[2023-09-19] 400 days of learning
Today, I reached a 400-day streak in Duolingo. I've been learning and practising Brazilian Portuguese for 400 days straight.
Last week, while working at the CityFolk Volunteer Check-in, I served a man whose name was Gustavo. That happens to be the name of my Brazilian neighbour's son, which made me wonder whether the man might be Brazilian as well. Then when I saw his last name, with its multiple names, I concluded that my hunch was right. "Você fala português?" I asked. "Sim," he replied. Given that he did, indeed, speak Portuguese, I did the rest of the check-in process in that language. I admit that this was a little selfish on my part: I wanted to practise my Portuguese more than he needed me to do so. Indeed, I'm sure that his English was stronger than my Portuguese. But it was a small courtesy to him and a lot of fun for me.
On Saturday, while we did our Terry Fox Run, my son and I got talking about languages, as we often do. In fact, we spoke in French for about half the 10K walk. Shane's French has improved considerably since he began using Duolingo to refine and expand his command of the French language. His pronunciation is better, his words come more readily, and his vocabulary is larger. I welcomed the opportunity to speak in French, as I want to maintain my own fluency in my second official language. Using Duolingo in French is also helping me.
In one of the most interesting parts of our conversation, Shane gave me Italian fencing terms and challenged me to translate them to English. Drawing on my knowledge of French and Portuguese, I was able to guess the meaning of most of the terms, which proved to be a very fun game. I noted to him that when we know only one language, we often think it's impossible to understand any words in another language. When we know two languages, we're a little bit more open to the possibility that we might be capable of deciphering the meaning of words in other languages. But when we know three or more languages, we feel like we have the potential to unlock the meaning of words in many languages—well, at least those in the same family, such as the Latin-based languages. I've long used my knowledge of French when answering Jeopardy questions that pertain to Latin. Now I use my knowledge of Brazilian Portuguese as well.
My comfort in Brazilian Portuguese has increased immensely since those first tentative steps I took to learn the language more than a year ago. Duolingo emphasizes repetition as a way of making the acquisition of another language subconscious rather than conscious. It uses game-like features, such as incentives and leaderboards, which keep me coming back day after day. And it celebrates milestones, such as consecutive days of learning, completing more than 10 lessons in a day, and coming back to the app after a hiatus.
Next goal: 500 days.
