is way less than mobile app.

[panyamnyenyekevu]

That was a nice read, thanks. I noticed that you hit around 5000 xp daily, may I ask how much time do you invest into duolingo? I use duolingo on the desktop web and noticed that the xp i earn is way less than mobile app.

Yes, let me tell you to hit those numbers, I use the mobile app, and just when I complete a circle - or level - in a skill, it gives me 15 minutes of two times XP, and I use those 15 minutes to do a “lightning round” which gives me 80 XP every time I complete a lesson. I’m embarrassed to say that I hit those high numbers by playing these sorts of trivial games and it takes me maybe 5 or 6 hours.

So it looks like what you see here but double the xp.

Or “match madness” which I can get through fairly quickly in a few languages.

Yes if you don’t have the mobile app, you can’t really compete with those who do. But I feel a little silly and rather ashamed for competing like this. Nonetheless, I find it comforting…

[I want to add that while I do these things on Duolingo, I usually have the sound off and I’m probably binge-“watching” something in the background and my mind is somewhere or other…]

[snicclas]

That was a nice read, thanks. I noticed that you hit around 5000 xp daily, may I ask how much time do you invest into duolingo? I use duolingo on the desktop web and noticed that the xp i earn is way less than mobile app.

Yes, let me tell you to hit those numbers, I use the mobile app, and just when I complete a circle - or level - in a skill, it gives me 15 minutes of two times XP, and I use those 15 minutes to do a “lightning round” which gives me 80 XP every time I complete a lesson. I’m embarrassed to say that I hit those high numbers by playing these sorts of trivial games and it takes me maybe 5 or 6 hours.

So it looks like what you see here but double the xp.

Or “match madness” which I can get through fairly quickly in a few languages.

Yes if you don’t have the mobile app, you can’t really compete with those who do. But I feel a little silly and rather ashamed for competing like this. Nonetheless, I find it comforting…

[I want to add that while I do these things on Duolingo, I usually have the sound off and I’m probably binge-“watching” something in the background and my mind is somewhere or other…]

Oh, now I see how such amounts can be hit! That is quite a neat and different way of duolingoing, I guess we all use it differently. The important part is having fun and learning

I personally aim to hit 200xp daily and that takes me usually shy of an hour. As I said I do solely use desktop and try to type all exercises which gets quite frustrating sometimes with german declinations haha

[panyamnyenyekevu]

…try to type all exercises which gets quite frustrating…

I think that is an excellent way to study. At one time Duo had timed typing tests. I would be so on board with bringing those back!

[Corinnebelle]

With an older account you can get 200XP easy by doing legendary. You don't have to pay with lingots, and if you get some wrong, and only get halfway or more, you'll still get 20 XP. I suppose plus would give you the same feature.

[mention]panyamnyenyekevu[/mention] Those lightening rounds look fun. Sort of like timed practice. [I use desktop.]