September 8, 2020

In the beginning .. or at least in Genesis 11- all people spoke a common language.  And because they understood each other so well they were able to achieve great things.  And then it all fell apart, many languages were born and people could no longer understand each other.

My version of the story is a little different.  In my version there were already many languages but the one language that everyone had in common was respect.  Every way of speaking was considered equal and most people could communicate in several tongues.  The civilization fell apart when each group stopped speaking to the other - when they stopped trying to understand each other and replaced communication with separatism.

Over the centuries we have become even more divided, languages and entire peoples have disappeared. Losing a language is like losing a gradient of color - with each language lost we become duller and our differences become more pronounced.  We become black and white instead of a rainbow.

This shift, occurring over centuries, does more than isolate us.  It also limits us.  

These limits are reinforced because learning a foreign language is not accessible to most people.  It is expensive and takes a lot of time.  But there is an option - Duolingo is a computer based app that allows people to learn a foreign language for free.  It is accessible to anyone who has a computer and it gives each person the opportunity to spend a few minutes each day learning a few more words, a few more ways to say things -- a few more ways to connect with each other.

Duolingo is not one of those "French for Traveller's" kind of programs.  It offers each student the chance to really understand a language - not just butcher a few key phrases.

I love languages and I have been using Duolingo off and on for many years.  In fact - I was one of the early adopters and I have seen the programming grow from just four languages to more than a dozen.  And it is my ambition to learn every one of the languages Duolingo offers (except Klingon and Esperanto).

Using Duolingo as my primary source of language learning - let's see how fluent I can get, how many languages I can learn and what I learn with the languages on the way there.