Episode 71: Learning Languages

   Every night, a green owl tells me to do my Spanish homework.

   If you aren't familiar with Duolingo, that above sentence probably confused you. But if you are familiar with Duolingo, you know exactly what I mean. 

   In high school, I took three years of Spanish. Spanish I-III, obviously. I could've taken Spanish IV, or whatever the next one up was called (I think it may have had a fancier name than Spanish IV), my senior year, but I opted not to in favor of having another off-block to spend doing nothing with my friend Josh. 

    Even though my Spanish-learning took a siesta in my last año of high school, I've still done a lot of tarea since. 

   I've been using Duolingo to learn Spanish for every day for almost a year, and I've had phases of using Duolingo before this. To this day, it's still mostly stuff I already know. Taking three years of a language makes you know the language to an at least somewhat conversational extent. 

   I am by no means fluent in Spanish. But I would honestly say that I am conversational. The person I'm speaking to may have to be slow and forgiving of some mistakes, but I'd say I'm for the most part conversational.

    Spanish is one of only two other languages I'd bother to learn. The other is ASL. I just don't think there's much practical reason to learn anything else (obviously no offense to those languages, people who speak them, or people who want to learn them) where I live. Spanish and ASL are all around American society, especially where I live. There are many Spanish-speakers in the US and Deaf people are obviously everywhere too. 

    But I am amazed by people who are fluent in more than one language. Two is cool, but it especially blows me away when people know three or more. 

    In the US, people just don't really bother learning anything else because English is far and away the dominant language and it's everywhere. But in other places in the world, like Europe, you're basically expected to know more than one language. I wish Americans would be more open to the idea of being bilingual and put some language-learning into practice.

    Anyway, I just thought this would be something cool to talk about. I wish I could speak every language, that would be awesome. But that's a lot of work for not very much practical results. I'm not looking to travel the world. But it would be really cool to be able to speak with more people who are already where I live.

¡Anyway, see you next semana!