Duolingo

A big part of my recent drive to travel to Europe has been my renewed interest in European languages. About two years ago, working my first year at a university in Korea, with more time off on my hands than I'd had since moving to Korea in 2009, a friend told me about Duolingo https://www.duolingo.com/, a language-learning site where you could study French, Spanish or German. (These days you can also study Italian and Portuguese and they are working on several other European languages, including Dutch and Russian). All the unstructured time on my hands was contributing to a severe bout of depression, but the site was so cleverly designed to compartmentalize and reward language learning that studying on duolingo quickly became my main free time activity.

I found, too, that the French and Spanish returned easily. One day, to test the efficacy of the site for learners who were new to a language, I also decided to try German and quickly fell in love with its sounds. Now I'm studying all three languages, with a focus on French and German. I have dabbled in Italian and Portuguese as well, but I've found that three languages is quite enough to be studying at once.

All this study really revved up my desire to go to France, but it also created a desire to go to Germany and Austria when I really hadn't considered those countries much previously. Finding that I could learn the rudiments of German, however, made me want to go to the country and practice and grow my language skills. I also began to look into the sites of Germany and Austria and soon realized that there was a lot more I wanted to see beyond "The Sound of Music" tour and Neuschwanstein. Now Germany and Austria are in my top 3 countries to visit alongside France. If I can only visit three on my first journey, those will be the choices.

I strongly recommend duolingo for anyone wanting to pick up or brush up on their language skills. It's not a perfect site. I'm finding as my studying deepens that the French lessons may occasionally get something wrong. (For example, watching a Rick Steves lecture recently I learned that if you ask for "le menu" in France, you are apt to receive an order called "le menu" rather than seeing your options. You'd better ask for "la carte.") Also, I'm pretty sure  from my limited investigation that the "idioms" section is not an actual set of French idioms, but perhaps a direct translation of American idioms that may or may not make any sense to French people. However, in terms of pronunciation and learning basic vocabulary, as well as access to a community of other learners offering advice, it's a great site and I like it much better than something like memrise.

For the past 23 days I've been studying both French and German (and sometimes Spanish) each and every day. Sometimes it's for as little as 5 minutes, but other days I study for an hour or more. I've also added in reading out loud in French (with much recourse to the dictionary.) I'm waiting til the 30-day mark, but at that point I may try to organize a little French club in town, or maybe a "European languages club", since I'd be happy to practice German or Spanish as well. Sometimes I feel a little guilty, since my Korean is almost non-existent. However, we may not stay in Korea too much longer, and I think that by the time I'd achieve something like an intermediate level it would likely be time to leave. Therefore, I'm studying for my future and for my dream of one day living in Europe. If we keep up with our European languages, we'll be good to go when we arrive.