Wales’s minister for education and the Welsh language said he will write to the company to see how the government might be able to support the course’s continued development.

  • neutron@thelemmy.club
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    1 year ago

    It’s actually cool to see a government body embrace new technologies to promote their language and culture.

      • pewter@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I can’t even see comments on lessons anymore. There was one Brazilian dude named Paulenrique who would answer anyone’s questions about quirks of the language and now all his efforts to help people are just gone.

        • Salamendacious@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 year ago

          Yeah there were lots of people in the Italian comments who did the same thing. It was invaluable. Now all that work is gone. It’s frustrating. I cancelled my super Duolingo subscription over that.

      • elscallr@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’m not sure if you’ve ever moderated anything volunteer based but… honestly you can’t give the internet anything nice.

        • pewter@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          But then why did they get rid of the comments that were old, locked, and useful? Sometimes it feels like Duolingo cares less and less about whether or not people learn languages. It’s not surprising, but unfortunate.

          • elscallr@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I’m not saying it was the ideal thing, I’m saying people mostly suck and moderating something sucks a lot less when you can fire the person who decided to say “pinche tu madre” meant “have a nice day.”

    • shneancy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      the Welsh government is desperate. Welsh was close to being eradicated because somebody wanted more land, like they literally used to beat children in schools for speaking Welsh.

      Now Wales is trying really hard to bring it back, and duolingo offering a free course for anybody on the planet helps a ton. Especially because it’s hard to find learning resources when you don’t live in Wales. Hell, the resources are scarce even when you do live in Wales!

    • onlinepersona@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      It’s unfortunate to see them embrace closed source solutions. They could either fund an opensource project and build a welch program on top of it making them the owners of their own fate, or they could beg a company to not let their language die.