I felt 'This is it!', but...
Ken Honda's Happy Writing Marathon #27: What was a moment recently when your heart felt 'This is it!'?
Something I felt just a few days ago.
I use Duolingo. Duolingo is a language learning app that can be used with a free or paid plan. Nowadays, you can learn not just languages, but also things like math and music. In my case, I'm not serious enough yet, so I use the free version.
Since I used to watch Korean dramas about 20 years ago, I know about 50 simple Korean phrases. I've never studied it properly, but I thought I'd try to see how much Korean I could learn on Duolingo, so I started. I wanted to learn the characters first, but I forget them immediately. Pronunciation is also quite difficult when listening to a smartphone. Maybe new languages are hard...
That's right, let me try French, which I've done before. I wonder if I can remember it. Since there's a lot I didn't understand properly in the first place, I thought it would be a good light review, so I added French. I only logged in occasionally and left it alone quite a bit, but then I got to know someone else who was doing French on Duolingo and became friends on the app, so I ended up continuing with the flow. Indeed, 'connecting with someone on an app' has an effect on continuity. Since the number of days since becoming friends is also counted, I feel bad for the other person if I don't do it. So, today is my 37th consecutive day.
How about Chinese? Actually, I use the paid version of a different app for Chinese, but each lesson is too long (10-15 minutes), so it became a chore. I didn't use it for the first few months after buying it. I've started doing it a little now, but when I don't have time, I thought Duolingo might be good, so I added that too. The tempo is good, so it's not bad.
When I was young, I studied multiple languages with passion. I had an inexplicable goal of being able to speak English, French, and German by the age of 23. It was broken, but I might have barely achieved it. Now, I don't have that passion from back then. Multilingual learning has started to feel like brain training or preventing senility. Indeed, when I do it, I feel like my brain has become a little more flexible. That's right, if it's for brain training, should I also try German, which I dabbled in long ago? I added German and did a few lessons. It's interesting, but German is still stiff, isn't it? (lol)
It's little by little, but when I go around doing Korean, French, Chinese, and German, it's fun and I can't stop. Suddenly, I thought, 'This is it!' I realized that what I enjoy, what I can do while forgetting the time, is indeed multilingual learning. It's not necessarily good, but I think it's truly fun. I want to add Turkish today too.
I use English at work every day, so before I knew it, I had drifted away from learning other languages, but it's fun after all. These days, when people ask if there's any point in learning foreign languages when there are convenient translation functions like AI, it's fun, it's good brain training, and it's simply nice not to have to rely on machines, right? There's also a big sense of it being a game or puzzle.
Because of that, the moment I felt 'This is it!' was when I was learning multiple languages using Duolingo. Without a doubt, it's my number one favorite thing. But how can I make use of it? If anyone has any good ideas, please let me know in the comments!
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