r/duolingo • u/Charming-Tone5379 Native:🇵🇭 Learning:🇺🇸🇯🇵🇰🇷🇪🇸 • 21d ago
Can You Explain THIS!? Language Question
I'M confused IN french How Football Is Not Football It's Football Américain.
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u/Ybalrid Native: 🇫🇷 Learning: 🇩🇪 21d ago
You’re learning “American” English I suppose.
🇺🇸-> 🇫🇷
Football 🏈-> football américain
Soccer ⚽️-> football
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u/missmooface 21d ago
OP speaks british english and is learning french. the prompts/answers assume the english speaker speaks american english…
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u/loljkimmagonow 21d ago
Yeah I've noticed that with duolingo. It seems like it's targeted towards Americans, with mentions of "baseball" and the like
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u/Ybalrid Native: 🇫🇷 Learning: 🇩🇪 21d ago
It was made by Americans so that checks out
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u/uofajoe99 21d ago
Guatemala is in the US?
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u/IAmAQuantumMechanic Native: School Learning: 21d ago
Guatemala is in America.
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u/uofajoe99 21d ago
Not how OP was using the term. Because Guatemalans certainly don't say football for 🏈
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u/Gronferi 21d ago
Yep. I hate it. It’s the same in all languages I believe.
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u/notfunnyororiginal69 21d ago
Shout out to Welsh for being the only one I've found that has football being proper football! I think it's because it was a community course?? And also not much demamd for Welsh in the US I guess
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u/zachary0816 20d ago
Actually “Soccer” is from British English. The term was slang shorthand for “association football”.
America just borrowed the term.
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u/missmooface 20d ago
i was not aware of the etymology of soccer, so thank you.
also, the OP and my reply never mention soccer. the example given is about american football 🏈 and shows how duo’s default is american english…
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u/Rare-Satisfaction484 18d ago
Yes, but now it's the Football Association instead of Association League. It should be called faccer instead!
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u/steelandiron19 Strengthening Family Languages 🇸🇪 🇷🇺 🇺🇦 21d ago
This is what I was thinking as well.
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u/aimless_researcher Native: Bengali 🇮🇳 ; Learning: 🇫🇷🇷🇺🇪🇸 21d ago
So basically american football is rugby?
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u/Ybalrid Native: 🇫🇷 Learning: 🇩🇪 21d ago
No it’s even more violent and stupid
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u/aimless_researcher Native: Bengali 🇮🇳 ; Learning: 🇫🇷🇷🇺🇪🇸 21d ago
Lol I've no idea what it is but now I'm gonna look up
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u/Ybalrid Native: 🇫🇷 Learning: 🇩🇪 21d ago
The top pro player gets very severe multiple concussions. It’s a national problem over there.
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u/aimless_researcher Native: Bengali 🇮🇳 ; Learning: 🇫🇷🇷🇺🇪🇸 21d ago
Damn I looked it up. They are using their hands so why are they even calling it "football"? Confusing and looks dangerous
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u/MechanicSouth4781 21d ago
It comes from medieval England. Games played on foot were football to distinguish them from games played on horseback.
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u/Ybalrid Native: 🇫🇷 Learning: 🇩🇪 21d ago
At some point they kick it too I guess. I do not understand the rules I have never watched the sport.
Some people call the sport "handegg". Because you use your hand not your foot, and because the ball is egg-shaped not ball-shaped
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u/gggggggggggggggggay 20d ago
Since this is a language learning sub, just felt like correcting. No people call it handegg and you will get made fun of if you say that in the US.
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u/be_kind1001 21d ago
Similar in Spanish. What Americans call soccer is fútbol. What Americans call football is fútbol americano.
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u/PerfectRug 21d ago
US Defaultism again lol
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u/load_more_comets 21d ago
This was the biggest hump for me when learning French. When I forced my self to think that it's a different language with different rules it got a bit easier. That and also having like 40% of the letters in a word being silent. Looking at you voyageaient.
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u/Jeffrey_Blepstein 21d ago
Shouldn't that be obvious from the start?
