#duolinguo plus

[plumadesatada]

Bwhahaha my Duolingo plus family subscription expired (don't judge me I got it before they decided human translators and the actual entire community could be replaced with badly-trained predictive-text-on-steroids) and I chose not to renew it (for aforementioned issues, which i wrote about in my 1 star playstore review)

mom, an avid Duolingo user, was like "the super is gone 😭 the ads are back 🤮"

I explained about the mass firing and she immediately said "well we're definitely not renewing the subscription then. I shall ignore the ads with relish"

and I was like "I'll do you one better" and through the power of piracy got us both a cracked version of the app with full super duolinguo unlocked, because I don't want those pieces of shit getting even $0.000001 ad revenue and also i dont wanna watch ads

viva la piratería!

[simple-friend]

Day ten

my first time making an aesthetically post, well, sort off. (I know the images aren't the same size)

this weekend was fast, I slept all of friday and went for a run. It has been a while since my last run, like 6 months or so, I noticed I was gaining some weight and had to stop that, I really want to try a OMAD one meal a day. did some laundry, my room ... but I couldn't study.

today, I woke up early and went to work half asleep, I was the only one working today. made coffee, started working on the project with Eplan, and then switched over to another project with Excel. I think I am going to have an Excel nightmare tonight.

went out to buy some groceries, found a discount on chocolate near its expiration date, grabbed a bunch , went to the cashier, stopped myself right there, and returned the chocolates. I want to be fit again, not tired, sedentary life is really a problem, plus thinking too much makes me want to eat everything. having too much chocolate is not the answer.

I made red lentils, I added celery for the first time, and the sauce became thicker, I am not sure if it's the celery, one thing for sure, it's my most delicious red lentils meal ever.

after that, I studied for one hour, it wasn't enough to understand one exercise but it was honest work. I played a bit with duolinguo, wrote this and zzzz

nighty night

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

hey! sorry to bother you but i'm welsh but I paid practically no attention to welsh lessons in school but now I have a B in welsh gcse I ironically now want to learn my own language. do you have any tips on learning how to speak it properly?? also thank you for your blog it is a damn delight

Hello! No bother at all! Welcome! And also THANK YOU SO MUCH, this blog is a mess of my ramblings but I am thrilled someone else likes it.

That’s pretty much the path my sister has taken, actually. In school she had zero interest in Welsh, in the same way she had zero interest in most subjects. And then she got to her thirties, living in London, and suddenly thought “Fuck I wish I’d learned that.” Though to be fair, I think what she struggled with was the way it’s taught - she’s actually someone who needs lists of verb tables and vocab to memorise, and then just practise at putting it into sentences, while the way we were taught was a lot of random topics and sentences that I’ve basically never used since (”Beth yw dy bwys di?” - HOW MUCH DO YOU WEIGH. I HAVE NEVER USED THIS IN EITHER LANGUAGE.)

As for tips… hmm.

I suppose it depends on things like how much you remember and how your language learning works. Not everyone is like my sister and wanting verb tables (she’s a bit of a freak if I’m honest.) So, let’s think…

If You Have Forgotten Everything

The first step has to be some form of refresher course, whatever form that may take. I don’t know where you are in the country, but almost every even-slightly-major town in Wales these days has a branch of the Menter Iaith, which is an organisation dedicated to getting people learning Welsh. They offer courses; they can also link you to others who do. You can do nice gentle ones where you go for an hour a week for thirty weeks; you can also do intensive courses over the summer, where you go every day for a few weeks. 

An EXCELLENT ALTERNATIVE for that is Say Something In Welsh. They do six-month courses or 5-10 day intensive courses, and at the time of me writing this their six-month course has been reduced from £200 to £50 - plus, if you aren’t a confident Welsh speaker at the end they refund you. And, you don’t need to go anywhere for it, as long as you have a working webcam and microphone - you do group video calls with your tutor and classmates once a week, I think, and then work at home the rest of the time.

Alternatives include things like the DuoLinguo Welsh app, or the Teach Yourself Welsh range. Given that you’ve studied it to GCSE level, even if it feels like you’ve learned nothing, you’ll have actually gained a surprising amount that will help you if you do choose to try to carry on with a book. Pronunciation will be much easier for you, for example.

Once you’ve done that and you have a good grounding in your head again, progress to:

If You Remember Some But Want To Turn It Into Fluency

Alright, so!

Both DuoLinguo and Say Something In Welsh offer good free/cheap Welsh lessons. SSIW’s consist of you choosing whether you want to learn northern or southern dialect, and then there are 25 free audio lessons and 5 free listening exercises. These are both good for getting back into the swing of learning it, and have the added advantage of you being able to hear how you should be saying it.

Immersing yourself is important, as soon as you can. Back to the Menter Iaith! They don’t just do courses - they also do a shit-ton of activities that are specifically aimed at making fluent speakers and learners mix together and try to speak Welsh. Choirs, hiking parties, gigs… Oh, and they always have coffee mornings, also known as a Siop Siarad. You literally just go along and chat to people as best you can. As I say, they’re designed for learners to practise, so no one thinks you’re a moron if you get halfway through saying what your father does for a living and realise you have no idea how to say “occupational therapist”.

