Esperanto is incubating on Duolingo!
od disgustus, 19. listopada 2014.
Poruke: 16
Jezik: English
disgustus (Prikaz profila) 19. listopada 2014. 20:44:26
=> http://incubator.duolingo.com/courses/eo/en/status
I think this is huge. Only a month has passed and it's already at 20%. Granted, it still has to move from incubating to hatching, and then to Beta followed by hatched, but - how exciting! Esperanto gets a lot of exposure from cool sites like Lernu!, but who knows that to expect with mainstream access for laptops, desktops, tablets, and smartphones via an established and highly popular service like Duolingo?
robbkvasnak (Prikaz profila) 19. listopada 2014. 21:26:49
disgustus (Prikaz profila) 19. listopada 2014. 23:49:18
robbkvasnak:You're Canadian and you don't know any French? That is strange....Technically, I'm not Canadian - I'm a permanent resident of Canada. I was born in North Carolina, so I'm a citizen of the US and I emigrated to Canada. I don't speak French, but I did take Spanish and German in high school, went to college for Russian, and dabbled in Latin for a while.
Although, there are actually more and more Canadians these days who also don't speak much or any French. They might take it in high school the same way lots of US kids take Spanish in high school, but being English/French bilingual in Canada hasn't been a sure thing for a while now.
My wife, for example, barely speaks "pidgeon" French, and nobody in her family speaks it at all. Her father worked for the government as a food and drug inspector for just over 20 years, but even his French is quite poor.
Of course, more and more parents (like the wife and I) are sending their kids to public French immersion school, so those numbers are changing a little. Our daughter is in the 2nd grade (but 4th year - jk, sk, 1st, 2nd) and doing great. I tried learning French, but seeing as all the other second languages I've taken were phonetic and French, like English, is not phonetic, I found it extremely challenging.
Alkanadi (Prikaz profila) 20. listopada 2014. 09:30:52
robbkvasnak:You're Canadian and you don't know any French? That is strange....Most Canadians don't know any French. English is the number one spoken language and I think Hindi comes in number 2.
WalterMitty (Prikaz profila) 20. listopada 2014. 12:24:26
Alkanadi:According to the 2011 census, French is the first language of around 20% of Canadian population (English 57%). Number 3 is chinese, then italian and german. The first indian language seems to be Pendjadi. Of course, every province is different.robbkvasnak:You're Canadian and you don't know any French? That is strange....Most Canadians don't know any French. English is the number one spoken language and I think Hindi comes in number 2.
What's interesting -- but not suprising -- is that more than 40% of French-speaking Canadians are bilingual, vs. less than 10% of English-speaking.
"Most English-speaking Canadians don't know any French" would be more accurate.
disgustus (Prikaz profila) 20. listopada 2014. 13:23:14
WalterMitty:What's interesting -- but not suprising -- is that more than 40% of French-speaking Canadians are bilingual, vs. less than 10% of English-speaking.I think what would be really interesting is to see the geographic distribution of French-English bilingual Canadians. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilingual_belt
"Most English-speaking Canadians don't know any French" would be more accurate.
For example, if the Wikipedia entry is to believed, Quebec and New Brunswick top the chart at 42% and 32% bilingual French/English. Granted, that doesn't say if they're fluent in both languages, merely if they have knowledge of both languages. After that, the numbers drop off considerably with Ontario, where I live, showing only 16% bilingual French/English.
If you average the numbers, then you can get the impression that French is widely spoken across Canada, but looking at the geographic distribution shows that bilingual French/English Canadians are primarily concentrated in only two provinces and in other provinces primarily along the shared borders with Quebec and New Brunswick. The decline of French and the French-speaking population in Canada was well documented in the previous census( http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/david-frum/2011-canad... ), but like I said, with the rise of French-language immersion public schools, these numbers could certainly change.
But how about that Esperanto on Duolingo, eh?
WalterMitty (Prikaz profila) 21. listopada 2014. 11:33:43
disgustus:But how about that Esperanto on Duolingo, eh?That's good news indeed, especially for the exposure. But what would be really great: courses for every languages in Esperanto
It reminds me of the UE linguistic situation: 24 official languages -> around 500 'duolingos' needed. With a common language, it could be reduced to 48.
Ĝis!
Alkanadi (Prikaz profila) 21. listopada 2014. 14:14:17
WalterMitty:Yah. So true. I think this is why Rosetta Stone is so big. It has no base language. Anyone can learn any language with any language background. It is for the same reason that the "Just for Laughs: Gags" and "Mr. Bean" are shown around the world.
It reminds me of the UE linguistic situation: 24 official languages -> around 500 'duolingos' needed. With a common language, it could be reduced to 48.
Ĝis!
In the early stages of globalization, it is profitable to produce things that don't rely on language because it requires far less effort and gives the producer a huge audience.
ruth3209 (Prikaz profila) 21. listopada 2014. 19:54:35
disgustus (Prikaz profila) 21. listopada 2014. 23:24:20
ruth3209:Thanks to course moderators Chuck Smith and Paul Garnier, the Esperanto course in the Duolingo incubator reached 20% last week and was able to take on 2 additional team members: Anja Eisemann and myself. It's painstaking work but we are all committed to creating a great course. Stay tuned!Do you know if Esperanto on Duolingo is going to allow use of the X- or H-methods, or will it only use the Unicode letters Ŝ, Ĉ, Ĥ, Ů, and so on?