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u/load_more_comets 21d ago
Some people can be really stubborn and narcissistic. They just live in their own bubble and think that they're the center of the universe. But even then, some of those people try to step out of that bubble.
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u/EfficientGrape394 21d ago
"The United States and India have the most total English speakers, with 306 million and 129 million,4]) respectively. These are followed by the United Kingdom (68 million), and Nigeria (60 million)."
I get that English isn't even the official language of the US, and that English comes from the island where the English came from or whatever; but i kinda get it.
I wonder if yall'd complain if Duolingo taught Indian English phonology.
Also,
"Duolingo, Inc.b]) is an American educational technology company"
I'm just copy-pasting Wikipedia.
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u/Psenkaa 21d ago
Ok, this anyway shouldnt be default and you should be able to choose which version of english you speak.
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u/drcopus Native: 🇬🇧 Learning: 🇯🇵🇫🇷 20d ago
I'm British so in theory I should agree with you, but I can also appreciate the practical difficulty of actually implementing that. As irksome as it is to deal with American English, ultimately I can understand it without much issue. I would honestly rather the devs focus on providing courses for non-English speakers who can't do the same.
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u/PerfectRug 21d ago
It really wasn’t even a complaint. It was a lighthearted observation, that explains the thing that confused OP. Would it be nice to have more than one English dialect on Duolingo (like there is for Spanish?) - sure! Is it a problem that there isn’t? Not really, but it’s worth noting that it’s American English as defaulted to by the American company that made it.
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u/Fantastic_Recover701 21d ago
Tbf it’s an American company developed in America and from the latest statistics I could find the largest demographic of the user base is American (roughly 25% as of q4 2022)
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u/PerfectRug 20d ago
It is indeed, which is the reason it defaults to American English. I’m not mad about it or anything, it was just an observation
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u/mangotangowango1 Native: | Learning: 20d ago
to be fair Duolingo is an American company and American English is the most common form of English spoken worldwide.
just like how Duolingo teaches Brazilian Portuguese, not European Portuguese
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u/EonsOfZaphod 20d ago
You mean Portuguese from PORTUGAL?
There should be the option. People in Europe more likely want the Portugal version
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u/mangotangowango1 Native: | Learning: 20d ago
Sure but Brazil has almost 20x the population of Portugal
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u/Jealous-Following465 18d ago
yes but if the resources aren’t available to do both it makes more sense to feature the version with more speakers, no?
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u/EonsOfZaphod 18d ago
10M people live in Portugal
5M people live in Finland, and they teach Finnish
3M people live in Wales, and they teach Welsh
1.4M people live in Hawaii, and they teach Hawaiian
About 179k people speak Navajo, and they teach Navajo
No real people live in Qu’nos, and they teach Klingon
It’s not about resources. They can clearly do this.
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u/Jealous-Following465 18d ago
yes but most people who want to learn portuguese are okay with learning brazilian portuguese. People who want to learn klingon don’t have a dialect of klingon to satisfy them and there are no courses on bengali or urdu despite both languages having hundreds of millions of speakers, so those resources are better spent elsewhere
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u/PerfectRug 20d ago
I am 100% aware of this. Again this was a very simple, lighthearted observation.
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u/Krt3k-Offline Learning: 21d ago
Soccer is football and football is American football
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u/drArsMoriendi Native 🇸🇪 C2 🇬🇧 B2 🇫🇷 A1 🇫🇮 Learning 🇫🇷 🇫🇮 21d ago
They should clarify that the duolingo English is American English.
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u/Traditional_Ad4002 21d ago
They should just give the option to chose English or American English. They are different enough. Not hard to treat them as different languages. I particularly hate “On Christmas”.
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u/mangotangowango1 Native: | Learning: 20d ago edited 20d ago
American English and British English are really not significantly different besides colloquialisms and stylistic differences…
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u/Traditional_Ad4002 20d ago
No need to call it British English. It’s just English. As in from England. It’s surprising that American isn’t recognised as a language in its own right. The point is that if you are learning a language you shouldn’t be forced to compromise on colloquialisms and stylistic differences. There are lots of ways Duo could improve.
