LANGUAGE LEARNING | ROAD TO BEING A POLYGLOT
The Decision to Take on a Challenging Language
I started a new course on Duolingo and the language I chose is one of the most difficult for English speakers
I was getting bored with the relative ease of the languages I was currently studying on Duolingo. I decided to take on a challenge to up the difficulty for myself. After taking years in school and through language apps and learning to get a good grasp on Spanish and German, I started taking more languages related to the two to try to expand my language base.
I went to languages in both language groups. Before long, I was studying a bit of Dutch, French, Italian, and Swedish. Just for fun, I threw in a language unrelated to any of these and started learning Finnish for fun. In the last five languages I just mentioned, I haven’t gotten anywhere near mastery.
I’m at a fairly basic level with all of them but can understand quite a bit based on context and previous linguistic knowledge in the languages I learned first. I needed a bit of a challenge. I kept waning on and off of my language learning because it felt fairly easy but also because I felt like my interest was waning and I was getting bored of the languages I was learning.
I wanted to try something harder.
I went to Duolingo to take a look at the courses. I already knew that the app still doesn’t offer my mom's native language of Tagalog, which I will likely try to learn through Mango Languages. The course is on there and the program seems to fit within a decent budget annually. I could learn that one fairly quickly since I still have my mom and other family to practice with.
For the language I decided to take on in my current app, I scrolled through and saw Zulu, Norwegian, Danish, and Polish, and I just kept saying no each time. Then came languages like Klingon and High Valyrian. When will I ever need those languages outside of nerd circles? No, I’m good.
Chinese?
Hmm. Chinese as in Mandarin Chinese, is one of the hardest languages for English speakers since it’s tonal and also has a complicated and comprehensive system of symbols to convey the various sounds. I would have to study and memorize thousands upon thousands of characters. Am I a masochist? I guess I’d decided to start on this journey.
I clicked on the course and started with the basics. I like Duolingo’s interface as you can ease into a language as the symbols make the sounds when you click on them to match the word or symbol you’re trying to learn. I was starting to gain confidence and was retaining some of the symbols before I knew it.
By the time I finished the course on the first day, I managed to complete two sections of work. I learned quite a bit about greetings, money, and numbers. I have a long, long way to go to get even close to a basic understanding. If I even want to be serious about it, I know I’ll have to use more than just Duolingo as I have in the past studying through alternative and supplementary resources such as workbooks, instructional videos, and just speaking the language with others.
At the end of the day, although this seems to be fun and renewing my interest in all of my language courses, I don’t seriously know how long I’ll commit to learning Mandarin Chinese but I’ll have a challenging, fun, and interesting journey ahead of me if I put in the work.
Have you ever studied a language you thought you’d never master? Do you speak more than one language? Does language learning interest you? Let me know in the comments what you think about my journey.
Thanks for reading.
If you’re interested in following my language journey on Duolingo, the link to my language profile is below.
Editorial Note: I’m not affiliated with either Duolingo or Mango Languages. These are just two language apps that are highly recommended by me and many other language learners to build a base when first learning a language.
