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I'm enjoying the Busuu Italian course so far!

Duolingo Sucks, Now What?: A Guide

Now that the quality of Duolingo has fallen (even more) due to AI and people are more willing to make the jump here are just some alternative apps and what languages they have:

"I just want an identical experience to DL"

Busuu (Languages: Spanish, Japanese, French, English, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Chinese, Polish, Turkish, Russian, Arabic, Korean)

"I want a good audio-based app"

Language Transfer (Languages: French, Swahili, Italian, Greek, German, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, English for Spanish Speakers)

"I want a good audio-based app and money's no object"

Pimsleur (Literally so many languages)

Glossika (Also a lot of languages, but minority languages are free)

*anecdote: I borrowed my brother's Japanese Pimsleur CD as a kid and I still remember how to say the weather is nice over a decade later. You can find the CDs at libraries and "other" places I'm sure.

"I have a pretty neat library card"

Mango (Languages: So many and the endangered/Indigenous courses are free even if you don't have a library that has a partnership with Mango)

Transparent Language: (Languages: THE MOST! Also the one that has the widest variety of African languages! Perhaps the most diverse in ESL and learning a foreign language not in English)

"I want SRS flashcards and have an android"

AnkiDroid: (Theoretically all languages, pre-made decks can be found easily)

"I want SRS flashcards and I have an iphone"

AnkiApp: It's almost as good as AnkiDroid and free compared to the official Anki app for iphone

"I don't mind ads and just want to learn Korean"

lingory

"I want an app made for Mandarin that's BETTER than DL and has multiple languages to learn Mandarin in"

ChineseSkill (You can use their older version of the course for free)

"I don't like any of these apps you mentioned already, give me one more"

Bunpo: (Languages: Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Korean, and Mandarin)

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Heads up to not use Duolingo or to cease using it

In December 2023 they laid off a huge percentage of their translation teams, replacing them with ai and having the remaining members review the ai translations to make sure the translations are “acceptable” (Note how they use the world acceptable and not accurate)

Link to the tweet that informed me of this:

https://x.com/rahll/status/1744234385891594380?s=46&t=a5vK0RLlkgqk-CTqc0Gvvw

If you’re a current user prepare for an uptick in translations errors as I’ve already seen people in the comments say they’ve noticed

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If anyone was wondering, Duolingo just got even worse.

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Venice, Italy

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I don’t know why, but learning lanugages always makes me so giddy!

Learning voacbulary in Japanese about the organs in the human? So cool!

Just ordering food in Italian? Rivetting experience!

Finding out whether the sentence I’m translating from Latin is a relative clause or a a result clause? Stress reliever!

Having a conversation with someone who speaks Castellano Spanish and me speaking in my Latin American Spanish? Multiculturalism galore!

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Grazie duolingo per insegnarci l’arte del gaslighting

“È solo la tua immaginazione”

“It is just your imagination”

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Swearing in Italian without really swearing

By now I bet y'all know Italian swearing words and how to create new ones I guess, so let's move on to when you want to swear but you cannot (eithe rbecause of your beliefs, because you're with kids or people you don't know...). There's a way out, if muttering feels a little too dangerous. You can "swear" using random words (even cute ones lol). These are some of the most common I can think of:

porca paletta = lit. holy spade porca ciabattina = lit. holy little slipper porca miseria (a little heavier tbh) = lit. holy misery porca vacca = lit. holy cow (at times we use the English literal translation "santa mucca" too) mannaggia/mannaggina = darn it porco mondo (heavier) = lit. holy world

These all could be considered an equivalent of "crap" or "dang" tbh. Reminder that "porca" is used as an adjective as to underline the incredible amount of negativity of the noun it comes with (basically it works as "lurid", "indecent".... Porco = swine, pig) and also to throw out a little bit of stress.

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Italian idiomatic expressions

Just heard this from the news (sport) Loved the use of similar words in this sentence so I thought about making a short post about it

"Vedremo se il nostro velocista di punta riuscirà a spuntarla"

-> di punta = top, best, primary (out of a team)

-> riuscire a spuntarla = "being able to make it/to succeed *despite/against difficulties or against odds*" idiomatic expression (spuntare = lit. to check, to trim) Similar to "riuscire a farcela" (more literal translation of "being able to make it"). "Spuntarla" suggests more of a tight battle against others as in a sport competition (implied info since the video was about this sprinter going to compete against others). Maybe "end up being successful" could be a more literal translation?

Translation: "We'll see if our best sprinter will be able to make it"

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Zim...? Is that you? 

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Was flipping through my japanese text book the other day and found this funny. Eat nothing drink nothing go nowhere meet nobody do nothing go king give us nothing

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no sé cómo decir nadaaa

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un buon articolo per tutti che l'italiano interessa!

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Comment ça va ?

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i need to know every language immediately

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Tiziano Ferroviaria

A masterpiece created by me 6 years ago…

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