Duolingo Review After Three Months of Learning Kiswahili

I started using Duolingo about three months ago on my third visit to Kenya, after seeing a friend use it to practice German. I realized that in as much as I knew some bits of Swahili, I was missing a proper foundation of vocabulary to practice with. And I did not want to go back to pesky word lists from school, that worked decently well for me to learn Latin but were very simplistic and unflexible.

First of all, I can report sucess in that: I am now able to express myself decently! Duolingo nicely fit itself into pockets of time throughout my day, teaching me incrementally.

The main struggle right now might be a feature of the language: Swahili is very compact and often spoken quickly (unlik almost anything else Africans do ^^) so comprehension in a conversation is still low, but also got better - rather than understanding only individual words like a few months ago, I can now comprehend phrases and sometimes a whole sentence. Still, a conversation requires the other person to consciously accomodate me so far, which especially kids are not really aware of unfortunately - and those are the ones I like to connect with most. Then again, not always words are needed.

Another challenge is the fact that Kenyans commonly intertwine Swahili and English, to the point that many are unable to speak either language purely. This means that I tend to commonly only get to hear a certain subset of words, with words such as colors entirely missing in everyday conversation. Additionally, I pick up Sheng, colloquial words typically used for example in money amounts - Nusu, Mbao, Chwani, Soo, Punch. Tanzania purportedly can help.

Now, in as much as Duolingo has helped, I see some room for improvement if Duolingo really strives to offer free quality education around the world.

First of all, gamification is nice but it does not have to come at a sacrifice of swiftness. Thankfully I found some settings to eliminate the interruptory little motivation animations that I do not need, but still: After each answer, I have to click continue - why not move on automatically on a correct answer? After a Lesson, there is an animated update of daily challenges and opening of chests that requires another click on "Continue" each. Those small things take up time that I want to be learning. Nonetheless, the daily challenges and especially the streak have a powerful effect on me. Even in the last weeks, where I did not always feel like continuing, keeping my streak going has been a major motivator to stay on track.

Another aspect of efficiency is the types of exercise - you can skip listening exercises, but what if you currentlly only have one hand for the phone and do not want to spend excessive time typing - i.e. you only want non-typing exercises? Being able to cater the type of exercise to the current circumstances can make it even more swift.

Practicing on my partners iPhone, I realized that the iOS-version is much more ad-infested than the Android version, showing an ad for Super Duolingo after every single lesson. Also, comparing it to my friends German learning, I was surprised that each character actually has an own voice, unlike Swahili which does not

In Swahili, especially when it comes to greetings, there are multiple interchangeable alternatives. I often found Duolingo narrowing the allowed answers down. Then it consistently wanted me to translate "safi", which means "clean", as "good" - even though there are other words that literally translate to good, such as "nzuri".

Another aspect to consider is the country of origin and destination - as a German traveling to Kenya, I want to be able to related to those two countries in conversation over something like French, Dutch and American as Duolingo likes to suggest. This includes naming the countries and inhabitants, but also getting acquainted with regional language variations. "Nimetoka ugerumani" - "I came from Germany" was something that I could only puzzle together after many weeks.

On the other hand, in some Units a word I knew well or did not care much about (like "kahawa" - "coffee") was repeated many times with exactly the same phrase. I believe that technology nowadays could fully personalize all lessons rather than having "Personalized training" lessons, recognizing proficiency and engraining it through spaced repetition including variations so that a word becomes natural to use. Even without that, choosing focus words or areas to train on which you want to improve would be great, which can then be taught in various inflections.

This extends to personalizing the journey - after 3 months and hundreds of lessons Duolingo finally wants to teach me counting which I have long picked up by now. Before expressing regret (Unit 3) and talking about school (Unit 4) I want to know basic building blocks like numbers and fruits, as market visits have been one of my first practice grounds. Even if non-personalized, I found the choice of the order of those Units quite odd.

I really enjoy never explicitly learning grammar - I picked up basic words and practiced them, developing an intuition when to use which prefix rather than learning it by heart. My focus was on being able to speak, so that I could pickup correct grammar in conversations just like children do. I looked into grammar tables a few times, but they never made sense to me.