So far the languages offered are Spanish, French, and German for English-speakers, and English for Spanish-speakers. Of course they are planning to add more languages, and I gather that Italian, Chinese (whether Mandarin or Cantonese is not clear), and Portuguese (or perhaps English for Portuguese-speakers) are likely next. If that sounds interesting, I have even better news for you. Today Duolingo has given all its beta users three invitations to bestow as we wish. If you don’t feel like waiting another 4 weeks to get in, leave a comment, and if there’s more than three candidates I’ll get out my choosing hat. Heartfelt appeals will also hold sway. I should just warn you that Duolingo is one of the most addictive substances on the planet, so don’t expect to get much else done once you start!

UPDATE: My three invitations are now gone, but if you’re desperate there are people offering invites on Twitter. Search for #duolingo to find them. Good luck!

This clever poster is the brainchild of Dublin artist Littleman. The QR codes link to downloadable ebooks, and even people viewing the poster online have downloaded these classics to their phones. How brilliant is that? Imagine if libraries started putting up posters around town with QR codes for their ebooks and audiobooks? What an excellent way to reach people who normally wouldn’t set foot in a library. Well done, Littleman!

via reddit

[Source]

“What did she shoot him with?”

“A pistol.”

“Where did she find it?”

“She brought it with her.”

“Well, that she didn’t do,” said Miss Marple, with unexpected decision. “I can swear to that. She’d no such thing with her.”

“You mightn’t have seen it.”

“Of course I should have seen it.”

“If it had been in her handbag.”

“She wasn’t carrying a handbag.”

“Well, it might have been concealed—er—upon her person.”

Miss Marple directed a glance of sorrow and scorn upon him.

“My dear Colonel Melchett, you know what young women are nowadays. Not ashamed to show exactly how the creator made them. She hadn’t so much as a handkerchief in the top of her stocking.”

—Agatha Christie, The Murder at the Vicarage

via @mhsteger

What better way to represent the world today than with the computer parts that connect us? This world map was created by UK artist Susan Stockwell for the University of Bedfordshire. As you can see the piece mimics the colour and relief of the world’s landforms. I particularly love the bundle of cables linking the Andes with the Amazon delta. Alas, she omitted Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii, both of which are much larger and more populated (and much more beautiful!) than many of the other islands depicted on the map. It happens a lot, unfortunately, so perhaps she was working from a faulty model. In any case it’s still a beautiful map. You can see more pictures at technabob and on Susan Stockwell’s website.

via technabob

Another social feature recently added to Duolingo is the “Stream” tab, where you can post messages in the language(s) you are learning, and others can respond. There has been “following” since the beginning, but there was no way to interact with other Duolinguites (Duolinguinos? Duolinguians?) unless they linked to their Twitter or Facebook accounts. Now you can leave a message on their stream or comment their posts. Much silliness has ensued, let me tell you. There is a playful vibe on the site (including among its creators) which makes it all the more enjoyable.

The graphics on the Skills pages have been updated to show the lessons as a notebook and the translations as dossiers. I think the new graphics lend a sense of concreteness to the work. As an added touch, when you mouse over one of the dossiers the flap opens up to reveal the pages inside. Cute!

Duolingo is expanding rapidly. Not long ago they added English for Spanish-speakers, and last week they invited 50,000 new users to the private beta test. I love following the Duolingo buzz on Twitter when they add new users because people are so enthusiastic about it. You see the words “impressed” and “addictive” a lot. Users are simply thrilled to bits. It’s fun to be a part of something so happy.

The latest addition happened just a few hours ago when Duolingo enabled French for English-speakers. I’m particularly pleased about this because I would very much like to knock the rust off my French. I was in French Immersion for several years and became nearly fluent, but in the intervening decades my French has lain dormant, for the most part. I can understand most of it (especially Continental French), and speak fairly well, but writing it is another matter entirely. I need help with the finer details. So naturally I jumped right into Duolingo in French. It only took me an hour to zoom through 5 levels (there is an option to test out of each skill and bypass the lessons), but I definitely made a lot of mistakes. The interesting thing is that I can feel that the French is coming from an older part of my memory. It feels physically different, and I know things without knowing how I know them. With Spanish, the knowledge is quite fresh and mechanical, but the French is organic. I suppose that is what comes of learning something as a child. There isn’t as much conflict between French and Spanish as I thought there might be, perhaps because they reside in entirely different areas of my brain.

It remains to be seen what will happen in my brain when I try to learn German, which I’m still planning to do when I finish the Spanish lessons. That could be a while because after 3 months, 12 levels, and 5,875 points, I am only about half way through the skills for Spanish. Duolingo keeps adding skills and adjusting the levels (it’s still a beta), so it’s difficult to know where you are, but it’s so enjoyable that it hardly matters. My Spanish has certainly improved dramatically. I have noticed that when I hear Spanish soccer players interviewed (which happens a lot in my world!), I can understand them a lot better than I used to. The same is true of Spanish web pages; I don’t need to look words up as much as I used to. I’ve also noticed that I can type much faster in Spanish now. At first I was quite slow but now I can type in Spanish almost as fast as in English. My fingers are learning Spanish along with my brain! I haven’t tried writing any Spanish by hand—I think it would make an interesting research project to find out if there is any difference between learning a language by typing versus writing.

If you are interested in following the Duolingo news, you can follow them on Twitter and subscribe to their blog. If you’d like to join the fun, sign up for an invitation. It’s hard to guess how long Duolingo will be in its beta phase, but considering what perfectionists its creators are, it could be a while. I think it’s pretty obvious that when it does open up it will trigger a massive stampede, so they will want set up some pretty skookum infrastructure to handle the load. And it will probably crash anyway. It’s so heartening to see such hunger to learn languages out there. I think it bodes well for the future of life on earth.

In fact I am not reading my book because I cannot stop using Duolingo!