I’m not one for New Year’s resolutions anymore, because my world is pretty small and there’s not a lot of things that I could really resolve to do, like lots of the popular resolutions like “save money” and “lose weight” that would end with me feeling disappointed and dejected when the results would inevitably be minimal, if at anything at all.
But somewhere in the month of December, I decided that I should give Duolingo a try and try to pick up a foreign language, and that starting on the New Year seemed like a good of time as there would be to begin doing so. That being said, I will be one of many people in the world doing a little bit of lessons on a daily basis, trying to bring myself to some degree of competency in Spanish.
I’ve always felt that the world is way too small to not know more than a single language, and I’ve always felt fortunate that I know a passable amount of Korean on top of English. I always find it real cringey when Americans are rendered utterly useless when approached by someone who speaks a different language, or if they’re in a different country and completely inept at speaking something else and arrogantly assume everyone else should be speaking English.
I still remember returning from a trip to Europe and walking through customs at New York-JFK, and seeing the faces of foreign tourists go from wide-eyed excitement to fear and disappointment when trying to communicate with airport personnel, almost none of which could speak another language. Meanwhile, on the way out of the country, arriving in places like Paris or Munich, everyone in those places speaks English, are helpful and accommodating, and a complete 180 of the treatment people get when arriving in America.
I actually struggled on deciding between Spanish and French as a new language to learn, because I actually would have preferred to learn French, seeing as how mythical wife is fluent in it, and as someone who has aspirations to see more of the world in my life, French being the language spoken in the largest number of countries, feels like it would have the most usefulness.
But I’m not going to be traveling internationally any time soon, despite the Global Entry that I went out of my way to acquire, so I decided to go with Spanish, since I already had a little bit of experience with it, having taken two years of it in middle and high school, and the sheer fact that when push comes to shove, knowing Español would have a tremendously higher chance of being useful in America than French would.
And the thing is, I’ve seen Duolingo work out for people that I know that use it. I’ve watched friends of mine become fairly proficient in other languages, and it’s not like they’re going full-tryhard mode and sinking a tremendous amount of time into foreign language lessons. They’re just consistent, and if there’s absolutely one thing that I know that I’m 1%-level elite at, is being consistent and sticking with things, once I get started with them.
One of my bros has like a 2,000+ day streak going with his own journey. I told him that I was coming for him, to which he laughed off, but I kindly reminded him that I’ve been brogging for the last 15 years, and even ten more before that, before I migrated all my shit to WordPress. If there’s something that I’m among the best at, it’s sticking with things, and I’m hoping that if I can stick to Duolingo remotely close to how I stick to things like my brog, Wordle, Fire Emblem Heroes and Pokémon GO, then I’ll become a pretty decent Spanish speaker before long.
I’m enjoying it so far, and I’m hoping that one day, being able to bust out some Español can come in handy or helpful to myself or others.
And here we are, hours before the clock strikes midnight, bringing on Christmas of the vaunted year of 2020, and I am sipping on the final and 24th beer of the Costco advent calendar.