I just spent a half hour on a single DuoLingo lesson – the longest I have ever spent. Most of the time, I do a lesson in 3-12 minutes depending on its length, complexity, distractions in the room and my mental clarity. On this occasion, I wasn't distracted, although a touch mentally unclear given I'm still adjusting time zones. But really, it was just a tough lesson and I'm really struggling with the rules around where the participle "na" goes in a Greek sentence.
In Section 2, Unit 27 (whatever that signifies) of DuoLingo's Greek curriculum, they start throwing in a lot of material all at once – so instead of picking up vocabulary around a certain theme or learning a particular tense – there's conjugation, vocabulary, structure, participle usage and probably a few other things. In other words, I've advanced to a higher level and now it gets tough. I'm mostly keeping up except for this "na" problem. It seems to go in a variety of places for a variety of reasons – and always has to do with complex sentences I can't see actually using - in in conversation while living in a Greek island.
Some examples:
- She wants to use my own things
- We can answer you but we don't want to
- She is looking for a beautiful dress to wear to the wedding
- She is not going to give it to you
- He is trying to find his keys because she lost them
- We have to be able to be there on time
- The engineers will test all of the machinery
- Why would you say that you can't love him?
- I don't think I love you anymore (was someone going through a divorce when they wrote curriculum?)
- We will all get in a taxi and come right now, but it is very expensive!" (written by an expert in passive-aggressive shaming)
None of them are really so bad – but few are likely for me to use and all have some kind of complex construction. They remind me of some the sentences my high school French teacher used to give us to translate like, "Would that he cared, she might have told him." or "If she had known the way, she might have arrived on time."
The sentences were all designed to trigger us to use a particular tense or combination of tenses – but in and of themselves they were useless. Under what circumstances would anyone say, "Would that he cared, she might have told him" ?! But if you're looking to make kids practice the conditional subjunctive, it's a winning sentence. I still don't think I have naturally come across any situation in which any actual living human has used the conditional subjunctive with me or vice versa – because – and I would hope Mrs Myer would be proud here – the conditional subjunctive requires "if", an emotion followed by a change of subject (which sounds like a bad date). Olympic ice dancers make less complicated maneuvers.
Not to say that either Mrs Myer or DuoLingo have led me astray. "How much are those apples?" and "What are you doing tomorrow night?" were part of both curricula.
In fact, I have learned foreign languages in several ways. First was the classic school textbook Mrs Myer way. I took French from sixth grade through my junior year of college. Without trying, I actually minored in French. Despite the absurdity of the subjunctive, I love French and am actually more comfortable reading and writing than I am speaking – because Mrs Myer always figured if we really knew our grammar and vocabulary, speaking can be picked up later, in practical usage. However, teaching people to speak doesn't necessarily translate into literacy. So I could write essays on Balzac and Saint-Exupery while sounding like an idiot on my first trip to France at when I was almost 16. In college, I was placed into second-year French and it was clear my first quarter I was significantly ahead of the class in reading and writing, but not in speech. However the University of Washington taught first-year French, it involved a lot more speaking and listening than I was used to. It took me a little bit to get out of the "yeah, but did you read my paper???" mentality I started the quarter with – and actually get on the listening and speaking train.
I came to Thai in a completely different way. I was in Thailand and it turned out I was going to stay and live there with a job and apartment. The rate of English in Bangkok was quite low at that time and I wanted to eat and go places. Learning Thai made a lot of sense. At first I was more interested in just the basics of what it took to order som tam and tell a taxi driver where to take me. Then I met my friend Jay who is British and had been living in Thailand for several years already. His Thai was very good. Jay's accent and slower speed make it so I could hear each word and begin to decode what he was saying – or identify words to ask him about. When a few months into my time in Bangkok Jay and his girlfriend Kung stayed in my guest room for a few months, I started learning a lot from Kung. What I didn't pick up from hearing one of them speaking, I came home and asked about because I found something I wanted to say to someone. They were like personal tutors in a sort of Montessori-like educational system. I learned based on interest, which was largely based on usefulness.
After a few months of that, I was happy with my progress and was curious if I could successfully go on a date in Thai. Jay and I were a handful of early twenty-somethings in an office of mostly 45+ somethings, which by default made us the IT guys. My regular trips up to the university's actual IT department led me to become flirty with the girl my age who worked the front desk and so, one day I asked her out – and she said yes. Nok and I ended up dating for four or five months before I left Thailand and that kicked my Thai learning into overdrive. We conducted our relationship in her language – even though she could occasionally help translate an English word into Thai for me. By the end of that time I could talk about family, politics, history and feelings but frequently forgot the words for fork and plate because I didn't have a full-kitchen in my two bedroom apartment (it's weird how that worked) and never cooked.
I never learned the Thai alphabet and am completely illiterate. Completely opposite of my French, I am illiterate in Thai but extremely comfortable speaking. In fact, I'm funny in Thai. I'm good at joking and the pleasantries the grease the wheels of life in a Bangkok neighborhood or getting a bureaucrat process paperwork. I also know some Lao dialect which is common in Thailand's poorer Northeast and among the many people from there who have migrated to Bangkok for work. My propensity to use Issan dialect sometimes embarrassed poor Nok who is from a well-established upper-middle class Southern Thai family – which in retrospect I can appreciate more than I did at the time.
