Language-learning resources!

[ruth]

tack så mycket solovei! i know at the very least i will be using a lot of the news and the tv to work on my skills, and there are a bunch of other online resources and dictionaries that i didn't know about before.

[kjeks]

Not sure if this will be interesting to anyone (as most of the forum is currently learning either Norwegian or German, it seems) but someone on Duolingo put together a MASSIVE list of online resources for learning swedish, from textbooks to video streaming guides to pronunciation charts.

Can be accessed here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aDkKW8cAS5zUwZA2f2SbETqAJc_WL-muMFkeV06zMDw/pub

Awesome. This will help me compare norwegian and swedish grammar .

[Lenny]

Just so people know, I'm sort of learning Korean, Japanese, German, and Norwegian sporadically at the same time. Maybe a not-so-good idea (I don't know - I like it, the differences in the languages are fun, even though it's not the most efficient thing to do), but it does mean that I'll drop in every now and then with a random learning source for one of those four languages. Like now.

Really, really good source for learning to read hiragana. Seriously. I'd gotten so fed up with things not sticking that I dropped it for a few months (admittedly life had a lot to do with that, too, but learning blocks can kill motivation quite easily), but this... I can remember them all now, and I only spent a few hours on it inbetween classes, over two days. And this page, by Tae Kim, is really good for remembering the stroke order in which to write hiragana. That is something with no shortcuts that only practise can make you remember, like learning a piano piece, but that page is a good resource to help. It's got free trace sheets and things, too. And this is a good learning source, plus a very good companion to the first pdf, as it goes into the pronunciation of the hiragana much more deeply - and explains things like the small tsu.

[StellersJayC]

I got my little brother to start the German Duolingo course! He's only done the first to lessons in the "basics" category, but he's already picking up on patterns. This is so exciting.

[SinkTheBismarck]

I have a bunch of resources for Dutch and Norwegian, if anyone is interested, but it's seriously too much and I have no idea how to upload it. Perhaps create a zip and make a torrent file? I'm not sure. Either way, message me if you're by chance interested

[kjeks]

I got my little brother to start the German Duolingo course! He's only done the first to lessons in the "basics" category, but he's already picking up on patterns. This is so exciting.

I tested my German skills today. I only reached level nine because of some translation flaws into english as well as some mistakes from the course (though no major ones).
All in all I think the German course, like the others, is pretty good and helpful. Though it's kind of sad, that europeans are not allowed to submit translations of texts, but well, Duolingo is free even for us copyright-addicted human beings.
Turkish is on the brink of launching, I'm so happy about that!

[Nimphy]

I tested my German skills today. I only reached level nine because of some translation flaws into english as well as some mistakes from the course (though no major ones).
All in all I think the German course, like the others, is pretty good and helpful. Though it's kind of sad, that europeans are not allowed to submit translations of texts, but well, Duolingo is free even for us copyright-addicted human beings.
Turkish is on the brink of launching, I'm so happy about that!

I tried Italian, but only reached level 10.5, because of the same exact reasons you listed and by dpressing accidentally "enter" before finishing the sentence. But I really like the German course.
I'm curious, how does the German voice in the course sound to you? The Italian one sounded pretty weird and mechanical to me, reading like Google Translate would, more or less.

[kjeks]

I tried Italian, but only reached level 10.5, because of the same exact reasons you listed and by dpressing accidentally "enter" before finishing the sentence. But I really like the German course.
I'm curious, how does the German voice in the course sound to you? The Italian one sounded pretty weird and mechanical to me, reading like Google Translate would, more or less.

It is the same with German, Swedish and French, though I think that at those three languages the mechanical voice is rather good if you hear them at regular level. At slow speaking all three are sounding a bit weird but are still very helpfull in hearing differences.
The Gaelic course is my favorite at the moment, because the words and sentences have been spoken in by a real human. Though her voice is very similar to the computer generated one, she has a clear speach and a perfect tune.

[Nimphy]

It is the same with German, Swedish and French, though I think that at those three languages the mechanical voice is rather good if you hear them at regular level. At slow speaking all three are sounding a bit weird but are still very helpfull in hearing differences.
The Gaelic course is my favorite at the moment, because the words and sentences have been spoken in by a real human. Though her voice is very similar to the computer generated one, she has a clear speach and a perfect tune.

Yes, I tried it once, without adding it to my actual courses. It looks incredibly pretty! Not just the voice, all the language. Although I don't know if I can add one more language to learn right now... but maybe just as a game.. come on, it's Gaelic! (If it were for me, I'd be taking all of the courses)

I'm very curious as to how the Duolingo crew will handle Russian when it comes out of hatching. After all, it doesn't use the same alphabet we do, does it now? I'm supposing Russian learners will just have a list of the cyrillic characters to select from, but that would be fairly annoying, I think.

[Hrollo]

I'm very curious as to how the Duolingo crew will handle Russian when it comes out of hatching. After all, it doesn't use the same alphabet we do, does it now? I'm supposing Russian learners will just have a list of the cyrillic characters to select from, but that would be fairly annoying, I think.

Virtual keyboards (where you actually type and it directly converts what you type) are relatively easy to implement on websites now, actually.

eg

[Nimphy]

Virtual keyboards (where you actually type and it directly converts what you type) are relatively easy to implement on websites now, actually.

eg

OOooooh!  That's so pretty! I'll be spending the next few minutes goofing around in that site, thanks!

[mithrysc]

It is the same with German, Swedish and French, though I think that at those three languages the mechanical voice is rather good if you hear them at regular level. At slow speaking all three are sounding a bit weird but are still very helpfull in hearing differences.
The Gaelic course is my favorite at the moment, because the words and sentences have been spoken in by a real human. Though her voice is very similar to the computer generated one, she has a clear speach and a perfect tune.

Yeah, I'm also doing Gaelic (sort of sporadically), and that's one of the reasons I chose it.

Virtual keyboards (where you actually type and it directly converts what you type) are relatively easy to implement on websites now, actually.

eg

Here's some more for different languages.

[Lenny]

Ooof, I tried the Dutch Duolingo course, and I had the exact same problem as you guys! Glad it's not only me >.> Only got to level 9 because certain linguistic characteristics weren't recognized >.> Certain translations which were technically correct weren't seen as such, and of course, the voice is wonderfully mechanical... but I'm still glad they have a Dutch course. It's pretty good, all said and done. It's for learners, after all, not native speakers.

And oooh, that virtual keyboard site... I'll be off playing with it now, thanks. *disappears*

[mithrysc]

Just found this, Ba Ba Dum. It's a small vocabulary games site (with amazing animations and quirky illustrations) for a bunch of different languages: Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Italian, Russian, Polish, Swedish, Greek, Portuguese, and Lithuanian, as well as British English and American English. Not so much for language-learning, but something that looks fun and is language-related.

I tried the Swedish and managed to get a whole bunch of words right, then promptly failed everything after that.

[kjeks]

Just found this, Ba Ba Dum. It's a small vocabulary games site (with amazing animations and quirky illustrations) for a bunch of different languages: Spanish, German, French, Japanese, Italian, Russian, Polish, Swedish, Greek, Portuguese, and Lithuanian, as well as British English and American English. Not so much for language-learning, but something that looks fun and is language-related.

I tried the Swedish and managed to get a whole bunch of words right, then promptly failed everything after that.

Awesome!!! If Duolingo had a Greek course as well, I'd be adding Greek to my chart.