Duolingo Arabic is now in beta
Posted: Wed Jun 26, 2019 3:57 pm
We talk languages
http://forum.language-learners.org/
http://forum.language-learners.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=10652
Saim wrote:Based on this Reddit post it seems the TTS is completely off as it doesn't differentiate word forms that are spelled the same but pronounced differently. That's quite a big oversight as you'll be internalising completely incorrect grammar at the level of "she eat" instead of "she eats" or "I are" instead of "I am".
I'm not sure if there's any Arabic TTS that doesn't make these mistakes, in my experience they all have trouble getting the correct word forms. If not I doubt they'll fix it.
Saim wrote:Based on this Reddit post it seems the TTS is completely off as it doesn't differentiate word forms that are spelled the same but pronounced differently. That's quite a big oversight as you'll be internalising completely incorrect grammar at the level of "she eat" instead of "she eats" or "I are" instead of "I am".
I'm not sure if there's any Arabic TTS that doesn't make these mistakes, in my experience they all have trouble getting the correct word forms. If not I doubt they'll fix it.
lavengro wrote:Saim wrote:Based on this Reddit post it seems the TTS is completely off as it doesn't differentiate word forms that are spelled the same but pronounced differently. That's quite a big oversight as you'll be internalising completely incorrect grammar at the level of "she eat" instead of "she eats" or "I are" instead of "I am".
I'm not sure if there's any Arabic TTS that doesn't make these mistakes, in my experience they all have trouble getting the correct word forms. If not I doubt they'll fix it.
Hi Saim,
I wonder whether you may have intended to link to a different reddit post? This one, at least to this point, does not seem to support what you say above and unless I have missed it which I may have, does not address differentiation failures or TTS issues. I see two posters complaining that one particular sound is off ("Is the "wa" audio correct? It doesn't sound like speech, is this just an issue with my device/app? All the other audios sounded normal") but otherwise, the majority of the comments seem to deal with the MSA v. dialects issue or otherwise spin off into an odd discussion about Shakespearean English or other odd comments.
There are comments in the thread relating to this not being an effective approach to teaching written Arabic. I am a big fan of Duolingo, but based on my tinkering at Duolingo Korean and Japanese in the past, I don't think Duolingo is one's best introduction to different alphabets or syllabaries.
Having said that, this is only the beta version and I expect it would benefit from feedback like yours.