I’m quite pleased with the note below from Duolingo. Its about the sixth such thank you I have received and to me its a part of the genius of Duolingo which so far is blemish free, as far as I can see, in terms of Internet pollution. I wish I could say the same for Facebook which gave me a great platform to show the pictures I took on my cell phone of my 25-day trip to France.
As the note explains I offered a translation answer to one of the tens of thousands of sentences Duo has created to teach people French and another 30 or so languages. If a 1,000,000 other people with me (on the French tree alone) average the same level of correct alternatives that’s six million improvements to Duolingo in the tricky art of correct translations. Just think of the many sentences you could create to say “The dog ate the shoes that once belonged to my father.” Imagine if only one of them was accepted as an alternative when dozens if not hundreds of others could say virtually the same thing.
I put in two hours a day learning French and have done so for almost four years. I will both speak and read a mildly sophisticated French probably by the end of my next year’s worth of work. In the announcement feature that has been added to Duo recently they report a scientific study of people my age who put Duo to work and the results found an improvement in their mental acuity. That was one of the reasons I started Duolingo. My Mother and her mMther had Alzheimer’s. I wanted to avoid what I saw my Mother endure over the last decade of her life. I have found my fluidity in ENGLISH writing at its best in the last couple years. Of course, I have put in a lot more time than the people in the research sample.
Duo recently announced it was going to offer a math “game” like its language site. I have been imagining a history site for Duo. Its not quite do-it-yourself learning because there is a vast team of people putting it together and, as this note shows, in my own small way I’m one of the team:
Hi Harry111162,
Thank you for suggesting “The witch then asked for the spirits help ” as a translation for “La sorcière a alors demandé de l’aide aux esprits.”. We now accept this translation!
Duolingo keeps getting better thanks to language lovers like you. We really appreciate your help!
—The Duolingo team