bounded in a nutshell with three people who won't stop introducing themselves

[cimorene]

One of the main problems with Duolingo Welsh is that, aside from (your name here), it only has three 4 regular characters: Owen, Dylan, Megan and Morgan. At this point I am heartily sick of Owen, Dylan, and the M-gans, and would actually enjoy the exercises more if the only character was the dragon (they do introduce the dragon early and let you address it occasionally, but it shows up like a tenth as often as these guys).

Of course, aside from using the dragon, or multiple dragons, or letting animals become characters... or inanimate objects like the Dutch course, which has you talking to and as a sentient apple... they could just give it a larger pool of names to work with?! And I really don't understand why you would use 4. It seems like such a strange and arbitrary number. It's definitely more than one, or one per gender, but it's also smaller than the smallest study group I've ever been in...?!

They also introduce the Duolingo owl later, naming it Dewi Lingo, but you never talk to it or as it - it's always in the third person, like visiting it or its office or its party (or going swimming with it, weirdly enough... since it's an owl. Do owls swim? ... Okay, I googled it. Owls CAN swim, although evidently it's not something they're seen doing very often).

The course seems to be making some effort not to play to gender stereotypes with the sentences about professions and hobbies and the like, but then it's got one (2?) female character and two (3?) male ones... which is arguably only a difference of one, but is also 100% greater. (Honestly not sure how to count the owl or the dragon, so I'll ignore them.) (The gender context for Morgan is a bit uncertain thus far. )

And also, again, 4 is just boring.

Comments

[spark]

There should be Ceri Lingo hanging out in there somewhere for another female character, unless they've pared it down recently.

[cimorene]

Is that a name, or is it Mrs Lingo?

[spark]

That's a name. I remember encountering an Alys in there too, usually in the context of her wedding to another woman whose name I've forgotten.

[cimorene]

I tried searching their boards and there are a lot of people talking about having too many names, which is apparently something they were asked to fix in the last course revision... and someone else said they didn't think the right choice was "getting rid of all of them", so maybe that's what happened? And of course it could be that you have to get further in the course before they introduce more characters, but three or four still seems awfully parsimonious...

But maybe the other woman was Siobhan, because somebody mentioned how awesome she was on the basis of hobbies and being a lesbian?

[spark]

Yes, I think it was Siobhan, that rings a bell. I know the course developers a bit (who are all Welsh speaking volunteers) and I would be surprised if they didn't pay attention to things like gender balance, but I guess you never know. Also since there's a fair amount of intentional randomness in the way Duo works, I suppose it could throw all sorts of unintentional effects that should even out over time.

[spark]

I shall also mention that I have never met a Welsh person named Megan or Siobhan, which seem like very Irish names to me. Lots of Dylans and Owens though! Welsh female names around here: Carys, Caryl, Gwawr, Menna, Sian, Mair, Elen, Lowri...

[cimorene]

That makes sense, bc I actually unlocked the next checkpoint yesterday after posting this and got a few more names - Siobhan, Gareth, and Eleri Lingo.

I still think there should be more dragons though.

Oh, and it's now clear that there are female and male Morgans in play.

[phosfate]

Ah, yes, the good old days of learning French with Phillipe et Anne. Ou est Phillipe? Avec Anne. Ou est Anne? A la piscine. Phillipe et Anne sont a la piscine.

You'd think 'piscine' would mean fish, but it means swimming pool. So I don't know what the fish is doing. Maybe France doesn't have fish. Il ny a pas les piscines au France.

[cimorene]

Language classes love swimming pools.

[phosfate]

And tennis. And grandmas.

[cimorene]

Actually Welsh started by introducing walking, running, and swimming, and then squash and rugby, but those are the only ones we've seen so far and the rugby is far less common. Talking about playing squash allllllll the time. I'd only ever encountered playing squash as a signal that a fictional character was comically old and/or wealthy before.

[spark]

The squash all the time is really odd, I suspect it might be an artifact of a generic underlying Duo course structure? Similarly weird how much course time focuses on whales and tigers and elephants compared to sheep and cows. (Lions are valid though, every town has Y Llew Goch, Y Llew Du, â Y Llew Gwyn!)

[cimorene]

My main thought is what whales, tigers and elephants are relevant with small children because they're popular or 'famous'... though in that case, they should include like... panda and penguin too.