![]() I could put a lot of sounds together, but show me random Katakana or Kanjis and I am lost. I could recognize the number 12, but I had no idea how it was pronounced. Watching those videos on YouTube, I realized that I could recognize numbers here and there, but I could not count from one to ten. The app had been interchanging Hiragana and Kanji without any warning or explanation. I had been practicing for months and I had not even known there was such a thing as Kanji. So I went to YouTube to watch basic lessons and compare notes. Unlike Latin based languages, I can't easily find someone to converse with in Japanese. I tried to look past the fun and double check my progress to see if I was learning anything useful. Learning new things in a foreign language is difficult, but Duolingo has mastered the art of making it fun all the way. It took many months and lots of efforts to complete the Japanese course. I would practice everyday, slowly progressing until I get stuck and go back to Hiragana to refresh my memory. I repeated the Hiragana lessons hundreds of times. Compared to Spanish, it was utterly difficult to learn. I was excited to learn this exotic language. There was a big launch event with an app update to announce the support for Japanese. The words are correct, the grammar is correct, but the meaning is off. You can experience this awkwardness when you translate a foreign language to your native language on Google Translate. The student ends up learning things wrong all the while the app rewards the effort with virtual points, persisting the lie. But this is also a confusion when translation is not one to one. Walter is a fast learner and he had done his best to learn what the app was teaching, but the material he was learning from was the problem.įrench, English, and Spanish share the same Latin root and often you can understand the meaning of a sentence just by looking at the familiar words. I tried my best to complete the course and often checked the comments to see people complaining that the answers were wrong. To my surprise, learning French with Duolingo was difficult. ![]() Although I have lived long enough in California that I have switched my thought process from French to English, it is still a language that is embedded in me. Then I decided to explore the App a little deeper to understand what was happening. But I thought he was just bad at it not that what he was learning was wrong. I could relate to what he was saying because I felt the same way when he tried to speak French. On a motivated day, I would do over 200xp. I had completed the entire course and was fluent in the app. I had no control over my la and el, over my un and una, I could not count from one to ten. Every other word I used was awkward and cringe worthy. Yes, Coche is car in Spain, but not in the Americas. "Coche? do you see a carriage in this parking lot? This isn't Cinderella." ![]() That's until I asked him where he parked his car. I was positive that I was improving everyday. I would try to have full conversation with him in Spanish and I could see his friendly eyes trying so hard to be polite and struggle not to break my spirit. I wasted no time and completed the entire course in a record (see obsessive) pace. Anything I learn from the Certified Duolingo Spanish class, I can immediately turn around and practice with my friends. In Los Angeles however, I have plenty of opportunities to speak Spanish. It's pointless to learn a language you are never going to use. She became my very first friend in this land of opportunity. She rummaged through her purse and instead of giving me some gum, she handed me five dollars and pointed at the Pollos Camperos across the street.Īndrea was a generous stranger who understood not one word of English and I was a misunderstood foreigner who spoke little English and no Spanish. "Oh, Comer?" she said with a smile and pointing at her mouth. I made one last attempt pointing at my mouth, chewing invisible gum. I must have been saying "Chewing gum " in an accent too heavy for the girl sitting next to me to understand. I was new in the country and I was still thinking in French and translating the words to English in real time. I was on my way to my night-shift job as a security guard and the bus was late. It was past 10:30 at night in Los Angeles and the unfortunate graveyard-shift workers were starting to appear at bus stops. I was giving up but she was still looking at me, as if she was trying to make the effort to understand me.
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