As someone who grew up speaking English and Mandarin, studied some elementary Mandarin in Chinese school (but only a few years), formally learned French from middle school to college, and started learning Korean as an adult, I’ve had an interesting range of experiences that sometimes crossover or I just have stronger opinions on.

Commence blogging about them.

I’ll begin a new tag here called language learnings (sometimes these thoughts barely have any connection to each other, so this will be the best encompassing tag).

Today I want to briefly go over a popular language app that I currently have a 653 learning streak. I’m proud of keeping the streak through a 3 week road trip within the wilderness, but I will say that I utilized their streak freeze option (that I also have to earn through learning at the same time).

Duolingo is great for those with some experience in a language.

It is fantastic for me to review both French and Mandarin, which both I have had some sort of formal training in. However it is very difficult to learn a new language from scratch from my experience.m I’m not sure if it’s because it is Korean itself that is difficult to learn on Duolingo or if it is any non-romance language. Through the French feature, I have seen how developed Duolingo can be (podcasts and interactive storylines in addition to daily practice), and have compared it to both Chinese and Korean. Both Chinese and Korean don’t use the Greek Alphabet and even between the two, Korean has it’s own alphabet while Mandarin… uses different characters for each word in addition to simplified words vs traditional (more complex characters). I use a different learning platform for Korean that has more distinct lessons.

It’s also really interesting to observe myself as I learn Korean now. I know how I learn better in this age (as well as have the patience), but I can definitely also feel how less absorbent my brain is now. 

Languages are truly fascinating, the grammar, the tones, and methods of communication. Slang and the jokes within each language. So interesting! Look out (listen out?) for more as I continue.