Duolingo - You can have it your way

How can I best learn a new language?  Oh, if I only knew the answer to that seemingly innocuous question.  Lots of us want to learn another language, but few of us succeed.   My best advice is to give DuoLingo a try.  DuoLingo is a web-based language learning program available for desktops, laptops, and mobile devices.  Two of the pluses of DuoLingo are that it has a perfectly acceptable free version and that you can tailor it to your own needs.  Is it the panacea for all language learning problems?  No, sorry.  But I have been using it for about six years and still look forward to using it on a daily basis. Here is the advice I would give a friend who wants to acquire another language using DuoLingo.

First, choose a language that is meaningful to your life. DuoLingo offers a wide variety of languages.You may be planning a trip to a foreign country, have friends who speak another language,, enjoy the music from a certain country, want to connect with your roots, or learn about a new culture.  I study Spanish and Portuguese because I have taught those subjects, French because I have French-speaking Canadian friends and enjoy traveling in Canada, Italian because a good friend has just bought a flat in Venice, and Irish and Welsh because I am intrigued by Celtic cultures.  And if you find that you chose the wrong one, you can quit it and start a new one.  I once began Catalan and  Romanian because they are Romance languages, but I quickly lost interest, probably because I didn't have a personal connection.

Next, set a daily goal ( a small one is fine) or let DuoLingo set one for you.  The program can be instructed to send you reminders if you don't meet your daily goal. I used them at first to develop the habit of doing some bit of language every day, but after a while, the reminders began to feel like a nag.  Now my strategy is to gain ten points every day, which is really easy.  I have a streak going of over 1800 days.  You may laugh, but I go to great lengths to maintain my DuoLingo streak.  However, in addition, my personal daily goal is to do one exercise in six different languages every day without making five errors.  Duolingo lets me know when I make an error by losing one of my five available hearts. So, my advice is to play around with your goal so that it fits your lifestyle.

Now to the content that DuoLingo offers.  You will choose topics to work on, some based on life experiences, like travel, and others based on grammar, like past progressive verbs.  Once again, you are in charge here.  The topics are arranged from easier to more advanced, but you don't have to necessarily work through them in a lock step fashion.  Remember, language learning can be a truly enjoyable experience. Language Acquisition experts talk about the important role of Language Input, that is, getting lots of language into your head in a comprehensible way. Duolingo offers an impressive amount of content.

Another piece of advice is to allow yourself to explore what DuoLingo offers.  There is no one right way to use it.  DuoLingo is constantly changing,  so you may log in one day and find new features.  I can compare it to learning how to use an iPhone or an Apple Watch.  You will discover capabilities you want to use and others of no interest.  On Duolingo, I have explored grammar explanations (pretty boring), jump ahead quizzes (great), vocabulary count (not useful), online discussions (pretty interesting if you have time), and adding friends to compete with (not so interesting anymore).  Just keep clicking around in the program until you find features that suit you.

Now back to the thorny question of how to learn a language.  I can only say that DuoLingo will help you along in your journey.  The program gives me an opportunity to maintain Spanish and Portuguese, helps me feel that I am not losing the French I learned in school, gives me hope that the next time I am in Italy I can use more Italian than the last time, and provides an intellectual challenge figuring out the workings of Irish and Welsh.   

My plea to Duolingo is: Please bring back the 'bots'.   The bots carried on a conversation with you to which you replied speaking or in writing.  Talking to the bots was very close to having a conversation with a real person, which means that you were creating language in your own head.  I loved talking to them.   But the bots unfortunately only made a brief appearance in the program.

Is DuoLingo the ultimate answer to the question, "How do I best learn a language?" No, but it is a flexible, motivating way to study language. And I look forward to a future where language learning is even more accessible. 

 If you are a DuoLingo user or want to be, I look forward to reading your comments and observations on language learning!

What's with that t sound in Beto?

Finally, my home town of El Paso, Texas is getting some positive attention, thanks to Beto O'Rourke. 

 

Beto, an El Paso native, announced that he is running for the Democratic nomination for US President in 2020. Now people I meet have something to chat about when I say I am an El Paso native.  "Oh, yes, Beto is from El Paso too, right?" 

It's almost amusing how the name "Beto" rolls off the tongue and is easy to remember. His name is not a campaign trick. "Beto" is a common Spanish nickname for anyone named "Roberto."  Pat O'Rourke gave that nickname to his son, Robert, when he was young.  (It is not at all unusual in a bilingual border city like El Paso to have Spanish names and nicknames.)