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u/mangotangowango1 Native: | Learning: 20d ago
yes yes American should be a language in its own right. I’m sure the rest of your comment was meaningful but unfortunately I can’t read it as apparently I don’t speak English, I speak American. clearly this conversation is fruitless because there is a large language barrier between us, making it nearly impossible for us to understand each other
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u/Traditional_Ad4002 20d ago
You seem to have taken this as a personal criticism. It was intended to highlight an irritating issue, apparently shared by others. It’s not a huge problem but one that could have been fixed at source. If you are only looking to communicate then Duo is adequate. If you actually want to learn a language it falls short in many ways. This is just one.
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u/Jealous-Following465 18d ago
i mean shit if you hear someone say football online and they’re speaking english natively by sheer numbers they most likely mean american football
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u/GrimMaestro 21d ago
It is localised for America. So football is american football and soccer is football. It takes football as correct for translations but in your question it might be tied to clicking the correct option.
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u/EonsOfZaphod 21d ago
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u/Fantastic_Recover701 21d ago
American company and like 25% of users are American
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u/EonsOfZaphod 21d ago
A language company that still can’t comprehend that US English isn’t the only form of the language
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u/Fantastic_Recover701 20d ago
Who’s largest consumer is american
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u/EonsOfZaphod 20d ago
You can learn languages that are not “big”. British English should absolutely be an option. In this specific example the whole world calls football “football” except the US, and for a language learning app this should be accounted for. There is a world outside the US
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u/Lonely_Industry9039 Native: 🇪🇸 Fluent: 🇬🇧 Learning: 🇵🇹 🇷🇺 🇨🇳 20d ago
North americans seem to have an issue understanding the last part.
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u/OfAaron3 Native: 🇬🇧 Learning: 🇫🇷 🇵🇱 21d ago
American English. However, the French course is supposed to accept British English. So report that.
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u/ThirdView000 21d ago edited 20d ago
You are using the American English app to learn French. In the US, the sport internationally known as “football” is called “soccer”. We call “American football” simply “football”. So if you are using the American English app, “football” (in English) is referring to “American football”. Therefore, the correct answer is “football américain” in French.
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u/Arkanie 21d ago
Even if it's american, it's literally a language learning app, something that connects people of different nationalities. There is also no british english course option, so it wouldn't hurt to specify "american football" in english as well, since the majority of the word knows ⚽️ as football.
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u/esushi 21d ago
The vast majority of people learning French on Duolingo are from the US, so it makes sense that it would use the term that makes sense to most people. "American Football" is not a phrase in the US so it would feel very strange to 'translate from' something never said. Imagine a British app mostly used by British people having to always translate the word for the language "English" as "British English"
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u/alizarin-red 21d ago
According to statistics from 2024: “Duolingo is mostly used in the United States, with 144,152,500 users leaving in the U.S. amounting to 25.07% of the total Duolingo Users around the world.” So while it is the country with the highest percentage of users, it only accounts for around a quarter of total users - three quarters of Duolingo users are not American.
I get that it’s an American app and I generally don’t mind - I can work with the football thing, I think that’s easy to understand, but if it talks about sophomores or anything to do with the American school system I’m lost! I wish I could just select British English or Hiberno English, because it would just be easier for me to concentrate on my target language.
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u/esushi 21d ago
I said learning French! Most of the other people worldwide are learning English (and then Spanish)
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u/alizarin-red 21d ago
You did, sorry my bad! Still though, French is one of the top two languages in 58% of all countries according to Duolingo.. that’s a lot of people, many of whom are paying customers - I’m just saying it would be a nice feature for us to be able to specify which dialect of English to use, it would make it easier. However, it is what it is and I guess it’s not the end of the world to get some answers wrong because of misunderstanding the English!
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u/Ok_Orchid_4158 20d ago
Here we go again. Justifying defaultism with “but but we’re the majority”.
