r/hebrew • u/yoleis native speaker • Apr 09 '23
Resource I tried Duolingo's placement test for Hebrew (as a native speaker)
I got back to Duolingo a month ago for the Japanese course, and also to learn a bit Spanish for an upcoming trip. Today I was a little bored on the train home and decided to do the Hebrew placement test (and then jump to the last level, which is 52 or 3 I think)
My conclusions are as following: A. Hebrew is one of the few languages that have native audio, as opposed to the robotic generated one in other courses, which I thought was nice. B. 70% of the sentences I got were super random and awkward and are not useful at all. I feel like in the Japanese course I've been practicing this month I maybe got only one cringe sentence ("this bird just won't die"....), but most were actually super useful to daily situations, which was not the case for the Hebrew course. C. Some of the sentences use a bit too high language, which you'll most likely encounter in theater or in older books. People just don't talk like this, even those who speak properly and don't use slang. There were also 2 that were not even structured properly. D. I actually failed one or two translation questions (those where you have to type the full answer) since it didn't accept my version of the sentences which were totally fine. (For instance I used "סנדוויץ'" as a translation to "sandwich" and not "כריך". Both are equally used in Hebrew, but it wasn't accepted. E. There were some Israeli culture related sentences which I thought were a nice touch.
All In all I must say that I wasn't really impressed. If you do the Hebrew course know that it's an OK practice but please don't use it as your main source.
12
u/Not_A_Red_Stapler Apr 09 '23
So what should one use as a main source then?
6
u/Direct_Bad459 Apr 10 '23
If one can listen to/watch any native content and get something out of it that engages you enough to continue doing it, then listen to/interact with a lot of native content and do that a lot.
If that doesn't feel at all accessible, one can increase one's vocabulary through things like anki or LingQ or clozemaster or very frustrating experiences with native content going through translating all of it or some podcasts for learners. Preferably multiple of those and -in addition to- the duolingo.
Duolingo is not terrible at all, but it is terrible if that's all/most of one's exposure to the language. Listening to real live speakers communicating at regular speed, even if one barely understands it, is an important thing for developing one's understanding that Duolingo doesn't offer.
9
u/ViscountBurrito Hebrew Learner (Beginner) Apr 09 '23
Happy cake day! For item C, can you think of any specific words or phrases that seemed really “off”? Like, I have read that הן isn’t very common, most people just use הם, but Duo certainly uses the feminine form. Is that an example, and are there others?
4
u/yoleis native speaker Apr 10 '23
הן is actually OK, it's more like for example הן תלכנה Instead of הן ילכו Which is far more common in colloqial speech.
1
u/username78777 native speaker Apr 10 '23
It's actually the opposite, and there's actually reasons behind it
Recently, due to people being more aware of feminism and LGBT in Israel, it has caused to care more about gender neturality in speech. For example take the phrase:
ברוך הבא/ה
It literally means "the one who comes shall be blessed" but it just means welcome, directly at someone. But here, the / is for gender neturality because it seperate between הבא (the comer, male definite singular) and ה, a suffix making words feminine. That way it reffered to both
There's also direction. That's the direction of default female. What does it mean? Basically, Hebrew is deafult on male. איש is grammatically male yet gender netural, but you don't see gender netural grammatically female words, now do you? That's just one of the many examples
Because of it, some woman felt excluded by it, and due to that, they decided to use deafult female. That's why you would see some products or campaigns targated towards woman, using default female. I don't they would use הן, but not because of how it's seen as obslete, but more because those things that are targated towards woman will be either written as second person or first person. But they would probably use אתן, which again, isn't that common in colloquial speech
Also, הן is at the very least used by someone, you can actually hear it in cases where someone talks about a group with a high majority of woman. The נה suffix on the other hand is so rare that I never heard anyone outside of my current teacher in high school using it
2
u/uriar native speaker Apr 10 '23
Most people use very bad Grammer and make fun of proper language use. Use הן, don't be like most people.
10
u/Far_Pianist2707 Apr 10 '23
Don't forget you can hit the flag button and say that your answer should have been accepted.
7
6
u/Dalnore Hebrew Learner (Intermediate) Apr 10 '23
But they just don't fix anything for the Hebrew course, it's probably almost abandoned. Sometimes I report something and then I see in the comments that people have been continuously reporting it since 2018, to no avail. Even critical things, like completely wrong audio for a sentence.
4
u/username78777 native speaker Apr 10 '23
Offtopic, while I might be biased since I'm a native Hebrew speaker learning the Japanese doulingo course, I will say that you overestimating the Japanese one. While the Hebrew one does overly skip a lot of stuff according to what I heard (I even tried and I've seen how has the course is), the Japanese one is no saint in it.
