Journey Into Language Learning

Language study has become a major activity in our household. In common with many people, this is something we took up when the pandemic began early in 2020. Pica decided to rectify a lacuna in her prior language studies and began working her way through German in Duolingo. She has continued with her German studies to this day (she had a Lingoda lesson in German late this afternoon) but also had side excursions into several other languages. I followed in her path: soon after Pica started her German I decided to work my way through the Hebrew Duolingo tree. Having last studied Hebrew seriously as a child, I wanted to see what I retained and could pick up.

I completed the Hebrew tree in about two years, and settled upon Spanish as my subsequent Duolingo language. Previously, I had taken three quarters’ worth of Spanish at the local community college about 20 years ago. This is not the spot for a Duolingo rant, but I was quite glad I discovered the concept of comprehensible input before I got very far along in Spanish Duolingo, starting with the wonderful program Dreaming Spanish. (Dreaming Spanish has been a commercial success, and their team has just announced they will be launching Dreaming French very soon). Nowadays I try to get at least an hour of Spanish comprehensible input though Dreaming Spanish and other sources each day, and also do a bit of daily Duolingo, and participate in a weekly conversation group through Easy Spanish. Looking ahead, I’m also dabbling with Catalan right now, watching some of the comprehensible input videos mentioned here.