(no subject)

[ysobel]

Also

* I keep wanting to do a language in addition to the Spanish that I'm duolingoing, but a) I can't decide between Yiddish and Korean and Japanese and Russian and ASL, b) three of those involve new alphabets, c) the last one I can't practice "speaking" and so it'd be harder to learn and also it's not practical for communicating, and d) even with Spanish, which is quite similar to English, I'm having issues remembering things these days

* I am half tempted to get a (cheap-ish) bugle, because it doesn't involve fingering and therefore I can either duct tape it to a stick and hold it myself, or have someone hold it for me, and teach myself to play based on YouTube videos, but that is like an incredibly silly temptation to have??? Especially since beginning brass sounds horrible and loud. And the "duct tape to stick" thing probably wouldn't work because it needs to vibrate or something.

(But it would probably be epic for maintaining lung function, lol)

Comments

Yiddish

[signeh]

I'm contimplating learning Yiddish myself. How does Duolingo work, exactly?

[krait]

I'd go with Yiddish or Korean! I attempted the Duolingo Russian course, but found it wasn't well put-together (there... was never actually a lesson on... the alphabet!?) and I ran into keyboard difficulties when trying to type answers, since of course my keyboard doesn't have the Russian alphabet on it. I gave up on it after getting sick of using a website to type out my responses and then paste them into Duo.

I've heard good things about Korean as far as ease of alphabet-learning goes, though I haven't tried it myself.

Possessing no musical talent personally, I say bugle your heart out. (Or your lungs in, as case may be.) You could learn 'Taps' and 'Reveille,' and be the alarm clock-slash-timekeeper for the whole building! :D

[highlander_ii]

good(?) news - Duo now has alphabet lessons for Russian. i had the same complaint - but they did add that! so - yay? and if you Duo on your phone (i know not everyone can), you can install a Cyrillic keyboard - but i feel you on the typing.

[krait]

That is good news. :D

I still can't use it - I am not a phone user, so the only keyboard for me is the one on my laptop - but perhaps there will be another improvement down the line and they'll add the ability to answer without using another website for the alphabet, akin to how they handle the Japanese alphabets in those lessons.

[highlander_ii]

i haven't done a lot of duo's russian lessons - so i haven't hit any of the 'spell the word' ones yet. but if they don't have the non-roman characters available to click on-screen - like for accented characters in the romance languages - that would be frustrating to manage.

[highlander_ii]

for the bugle - i think you'd be okay taping it to a stick w/o negative effects, since it would be similar to the amount of pressure one would exert holding it with fingers. so, go forth and make loud noises with a metal tube and enjoy yourself! =)