Duolingo

Started by Thalass, March 13, 2014, 05:37:25 AM

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Thalass

I'm sure we've all heard of duolingo. Last year they opened up the system so users could create courses to teach the languages already on the site (so English for Na'vi speakers). It seems that they've just opened up the ability for people to create courses from and to any language!

https://www.duolingo.com/comment/2175794

It takes a lot more work to create a whole new lesson tree compared to repurposing an existing one for new learners, but now it is at least possible to create an English-Na'vi!

marcin1509

#1
I don't think that it's good idea.
Duolingo is good and exciting project for learning langauges, but only natural.
Learning artificial language is not good idea in Duolingo.
Na'vi has a syntax, where it doesn't matter where you write words.
In project Duolingo and creating a course - you have to translate all
variants of sentences.

Recently Klingon course on Duolingo has started. Maybe it's not a bad idea ?

Mech

I am a Duolingo fan and I always hoped about a practical Na'vi lesson. A year ago I entered the incubater and applied to participate to a course, and there I found some options for Klingon, Sindarin and Dothraki (not sure about Na'vi). Klingon is the first constructed language in the works, but when I entered the incubator recently, i saw the options for Sindarin and Dothraki were removed. Perhaps they don't wish to continue the experiment after Klingon? If anyone would consider pushing the project to Duolingo I would wholeheartedly support it.

Plumps

I was thinking about that as well when I took up my Duolingo courses I started to learn a while back.

I didn't go into that much deep research but I wouldn't even know how to apply a language, let alone create a course... But it would be awesome indeed, especially since it's free and voluntary work.

Mech

Well, the obstacle is that Duolingo is not crowd-sourced like memrize. Anyone can make a Na'vi course on memrize, but things with Duolingo seem more complicated; the platform must "support" a language to proceed to creating a course. I am not sure what it means, but if you want to participate to a course, you must select it in a list. I found no option to create or join a course on, for example, Japanese or Arabic, even if I wanted to. That's what I meant that Sindarin and Dothraki were once "in the list" but now they aren't.

Other than that, I am not sure what criteria the Duolingo guys use to include a future language in that list. Perhaps they were disappointed with the Klingon participation and removed Sindarin and Dothraki? Perhaps there are copyright concerns? Perhaps they need some pressure from the fanbase?

Mech

Ok things are better than I thought.

If you into the incubator application form (https://incubator.duolingo.com/apply) there are more options. There are options for Klingon, Dothraki and Sindarin; there is no option for Na'vi but there is an option "other". It's possible to apply for a whatever course. Perhaps if there are enough persons interested they will consider the option.

Plumps

Thanks for the link. I applied for the German one (bummer that they only let you choose one target language :( )

Let's see if anything happens.

Samraku

Quote from: marcin1509 on May 02, 2014, 01:00:04 PM
I don't think that it's good idea.
Duolingo is good and exciting project for learning langauges, but only natural.
Learning artificial language is not good idea in Duolingo.
Na'vi has a syntax, where it doesn't matter where you write words.
In project Duolingo and creating a course - you have to translate all
variants of sentences.

Recently Klingon course on Duolingo has started. Maybe it's not a bad idea ?

You may have changed your mind in the interim between your post and mine, but the Esperanto Duolingo works even though it has relatively free word order. And if people are answering with a syntax that is grammatical but not accepted, they can report that their translation should be accepted, and if a mod agrees, the alternate translation then becomes accepted. I don't know if it's streamlined for the mods or if they have to manually add the translation, though.

Plumps

Quote from: Samraku on May 08, 2016, 02:16:41 PMYou may have changed your mind in the interim between your post and mine, but the Esperanto Duolingo works even though it has relatively free word order. And if people are answering with a syntax that is grammatical but not accepted, they can report that their translation should be accepted, and if a mod agrees, the alternate translation then becomes accepted. I don't know if it's streamlined for the mods or if they have to manually add the translation, though.

That was my concern as well with the relatively free word order. But you are right, if the mods don't think of it then it has to go through a beta phase ;)

marcin1509

#9
Quote from: Samraku on May 08, 2016, 02:16:41 PMYou may have changed your mind in the interim between your post and mine, but the Esperanto Duolingo works even though it has relatively free word order. And if people are answering with a syntax that is grammatical but not accepted, they can report that their translation should be accepted, and if a mod agrees, the alternate translation then becomes accepted. I don't know if it's streamlined for the mods or if they have to manually add the translation, though.

You are right. Esperanto course is very fine, I've used it.
I like Duolingo but I thought that it's not good idea to create a course of nonnatural language.
But when I saw there Klingon and Esperanto, I changed my mind.
But to create a course on duolingo you have to wait for acceptance
From teamm.
I don't know how klingon got there.
But apart from duolingo, we can do our version of it ...