Today is 200 days straight for me and Duolingo Spanish. I appreciate how “doable” they make it to keep a streak going. There’s even a way to protect your streak from a missed day… I didn’t need that option so far.
Some days it has been 3 minutes. Some days an hour. At this point, I know that I could NOT write this all in Spanish. Nor much of it! Yet, I am finding it easier and easier to understand written sentences for sure! My vocabulary grows in microsteps. My confidence stays with this as useful – both for the skill of another language AND ESPECIALLY as setting the tone for other things I’d delight in having more consistency with!
A few weeks ago I “resigned” from league play with Duolingo. For awhile it had helped me to feel connected with others learning, but the connection was really “only” competitive. It stopped being good, so I let that go and am focused now on deeper learning at a slower pace than trying to “keep up with the Obsidian League” was allowing.
I share this both the celebrate a streak of 300 days of ANYTHING not biological or coffee. It feels good, my comfort has grown SO much with listening and hearing (and getting answers incorrect). It’s microsteps that have lead me to be 1000 words beyond where I started.
Am I fluent? Jajajaja no.
I laugh because, yeah, each time before I had wanted to become fluent, as a GOAL. Here, I want to experience the nature of another lingual way, and it’s expanded my range of sounds and comfort. There’s something about listening to a show about the Magical Andes in Spanish – even if I understand only 20% – that brings it to life in a way that the English track just… doesn’t.
Anyway, wanted to share an update. It’s one of the things I like about the community center is that we can find and surface again things we’ve shared from “long ago” and add more to them. I invite YOU to do the same, with something you’re exploring.
Love to us all in our growth… baby steps… micro-changes that matter each day!
I wish! I’d love to have a cat that enjoyed swimming with me in the pool!
One Whole Year!
Today is day 365 of Duolingo. I admit to being surprised that I actually did it every day, and never used the “streak protection” lingot they offer.
My identity used to have a strong streak of “I am inconsistent.” (except for drinking coffee each and EVERY day). With this one year streak, that has changed. With the change in core identity, it’s also made it possible to do the Morning Mile consistently, too. (This will be day 225.)
I’ll say that if I had required 20 minutes a day of practice, it would not have happened. I made it really easy on myself. ANY session through a lesson or story counts.
This wasn’t a goal, either. If I’d set “fluency” as a goal, well, I’d be very very sad right now. What I wanted was to explore, experience, and to become more familiar with.
It’s also a place where mistakes arise, and I’m still working on my reflexive “ouch” when the red error message and sound comes up. My sense is that the shifts there I’ve already made are helping when “mistakes” happen elsewhere in my world. Still more to shift with intention, following the System of engagement I’m following.
I was going to better learn Spanish, but after the first couple years in 2012-2014, it was just too much work. I just wasn’t getting the accent correctly. My husband is from Colombia and he was trying to lose his Colombian accent and I was trying to learn Spanish to communicate with his mom, his sister and friends. But, I ended giving up after awhile because I wasn’t keeping up with the work.
Duolingo is an app on my iPhone, but I haven’t used it in ages. I am so proud of you for taking steps towards learning Spanish.
I, too am very proud of you, Rick!! Especially the way in which you completed 365 days…no requirements, no goal…just curiosity and exploration and allowing mistakes! Thank you for modeling this for us!
It’s been interesting to feel the changes in me, what I’d “consider” (like living in a Spanish-speaking country someday for a period or part of the year)… y más.
There’s an archaic version of Rick that wanted everyone in this country to speak English. I’m glad that’s changed inside me. Indeed, i look forward to translators becoming so good and real time that, heck, even our jokes can survive translation! (Maybe?)
Tuning into the challenges in Spanish and its different tones and textures helps me appreciates the complexity of right word, right context for communication and understanding. For sure.
500 days is not something I’ve ever done in a row on learning something or taking action on something that isn’t a “natural” for me – like drinking coffee is a natural. Or eating…
It’s hard to express the subtle-profound change in me by having done this. I’ve done 360 days of morning mile, even when sick (although not always in the morning or always a mile ).
When I started this topic last year, it was the surprise that I was in the Top 3% in Spanish in terms of consistency and effort. While I am not anymore, for myself this Celebration Point reminds me of how small increments each day bring surprising benefits.
I can overhear some Spanish conversations or read some tweets or articles in Spanish and… not be clueless! Yay! I can listen to my Latin dance music and feel the emotions and expressions more deeply, follow printed lyrics with more curiosity and place for them to land in my cognitive brain.
And freedom… it feels like more of the world is opening to me, countries in LatAm where, who knows, in another 500 days I’d feel like I could go and not be so lost in communications that make no sense to me.
Like with the guitar, I am not “better at this than I thought… or hoped.” My progress is actually still much slower than I even expected. Still, like with the guitar, expressive SOUND matters to me, and language is a core way we humans express our emotions.
