Duolingo Cymraeg

I know. I tend to do something with Russian, but I can’t claim that I can practically form a decent sentence … Will wait for the SSiRussian rather then try really to learn the language through DuoLingo.

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In most cases, they accept moyn, eisiau, isio (but probably not mwyn or isie) - but when you wrote that, at the early beginning, many sentences only had one or two accepted translations. That list is slowly growing as people report alternatives.

A few people who were frustrated at their correct sentences being rejected because they didn’t use the exact wording that the course maintainers had used decided to go away for a few weeks and hope that things got better then :slight_smile: Which I think they do - as people keep reporting additional alternatives and course maintainers accepting them, it becomes less frustrating and more all-encompassing.

I believe the goal is to favour neither north nor south but to accept all reasonably common written Welsh.

And speaking about moving beta to apps: I believe there’s a certain statistic for “Number of reports per person per day” (or something like that) that has to be reached before a course is allowed on the apps. So that’s something that course maintainers have no direct influence over - only indirectly in that the more alternatives they type in ahead of time (e.g. o/e/fo/fe, moyn/eisiau/isio, llefrith/llaeth, wnes i vs. single-word past, etc.), the fewer reports they will get for “my sentence should be accepted” and the faster the course can “graduate” to the apps.

(Perhaps that statistic is there because it’s more complicated to report problems from the apps, so the Duolingo core developers want app users to have a reasonably smooth experience from the beginning, whereas PC users are allowed to preview Beta courses earlier when there are still more rough edges.)

107,000 users as of today! It is really useful for reading and writing, using Welsh in a different way and picking up vocabulary. However it is only useful as a secondary tool to SSiW. But the numbers are very positive.

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As one of the folks who found SSiW via Duolingo’s Welsh course, I’d just like to make an observation. I’m not sure I’d agree with the statements that Duolingo’s course is necessarily a secondary tool to SSiW. I think it totally depends on one’s goals and, to a degree, their environment.

For example, my language learning style is based more on the written form. I can remember HOURS of staring at a blackboard with enitre Latin conjugations, saying each one in turn after the professor; translating Cicero ad nauseum; actually reading about the grammer and then seeing how it’s applied in written examples. So for me, Duolingo serves as a great resource that caters to my needs in learning a new language.

Furthermore, I’m not likely to have much need or use of being able to hold a conversation in Welsh anytime soon. BUT, I can (and have) picked up a few Cymraeg books and magazines, which further supports my more immediate goals of learning to read and understand the language, rather than be conversant.

That being said, Duolingo really doesn’t help much with getting the brain to think in a different language. So after getting 1/3 of the way through the course, I actively “hear” myself translating from Welsh to English in my head, rather than thinking in Welsh. So by about the 35% complete mark, my conversational skills were rather lacking, to say the least. Which is what lead me to SSiW. And those first few Lessons in Coarse 1 were an eye-opener! I’m not very far into the SSiW program at all, just getting into Lesson 5, but the change its made to how I think when doing a lesson (either SSiW or Duolingo) are probably fundamental in my (eventual, hopefully) success with the language.

So, for me, while SSiW is a very important part of my Welsh studies, I see it as complimentary to what I’m learning in Duolingo, not the other way around.

As I said, it’s just a differing perspective given a different set of personal goals. The end analysis is the same: Whatever brought you to SSiW (and/or Duolingo), great! Make the most of the tools available to you!

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