#and do my duolingo

[bigfatbreak]

Does Chloe tone down her direct bullying/harassment of Marinette after that day to just the dead mom jokes out of guilt, or is it more that Marinette now being homeschooled means Chloe just lost access? Also, does Lila try the whole lying/sabotaging thing on Marinette and just fail or does Marinette just not care?

Lila has no reason to sabotage Marinette because Marinette isn't threatening her little empire she wants to build. In fact, she really wants Marinette on her side BECAUSE she's not apart of the school, so she doesn't need to keep up an elaborate web of lies! She can just try to befriend a talented girl who makes AMAZING food and try to get freebies~

meanwhile, with Chloe, things got really complicated after the pool incident...

Tom was not in the mood to put up with this crap.

[too-fond-to-be-fearful]

Been thinking recently about the goings-on with Duolingo & AI, and I do want to throw my two cents in, actually.

There are ways in which computers can help us with languages, certainly. They absolutely should not be the be-all and end-all, and particularly for any sort of professional work I am wholly in favour of actually employing qualified translators & interpreters, because there's a lot of important nuances to language and translation (e.g. context, ambiguity, implied meaning, authorial intent, target audience, etc.) that a computer generally does not handle well. But translation software has made casual communication across language barriers accessible to the average person, and that's something that is incredibly valuable to have, I think.

Duolingo, however, is not translation software. Duolingo's purpose is to teach languages. And I do not think you can be effectively taught a language by something that does not understand it itself; or rather, that does not go about comprehending and producing language in the way that a person would.

Whilst a language model might be able to use probability & statistics to put together an output that is grammatically correct and contextually appropriate, it lacks an understanding of why, beyond "statistically speaking, this element is likely to come next". There is no communicative intent behind the output it produces; its only goal is mimicking the input it has been trained on. And whilst that can produce some very natural-seeming output, it does not capture the reality of language use in the real world.

Because language is not just a set of probabilities - there are an infinite array of other factors at play. And we do not set out only to mimic what we have seen or heard; we intend to communicate with the wider world, using the tools we have available, and that might require deviating from the realm of the expected.

Often, the most probable output is not actually what you're likely to encounter in practice. Ungrammatical or contextually inappropriate utterances can be used for dramatic or humorous effect, for example; or nonstandard linguistic styles may be used to indicate one's relationship to the community those styles are associated with. Social and cultural context might be needed to understand a reference, or a linguistic feature might seem extraneous or confusing when removed from its original environment.

To put it briefly, even without knowing exactly how the human brain processes and produces language (which we certainly don't), it's readily apparent that boiling it down to a statistical model is entirely misrepresentative of the reality of language.

And thus a statistical model is unlikely to be able to comprehend and assist with many of the difficulties of learning a language.

A statistical model might identify that a learner misuses some vocabulary more often than others; what it may not notice is that the vocabulary in question are similar in form, or in their meaning in translation. It might register that you consistently struggle with a particular grammar form; but not identify that the root cause of the struggle is that a comparable grammatical structure in your native language is either radically different or nonexistent. It might note that you have trouble recalling a common saying, but not that you lack the cultural background needed to understand why it has that meaning. And so it can identify points of weakness; but it is incapable of addressing them effectively, because it does not understand how people think.

This is all without considering the consequences of only having a singular source of very formal, very rigid input to learn from, unable to account for linguistic variation due to social factors. Without considering the errors still apparent in the output of most language models, and the biases they are prone to reproducing. Without considering the source of their data, and the ethical considerations regarding where and how such a substantial sample was collected.

I understand that Duolingo wants to introduce more interactivity and adaptability to their courses (and, I suspect, to improve their bottom line). But I genuinely think that going about it in this way is more likely to hinder than to help, and wrongfully prioritises the convenience of AI over the quality and expertise that their existing translators and course designers bring.

[front-facing-pokemon]

[flawedamythyst]

I started a modern AU Old Guard fic in Feb 2021 in which, a few chapters in, Nicky starts learning Arabic on Duolingo.

'You know what,' I thought, naively, 'I'll just do the first few lessons myself so I can use some of the sillier sentences from it in the fic.'

Just under 3 years later, I have just completed all levels of Duolingo Arabic on Legendary. The fic, while nudging at 100k words, is still not finished. I believe there is one brief reference to Duolingo in it.

It's a bloody hard won reference though.

[genghisthebrain]

wednesday joining duolingo to learn more languages, because she can, dammit, and quickly discovering that duolingo simply is not meant for her because she HATES losing. and enid has to literally pry her away from her laptop because wednesday is so adamant that she won't let jacob from canada beat her this week.

[some-messed-up-writing-for-you]

WHEN I TELL YOU I DID A DOUBLE TAKE-

[tromboneralert]

K so

Today (November 9) was my birthday

This is what my spouse got me as a gift:

I am absolutely fucking delighted. I am blown away. I can't even take her out of the box she's so perfect I don't want to ruin her

[grapehyasynth]

young royals duolingo, 17/?

(1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)

[duine-aiteach]

Póilíní is a new word to me. We just have An Garda Síochána in Ireland so every piece I’ve read as Gaeilge that mentions the police just calls them a Guard, regardless of where it’s set.

[say-hi-intrepid-heroes]

bad news for the new year: i've returned to a toxic, manipulative, relationship where i will never be good enough in their eyes. i've returned to duolingo and its accursed owl.

[sneez]

victor kain chronic pain nation rise up (credit to @transdankovsky for this idea :-D)

/ id: two digital drawings. the first image shows victor kain and daniil dankovsky sitting together; daniil is taking victor’s pulse. inside a speech bubble above victor’s head is a screenshot of a question from the duolingo russian course, in which the sentence ‘я – хороший пациент, у меня всегда всë болит’ is translated as ‘i am a good patient, i always have pain everywhere’. the second image shows daniil looking politely horrified. end id. /

[trollprince420]

Strade what are you doing in my Duolingo? 

[theproblemcallednight]

only had the energy to color skk cuz i got lazy but it was still fun to doodle. plus skrunkle sigma cuz skrunkle sigma

oh yeah @fyodorkitkat btw this is how i imagine u. ur now the anime man

[wikagirl]

*shaking the dutch language by the neck* when het instead of de??? tell me!!!

edit: hey uuuhh this was just supposed to be a little haha funny vent post bc I got frustrated in the moment but everyone in the comments and reblog has been so nice about it and tried to help me?? 😭 thank you guys so much I honestly didn‘t expect this you are too kind

[forestshadow-wolf]

Soap and ghost duolingo-ing together. They compete on who can do better.

Ghost is learning Gaelic so he can understand soap, and soap is learning dutch since ghost alredy knows it.

[emry-stars-art]

Pt 3/3

[Pt1] [Pt2] [HERE]