Learning German from DuoLingo: Day 80

Today is day 80 in my ongoing quest to learn to read the German language through use of the DuoLingo application and web site. This post will provide an update on my progress during the last few days.

The new DuoLingo development that I find most interesting and challenging at the moment is that the further I progress in the categories, the more completed categories I leave behind me. This means that the further I go, the more likely it is that one of the previously completed categories will decay away from completion and need me to refresh it. For the last two days, I have needed to re-complete at least 3 categories per day. And of course, the time I spend on re-completing decayed categories is time that I cannot spend on completing new ones. For that reason, it seems that it is going to soon become difficult or impossible to keep all categories at the fully completed level. It will be interesting to see what happens when I get to that point.

On one hand, it's good because it forces me to revisit words that I have forgotten, but on the other hand it prevents me from learning new words. It will be interesting to see how DuoLingo maintains that balance.

With the past few days of learning, I did manage to complete the "People 1" category, which means that I have now completed a total of 26 categories. So basically, based on the last couple days, it seems that an average of about 1 in 8 categories will be decaying away daily. I still have to complete 94 more categories to get to the end of the lessons, at which time it would seem that I could be losing as many as 15 categories per day to decay. Realistically, I can't see any way that I'll be able to refresh that many categories back to "completion level", especially if I want to learn any new material at all.

Anyway, on to some of the words and phrases in today's lessons. None of them are new, but I'll post some here anyway.
(remember, I'm learning, so errors are possible)

German	English
Der Feind	The enemy
Der Besucher	The visitor
Das gemüse mag die Vegetarie nicht.	The vegetable does not like the vegetarian.
Wir sind nur Besucher.	We are only visitors.
Der Bürger bezahlt.	The citizen is paying.
Der Gegne ist müde.	The opponent is tired.
Dein Freundin mag mich nicht.	Your girlfriend does not like me.
Mein Mann ist alt.	My husband is old.
Meine Frau ist schön.	My wife is beautiful. (All German husbands must learn this phrase ; -)

And here are the current numbers that the app is reporting for my progress:

• Streak: 80
• Hearts: 4
• Crowns: 130
• Lingots: 389
• Crystals: 823
• XP today: 68
• Total XP: 14451
• League: Diamond
• XP in league: 138
• Place in league: 23
• Time left in league: 5d 0h 30m
• Followers: 4
• Words learned: 530 in app, 661 in web site

I should also note that this is my 3rd week in the "Diamond" league, which is the highest one that can be reached. I intentionally waited until late in the day yesterday to try to get in a less competitive bracket with the less motivated learners. ; -)

Of my three weeks in diamond league, week 1 was mildly competitive, week 2 was highly competitive (I had trouble staying above demotion level, which is positions 46-50). It's only been two days so far, but so far this week seems less competitive.

No new special characters in today's post, so the full table (so far) looks like this:

Key press	character
ALT-0196	Ä
ALT-0214	Ö
ALT-0223	ß
ALT-0228	ä
ALT-0246	ö
ALT-0252	ü

If you want to learn a foreign language (or Klingon or High Valyrian), my recommendation for DuoLingo continues to be "thumbs up". According to the app, you can also use DuoLingo to learn dead or endangered languages like Latin, Navajo or Hawaiian.

My guess is that no one is going to learn to speak a language perfectly through DuoLingo, but I think it can provide a solid foundation that can be used to build additional knowledge through other, immersive techniques.