And on that note, some general tips:

Do not be afraid to lapse into English for vocab you don’t know, or if the grammar of a sentence is tricky. Just make sure you return to Welsh after you have.

Do not be afraid to ask someone to repeat themselves. If you still don’t get it, do not be afraid to say “I’m sorry, I’m just not getting this. Can you say it in English?” Make them then parse through the sentence with you, if possible, so that you see why you weren’t getting it.

THIS HAPPENS TO EVERYONE, DON’T WORRY. Learners will understand. Fluent speakers will just be grateful you’re trying.

Don’t stress about mutations. They’ll come in time. Learn them so you’ll recognise them, but really don’t worry too much about using them yourself until you’re ready (it’ll happen naturally, too.)

If you wish to make the past tense much easier for yourself, don’t worry about short forms; just learn the past tense for “gwneud.” If you want to say the sentence “I walked to town”, it is just as acceptable to say “Nes i gerdded i’r dre” as it is to say “Cerddais i’r dre”. This means no fumbling about to work out how to put an “ais/aist/odd” ending onto any given verb; instead, you shove “Nes i/nest ti/wnaeth e” in front, and you’re done.

Mix and match whatever dialects you damn well like. This is about you, and what you’ll remember and be comfortable with in the moment. No one gives a shit if it makes you sound like a learner, and nor should you.

A strange phenomenon of the human brain is that, if you meet someone in one language, that’s the language your brain will make you speak to them in forever more. So, when you are trying to make new Welsh speaking friends in the choir or coffee morning or whatever, DO WHATEVER YOU CAN TO SPEAK IN WELSH TO THEM. Otherwise, you will make friends in English, and you will never speak Welsh to them. Trust me. I’ve been there.

But ultimately… have fun with it! You may enjoy learning other stuff about Welsh-language culture at the same time, actually - there’s a lot of fun shit like the Mari Lwyd and that, of course, but also different musical forms (Cerdd Dant springs to mind), different poetic forms (cynghanedd) and, of course, a whole different mythology. There’s a lot of good stuff that you never know about if you grow up Anglo-Welsh, because you aren’t taught it. It’s also worth a look.

Good luck! Feel free to ask me anything else.

[studiousbees]

[App Review] — HelloChinese

Hello, everyone! I’m glad to be back <3 Two weeks of grad were intense—classes from 9am to 6pm, plus readings and homework and projects and just generally studying for usually about three hours (or more) each evening before getting up to do it again the next day. Yesterday morning we had our exams, and now the first 20% of my master’s degree is complete :)

ANYWAY! Today I bring you... Chinese??

My blog is pretty much totally geared toward Korean lately, but I haven’t given up on Mandarin! I actually use a few different language exchange apps and sites to chat with native speakers, so even if I’m not actually doing book study, I can get a little practice here and there. However, I have lately been using this app, HelloChinese, to get a little more practice in, and to shore up my basics. I’ve been using it for a bit now, and even used it to get in some short practices during downtime after grad classes, so I figured I would tell you guys how I’m feeling about the app.

(The hamburger isn’t part of the opening screen; that’s just my Chinese dictionary app!)

HelloChinese is set up sort of like Duolinguo, if you’re familiar with that structure. There are different levels that you progress through, from absolute basics and up, though there are shortcuts you can take, sort of to test in to a higher level so you can skip things you already know. I decided to start from the bottom anyway (though I didn’t do the pronunciation part; you can go straight into basics without doing that if you already know how Pinyin works). Each topic starts with a little intro page you can read for some cultural background on the topic, and then you get into learning. New words and grammar are presented with audio and images, and you can choose if you want to see just Pinyin, just the characters (my choice), or both together. Also, blessedly, you can choose to use either traditional or simplified. I love traditional characters, so I was really glad I wouldn’t be forced to use simplified <3

As you progress through each part of the lesson, you’ll be presented with a variety of questions, including vocab-picture matching, translating vocab or sentences, writing characters, and even speaking questions! The individual little lessons are short, but they pack so many activities into them that I feel like it’s a really good, effective format. My favorite thing is actually the final lesson of each topic, which is purely speaking. It judges fairly harshly at times (and I, being a perfectionist, keep retrying each sentence until it judges all of my characters as correct even though you can move on without that), but that certainly isn’t a bad thing if you really want to nail your pronunciation and tones. The only thing that’s a bit disappointing is that if you choose to redo the level, which you can at any time, the questions never change. It would just be nice if it could use the lesson material to build new sentences for each time you try.

There are some other little features outside of the main topics and lessons, but I honestly don’t mess with them much and just keep trucking on forward. You can download the lessons for offline learning, and there is a training function in which you can play games using coins earned from completing lessons. However, you can only play one unless you pay to unlock all of the games. Another feature is word, character, and grammar cards. When practicing those, you can choose specific topics to include or exclude, or you can just do all of them together.

To sum it all up, I really enjoy this app for working on my Mandarin! The progression from basic topics and onward is smooth, you can choose the character set you want to use, and it has good speaking practice and flashcards. It would be nice if the speaking exercises were mixed up a little, and if the games were free, but eh, I guess the developers need to make money somehow! If you’re looking to get into learning Chinese or just need a way to fit some quick and easy practice into your busy day, I would recommend HelloChinese :)

As always, happy studying~