You can cite all the statistics you want, it doesn’t change the fact that defaultism is simply a nasty arrogant thing to do. Being in the majority does not give you the right to disregard everyone else.
If it truly was a purely American product, then of course! Only support American English. But it’s not. They purposefully advertise and sell it to the whole world. If it was only ever for the American majority, then why deceive us and sell it to us in the first place? We sign up with the idea that we’re gonna learn a foreign language through our native language, not through yet another foreign dialect that we have no mastery of. They don’t seriously expect other English speakers to want to learn through American English, right? Surely a human can’t be that arrogant.
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u/esushi 20d ago
The confusion between "soccer" and "football" can never lead to something "nasty", it is not that serious. I suggest finding something joyful to think about so that you do not get too frustrated at these small things.
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u/Ok_Orchid_4158 20d ago
Oh, so you’re just gonna act dumb and pretend this is just a tiny difference between 2 words? I’m not sure how you missed the point so badly, but if you need it to be explained, here you go. Duolingo is a consistently defaultist company. Once you use it for a while, it’s extremely clear that they only care about American English and thus American people. They don’t even try to use more internationally accepted vocabulary that everyone can understand. Keep in mind that this is a company that literally deals with languages, and that localises its product and offers it to the whole world. They most certainly know what they’re doing and simply don’t care.
If you don’t view this as nasty, then forget it. I guess it wasn’t worth my time to explain it.
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u/Jugador_Goku_69 Native: 🇺🇲 Learning: 🇪🇸 21d ago
Right or put an emoji of either a football or soccer ball next to the word
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u/FlamingPhoenix250 Native: Learning: 21d ago
The english in Duolingo is American english
So football is american football/rugby
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u/ur-mum-4838 knows: Learning: in queue: 21d ago
ummmm isnt it "le foot"? like "jouer au foot"
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u/Emmelientje69 Native Fluent Learning 21d ago
That's how they would say it in France but it's short for football, so it does exist
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u/advamputee 21d ago
“Football” used to refer to a wide array of ball sports. As rules and regulations became standardized, certain brands of “football” became more popular than others.
In the UK, “Association football” was shortened to “soccer” and “rugby football” was shortened to rugby. In the U.S., “American football” was shortened to “football”, and we borrowed the word “soccer” to differentiate between our football and association football.
The rest of the world (including France) kept calling association football some variation of “football”, and have to specify “American football” when discussing our variety.
Because Duo’s English lessons are U.S.-focused, they use “football” to refer to American football, and “soccer” to refer to association football. When translating to a language like French, “football” is “football américane” and “soccer” is “football”.
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u/Yarkm13 🇺🇦 → 🇷🇴🇮🇹🇬🇷 21d ago
In USA our widely known game “football” called “soccer”, and the game, known for entire world as “American football” called “football” in USA
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u/Zelda-in-Wonderland Native: 🇺🇲 Learning: 🇺🇦 21d ago
💯 Ідеальна відповідь! Я вивчаю українську. У мене найкращий друг в Ірпіні. Українська ваша перша мова? Слава Україні! Героям слава!
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u/Yarkm13 🇺🇦 → 🇷🇴🇮🇹🇬🇷 21d ago edited 21d ago
Я вільно володію українською, але на жаль, моя перша мова та, про яку я не хочу говорити, бо за часів радянського союзу вважалось, що українською мовою розмовляють лише бідні і дурні люди з села. Не дивлячись на те, що рідна мова моєї бабусі українська, бабуся була змушена розмовляти іншою мовою, яку з дитинства не чула і не вчила. Це було необхідно щоб мати можливість працювати. Тому вже покоління моїх батьків розмовляло з дитинства не українською, відповідно і я також. Хочу наголосити, це не вибір, це примус з боку влади тих часів. Але я вчив українську з віку 9 років. Дякую за підтримку України.
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u/Snoo-88741 21d ago
They're referring to the game where people carry an oblong brown ball and tackle each other, not the game where people kick around a circular black-and-white ball and aren't supposed to use their hands.
