Duolingo

[Martin Hash]

I'm good at a lot of things but learning another language ain't one of them. I've tried several times: German in High School, French off of a record, and Spanish from reading children's books. It's kind of like learning to play a musical instrument: unless you have a reason, like playing in a Rock 'n Roll band to get chicks; the amount of effort doesn't seem worth it, and after a while you give up and can't remember what you learned the first time, making the whole thing a monumental waste of time. Every time I sit down at a piano, it takes a couple days just to play kid stuff, and I give up in frustration; plus, no chicks would take me home anymore anyway.

Learning another language is even more uninspiring; I've traveled a lot, over 100 countries, and lived all around the world, going on 5 years; there's no 1 language you could learn that would help, except English, and I already speak that; so learning a second language definitely fits in the way-too-much effort category... Until now. My youngest son went off and married an Inca wife from Peru, who was born in the Andes near Machu Picchu and they live in Lima with my only grandson, who is learning 3 languages: Quechua, the native Incan language, English & Spanish. My goal is to keep ahead of him in Spanish. To accomplish said goal, instead of taking the old familiar failure route I've tried before, instead I'm using technology: my iPhone. I use an App called DuoLingo, as do a lot of other folks, to give me daily lessons in Spanish. These DuoLingo people have motivation down: they constantly congratulate you on your progress, give you achievement awards, and keep a running total of how many days in a row you've studied, and if you're in danger of missing a day, they text you; the program does anyway; I'm not sure any actual people work at DuoLingo: it's free?

Awards.jpg

I've also got a 5-year anniversary award, and as of today, I have over 10,000 gems, and my DuoLingo day streak is 1000! Now that may not seem like much to you but I've had a couple 300 day streaks broken by bad time management on my part, so now I pay attention, and I pay money; when I'm traveling, I pay the big bucks for data service in other countries just to keep my DuoLingo streak alive. I've got my wife hooked too, after all he's her grandson too. We saw him lately, and I'm still winning the language battle but he's only 2. I'm still betting I'll be ahead when he's 3, and maybe even 4? However, he'll probably always hold his Quechua over my head.

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[Montegriffo]

Well done. I've always struggled with languages too.
I just figure that if I do retire to the house in France that necessity will help me learn the language.
I just have to avoid having only English friends like a lot of the other ex-pats do.

[Calculus Man]

When I was a 9-5 M-F stiff, I always lost my streaks on the weekends...lol