Duolingo is great

T.C.

T.C.

The Living Force
FOTCM Member
I'm using the website/app Duolingo to learn Russian. It's really good and I just wanted to recommend it here for anyone who is thinking of learning a language. The browser version is completely free to use.

The app version is a little bit different. It's possible to make too many mistakes and run out of 'hearts' or attempts. You then need to either use in-app currency which you've accrued or pay a real-money subscription for unlimited attempts (in eight days I've only run out of hearts once, and I've been studying about an hour per day). You are also forced to watch an advert for the real-money option each time you complete a module. It lasts about 20 seconds.

My only criticism so far is that when it gives you a phrase in your native language and asks you for the words in the language you're studying, 99% of the time so far, there are a selection of words written on the screen that you just have to click on. And so, whilst my ability to recognise and understand Russian words is developing nicely, my ability to recall them and write myself is still quite poor. And so I have to get around this by looking away from the screen.

I'm not sure if this is mainly because the language I'm studying is Russian and the alphabet is different, which would make it more difficult for me to type the characters. Perhaps it asks you to type in languages which use the Latin alphabet more often. It has asked me now and again to type the Russian characters, and I use a website with a virtual Russian keyboard for this, and perhaps as I get further into the course it will ask me to do this more often.

Anyway, despite this issue, I still encourage English speakers who want to learn another language, or non-English speakers who want to learn English, to make an account on Duolingo and dive in. It makes learning a new language fun and surprisingly easy.
 
T.C. said:
I'm not sure if this is mainly because the language I'm studying is Russian and the alphabet is different, which would make it more difficult for me to type the characters. Perhaps it asks you to type in languages which use the Latin alphabet more often. It has asked me now and again to type the Russian characters, and I use a website with a virtual Russian keyboard for this, and perhaps as I get further into the course it will ask me to do this more often.
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Good idea using Russian keyboard for this.

I'm using Duolingo for couple of months, learning French and also English. Reason why I choose French because I learned it at school and I thought that will be easier for me to start with language that I know basics. My main reason for learning new language is keeping my brain activate and also gives me opportunity (with Duolingo) to relax, learning and have fun with it.

In first, I was caught up in the competitive spirit so I was hurrying myself to stay as high as possible on the list (you get more lingos ;-D), but then I decided that is much important to have my own pace and really practice/learn then be on the first three. I notice my feelings and inner reaction when I reach demotion zone which is colored red. Like this is alert zone and you shouldn't go there;-). And give you feeling like you're not good enough, or maybe I'm projecting my inner problems:cool2:.

I like the part with stories, sometimes they are funny like the ones where Eddy brings his son to the conclusion that having a dog is very responsible thing. Not just telling him, no, you can't have a dog.

I'm using Duolingo on my computer but also on my mobile phone so that when I have to wait for something, I can use the waiting time usefully.

Recently I watch The Rubin show where showed video of Giorgia Meloni (Italian Prime Minister) where she talks about Christian family values with such a passion that I had cried listening. I felt relief that someone with so much righteous anger, freely and publicly spoke about those things that elite trying to destroy. And maybe this will sound ridiculous but saying all that on Italian as if it became even more powerful, for me. So, definitely next language on my list is Italian.

 
I use Duolingo to learn Russian. When it comes to the Russian characters, I have put in Language Preferences in Windows both an English character keyboard and a Russian character keyboard. After that it is merely having to go down to the taskbar to choose which keyboard I'm going to us when using Duolingo.
 
Alix said:
I use Duolingo to learn Russian. When it comes to the Russian characters, I have put in Language Preferences in Windows both an English character keyboard and a Russian character keyboard. After that it is merely having to go down to the taskbar to choose which keyboard I'm going to us when using Duolingo.
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Does the Russian keyboard remain on the screen so you can see where the characters are relative to your physical keyboard?
 
T.C. said:
Does the Russian keyboard remain on the screen so you can see where the characters are relative to your physical keyboard?
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Maybe you can look for this kind of thing: link

Привет!

This is handy for typing Russian on Windows PCs with an English keyboard: a phonetic layout. (Chromebooks seem to have it built in.)

