Just a quick reminder that Japanese does not use alphabets except for some loan words, and even then it is optional. Instead Japanese writing uses kana – hiragana and katakana – which represent syllables. Luckily Japanese have few and simple syllables. Almost without exception, words in kana are written the way they are pronounced. Then there are kanji, currently just over 2000 in regular use, which are ideograms. They are generally more complex to write and can be pronounced in different ways depending on context, but tend to have the same or similar meaning regardless of pronunciation.
When teaching basic Japanese vocabulary, Duolingo has almost entirely relied on hiragana. For some reason a few kanji have been taught, but quite few. That is fine, because new readers need hiragana practice and need to associate the sight and spelling of words.
But lately more kanji have appeared. Which is fine too. But the strange thing is that they don’t appear just in new lessons. I rarely ever do new lessons, because just refreshing the lessons I already have learned is enough to fill my daily quota while being difficult enough that I don’t get bored or race thought them too quickly. Well, lately kanji appear in lessons that are simply repeating old exercises that I already did with hiragana. The most puzzling thing about this is that they are not explained in any way when introduced. They just show up in the text, either as part of the text you are supposed to understand or the text you are supposed to form into an answer. There is no way to know what a new kanji means except from context. Today there was even a sentence I should translate into Japanese using building blocks, which included two new kanji. There was no obvious way to know which was which, except trying.
Well, I guess it is OK that the course get harder even if I don’t make progress. If it gets too hard, I can always use the “crown levels” to pick an easier part for a while. But I still think a complex piece of language deserves at least a brief introduction rather than just appearing out of the blue, and then only part of the time.