Mille jours avec Duo

One of the joys of going abroad is having a go at speaking a bit of the language. Sadly, they didn't teach any foreign languages in my secondary modern school, but over the years I've tried to make good that deficiency in my education. Greek was tough, and I didn't progress much beyond sas efcharistó (thank you) but for France and Germany the Reader's Digest came to my aid with sets of cassettes that I played over and over again as I travelled to and from work. 

Those cassettes certainly gave me a grounding in French and German, enabling me to greet people, buy food and railway tickets, and ask for simple directions. I well remember taking a cable car ride in Austria and going into the mountain-top cafe. Ahead of me at the counter, an Englishman was trying to make himself understood by speaking loudly in English. When my turn came, I smiled and proudly said something like, "Zwei Apfelstrudel, ein Bier und einen Kaffee bitte."

However, despite such successes, those cassettes did little to help me engage in casual conversation. So back in 2019 I resolved to use some of my time in retirement to become reasonably fluent in French.  I briefly tried Linguaphone audio CDs but finally (thanks to my brother) settled on the Duolingo smartphone app. Since then, and after a brief break during a holiday where there was no Internet, I've clocked up 1000 consecutive days of lessons.

Here are some screenshots from this morning's Duolingo lesson...

Using a UK smartphone keyboard, it's not easy to include the French accents. Duo accepts this and I'm very pleased not to have to bother with them. 

The first of these asks me to type what I hear and the second requires me to speak.  Notice that Duolingo, being an American app, translates bonbons as 'candy'. Thankfully, though, it will accept 'sweets' and also allows us English to use 'town' for 'city', 'football' for 'soccer', etc.  However, I had no option but to accept American English for mon portefeuille est dans mon sac à main, which to me translates as 'my purse is in my handbag.' "No," says Duo, "it's 'my wallet is in my purse.'" That conjures up a very strange image indeed!

Long ago I tired of Duolingo's advertisements and subscribed at about £45 every 6 months. (It's priced in dollars, so fluctuates a bit with the exchange rate.) That's fairly expensive, but has been an incentive to spend longer learning each day, thus speeding my progress. Now, when I tune in to a French radio station or listen to one of Duolingo's podcasts, I'm beginning to pick out phrases and sense what they're talking about. After a lifetime of understanding little save my own language, that indeed is progress.