Ola, Vikram. (The power of Duo Lingo)

My Duolingo streak is now over 200 days. 

How's my Spanish?

Not entirely mal, but not exactly muy bien. 

I can understand almost all the sentences, the little stories when I read them. If I slow down the audio, so it's really dragging, I can understand all most all the sentences, the little stories, when I listen to them.

I know a lot of words. Let's hear it for vocabulary building!

My pronunciation skills are pretty damned good - at least according to the Spanish-speaking staff at St. Francis House, who when complimenting me always have a look of astonishment on their face when they hear my accent. For whatever reason, I'm a reasonably good mimic, and can generally convince someone I know more Spanish than I do. 

But my English to Spanish translation skills are mucho limited. When presented with a sentence in English, I pretty much can return the basic elements en español. I'm mostly okay with soy v. estoy, and conozco v. sé. But I fall down on the nuances. E.g., when to use me. 

Most of this is my own damned fault. My focus is totally lacking. I'm really not concentrating on anything much other than keeping my streak going. On many (most?) days, I do the absolute minimum. Minimal listening lesson. Minimal speaking lesson. Minimal word recognition lesson. Guapo = handsome.  Film = pelicula.  Bravo, me! Streak continues! Olé, Olé, Olé, Olé!

I don't get involved in contests. Other than keeping the streak alive, I don't get into competitive mode so that I can beat complete strangers to get elevated to the Pearl League. Or whatever. 

Often, I scoot through my streak-continuation task in the middle of the night when I get up to pee. Get it over with, back for more Z's. Sometimes I do a bit more during the day, but mostly I'm satisfied with my half-baked approach. 

Despite my half-baked approach, I am using my rudimentary Spanish to communicate with the Spanish-speaking guests when I'm volunteering. So I can ask whether they need a cepillo de dientes. I can tell them that we have no more tickets for a clothing appointment, so they should come back mañana, temprano. 

Which is not to say that Duolingo isn't both brilliiant and fun.

Which was not always the case.

A few years ago, I tried Duolingo to learn German. I'm not sure why. I had no trip planned to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, or Frankenmuth, Michigan. If my mother were still alive, I might have been trying to get in touch with my inner German so I could sprecht with her in her mamaloshen. (Ok, that's Yiddish, but close enough.) But for whatever reason, I started to "learn" me some Germans.

When I was doing the German, it was a drag. I got into the streak thing, but I also got maniacally competitive, trying to outdo those complete strangers to reach to top of the daily/weekly/monthly heap. But German is hard. A lot harder than Spanish. So to keep on top of the heap, after I got through all the easy-peasy lessons, I resorted to cheating, using the Duo app on my phone while furiously looking for answers on my laptop. Which is when I decided that my efforts to learn German were kaput. So I quit.

But I do have a reason to learn Spanish. Many of the guests I work with at St. Francis House are from Latin America or Caribbean. Others are Haitians who - because they live in close proximity to the Spanish-speaking DR and/or have spent a few years living somewhere in Latin America before making their way to the USA - speak some Spanish. (I can do a bit of limping along in high school French for the French-Creole speakers.)

And the new and improved version of Duolingo - new since I was struggling/cheating my way through German - is greatly improved. The lessons are more engaging. It's a lot more fun. They've introduced a group of characters, including Vikram and Priti, the idiotic Junior, the annoying Lily, who present the Spanish sentences, who tell the stories. 

The illustrations are funner, too. 

I may not be learning all that much, but I'm enjoying it. And I'm enjoying keeping my streak going. (There is a bit of competition at hand. I'm in a family group set up by my sister Kath that includes my sister Trish, and nieces Molly and Caroline. Other than Caroline, who's doing Italian, we're all doing Spanish and are all streakers. We also pepper our convos with occasional palabras.)

Duolingo is really, really, really good at getting its users to come back day in, day out. 

The ability to get people hooked and keep them engaged is one of the holy grails in business. Few companies do it better than Duolingo, the world’s most popular app for learning another language, which takes advantage of two concepts that translate to lots of other industries: streaks and notifications.

It’s why Duolingo has become one of the biggest winners in the global battle for your attention. 

...It’s not just because you’re intrinsically motivated. It’s mostly because behind that cartoon owl named Duo is a large team of engineers, researchers, strategists and product managers giving you that extra push.

...The best way to learn a language is getting in the habit of daily practice, and the best way to form that habit is getting a well-timed nudge, which makes streaks and notifications essential to Duolingo’s surprising business success.

Humans are so wired to look for streaks that we see them even where they may not exist. Duolingo takes our propensity for streaks and turns it into a motivational tactic. It turns out people are willing to do all sorts of peculiar stuff if they have the incentive of a streak—like sneaking out of a bar right before midnight to speak a few minutes of Japanese.  (Source: Wall Street Journal)

I'm certainly someone who's gotten sucked into streaking. But I don't seem to get all that many notifications. 

In fact, I don't seem to be getting many of them at all, even though - as far as I can tell - I don't have notifications turned off. 

Maybe it's because I'm usually doing my minimal streak-keeping at 2 a.m. According to the article, most Duolingo-ers  - and there are 30 million of us - don't get around to Duolingo until late in the evening - 10 p.m. or so. 

Anyway, my streak is really nothing compared to my sister Kath's - she's more than double my meager number - let alone when compared to the person who's up to over 4,000 days. 

Notifications or not, I'm going to keep my streak going. And I'm really going to try to do a better job of focusing, of concentrating, of not taking the quick and easy way out. I really want to get more serious about what Duolingo can offer. Maybe I'll actually learn enough to have a simple, multi-sentence conversation with one of the folks at St. Francis House. 

Bravo, Duolingo! I'll never be able to do it without you!