UPNetwork  

Go Back   UPNetwork > General Forums > The Misc

Reply
 
Thread Tools
Old 08-07-2018, 12:51 AM   #101
Talon87
時の彼方へ
 
Talon87's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Lafayette, Indiana
Posts: 20,578
Alright, not sure if this is representative of other Duolingo courses or not, but ...
  • it looks like the Japanese course material caps out at around a 201, maaaybe 202 level
  • "leveling up" in a previously-sat lesson does nothing more for you than to have you re-answer the same tired questions over and over again
At least, that's been my experience with the ones I've resat so far. Maybe they plan to expand the offerings later. But from what I can see right now ... it's pretty bare. Simply out of morbid cruelty curiosity, I think I might go ahead and max out the levels on every single module. Or I might not, and just call it quits here, because waste o' time.

Looking on the Duolingo forums, it's lookin' like this is the case. Most of the posters are bright-eyed beginners just getting started on their Japanese adventures. And one of them asks, "Are people who have completed the Japanese course to level 25 proficient in Japanese?" To which the top-voted reply is, "This course alone? Absolutely not. You'll be able to read and write kana, sure, but actual Japanese (with kanji)? No. I've completed this course months ago, studied on the side and my reading skills are still B1-ish/JLPT N4-N3; Duo was a good foundation to get me started, but you won't get anywhere past JLPT N5 using it on its own."

So yeah. It doesn't seem like Duolingo is worth anyone's time if they're N3 or above -- at least not yet! That's not to say that the Japanese Duolingo team can't make the offerings worth an N3, N2, or N1 student's while. But for right now, at least, it doesn't look like that's on offer. Hell! They don't even really test for kanji proficiency. A highly-upvoted thread on their forum is one eager member cross-posting the lists of kyouiku characters from Wikipedia or wherever else, and people are excitedly thanking him for the inside scoop. ^^; #bless So like ... yeah. ^^; This is not for people who already know how to write a thousand characters. This isn't even for people who know how to write their first 240. This is for people who are just starting out, who want to learn a little more Japanese than "SUGOI! " and "KAWAII! ". And to that I say, God bless. Good luck and I hope you have a wonderful time ahead of you.
Talon87 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-07-2018, 01:44 AM   #102
Talon87
時の彼方へ
 
Talon87's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Lafayette, Indiana
Posts: 20,578
Quote:
Originally Posted by McSweeney View Post
Oh man! I thought that you had given up on Duolingo until I finally saw that you had accumulated some experience points on my leaderboard.
I saw your post the other day but wasn't able to respond at the time. Tonight something unrelated took me into one of my e-mail accounts where I saw notifications from Duolingo, including one informing me that you had befriended me on the site. So I decided to head on over and the rest is history how I just lost the last three hours of my life.

Quote:
Originally Posted by McSweeney View Post
I agree with you that the Duolingo instruction isn't great; they don't explain verb conjugation or grammar at all. They just throw a bunch of phrases at you and expect you to memorize them.
Agreed. Even as an N2, it is frustrating to me that I have to play the game with word boxes turned on (and the keyboard turned off) because I know that if I don't I will type in answers that while technically correct (or even superior to what was provided by Duolingo!) they aren't the very specific answer(s) that the machine is looking for and will be rejected as incorrect. For example:
Q: お母さんはお元気ですか?
Talon's first thought: Is your mother well?
Evident answer choice, given limited options: How is your mother?
But if it's frustrating for the N2, it is a learning nightmare for the aspiring N5! How is he to know what 元気 means? What is he to make of the prefix お? Will it really be clear to him what the distinction is between 母 haha and お母さん okaa-san? "If I were doing this as a novice," you wrote, "I would probably have given up after a few lessons." EXACTLY!

Quote:
Originally Posted by McSweeney View Post
Moving on to Chinese
I think it's really great that you're learning Chinese. I don't know what else to say! I hope it will be as rewarding for you as Japanese has been for me.

