My quick reactions are appreciative that many of Duolingo's questions accept kanji they shouldn't… - Feed Post by Arachkid
My quick reactions are appreciative that many of Duolingo's questions accept kanji they shouldn't that contain the same sounds. :P
posted by Arachkid
Comments 14
Meanwhile, I get "wrong" all the time for using 俺 instead of 僕 or 私 -.-
I am also almost 40, so never felt comfortable about using anything other than 私. I think I'm also rooted deeply in English, so "I" having multiple words is just odd. Never mind my students who refer to themselves in third person in Japanese, which in casual conversation is acceptable. Yuck.
I think I agree with this. Too often I submit the answer assuming IME has converted common phrases correctly, only to notice afterwards that IME detected the word boundaries incorrectly resulting in wrong conversion.
It doesn't help that I'm not always using Google IME anymore and am now regularly switching back to Microsoft IME. So my personalised conversion based on previous input is different depending on which IME I happen to be using.
So yeah, I'm thankful that it doesn't mark these mistakes as wrong.
I noticed with 俺 that sometimes is is accepted and sometimes it isn't, which makes things even more confusing. I typed わたくし instead of 私 or わたし and it didn't like that either. It does accept some pronouns which I wasn't expecting to work, like 我々. I don't like it has ever accepted おまえ yet for me though--only あなた and I think きみ too.
In some cases it doesn't like your combinations of ～たち or ～ら, like with 僕. I don't actually know which one is the more commonly used one in Japanese. It seems to change its mind about which combinations it allows in Duolingo though.
It is pretty fun testing what works, but it has slowed down my progress a lot getting so many wrong answers because of it. :P- Sometimes I've actually challenged "wrong" answers and had them answered to the database, or asked them to "fix" stuff (some of the answers come up in all katakana, which is disturbing to me when it's not something that's meant to be in katakana). It's free, and I think that's why a lot of things are very hit and miss as to whether you get them right or wrong, because I figure the people working on this are doing it for free. Can't complain.
- Maybe I can. English: "I want to take more coffee." The real meaning they're after? "I want to drink (some) more coffee.". :P
- Argh and the arbitrary needing of (or not needing of) "the" or それ.
- Yeah, that それ thing is pretty annoying. It took me ages to get used to when it needed me to type それ. After I'd finally got used to always typing それ/その every time the words "it"/"the" were used in the sentence, Duolingo then started marking some of my answers as wrong because I had typed it!
Also, it started to get even more annoying once あれ/あの was thrown into the mix. The sentence would have the word "that" in it, and would seem like it could either be talking about something the listener is holding or something more distant, yet it would mark それ/その as incorrect. xD
I was pretty shocked when it marked "I want to drink coffee" wrong and told me I should have written "I want to take coffee"! This sounds really weird in any situation, although "I'll take (a) coffee" is sometimes said but is more often "I'll have (a) coffee". However, the sentence we're translating from even uses 飲む, so that's really messed up... I had already reported these questions too. I really like the way it allows you to report each question so specifically. ^^ - I think the statement you're talking about is even worse than you think. I think you mean "I want to take MORE coffee", which I totally posted a message about.
- They acknowledged it, but said there's no easy way for them to fix the English sentences. Really, REALLY glad I'm paying the wonderful price of zero now. :P
- And of all the new stuff that I'm learning through Duolingo, I HATE "follow". That's worse than "have to" when I first found out about it. Sometimes the Japanese works well or just makes sense, and then sometimes... what?
I'm confused. Duolingo teaches Japanese now? 何- @timwizard, Set the site language to Japanese and pick the English course! It isn't quite as good as a proper Japanese course, but it is still amazing for practicing Japanese sentences. I keep forgetting that it's not actually an official "Japanese" course because it is so good. :D
If you are going to try doing this course, I suggest turning off the mic and speaker settings to avoid the completely English questions. Unfortunately this means you lose all audio including sound effects (you can still manually play the sentence audio by clicking the button or keyboard shortcut for it), so just put on some decent music instead or something even more useful like Japanese radio. ^^ - Question: He stayed in the hotel.
My answer: 彼はその旅館に滞在しました。
Result --- wrong! ><
Apparently it was only the "旅館" bit that it didn't like; ホトル is what it wanted...
I can't figure out if situations like this one are sensible to report? I can understand that not all hotels are referred to as 旅館 in Japan... I don't think I even know specifically enough what the word "hotel" means in English compared to other words like "inn", so I shouldn't really be debating Japanese translations of this word until I've gone and learnt the English difference first! haha ^^; - @mog86uk, I appreciate your very thorough reply. I may have to give it a try down the road. I am very new to learning still so I may have to build a basic foundation first. Again, thanks for the tip.
