• @Th3D3k0y
    link
    English
    172 days ago

    My biggest issue with Duolingo trying to learn German honestly. Sure I can read a compound word when presented with it, but fucking Duo is like “Cool… now spell it… bitch”

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      English
      122 days ago

      German is phonetic though - once you know how pronunciation maps to the alphabet (and certain compounds), it becomes easier to spell any new word. It’s actually why there’s no Spelling Bee in German.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      72 days ago

      I gave up on duolingo very quickly because it had a ton of clearly wrong stuff too. Drops and Rosetta Stone have much better content for learning German.

      • @Siegfried
        link
        2
        edit-2
        1 day ago

        I once talked to a guy that was learning portuguese all by himself using Langenscheidt’s portuguese course.

        They are pretty neat.

    • Deconceptualist
      link
      fedilink
      English
      42 days ago

      That’s your issue? Not adjective declination?

      I’m nearly at the end of Duolingo’s German content and spelling has mostly been quite easy (as a native English speaker). You want a spelling challenge, try French.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        11 day ago

        So we have this verb and the ending in third person plural is -ent but we just dont pronounce that so it pronounces the same way as third person singular…

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        12 days ago

        Fucking French. ‘we’re never, ever going to say this ‘h’ character, but you still need it to spell words correctly because fuck you, that’s why.’

        • Deconceptualist
          link
          fedilink
          English
          12 days ago

          English isn’t exactly innocent there. See knight, plumber, mnemonic, pterodactyl.

            • Deconceptualist
              link
              fedilink
              English
              2
              edit-2
              1 day ago

              Yeah but the spelling ‘normally’ would have been updated to match English pronunciation. That’s what happens in most languages. As I understand there were two issues:

              • Some dictionary writers (ca. late 1400s IIRC) wanted spellings that seemed fancier like French and Latin, which is why e.g. the silent B in debt was added ‘artificially’.
              • The printing press was invented right in the middle of the Great Vowel Shift so old spellings got “locked in” even though spoken English continued to change significantly for a long time afterward.