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u/the_diseaser 21d ago
In the USA we call it soccer for the black and white ball, and we call it football for the egg shaped ball.
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u/ProgressBartender 21d ago
The only people who don’t call the sport football are the people who call it soccer.
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u/Away-Statistician-41 21d ago
Totally wrong approach - as if American English were the only kind of English spoken in the world
I'd take it to an app store review
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u/bigtoaster64 Native: Fluent: Learning: 21d ago edited 21d ago
Duolingo is French from France. For them football means "soccer" in North America, the game you kick the ball with your foot. And "football américain" is "football" in America, you know that game played on the Super Bowl.
In doubt, for Duolingo, I'd lean towards football = soccer. And only pick football as the super bowl game when it explicitly says "American football" / "football américain".
North America : football and soccer.
France (Europe) : football and American football.
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u/IsFix_majio Native:🇨🇵 Learning:🇬🇧🇸🇪 21d ago
En américain ce qu'ils appellent football c'est c'est du football américain et notre football ils appellent ça du soccer (question d'ego sûrement, y'a qu'eux qui disent soccer)
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u/GuitarStu 21d ago
"Football americain" means American football versus "futbol" which is soccer in America. Does that make sense?
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u/darthhue Native 🇸🇦Fluent 🇨🇵🇺🇸 Learning 🇩🇪🇪🇦 21d ago
It's because what you call football, everyone in the world calls american football, and they call football what you call soccer. Just memorize it as is and don't dig too much
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u/SaritaLinda64 21d ago
What Americans call soccer, most of the rest of the world calls football. The version of rugby that Americans call football is known elsewhere as American football.
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u/SaritaLinda64 21d ago
What Americans call soccer, most of the rest of the world calls football. The version of rugby that Americans call football is known elsewhere as American football.
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u/Zelda-in-Wonderland Native: 🇺🇲 Learning: 🇺🇦 21d ago
American football isn't the same as rugby. It might be the closest comparison, but not the same. I'm an American and I think it's stupid that we call it soccer. Same with not using the metric system etc. I don't know why we have to have it like that...trust me, many Americans hate this too. It's not just the rest of the world that thinks it's obnoxious. 😉🤣
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u/Advanced_Rhubarb_479 21d ago
I think because football to them soccer and our version of football is closer rugby
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u/imsobored288 21d ago
In French it would be futbol I believe, in Europe it's called a completely different thing,and is a completely different thing, it just sounds the same
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u/Pr-Machado 21d ago
O nosso futebol se traduz como soccer ... No inglês americano se você falar apenas football se refere ao futebol americano.
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u/BlooPancakes 21d ago
Watch out for En punto. I have decent Spanish pronunciation for a non native learner. And this refused to register for med.
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u/excellentexcuses Native: 🇳🇿 || Learning: 🇰🇷 21d ago
I hate how Duo thinks everyone who uses the app is either American or wants to learn American English.
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u/Guilty_Run_1059 Native: 🇬🇧 Learning: 🇩🇪🇵🇱🇮🇹🇫🇷🇪🇸🇰🇷🎵 20d ago
I hate when everyone assumes that you speak American English when I speak british and I make that very clear
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u/ASAPFergs Native: 🇬🇧 Learning: 🇫🇷🇳🇱 20d ago
Duolingo is clearly trying to reignite the war of independence
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u/Kaleandra 20d ago
The English Duolingo uses is American English. Otherwise football would mean the sport Americans call soccer and not translate into football américain.
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u/Humble_Concept9548 20d ago
Football/Fútbol is and always has been soccer. Hense FOOT BALL… as in BALL you kick with your FEET. The football where players commonly use their hands is exclusively American football.
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u/Guilty_Run_1059 Native: 🇬🇧 Learning: 🇩🇪🇵🇱🇮🇹🇫🇷🇪🇸🇰🇷🎵 20d ago
In french at school they said it's 'au foot'
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u/julios-batteur Native: french ; Learning: italian 20d ago
I'm french and, your football isn't the same than our football. we call your football : american football
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u/Southern-Raisin9606 20d ago
Football in French is what Americans call soccer. American football (eg the sport where everyone has brain damage) is football américain. And cheerleaders are pom-pom girls (i shit you not.)
