Anything you catch in the new test app at www.saysomethingin.app - hiccups of any linguistic kind - please drop them in here so that we can put them carefully on top of the trembling mountain of fixes on Kai’s desk…
If it’s an app behaviour issue rather than a language fix, then we’d be delighted to hear from you in the bug report thread:
“Because”: first prompt after learning asks “because I want to”, but gives model for “because”. Returns to expected behaviour afterwards (2nd prompt is for “because”, and gives “because” models, 3rd prompt is for “because i want to” and models give “because I want to”.)
“I want to speak with people” prompt is answered by “I want to learn with people” models
I’m not an expert, but right at the start of the Greek course it seems as though the distinction between habitual and occasional, “μιλάω” vs. “μιλήσω”, requires some care. This may clarify in due course, but the initial choices seem potentially misleading.
While it’s context dependent, at least for me “I want to speak Greek with you now” seems more likely to be occasional - compared to “I want to speak Greek with you from now on” if you were trying to be less ambiguous in English. “I want to speak Greek” seems more of a 50/50, but FWIW DeepL goes for “μιλήσω” here too, unless I use the “…from now on” qualification or similar framing.
Thank you - yeah, this kind of stuff is super tricky to catch - but it does always get a bit clearer over time from the extra context, in due course… but I’ll flag this up for the catchers/fixers!
Couple from Armenian - introduces the verb to be as “linel” which is correct, but then all the sentences it brings up want you to translate it in conjunction with karogh as “karogh linel” for “to be able”. This is wrong - “to be able” is “karoghanal”.
Immediately thereafter, introduces the basic “du” pronoun for second person “you”. This is correct - however the example sentences are all incorrect, as it just takes earlier sentences with the accusative form of “you” (qez) and switches qez out for “du”, generally in the form of “with you” being retranslated from “qez het” to “du het”.
It has also started (about two hours in) to add “het” (with) to qez in situations where it isn’t needed, and wasn’t being added earlier on in the course. For example - I want to explain everything to you “uzum em amboghj qez het batsatrel” was initially correctly translated without the “het” but now isn’t.
As a non-linguist, it is actually weirdly hard to explain how some of these are wrong
Couple more from my friend in Yerevan - amboghj is “whole”, but can’t be used for “everything” - that would be “amen inch”.
“I’m not sure” is vstah chem, not vstahrover chem.
Also, it seems like the issue with verb forms I reported in the previous thread is not limited to “parapelu” - I’ve just had the “avartelu” instead of the correct “avartel” and I’ve also had the phrase “after you finish” given as “vor du avartelu es” which is nonsense - should be “erb du avartes” or “erb avartes”.
Brilliant, thank you both for these, super helpful, keep them coming!
And before the end of the year (fingers crossed!) you should just be able to flag them up and trigger changes inside the Popty itself (we’re doing some thinking about how to make all of that really intuitive).
Greek, Blue belt, round 332 (numbering has changed?) around seed 149 (but first arises a bit earlier): ‘with this work’ is translated as με αυτή η δουλειά but AFAIK should be με αυτή τη δουλειά. (It should be in the accusative case after the preposition με, but η/τη is the only bit that reflects that change - η is nominative/subject case.)
Also, as far as I can tell, γι’αυτό and ό,τι are both now fixed, but we still have quite a few gwybods that should be nabod (every sentence in which the object is ‘people’ ανθρώπους, for starters - as in ‘to speak Greek with people I don’t know’ etc.).
Greek, Purple, seed 151: “I wouldn’t have said it” (Δεν θα το έλεγα) is translated several times when first introduced as Θα το έλεγα (“I would have said it”). Subsequently, “I would definitely have said it” is correctly translated as Σίγουρα θα το έλεγα.
Thanks for the Mandarin and Korean, they’re great.
Couple of queries:
Mandarin - there are a couple of sentences at Brown Belt level which put the adverbial of time (jintian, xianzai) at the end of the sentence. I can’t say this is completely wrong, but from my understanding of the language, it’s very unlikely.
Also the xing/hang confusion at the same level - xing as a verb is occasionally being pronounced hang in the guide sentences - really only gets pronounced this way for very specific uses to do with rows of things (eg. yinhang, bank - rows of gold)
For Korean, the sentence about not expecting to wake up in the middle of the night - this seems weird. Ireonada is the usual verb for to wake up If it’s not been checked with a native speaker it probably should be.
Armenian - “tomorrow” is vaghy not “vaghen”. Also gives “to guess” without introducing the verb. Not sure what the Armenian verb is, so can’t comment. edit krrahel is the verb it gives which I think is right.
Also gives “what’s going to happen” as “te inch em uzum asel vaghen” which is essentially nonsense. To happen is “patahel” and I’d guess it would correctly be “inch patahelu e” or something along that line. edit again it’s just reintroduced that sentence formally as “te inch vaghen klini” which my friend says is more or less correct, if you take “vaghen” out.
It’s really interesting thinking about these things and trying to work out what I actually know about these languages
Queries from today’s Korean -
tangshin for you - strictly speaking correct, but as far as I know from my teachers only used in a very limited set of circumstances
husband and wife
if you want to start a fight
(no this is not a joke. this is Korean)
possibly in very very formal circumstances.
Otherwise I understand they just don’t use it.
Also the sentence ‘I thought that was a good idea’ - 2 things -
the most commonly used Korean word for idea is … idea.
choheun sengagiyeosseoyo - just means ‘it was a good idea’.
Should be choheun sengagirago sengaghaesseoyo. Although I think choneun choheun sengagiyeosseoyo could be translated as ‘I thought that was a good idea’ (lit. ‘for me/in my opinion, that was a good idea’), and then Koreans might well drop the choneun, so they might use the existing answer sentence and intend the existing prompt meaning. But I’m not sure that this is so helpful to the learner trying to acquire structures?
Up to you guys really though.
@Greg yeah, we’re not going to be able to make all these fixes very quickly - we’ve got one person working on catching them, and he keeps on wanting to sleep