Thanks to all who have celebrated with me at previous points. Today feels really satisfying…
Today, passing this milestone, I appreciate feeling connected even in such a small way to those who live in different parts of this planet. Starting to get to the place where the Spanish-speaking people I follow on twitter I can get much of what they are sharing before I do the translate link.
It’s interesting to me… certainly if I had pre-judged how I “needed to be speaking and understanding” by day 777, I’d be quite dissatisfied with where I am.
Yet, my brain knows. My brain knows that a few thousand new words and their energy now live inside ME! The student in me is enlivened by the repetitive exposure to freshness – and alternative ways humans conjugate the experiences of life.
Congratulations for continuing your learning and walking!! Wow! Yes I can imagine how it helped you to see yourself as more consistent. How wonderful that must make you feel
Oh yes! I appreciate that you have been here through this “skill building” for myself. Picking one thing to even do daily for a month was… well, a significant milestone in changing my identity. As days and hundreds of days passed through, and I still “get value” from both the endeavor and the consistency… well, I can’t actually say I am never consistent with anything!
It helped last night, too, just to do a few minutes of piano improv before bed, even though I was really tired. And today to go for my morning mile after being up since 5am and taking care of sick unhappy baby with a headache all morning. Somehow, it makes so much “easier” to have something consistent to resonate with.
I spent over a full day of my life this past year learning Spanish! About 28.5 hours…
I am not fluent. Not close. What I am is “connected” to those who Speak Spanish in a way that I would not be if I didn’t hear it and read it every day for a few minutes. I am getting the “gist” of tweets by the president of El Salvador and other people I know through Twitter without always having to click translate.
I’m also perhaps at the earliest stage of understanding how certain expressions of courageous conviction like “Seguimos” – We Continue, Persist.
There’s a subtle thing, too. Practicing Spanish also seems to have increased the variety of words I use in English! (At least according to Grammarly).
Anyway, wanted to share.
And remind myself:
When I started Duolingo I had NOTHING I could point to where I was consistent on something ‘not easy’ for me. Over two years later, the part of my identity that used to be ‘Rick can’t be consistent’ has been utterly replaced with 'Rick can absolutely be consistent when he knows why it matters.'
Today will be day 725 of the Morning Mile, too. Duo came first, and for that I am quite grateful!
In highschool I had a girlfriend who was fluent in Spanish…she had lived in Mexico for a year as an exchange student. I was also taking a Spanish class at the same time (grade 11 and 12). As well she had friends come from Mexico a few times who were native speakers of Spanish. So, I had some small degree of immersion along with the classroom study. I got to a fairly reasonable level of fluency as a result. I could speak without first having to translate in my head a lot of the time. I still remember a lot of it and can understand more than I speak. I get a bit of a thrill hearing someone speak Spanish on TV and I can understand most of what they are saying. It’s a beautiful language.
If I had known I would still feel so awkward with Spanish after 1000 days, I might not have started. Yeah, I’m like that. As much as I do embrace awkward beginnings, there’s a part of me that just feels like after 1000 days not being able to have even a pretty simple social conversation feels… well… confusing.
THAT SAID, if I hadn’t started DuoLingo back then, I’d not have had the consistency that I built on for my Morning Mile. THAT would have been tragic.
And the intangibles of practicing something new, even if for 5 minutes a day, has exercised my brain in ways it was craving.
Feeling closer to those in Latin America, too, feels so good to me. I listen to Nayibe Bukele of El Salvador and while I do need English subtitles, I FEEL the language and its essence differently. The emotional content isn’t “lost” in mental confusion anymore. Applies when I listen to Latin songs I don’t “understand” yet the sounds and essences are more alive in me.
I’m feeling a need for an AI “tutor” to chat with soon. I’ve been experimenting with that, and I can tell that it would be super helpful to just talk back and forth, even if I type Spanglish.
We’ll see. I do feel like this milestone means I am going to switch off of Duolingo being my “streak counter” and do that manually, like I do with the Morning Mile, so I feel more free to do things like read stories or news in Spanish rather than do Duo’s exercises. While it might be exercise, today’s lesson with the Cows cooking dinner and the cats cleaning up was silly in a way I might enjoy again someday… but I’m feeling like in 1000 more days I’d like to spend time in a Latin country with the family – and be a lot more savvy about conversation by that point.
Thanks for listening, your support, and being witness to the first thing (other than coffee) I’ve done as an activity every day for 1000 days… I feel the stick-to-it-ness benefits in my core.
Doing your Duolingo like you have been, is something to feel “proud” of yourself for. I have a feeling you know more than you think you do and when it comes time to visit that Latin country you may be amazed at how much your 1000 days learning has helped you.
Indeed. I’ve been chatting with ChatGPT in Spanish. While I don’t understand a lot of the reply, I do get the sense pretty well. I suspect in person it would be similar. I did another app today that is more conversation oriented, and it feels like a good adjunct until I get ChatGPT or another tool more tuned to help me. They say Duolingo is working on that, too, but they are not (yet) offering it to me.
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