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#Duolingo yiddish
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important announcement: in the midst of tonight's Yiddish Duolingo lesson, I briefly forgot how to read and typed in "drashig" which, fun fact, is an anagram of "dishrag" but it is not in any way transliterated from "טראָגסט" I'm fine
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ghostcashew · 1 year
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!!! duolingo has been going well!! 😄
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wtfduolingo · 4 months
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(ID: Duolingo phrase in Yiddish that translates to "Lithuanians are often in Lithuania.)
I sure hope they are!
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bonyassfish · 9 months
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Happy pride to this Yiddish kid with two moms!!
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chaotic-archaeologist · 2 months
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hi internet bro, You posted Duolingo Yiddish the other day. Are you taking it as a heritage language ? Did you hear it growing up? How do you feel about studying it (in the Duo version of study)
I ask because I am curious about learning the language of my ancestors, but don't have a clear place to use it- whereas my workplace is multilingual and it would be more practical to learn the trade languages I hear every day.
but I still want to help revitalize indigenous languages and culture.
Hey there, thanks for asking!
I'm learning Yiddish because it's the language of my ancestors who fled Russian and Lithuania in the wake of pogroms at the beginning of the 20th century. When they reached American there was a great deal of pressure to assimilate.
One of my great great grandfathers was very proud of his ability to speak English without an accent, something that he associated with his success in starting a business which would later give him the ability to send my grandfather to college, making him the first person to do so. On the 1920 census, that great great grandfather's native language is listed as Jewish, which was sometimes how Yiddish was referred to.
My grandmother grew up in a house with Yiddish speaking parents. They were orthodox, but her father didn't wear a kippah outside of the house because of the pressure to assimilate. Her parents only spoke Yiddish when they didn't want their children to understand what they were saying. As a result, my grandmother never learned.
So I'm learning Yiddish for the same reason I wear a kippah, because my not-so-distant ancestors didn't feel like they could. Because it makes me feel connected to them, who and what they left behind, and the generations of Jews who have kept Yiddish alive both in Europe and diaspora communities. Certainly, it's less "practical" than learning Spanish or Chinese or Arabic or any number of other languages that are more commonly spoken.
But if we only learned languages because they're practical, what happens to the languages that don't make the cut? What happens to the languages that have been deliberately suppressed by colonialism and genocide and assimilation? There are many different reasons to learn a language; practicality is only one of them.
I'll be honest: I'm conflicted about the Duo version of Yiddish. Here's a really good article that explains the debate over the dialect of Yiddish that Duolingo chose to use for their course. The TL;DR is that Duolingo teaches Hasidic Yiddish, a popular dialect but not a universal one. Different dialects result from different communities, and there are political implications for choosing one over the others.
But Duolingo is free, and it's easy for me to spend ten minutes in the evening practicing a few words. It's not the best language learning platform by any means, but it has the language I wanted to learn and it meets my (admittedly simple) needs. After a year or so (and I'm maybe 50% of the way through the course) I find myself able to read simple texts and understand snatches of spoken Yiddish.
I'm also a member of the Yiddish Book Center, which I would totally recommend. They have lots of great resources for learning Yiddish and for interacting with Yiddish culture via literature, oral history, music, art, etc. Most of their programming is in English, and is easily accessible. There are other organizations out there doing great work to support and revitalize Yiddish, this is just the one I'm most familiar with.
(mazel) מאַזל
-Reid
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allinllachuteruteru · 5 months
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porcelain-rob0t · 1 month
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ive heard that a lot of people are starting to boycott duolingo for their use of AI and that seems like a good idea? are there any good free alternatives? im specifically looking for language programs that offer Yiddish, but any recommendations are appreciated
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starlightomatic · 6 months
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yoda talks like his first language is yiddish
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[Image description: a sentence in Yiddish from Duolingo:
The Yiddish: .איך גלייב אין דער זון אפילו ווען זי שיינט נישט
The English translation: I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining.
End description]
A little positivity from Duolingo.
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dayinthelifeofrory · 1 year
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little rant about the duolingo update (the biggest one recently)
i much prefered the old layout in practice. when i heard they were gonna update the tree and whatever i thoight it looked pretty cool and thought it would be pretty helpful to learn the language. but in practice i just feel like it going nowhere.
ive been learninf yiddish on duolingo since about january/february and now i have a decent understanding of grammar and spelling and language. i know quite a bit of vocab, enough to have a very limited conversation but its still a conversation and i’m proud of that. i have been using outide resources to gain a better understanding about the language but my main source of language content comes from duolingo because thats what i find quite helpful.
i got a decent amount far in the tree, i was on unit two (in the old tree style) anf i was proud of that! and because i could physically scroll past the finished units and lessons that i had finished and had a pretty good understanding of how far i was from a topic i was excited to do.
but then when the update came (2 november for me because im in the uk lols) after the first thoughts of intruige and just curiosity about what it changed, i eventually just got really.. unmotivated.
it feels like there are so much more things to do, when in reality 5/6 levels of one topic in the old format are spread over 1-3 ‘units’ in the new format. i’ve been doing the ‘complaints’ unit since the update came because it was spread over the unit they placed me on and the next one after that which im still on?
and i feel like in my orher languages also, like dutch and german, theyve placed me way behind where i am. and when i try and catch up by doing the ‘skip here’ tasks im still way behind. cause i look ag the (stupid) ‘guidebooks’ and they give me five ‘key’ phrases. and if its a popular language, it gives some grammar notes which i have to admit is very useful but if its not a popular language, like dutch and yiddish, im completely left in the dark! not to even mention that because the lesser popular languages on the app dont even have a guidebook? wheres the equality for the language learners? i deserve the same amount of extra tips for my yiddish than a spanish learner does, even if its less useful. and i know that it might be a cost issue because ‘they would be putting so much effort into so little learners’. they shouldn’tve done the update then. it costed a lot of money anyways.
a lot of learners even protseted against the idea of this. the trial testers for the update really disliked it and told the team that. but they didnt listen. and i know twitter replies are basically useless against a big company but so many twitter replies to their tweets were just about the update or things that have gone wrong because of the update. and duolingo replies to some of the tweets so theyre obviously seeing these comments and opinions.
and then when they made the legendary status on topics gold? its really petty but i just.. its not the vibe for me. i loved the purple. its nostalgic of last year for me when i just started duolingo. i was always so proud to show the purple units ive finished and now its gold and its jusg confusing. it was completely unnecessary.
i get that this is just my opinion. i get that eventually i might grow to tolerate it. but right now i just feel so bad about the update. so unmotivated. thats not what the app was meant to do: to let the learners feel unmotivated after using the app.
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i-love-cats-too-much · 4 months
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Duolingo is so weird wtf type of sentence is “wine for a gorilla”?
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ghostcashew · 1 year
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fun development on language learning: i've realized that if it takes an extra second for my brain to process My First Language then i should also give my brain that same second to process My New Language
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wtfduolingo · 1 year
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Something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve!
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chaotic-archaeologist · 11 months
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Duolingo, at it again with the incredibly useful phrases that I will no doubt be using frequently in everyday conversation...
Also, why does the bear give me the impression that it sees dead people because it just... killed a bunch of people?
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