In my year-and-a-half in Taiwan, I never took to Chinese the way I did to Thai. Maybe because I didn't have a Jay or Nok equivalent. Maybe because I went there with my friend Jesiah and we had other Americans we hung out with. Maybe because Chinese is hard and I was fine with learning what it took to be transactional. I was adeptly transactional.
While I don't count Indonesian as a language I speak – I became reasonably adept at writing notes to Nengah, the housekeeper at my house in Bali. He spoke NO English and yet, he and the gardener came with the house I leased. Using an Indonesian-English dictionary to write notes to Nengah was my friend Chad's idea – and it worked. In the process, I learned a lot of useful words and phrases that I sometimes practiced around town. Indonesian is written in the same Roman alphabet as English, making it much more accessible. What's more – Indonesian and Malay are close cousins – so I could have my Indonesian reinforced reading signs around Singapore - because I went back and forth between Bali and and Singapore in those years. However, most Balinese speak English pretty well – so I was lazy about using it out and about. When I dated a Malay-Singaporean girl, I tried using my Indonesian with her – it seemed like a good way to really improve. She mostly laughed at me – in part because it was hard for her to take me seriously in Indonesian and in part because to Malay speakers, Indonesian sounds old fashioned – maybe similar to the way an American might perceive a British aristocrat. She just couldn't.
All of this to say, I've come at a variety of languages in a variety of ways.
Today was my 92nd consecutive day of using the DuoLingo. The app told me today I have stayed active daily longer than 70 percent of users. I'm also in the top 12 percent of Greek learners. But what does that translate to? I had this idea that with all I've learned, I'd show up in Patmos and show off some new skills. While it's only the second day (third in Greece), I'm finding the opposite to be true. I'm having trouble using the basic phrases I had already comfortably learned and I'm practically tongue-tied trying to put together a basic sentence despite the fact that on Duo Lingo I'm adept at passive-aggressive shaming that would be considered advanced in any language.
It's almost like DuoLingo scrambled my brain. There are words and phrases floating around and I just can't grab them and put them in order.
Maybe it's because DuoLingo's approach to language learning is so different than any I've ever encountered before. It's not the Montessori-like approach I took with Thai and Indonesian. But it's also not Mrs Myer who stood in the front of the room trying to explain to our adolescent brains over and over what the rules of a particular tense were, why they're important and then criticizing our failures on exams and papers (with love). Mrs Myer may have sometimes fed us some very artificial sentences when necessary, but she gave us context as to what we were learning and why. And with 33 years of teaching experience at that time, she also knew why we hit certain walls. I can't imagine she thought the conditional subjunctive was any cooler than we did – but she had curriculum to follow and was preparing us for the AP exam – so emotion followed by a change of subject we went.
DuoLingo doesn't give you personal feedback or explain context. It does make you correct errors and can adapt in certain respects. Its methodology is fascinating. Ninety-two days ago, I was super impressed. It seems like DuoLingo is almost programming your brain with a language. The beginning lessons used sounds, basic words and two-word pairings. Clearly, one of the first things DuoLingo tackled was getting me to read the Greek alphabet. It smartly employed cognate vocabulary to help me with two and three word groupings like "Mama, carrot" and "Mama, avocado". After a little bit there was pink rice, pink water, drama at the mini-market and someone smoking a cigar in the museum. Sometimes people were dancing in the museum. Sometimes there was a throne in the museum. It was quite a museum.
The oddness made me trust DuoLingo because there had to be a method to the madness and within a week, I realized I was reading Greek fairly well (I might have had a leg up because of personal experience – but still….). It seemed like DuoLingo's approach was to play on how our brains learn language. It also takes advantage of how we play video games using sounds, vibrations and point systems. It tracks how many days you've used the app, gives your points for each lesson, allows you to win little games to get point bonuses and allows you to earn "gems" which can be traded for point bonuses, helping friends, buying advantages to games, etc. DuoLingo allows you to link to friends and both compete with them, but also form alliances. this week my friend Conlan (who got me into DuoLingo) is in the same Diamond League competition group as me. He's #1 no less. Conlan's learning French – however the groups aren't based on which language, just points. At the same time, Conlan and I are partnered in friend challenges where when we collectively earn enough points, we both get a substantial point boost. What does it actually amount to? Nothing – but it's the kind of motivation that gets people addicted to video games and slot machines.
So I've getting points, tracking streaks, high-fiving friends, climbing my way to the Diamond League and learning Greek for three months. And the result? I sounded dumber than I would have in December telling the man at the produce shop that I don't need the free map he was trying to give me because I have a house here.
Is that where it ends? I don't know. When I listen to people, I understand a lot more of what they're saying. I can read signs better. Children spend a lot of time listening to language before they speak. Maybe what I'm doing in DuoLingo pays later dividends – the time isn't ripe….? Maybe I'll be comfortably chatting with engineers, brides and people who can answer me but don't want to (again, so passive-aggressive)?
Or maybe I'll toss the app aside and switch to the Montessori-like method one can come by when they're immersed. I have about 3,000 potential teachers around me – many of whom I talk to everyday. One thing I have long believed is that language is a reflection of culture. It's a lot easier to learn a language when you have first-hand experience with people who speak it and the context in which they live – and I do have some of that.
Either way, I say to Conlan, "Would that I had enjoyed an easier week, my score would have been higher. Mais neanmoins, tu es le meuilleur."