YaWert Phonetic Russian keyboard layout

So for example z → з, w → в (this one doesn’t make complete sense; there’s another “YaZHert” mapping with v → в), and i → и.

Энди
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T.C. said:
Does the Russian keyboard remain on the screen so you can see where the characters are relative to your physical keyboard?
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И сшитцч овер то тче Руссиан кеыбоард анд ит симплы тыпес ин Руссиан цчарацтерс шчат И ам тыпинг ин Ебглисч он тче кеыбоард.

I just wrote the above using the Windows Russian keyboard layout, but I was typing in English. So it doesn't matter if your typing in English, it comes out in Russian characters.
 
I typed the words 'edit language and keyboard options' and what you see on the screenshot below pops up". The first screen shows 'Edit language and keyboard options' and clicking this brings up the second screen, where you can pick to add a language to a keyboard.
keyboard options.jpg
 
Alix said:
И сшитцч овер то тче Руссиан кеыбоард анд ит симплы тыпес ин Руссиан цчарацтерс шчат И ам тыпинг ин Ебглисч он тче кеыбоард.
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“I switch over to the Russian Keyboard and it simply types in Russian characters what I am typing in English on the keyboard”.

The one I’ve been using does have that function too, but the thing I’m hung up about is that Russian is often not phonetic, and in order to get the words right, you kind of need to know how they’re spelled in Russian.

Say I wanted to write the word ‘milk’. If I’d only heard it said, I would type something like muhlako. However, when written in Russian, all the vowels in the word are O’s. So then I’d be using a phonetic keyboard system, but, I’m guessing you’d still type O’s for each vowel in that word. So it’s kind of straddling two worlds without being strictly in either one of them.

Am I over-thinking this? I’m still new to the language and new to thinking about how to get around this keyboard issue. Do the above points make sense?
 
If someone here decides to buy second keyboard with one of Russian keyboard layouts remember that in case of Windows OS all keyboards use currently active keyboard language/layout (you have to toggle language manually each time you decide to change language in which you write. It is not possible to manually assign one layout to one keyboard and other layout to second keyboard.

In case of Linux it is possible to assign different layout to different keyboard by using "setxkbmap" tool.
 
T.C. said:
“I switch over to the Russian Keyboard and it simply types in Russian characters what I am typing in English on the keyboard”.

The one I’ve been using does have that function too, but the thing I’m hung up about is that Russian is often not phonetic, and in order to get the words right, you kind of need to know how they’re spelled in Russian.

Say I wanted to write the word ‘milk’. If I’d only heard it said, I would type something like muhlako. However, when written in Russian, all the vowels in the word are O’s. So then I’d be using a phonetic keyboard system, but, I’m guessing you’d still type O’s for each vowel in that word. So it’s kind of straddling two worlds without being strictly in either one of them.

Am I over-thinking this? I’m still new to the language and new to thinking about how to get around this keyboard issue. Do the above points make sense?
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So, what I really struggled to word in the above is the question: if you type Russian phonetically using this keyboard method, does it always spell the Russian word correctly.
 
T.C. said:
So, what I really struggled to word in the above is the question: if you type Russian phonetically using this keyboard method, does it always spell the Russian word correctly.
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I use it in Duolingo and it has never told me I did it wrong. I like to write out words I'm learning with the Cyrillic alphabet. I just learn faster when I'm writing it - that's just me. :thup:
 
brandon said:
My partner is learning Russian with Duolingo as well, and bought some Cyrillic key stickers for her PC keyboard, like these: https://www.amazon.com/Keyboard-Sti...ound-alternative/dp/B004GQYTW4/ref=mp_s_a_1_5

I really must get around to joining her in this...!
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IMO, it's the best option. Russian alphabet has 33 letters while English one only 26, some Russian letters can be phonetically represented only by 2 Latin letters and some - not at all. It can be confusing.

As for Duolingo, I didn't like it. It's powered by AI and the words it chooses are often very strange and unusable. The sentences it suggests are weird as well. Plus the audio is not of native speakers (at least back then) but computer generated as well.

I would rather recommend Memrise. It offers a good selection of words/phrases spoken by native speakers. And it has an official Russian course.
 
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