The Promise of Duolingo ⇥ thedial.world

Imogen West-Knights, the Dial:

I guess it depends on what you think learning a language means or should mean. When we say that we are “learning a language,” the assumption is that the goal is to reach conversational fluency. To speak to other speakers. When I was doing Duolingo Irish, I did not learn Irish, but I did learn a fair bit about Irish: how to pronounce Irish words, the way syntax works in the language, and so on. I do read French reasonably well. Even when I was barely able to speak a sentence in Swedish, it was still better to be able to understand what was being said around me than not to understand at all. But was I learning a language or was I learning translation? What is the difference?

I am approaching a year-long Duolingo streak, and this piece spoke to me in its criticisms of Duolingo and its appreciation of it. I am not bilingual and, though that would be a nice thing to achieve, I am fully aware I cannot achieve that through a few minutes per day in an app. But learning a little bit every day has — equally slowly — given me a glimpse into how to begin learning more. It opens the door to a different language for me in a way other techniques have not resonated.