Quick aside: a coworker of mine shared with me today the following Chinese sentence. I wonder if you can read it? :o 我先走了 We have all of these same characters in Japanese, but we don't use all of them the same way. Spoilers:

Spoiler: show
走 is reserved for running in Japanese. 我 means the same thing in Japanese as in Chinese but the case / the flavor of the word is somewhat different: it sounds a lot more old-timey and flowery in Japanese than it does in Chinese. 先 is 先. 了 we have but we don't use it as it is grammatically used in Chinese. You see it in the Japanese word 了解 ryoukai "Roger" / "Understood". Also in Japanese 終了 shuuryou. And in 完了 kanryou. But that's about all that I can recall at the moment.

Spoiler: show
He told me it means "I'm going" in Chinese. In Japanese it would look like it says "I Ahead Run, STOP[/telegram].". The general meaning is kinda sorta conveyed. But yeah. It's amazing how things have diverged, both in the sense of "The Japanese didn't get it right" when things were originally delivered as well as in the sense of "Divergent evolution over the course of centuries and geographic separation.")
Talon87 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-07-2018, 02:03 AM   #103
McSweeney
Soul Badge
 
McSweeney's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Saskatchewan, Canada
Posts: 1,488
I only know one of those characters so far: 我. At first, I thought 走 was 是 (to be) with the tiny font, but now I see that it's slightly different. I've got 112 words in my catalogue so far. Thankfully, learning the numbers 1-9 was easy because of mahjong tiles. Thanks Akagi.

One thing I found amusing is that "United States" is 美国, which literally means "beautiful country." I thought: Awwwww, how nice. But then a Chinese guy explained that it's just a coincidence, because 美 (Mei) sounds the most like "America" but it sounds like the Chinese guy was just being tsundere ...
__________________


Smoking Gary sez:
"Stay in school kidz"
McSweeney is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-01-2019, 01:21 AM   #104
McSweeney
Soul Badge
 
McSweeney's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Saskatchewan, Canada
Posts: 1,488
Found an interesting tier list from the Foreign Service Institute, who train diplomats, for the hardest languages to learn for an English speaker based on the average time it takes students to achieve "professional working proficiency":
https://www.atlasandboots.com/foreig...ge-difficulty/

As you can see, Japanese is in the highest tier with an asterisk beside it, meaning that it's even harder than the other category IV languages. So congratulations all you Japanese learners for picking THE HARDEST LANGUAGE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD to learn! If you can succeed with this, you can overcome anything!

And if you've been studying a language for longer than the classroom hours listed and still aren't fluent, don't feel bad because you have to keep in mind that the classroom hours are based on the hardcore training that diplomats receive, which is probably the most effective language training known to man. There's also an assumption that the students already have natural talent for picking up languages.

I also saw an update that French received an upgrade in difficulty, needing an additional 6 weeks of training compared to the other category 1 languages because a lot of students were missing their proficiency deadlines:

https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/247092.pdf
__________________


Smoking Gary sez:
"Stay in school kidz"
McSweeney is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-01-2019, 08:33 AM   #105
Doppleganger
我が名は勇者王!
 
Doppleganger's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: Emina Isle
Posts: 14,198
Send a message via AIM to Doppleganger
Curiously, I've heard that Spanish speakers apparently have an easier time grasping Japanese, and visa versa?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BOJyl0QSRc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkwYaMdtCsI

I'm just going out on a limb here, but I think Spanish - with most words and consonant pairs ending in vowels - makes it easier to transition to Japanese which is the same way.

It's a huge reason why most songs in English must rhyme or they sound cringey, all rhymes end in vowels, and the metere forces English into a form that's more pleasant to the ear, if a little boring.
__________________
あなたの勇気が切り開く未来
ふたりの想いが見つけだす希望
今 信じあえる
あきらめない 心かさね
永遠を抱きしめて
Doppleganger is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Lower Navigation
Go Back   UPNetwork > General Forums > The Misc


Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
 
Thread Tools

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 12:31 PM.


Design By: Miner Skinz.com
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.