The Gadgets Page

I downloaded Duolingo quite a while ago. It was a game. It acts like a game. It looks like a game. I set it up for only five minutes a day. I thought, I’ll play this for a while. See if I learn anything.

I set it for French.

I wanted to learn French so I could read the advertising posts on Facebook from Safari Alto, a camper manufacturer from Montreal, Canada. It was a humble goal, especially since they usually provide an English translation.

To be fair, I speak Spanish pretty well and took a semester of Latin in college, so this is the third time I’ve tackled a language. Some of the words are very similar to either the Spanish or Latin words I know, so I have a little bit of a head start. Still, I’m shocked.

After only a few months of practicing five minutes every day, I was able to read my first Safari Alto Facebook post:

I covered the English and was able to understand most of the French. It was such a feeling of liberation! I had only been playing with Duolingo for a couple months at that point and I could understand something!!

Then, yesterday, a friend linked to this video:

I was watching it on my phone, so I couldn’t read the English translations, but I UNDERSTOOD IT! I didn’t get the nuances of the fact that the cat didn’t live there, but I understood the punchline. He wanted the human to open the door because it was closed, not because he necessarily wanted to come in. “Porquoi?” “Se ferme!” Even now, it makes me laugh again.

All because of a silly little video game. I have spent a mere five minutes a day playing my game and now I can UNDERSTAND things. I’m not fluent. I’m not even able to understand the answer to a simple question like, “Where is the bathroom?” But I can understand the gist of things.

Thanks, Duolingo!