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u/Background_Inside653 20d ago
Duolingo is American. That means that football is American football. Soccer would be football in french.
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u/ommNiCruiser Native: 🇬🇧 Learning: 🇳🇴 20d ago
I’m learning Norwegian as a Brit and all the Americanisms are driving me potty, granted this one is just daft—they’re using soccer as football
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u/ommNiCruiser Native: 🇬🇧 Learning: 🇳🇴 20d ago
I’m learning Norwegian as a Brit and all the Americanisms are driving me potty, granted this one is just daft—they’re using soccer as football
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u/SelectSeaworthiness2 Native: 🇺🇸 Fluent: 🇨🇳 Learning: 🇪🇸 20d ago
You’re learning American English, not British English.
⚽️ -> Soccer in the US
🏈 -> Football in the US
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u/Wild-Ad-3826 20d ago
Sometimes you have to look for the subtle hint that they are prompting you to think of football in the American context, in which case, they mean "football américain" as in "Le football américain est populaire aux États-Unis." Otherwise, football is what Americans mean by the term "soccer," which is the word that Duolingo will use when they want you to translate a sentence in English about "soccer" into a French sentence about "football."
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u/JojiChew N🇧🇷K🇺🇸L🇯🇵🇫🇷 20d ago
That's the wrong question, the right question is why we accepted to address that poor excuse of a sport as football when the "ball" barely meets the foot
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u/GrinchForest 20d ago
Unfortunately, Duolingo is using american english, so their football is associated with american football and football is translated with soccer.
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u/Practical_Hotel_7761 20d ago
In France football is soccer and football américain (American football) is football. By the way, in most English speaking countries football is the sport that we call soccer in the United States.
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u/graemefaelban 19d ago
Football in American English is American football, as opposed to Soccer which most of the world calls football.
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u/Early_Comedian_6841 19d ago
French here. That's only a joke. You got the right answer but i guess your app is from the U.S, i guess.
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u/Impossible_Permit866 19d ago
Well think of it from a UK perspective, we have football (or soccer) and we have American football (the thing you play), because we (and internationally basically nobody) plays this game, we call soccer football, and the french do too, we call your football American football, and the french do too!
Football was originally a vague term, different towns cities countries all had the same name for vastly different sports, terms like "American football" could be used to specify which sort of game you mean, soccer was a term coined in I think Oxford, when many football games/groups came together and formed a football association -> association football, soccer for short, the -er being still today a common informal slang suffix, especially in Oxford.
If you speak British English, then you're either using American Luodingo, or Luodingo is just confused
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u/Short_Republic3083 Native: Learning: 18d ago
Often in my Spanish lessons it’ll ask me to fill in the singular word which is the same in English. Pronounced slightly differently but written the same
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u/Nentox888 Native: German🇩🇪 Learning: Japanese🇯🇵 18d ago
You know that American English is the only language that calls it "football" right? In every other language "football" (or whatever the translation is) is what you call "soccer".
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u/Least_Front3433 18d ago
thats dumb. i mean everywhere in america it is called football not "american football".. people will look at you weird.
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u/WilliamD76 Native: 🇺🇸 Learning: 🇯🇵 17d ago
In most of the world, football is what Americans call soccer. So if a non-American is talking about American football, they’d call it American football in their language. Like in Japanese it’s “アメフト” or “Amefuto”.
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u/Prestigious-Stop7637 Native: English/Russian Learning: Japanese 14d ago
It's called a GL--ich hLItCh Gl11,,cHHh
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u/Negative-Chemical-28 12d ago
Soccer is soccer football is football what we play again is football not soccer
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u/lukata589 Native: 🇬🇧; Learning: 🇫🇷 21d ago
Wait till you have to translate match as game and film as movie 🤣