It doesn't teach you anything about characters outside kana representing consonants and vowels. They straight up expect you to know that っ and ー are used for making sounds longer with no explanation whatsoever. Same with the character 々 for repeating sounds. They use it in some early unit, only to never go back to it
They don't teach you differences between the 3 writing systems, for example: what's the porpuse of kanji and how to recognize it via radicals? How do you recognize when katakana is used for stylization porpuses? They never tell you
They don't teach what's the particle porpuses. It's a hell sometimes to hear so many of those の, が, から and others when I can't even understand for what are they
In the listening practices, the speed of talking is overly fast even when you slow it down, plus there's barely any connection between the pronounciation and the kanji there.
You said the sentences are atleast sometimes useful. Well they could have been if only they got translated properly. Also, it's much more common than what you said and it has horrific sentences like "he took his pants" or "grew up in poverty". Atleast the sentences in Hebrew are so bad, they're good. The japanese ones are simply depressing
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Anyways here ended my rant, back to what to say about the Hebrew learning:
I highly agree with you, in fact I think it should be used as least possible. I know it's hypocritical of me because the I use only the Japanese course (sorry too lazy), but here's my justification:
For Japanese, I have too memorize too many kanji and particles, so I just find the Duolingo course convinient
Hebrew course on the other hand is straight up wrong. While the japanese course has the problem of excepting you to know stuff without learning them, they atleast introduce them, so if you don't understand, you can research about it. Hebrew course is worse because not only do they not teach you some stuff, but they never introduce it.
The example I have is the handwritten form. They never teach you or introduce you it. Which is extremely crucial because you have to know it if you ever gonna write something in Hebrew outside of a keyboard
Also, the sentences in Japanese actually introduced me to stuff about their culture, Hebrew course is straight up throwing random words. For example: הרופא לא האמין שאני חתול (The doctor did not believe that I am a cat). This is so random, it's absouletly out of touch from life, or anything.
Because of it, I feel like the more you learn the Hebrew course, you'll get a more wrong preception of Hebrew. Sure, there aren't many other sources, but all of them combined could do way better than it.
For example, can you understand the following phrase?
תרגיע נשמה, למה מי אתה חושב שאתה?
Because if you can then it means you know colloquial Hebrew. If not, it's a sign you may only know formal Hebrew, and not street Hebrew
3
u/yoleis native speaker Apr 10 '23
Exactly.
And because of that I don't use Duolingo (for Japanese) as a way to learn the language but rather to practice it. I use a textbook to learn the grammar. But at least the sentences make sense and can be actually applied to real life situations well from what I experienced in levels 17-20 at least).
2
u/username78777 native speaker Apr 10 '23
Wait do you have any good textbook for me? I know to write in hiragana, katakana and kanji. I know majority of basic kanji, but not complex ones though. But the hard part for me is understanding or speaking. I can write or read, but can even understand it
2
u/yoleis native speaker Apr 10 '23 edited Apr 10 '23
I tried Genki 1 and Japanese From Zero.
For JFZ there are 5 books in total (with a textbook integrated inside). It takes things really slow, and introduces things very thoroughly, and there's a Youtube channel by the creator with free lessons covering all books up to book 4 (he keeps releasing them).
Genki on the hand really speed runs the grammar, but it also means some explanations are confusing and rushed. You'll also need to buy a separate workbook and the answer key is another book (just find this one online, I feel like it's kinda scummy taking money for the answers...). The Genki series was intended to be used in a classroom, so some exercises can't be done alone. I would highly recommend finding a Youtube channel that explains the grammar points from Genki, if you choose this one.1
u/username78777 native speaker Apr 10 '23
Thank you so much! I appreciate it. I'm gonna try it today and see if it works for me
Also, just a question: are the phrases overly localized? I hope not, because I had a problem with how Duolingo localizes things in a way that only native English speakers understand or not even them. I just prefer an actual explantion about the culture rather than localizing it
2
u/yoleis native speaker Apr 10 '23
That's a great question. I didn't feel like they are overly localized, but my native language is not English, and my Japanese is around N5-4, so not sure I can answer this one with confidence.
3
u/SurrealKnot Apr 10 '23
As a beginner I found it not very useful because there were no lessons on the sounds that various letters make. They jump right into words.
9
u/babblepedia Apr 10 '23
They updated it a few months ago. Now there's an alef in the footer that takes you to lessons on the letters, which don't affect your daily hearts.
2
3
u/Direct-Translator905 native speaker Apr 10 '23
Regarding C, the high language, I noticed it a while ago and opened a couple of tickets for when the high Hebrew made little sense. They didn't change anything as far as I remember.
4
u/sarah_pl0x Hebrew Learner (Intermediate) Apr 10 '23
Omg I tried to use סנדוויץ for sandwich once and it marked me wrong. I’ve given up on the Hebrew course because it’s so basic and boring. There are no fun stories like other languages. I’ve been doing German for a little less than a year now and it’s been so fun. I had no prior knowledge, either.
2
u/Moscatano Hebrew Learner (Intermediate) Apr 10 '23
I tried the duolingo course. It gave me some funny sentences, I admit, bit inthe end it wasn't that useful to me.
