365 Days with Duolingo
lifeToday, I hit my 365 days streak with Duolingo. I joined Duolingo in August 2015 but didn’t take it “seriously” until recently.
When I was in middle school, we were given a choice on what foreign language we wanted to take. It was either French or Spanish. As someone whose first language is Tagalog (language of the Philippines), which is very similar to Spanish, I decided to take the harder route and opt for French.
I took French throughout middle and high school (7 years). I got to a level high enough that I was exempt for having to take a foreign language in college. Granted, I still did not speak any work of French except for Je ne parle pas Francais but I guess that was good enough for higher ed.
I tell people I’m fluent in Tagalog, and technically, I really am. Give me enough time and I can hold a conversation in the language. However, I don’t speak it often and I am a terrible translator (so please don’t ask me to translate anything). The point is, Tagalog has 20-30% Spanish loan words already due to the Spaniards colonization of the Philippines in 1565-1898, so I’m basically 30% fluent in Spanish already… so I figured, why not try my hand in Spanish this time around?
If you are serious about learning a language and becoming fluent at it, Duolingo is probably not the right tool for you. If you casually just want to learn phrases, and words to get started, then their gamified way of learning is a lot of fun. I did the free plan of Duolingo for the first 7 months of my streak, and eventually got tired of losing lives due to my mistakes, and ended up subscribing. Although it was a bit annoying, the free plan is doable, although it’ll probably take you longer to learn. If you come across a discount for 60% off (typically beginning of the year, nothing on Black Friday that I’ve come across), grab it.
Here I am, a year later… and I still can’t hold a conversation in Spanish. However, I can read a little bit better and understand very slow conversations. I’ve upped my fluency from 30% to maybe around 45% in 365 days, and I think that’s a good enough start.
Side Note(s):
- This post is Day 20 of the WeblogPoMo2024 challenge.
- I tried learning Chinese (Mandarin) via Duolingo for a month but it was super difficult for me. I don’t know if it’s because I was already trying Spanish and learning 2 languages just didn’t work out well. In either case, I don’t think learning Chinese would’ve fared well for me using Duolingo even if I continued with it.
- They recently just came out with Math + Music for Duolingo. Math was interesting and I tried it a few times. It was a good way to just brush up on basic arithmetic (I didn’t get too far). Haven’t tried Music yet though.
- I find it fascinating that Duolingo applies some passive aggressive techniques to get you to continue your streak via notifications. Even their social media content is a little bit unhinged… but it actually works.
- Are you a Duolingo user? What’s your current streak?
