Duolingo and gendered language.

[Dilbertian]

My mother tongue is not English, and I am very rusty in it. I'm using Duolingo to help me improve my spelling and grammar. My language is a gendered language, but not only does Duolingo tend to default to masculine pronouns, it only ever offers masculine forms for all sentences using first person pronouns. This is not helpful for a female learner.

Is there any way of changing this?

Is this the english course? I have done Italian, Spanish, French, Dutch etc on Duolingo and never noticed any such thing. I find unless otherwise prompted, it doesn't care whether you answer male or female unless you use the wrong endings.

Except that it never offers the feminine forms in the word banks.

Are you talking about the English course? Could you clarify what you mean exactly? Do you mean it only offers sentences that have masculine pronouns such and ‘He has brown hair’ or do you mean you are expecting Duolingo to use ‘feminine’ words such and ‘waitress’ as opposed to ‘waiter’?

I’ve seen it offer the feminine version in the word blanks for Italian in the first person. It can depend on how the character is drawn.

I'm doing 6 languages on Duolingo, all of which are gendered, and they might not be quite equal, but I wouldn't say they default to masculine, although in e.g. French and German, the third person impersonal (on or man) takes masculine endings by default so it's difficult to avoid it then.

I'm not doing English . Why would I be doing English? I am studying Hebrew. When Duolingo asks me to translate sentences that are gender-neutral in English, such as "I am (or they are) studying Hebrew" into Hebrew, it only offers the masculine forms. I'll do this in transliteration: Ani lomed / Hem lomdim, instead of Ani lomedet / hen lomdot.
Yes, when I enter free text I can enter the feminine forms, but Duolingo does not explicitly teach them. I know most of the feminine inflections (though I don't know how to spell them) because I already speak and understand the language. How can a new learner be expected even to understand that she needs to know them, let alone what they are?

I think that must be the Hebrew course, rather than generally.

I understand Duolingo now uses a lot of AI to set up their courses, but they used to be people - a few years ago, for a couple of terms, our real life tutor was a man who was involved with setting up the Duolingo Welsh course. So I guess it could be the fault of humans or AI.

I would use the Help centre and Feedback links to ask Duolingo about it.

The reference to your mother tounge not being English and being rusty in it.

I (and others likely) could read that as you are learning English because you are rusty in it, and its not your first language / a language you are fluent in it

Of course it makes sense also that your first language is the one you are attempting to learn because you are rusty in it, and that language isn't English.

Yes, I see, ‘I am very rusty in it’ could refer to either language.