Greetings, friends. (XIX)

Greetings, friends. Today I’d like to talk about habits in the context of learning languages.

Also, today I am going to try to be super disciplined about my time investment. I’m visiting Suzy and this journal entry is the only thing keeping us from spending the evening playing couch-coop Diablo III.

You probably know that I studied linguistics in university. In fact, I changed majors four times and this was the only topic that held my interest long enough to get a degree in it.

You tell people you studied linguistics and the first thing they want to know is how many languages you speak. To my perpetual shame, the answer was one: English.

As a child, however, I had the privilege of attending a private Jewish elementary school where, I would say, about 40% of the curriculum was in Hebrew. Today I can read Hebrew, if painfully, but nearly all of the words I know in practice are religious in nature. If you need a deity praised beyond compare to the literal highest heavens in ecclesiastical Hebrew, I know how. We only have one deity, so that does make it easy.

But aside from that, what chance would I have to learn another language? I’m American.

Well, it turns out there are many languages that are spoken in the United States, but there is one other that is widely spoken, and that’s Spanish. Moreover, it’s a language that’s spoken by a bunch of our neighbors.

I discovered the utility of speaking Spanish on my very first visit to Mexico, when Matt’s high school Spanish saved me from a stiff fine, or worse, one evening we were driving around Ensenada and I happened to blow through a very poorly lit and extremely non-reflective ALTO sign. I think he basically explained to the municipales that I was an idiot and they would never see me driving around Ensenada again. Astonishingly, this was the only time I have interacted with local police in Mexico and not been shaken down for a bribe.

But it would’ve been nice to be able to save my own ass from winding up in a jail in Baja.

The problem is, you gotta speak a language to be able to learn it, and, like I said, when would I have done that. I took the equivalent of five university semesters of French and I can barely order un petit déjeuner.

Well, then came the COVID-19 pandemic, and, as I like to say, teníamos mucho tiempo en casa con nada de hacer. Enter Duolingo. Now, I don’t normally like to shill for products — you’ll notice I didn’t mention the brand of my foil shaver, and quite on purpose, but this app fucking works.

What makes it work is that they gamified language learning, and the gamification actually provides sufficient substitute for the social pressures that normally drive language learning when you are a foreigner. Each Duolingo lesson takes a few minutes at most, and they kind of gently nudge you through matching words through context, then constructing sentences using tiles that include the new word. Then there are listening transcription exercises, and reading-aloud exercises. Finally, they have you freely translating English sentences with whatever vocabulary you have by that point.

And the streaks. I’m on an 890 day streak, which is to say that I have done at least one lesson a day for 890 days, with the occasional “streak freeze” as permitted by the app. You can earn up to 2 streak freezes when you complete lessons, or you can buy them with in-game currency, which you also earn by completing lessons.

Mind you, I have not done Duolingo lessons every day for 890 consecutive days. For about 1,000 consecutive days, I have either done one or more Duolingo lessons, or I have accumulated enough streak freezes to burn them on the days where I forgot or got too busy. That, plus things like league tiers and monthly challenges, have been enough to keep me investing 10-ish minutes a day studying Spanish most days for three years.

¡Y el día de hoy, lo puedo hablar! Not well, but well enough to order a bit of desayuno or give a cabbie directions and not make a total fool of myself. Well enough to befriend strangers when I visit Mexico.

They gamified language acquisition using science, and it works. Para mi, hablando español fue un regalito sorpresa de la pandemia. Take that, Farmville.

Duolingo is free to use, but you only get a fixed number of mistakes in your daily lessons before you’re done for the day. For, I think, $10 or $12 a month, you get all-you-can-eat and some members-only buffs. This year I let them up-sell me a special offer on an annual family plan, and now I got a year’s worth for me and five family or friends for something like $100.

So I’ve spent maybe $350-400 over the course of 3 years to learn Spanish. I call it an absolute fucking bargain. The app is not perfect, and it actually has some pretty grave annoyances, but find me a mobile app that doesn’t. This would’ve been worthwhile at 5 times the price.

I have lots more to say about Duolingo, pero no tengo más tiempo ahorita. Tal vez luego.

Speaking of habits, I did do my 2½ mile run today, like I promised myself I would. Suzy lives two blocks from the Richmond Marina, so I ran around it at sunset, with a view of the Bay, and the city behind it, with the Space Claw towering over everything. My new additions to the playlist were perfect, and I kept a 13:00 pace. Already I miss the weather here.

NARRATOR: He was not super disciplined about his time investment today.

If you’re reading this, te agradezco mucho. Ceterum censeo pro vigilum imperdiet cessandam est. Hasta mañana!