Get Duolingo, they said. It'll be fun, they said.
I kid, I kid. Duolingo is an absolutely awesome resource and I'm here to tell you why.
So I'm probably about an 11.5 on the Richter scale of fucking lazy, especially when it comes to anything academic, commitment-related, or even just some menial activity that doesn't allow for me to move at my own grandfatherly pace. I'm that little shit in your high school math class who sat in the corner all year and did absolutely nothing and was then really happy with scraping a 53% pass and a SEE ME red-pen footnote.
But I've always wanted to be one of those incredibly sexy and worldly people who can slip from one language to another without trying particularly hard. You know them: they'll chatter away in basic Canadiana until they get a mysterious phone call that they answer in flowing, flawless Russian. It makes me wheezy to think of it.
German is a language that has oft fascinated me. The crags and peaks of it, those cute little Umlauts, the power that oozes from it as it's rattled off quickly, fearlessly. Fearless is, in fact, the best word for it: It's a language that demands to be listened to. It's a language that gets shit done.
I wanted to take German class at high school, but I wasn't allowed to. I don't know why. I just wasn't. I got stuck with French, which I was annoyingly good at. To this day, I still remember all of my French, but rather insidiously. It lurks below the surface. If you said to me now, "Speak me some French" I'd say hell no. But when I'm in France, and a French person asks me a complex question, I can fire off an answer like a fucking local. It's a useful, albeit perplexing skill, but I want more. I need more.
I was on Tumblr one day and a post about Duolingo came across my dashboard. I discovered that it's free, and there's an app. There's an APP. You can actually take a crash course in a language of your choice using your phone. So I signed up, and holy shit. I can formulate competent sentences. I can conjugate. I can literally watch German dubs of TV shows and catch the gist of what's going on. Not too shabby, for having had the app for all of two and a half months.
For a great (free) kick-start course in any language, get Duolingo. You can't rely on it entirely; you will need to acquire a dictionary of your chosen language and study conjugations, but you can probably hit conversational standards with this app to guide you. They're constantly expanding, too. When I first signed up there was only French, German or Spanish to choose from. Now there's the option of Portuguese and Italian, and I think there's Dutch, too.
And that little green owl cheers you on when you do well. And sends you texts when you need to get on track. It's a better language teacher than any of the humans I came into contact with in school.
Go for it. Talk to your iPhone in a public place. Learn how to explain that your wife is reading a book. It might come in handy someday.
HYOH.
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