Preface: I apologize if I am a bit of a pedant. You have been warned. Also, nothing here should be construed as ingratitude to the good people working on the Duolingo course. They are expending an immense amount of time and effort to create an invaluable resource.

Anyway, I am working through the Duolingo Esperanto course. Today I came across a sentence involving bedaŭrinda: regrettable. Pretty straightforward. However, I noticed that their alternative/primary translation was regretful. This strikes me as subtly but definitely incorrect. Only a being can feel regret and therefore be regretful. The incorrect conflation of these words is even mentioned in a couple of dictionary entries I inspected. I should think that the closest thing to regretful would be something like bedaŭrema or bedaŭrplena. Thoughts?

There are some other things beyond the run of the mill which I have found odd in the course, too. I am far, far, far from an expert, but it seems like they hew towards popular usage especially from the perspective of American English speakers even when it is inconsistent or idiomatic. Today I saw this:

Bebo, ekdormu jam!

Saying “go to sleep already!” seems awfully regional. Several non-American native English speakers expressed a lack of understanding in the question forum. Is this really a typical use for jam?

Obviously I am OK with having plenty of alternative answers; translation is not an exact science. But some of the model sentences seem a little wonky. My point here is not to trash talk the authors. I doubt that anything they are doing is strictly wrong. I just don't know if I can trust them to live up to my OCD expectations. I come at this from a math background where precise definition is everything. If there is a right way to do something I want to learn it from the beginning. It is much harder to unlearn bad habits. The Lernu resources I have gone through seem much more diligent in this regard.

Here is another thing I don't really understand:

De vs. El

I am still not fluent enough to really understand Esperanto-only grammars/dictionaries fully. This is frustrating. I have looked through a few resources and it seems to me that if one is using a construction in English of the form “I am going from X to Y” where x and y are physical locations, it should be from=el and to=al. But I see de used frequently for the former. On the other hand when talking about, say, a member selected from a group, it will want me to use el. I realize prepositions are difficult and arbitrary in every language, but is there really no clear distinction here?

Anyhow, just a few things I wanted to solicit opinions on.
Thanks for reading.

"Bebo, ekdormu jam!" is not an americanism, but a usual Esperanto expression.

de means "from a point", so "Ili flugis de Parizo al Londono", while el means "out from" (a container or something percieved as a container/surrounding, e.g. a group of people), so "Ili venis el la domo", "unu el miaj amikoj".

I personally would not say "ekdormu jam" but I would understand it fine, it has a very colloquial sound to it.

Bedauxrinda as regretful? I think that's not correct, and it's not even an Americanism.

I encourage you to speak up to the Duolingo people about your concerns, if you haven't already. They are nice people and I'm sure they will take it constructively -- after all, the Esperanto version is in beta, so everyone knows there are kinks that still need working out.

Bedauxrinde - regrettable; bedaurxema/bedauxranta - regretful, regretting.

Duolinguo still doesn't have all the bugs worked out, so all corrections/comments are welcome and, indeed, necessary for future improvement.

Tempodivalse:Bedauxrinde - regrettable;

Bedaŭrinde would be regrettably, no?

I realize it is in beta which is why I very actively submit corrections and alternative sentences. I just get the vague impression that some of the oddities I encounter are not mistakes, but intentional choices made to skew towards a certain philosophy of inclusiveness/accessibility for a certain subset of users. But this is not the point of my post; mostly I am just here to ask the above questions, not to poo-poo Duolingo EO, which has been an indescribable benefit to me regardless of such small criticisms. The poll was just an afterthought, but I would like to hear what more experienced speakers think; maybe I'm baselessly barking up the wrong tree. I may revisit this topic once the course is entirely complete and I am more proficient.

seveer:

Tempodivalse:Bedauxrinde - regrettable;

Bedaŭrinde would be regrettably, no?

Can be both:

Mi bedaŭrinde faris tion. = Regrettably, I did this.
Fari tion estis bedaŭrinde. = Doing this was regrettable.

Cf.: Resti kun leono estas danĝere.

Here's another one I find odd, that I came across today:

La hundaĉo estas aminda.

The hover translations for hundaĉo are: mutt/mongrel/cur. The primary, and in all the dictionaries I have looked at, only definition for these words when referring to dogs (not people) is for mixed-breeds. That is, hibridaj hundoj. It's an attractive-seeming single word translation but it just isn't very accurate. When people yell "mongrel!" at a dog, they are really yelling "half-breed!" This sense of the word is the primary/only one in most English dictionaries, and it appears nowhere for hundaĉo in the PIV. It would be like translating aĉulo as mulatto. It would be incredibly offensive except that we are talking about dogs rather than people. The other issue I have with the sentence is the contrast between a suffix that is supposed to mean essentially "worthless" or "awful" and immediately describing it as "lovable." I realize that people employ gentle sarcasm and hyperbole when joking about their pets; but why this convolution on the first of few sentences introducing this suffix? I feel like this is teaching people to view -aĉ as a cute little friendly jibe where it might be otherwise.

Hi guys!

I am one of the moderators of the Duolingo course, and very much appreciate your comments. As you know, the course is in the beta testing phase, so we are taking all comments very seriously and welcome your help in order to improve the course. The thousands of sentences were written by individual members of our team and were not subject to group discussion for each one. Although we did try to proofread everything at least once, plenty of mistakes remain. So when we discover a sentence that doesn't work for what ever reason-- grammatical error, awkward translation, users hate it, etc, we can always remove it, and substitute a new one if needed.

I just discovered the "regretful" issue too and thought I had fixed it; will check again. The "bebo dormas" sentence was discussed at length in the FB group, too

The most effective ways to get your concerns to us are: report the sentence in the Duolingo system, participate in the discussions in Duolingo, and bring up your concern in the "Duolingo Esperanto Learners" Facebook page. We promise you that we will consider all your comments. Comments here are less helpful to us because I can't monitor these discussions closely while also following the Facebook group (which has 1500 members) and editing the course.

ruth3209:Hi guys!

Thanks so much for commenting! I always submit anything I mention here (and a whole lot more) under the Duolingo error reporting and I participate in discussions there when I can. I deleted my Facebook account a few years ago due to their poor privacy policies so unfortunately I can not participate in that venue:-

I'm glad to hear I'm not just crazy and that other people have been considering some of the same issues.

Thank you once again for all the work that you and the team have done and continue to do!

Bonŝancon!

I've had over thirty feedback emails from the Duolingo team in a very short space of time. I think they're doing a great job of trying to iron out any kinks while its in beta.

At the beginning I noticed a slight bias toward American-English renderings. If most of the writers are from the U.S. that's going to unintentionally occur, but this has changed as the course progresses.