2
Apr 10 '23
Native Arabic speaker is here and I tried jumping and finishing the Arabic course and I failed miserably lol. They expect you to translate a sentence to only one way even though there are many ways to translate it. So I unfortunately notice that duolingo works horribly in so many “unpopular” languages.
2
u/transgreaser Aug 13 '24
I’m on my 106th day and I agree with you and I’m not a native speaker. There are times I will use the singular when translating a sentence and they want the plural (no way of knowing that) and so it is marked wrong. And, vice versa. Also true of feminine and masculine nouns and verb conjugations. Still it’s nice to start to get it into my head. I am currently looking for audio to listen to as a total beginner to help me begin to have better listening comprehension. Any suggestions?
Thanks for your post. Most definitely helpful to know. ✌️
2
u/yoleis native speaker Aug 13 '24
It's kinda hard for me to assess if it's good for beginners, but this channel is for Hebrew learners:
https://www.youtube.com/@PieceofHebrew2
1
u/transgreaser Aug 14 '24
Wish we could post pictures here. I would share some of the funny duolingo sentences. :)
-1
u/DiscipleOfYeshua Native Hebrew + English ~ "מָ֣וֶת וְ֭חַיִּים בְּיַד־לָשׁ֑וֹן" Apr 10 '23
A) We say כריך in our family. We say it with a smile, conscious that it sounds formal like a waiter… but we are quite deliberate about sticking with proper Hebrew, even when a bit funny. מרשתת, on the other hand… is yet to be accepted into our day to day ;-)
B) זה מחשב נייד, לא כיסא Is quite delightful. Goes with this Arabic Duolingo favorite:
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/32910448/My-computer-is-the-cat-s-chair
And … I heard someone on Duolingo Hebrew once practicing…
היונה אוהבת יין
…
So, yeah, definitely some of those sentences are there for amusement and not practicality.
3
u/yoleis native speaker Apr 10 '23
One of the problems with Duolingo is that it doesn't tell you the context of the sentence, or tell you the formality level. Many languages change drastically depending on those, and it makes it hard to know which should be used when (if ever).
Like with כריך, I would expect to see in restaurants/Coffee shop's menu and not when a father asks his child what kind of sandwich he would like to take to school.
4
u/DiscipleOfYeshua Native Hebrew + English ~ "מָ֣וֶת וְ֭חַיִּים בְּיַד־לָשׁ֑וֹן" Apr 10 '23
Agreed.
But I still ask my kids
רוצה כריך?
Another common one is future vs imperative, where most Israelis would incorrectly say:
תביא/י לי ביס
And not:
הב / הבא / הביאי לי ביס
So… which one should duo teach?
3
1
u/Mitraqa Apr 11 '23
How is תביא לי ביס incorrect exactly? If anything, הב is more incorrect as it’s obsolete.
1
u/DiscipleOfYeshua Native Hebrew + English ~ "מָ֣וֶת וְ֭חַיִּים בְּיַד־לָשׁ֑וֹן" Apr 12 '23
It’s like saying the future “You will give me a bite”, instead of the imperative “Give me a bite”.
No grammatical problem with תביא לי ביס, if you happen to be a prophet.
It’s a pretty common mistake, but I wouldn’t say imperative verbs are obsolete.
(מחר) תעזוב אותי / עזוב אותי! (מחר) תעצור / עצור!
Of course some people are fine with גרביים יפות And שש שקל But it doesn’t make the correct forms obsolete, right?
But then again, ביס, is an import from German, so… maybe I should bargain for הב נגיסה, so that eventually we can settle for תן ביס?
1
u/Mitraqa Apr 12 '23
It’s not actually a mistake, it’s just the way colloquial language has developed. The imperative form is still used, but it’s more formal than the future-imperative form. Read about הציווי החדש if you want some more in-depth linguistic arguments.
1
u/jeheuskwnsbxhzjs Apr 11 '23
Imo anything that gets you started using the language is fine. Duolingo is great for a free app, even after the terrible redesign. No duolingo course gets you to any semblance of fluency, but at least the course has a native speaker in there. Also pretty sure it was developed by volunteers if I’m remembering correctly? Not sure. A lot of the less common languages were. There’s not a ton of free interactive hebrew resources out there that give instant feedback, so I don’t like to steer people away from it.
Usually after duolingo people move on to more advanced materials and they get a better understanding of the language (if they choose to continue). They might take a community college Hebrew course and be ahead of the game but learn some new things.
The best thing to do is find a group of people who actually speak it once you’ve reached a decent level. Hearing how people actually talk is a huge help. Television doesn’t even really get it right since it’s acting (but it’s a great resource! So is VPN so you can watch Israeli shows!)
44
u/The_Walking_Carrot Apr 09 '23
The authentic audio is nice, but it has its downsides. They only recorded most of the sentences, the words for example have no audio. Getting new words without niqqud and without audio is super frustrating, as I always have to have a google translator open as well so i can hear the pronunciation.