As I began hearing Beto's name said by a variety of acquaintances and the national media, I noticed that often the pronunciation sounded just slightly off. I learned Spanish as a second language and hear Spanish spoken on a daily basis in El Paso. One important way to avoid having the much maligned "American accent" is to pronounce the "t" differently in Spanish than we do in English.  What a great excuse Beto's name is for a brief investigation into the linguistic fields of phonetics and phonology!

At first I thought the strange pronunciation of Beto was caused by the fact that the usual Spanish t is pronounced with the teeth touching the top teeth, which creates a softer sound than the English t, in which the tongue touches the roof of the mouth to make a more explosive sound. Say the word "top" in English and put your hand in front of your mouth.  You should feel a slight puff of air from the t.  But the answer did not lie in the t sound, because what I was hearing was something more like "Bedo."  

Further investigation cleared up the issue.  An American English speaker pronounces a t sound between vowels as a sort of d sound. (Linguists identify it as a "flap" in which the tongue touches the roof of the mouth quickly.)  Think about the pronunciation of the t in the word "water."  It is more like a d than a t, isn't it?  Try the word "data."  The t in the middle sounds like a soft d.

So, mystery solved!  An English speaker looking at the name "Beto" naturally pronounces the name as it would sound in English.  Hence, "Bedo."

I'm sure more weighty issues will come to the forefront as the race to the presidency continues, but for now I am pleased to have Beto (or Bedo) O'Rourke as a publicity maker for my home town.  

Are you a victim of Language Attrition?

The term "Language Attrition" has a fairly unpleasant ring to it, doesn't it?   I hesitate to admit it, but falling victim to Language Attrition has risen to the top of my personal worry list.

Attrition is defined as the wearing away of something.  Language Attrition is the term linguists use to describe a natural decline in a person's language skills due to insufficient use or environmental changes. (In other words, "Why is it that I used to carry on a conversation in Spanish but now find myself groping for words?")  I'm not concerned with losing my first language, English, because I use both the oral and written forms all day, every day. But I am becoming very concerned about the loss of Foreign Language skills.

An inordinate part of my life has been devoted to learning Foreign Languages.  Through the years, I have taken countless language courses, completed college degrees in languages, and taught languages and linguistics. I would have thought that given the amount of time and energy I have devoted to Spanish and Portuguese that at least those two languages would have a permanent place in my brain. Surely the languages I have been most intimately connected with are not beginning to recede in my memory! But I fear they are.

The first hint of trouble appeared as I was doing a daily round of exercises recently on Duolingo, my favorite free, online language learning program.   I have worked on Duolingo with at least one of six languages every day for over 1700 consecutive days. On some busy days, I have completed just a Spanish exercise.  On others, I have plowed through Spanish, Portuguese, French, Spanish, Welsh and Irish. I typically do Spanish and Portuguese back to back to avoid mixing the two Romance languages.

When you get the right answer on Duolingo, you receive a pleasant sound as a reward.  When you make an error, the correct answer appears in a red box at the bottom of the screen, and, depending on which version of the program you are using, you lose a segment of the much dreaded "health meter." (Loss of too many health segments potentially stops your progress for a period of time.)

I noticed that I was making more and more errors in Spanish and Portuguese.  And the errors weren't with big issues, like obscure vocabulary items or intricate grammar points.  The mistakes appeared with commonly used words and concepts.

Who would have thought I could mix up the Spanish and Portuguese words for "the"?  Spanish uses "el" or "la" for singular "the" and Portuguese uses "o" and "a" for the same concept. How could I forget that the Spanish word for "bus" is autobús but ônibus in Portuguese?  How often did I have to remind students that the "they" form in Spanish ends in "n" (ellos beben) but in "m" in Portuguese (eles bebem)?  I feel Language Attrition setting in.

I can recommend to myself many paths for maintaining languages to keep attrition at bay.  Unfortunately, I no longer lead a life style that allows frequent practice with native speakers of other languages. (Granted that living on the border with Mexico in El Paso, Texas gives me some contact with Spanish, but we are in truth a bilingual city.) Of course, videos, movies, radio, music, newspapers, and novels could fill the void if I would just make time to use them. 

I'm not sure I like the conclusion I have arrived at in writing this post about Language Attrition.  Counteracting it is going to take much effort on my part, along with losing weight, exercising, practicing the baroque recorder and guitar, not to mention decluttering the house.  

But instead of whining about being one of the many victims of the disappointing phenomenon known as Language Attrition, I'm going to begin reading a Graham Greene novel translated into Spanish, Nuestro Hombre en La Habana (Our Man in Havana). It's one small step, but at least I feel like I am doing something.  Now on to those other life challenges!