my best friend is a little green owl

when i started breathing, i looked forward to speaking. when i started speaking, i looked forward to reading. when i started reading, i looked forward to writing.

whatever was happening, i couldn’t wait to learn.

i grew up bilingual. my mother spoke dutch to me, my father spoke english. my brother and i formed our own little hybrid language.

i continued to learn. and learn and learn and learn.

i moved to Belgium when i was ten, and the learning stopped. everything in school was boring, slow, repetition. i got bored.

so i decided to take matters into my own hands. i opened duolingo and duo asked me to choose a language. i scrolled through the list with my eyes closed and my finger hit the screen at a random moment.

danish.

and so, i started learning danish. a few days - or maybe weeks - in, i gave up. like most duolingo users, i was fed up of the little green owl, the constant notifications, the repetitive exercises.

a few years later, i opened the app again. i had managed to stay off it for so long that even the notoriously persistent messages had stopped. nonetheless, duo was overjoyed to see me again.

skal vi begynde at lære igen?

yes. yes.

and so i started again. those first few weeks were nothing, all forgotten. i started afresh, sticking to danish. and it went on and on and on.

some days, i would keep going. three to five lessons. twenty new words. a whole new tense. five speaking exercises. (not many listening exercises, they got on my nerves)

some days, i’d pay 100 gems for a match madness. or i’d just about survive a lesson, nearly running out of hearts because my heart was just not into it.

but i managed to keep my streak, and keep the little green owl happy.

in the summer, we went on holiday to denmark and i was so excited to test my abilities. i managed to order our food multiple times and one man even said he was surprised to find out that i wasn’t danish!

all in all, it made be believe in duolingo even more.

yes, the notifications are annoying, so are the sounds whenever you get something right. the whole app screams irritating. but somehow it works.

this isn’t an ad for duolingo, it’s an ad for finding a way to learn. you don’t need school to educate yourself or to learn new things.

i ended up finishing the entire danish course. i’m now looking to read some books in danish, or find another website or app that could offer more content.

in the meantime, i’ve started a new language. i wanted one with a different alphabet so i flipped a coin between japanese and arabic.

so now i continue my daily duolingo, challenging myself with arabic (which is a LOT harder than it looks, and it already looks quite hard).