Doesn't sound like much progress after 2 months or so, but I don't know, I'm finally starting to think I might maybe understand German. 100% fluency though? We'll see. Probably won't happen through an Android app (Duolingo).
My coworker was like Why German?
I replied Because I don't know wtv It was the hardest languages available on the Duolingo app (while waiting for Japanese and Korean) that I might end up using at some point. Getting familiar with the app through German couldn't hurt. But yeah. uh. No.
The app is really bad in that it gives you no education in the language itself. It assumes you know the alphabet, basic grammar and other parts of speech. Of that you can figure them out as you go by paying attention to the examples. I'm maybe just really bad. Without that foundation.. don't bother starting anything new. Even with it though German is hard.
As you might know, the English language came from French and German among other sources. Already being supposedly fluently bilingual in French and English doesn't really help. It's like getting back to A through B and C. Well more like French doesn't help at all while English and German are very similar. They are still very different. Apparently some of the world's older languages like Korean and German... (I got cut off while thinking out loud lol)
At which point my Chinese coworker is like Nope! It is the newest. I'm like huh?
He meant the alphabet, derived somewhat from Chinese so like Japanese at roughly 570 years old is new while spoken Korean which I figured, is indeed one of the oldest languages.
Both Korean and German seem to be 'old' and lack the same kind of influence you see from other major languages on each other. I can only assume it isn't evolving at the same rate as say English has in the last century due to cultural forces like globalization and the corrupting influence of linguistic slangs and jargon. Just means that there's that much more to learn when trying to pick up older languages. Getting conversationally adept would require actual conversations (or immersion in the language like with simple forms like movies music and such). For Korean that would be easy.. I could start watching k dramas... Shudders. For German..hmm there are some TV shows that might not be too foreign.
Because really that's the problem. The languages are foreign.
The wiki page says this is called isolation in the case of Korean. I say it's just the languages are showing conservative cultural trends especially for German and Korean. While oddly Japanese is accepting of slang. I mean odd for such a conservative culture that's so connected to accept slang and generally corruptions and simplifications of the language. If change isn't really accepted at a fundamental level like it is in say English and French then the language won't change much. That should actually make it easier to learn. But even so I heard that so long as you learn Chinese first, Korean then Japanese would follow easily like trying to learn Latin languages.
Having French and English and Japanese (from Rosetta Stone many years ago) means learning Chinese Korean and German I'm learning them ass backwards. Can't be helped.
But then I got back into IT at a large employer. This means I need to get back into the swing of using French. It has thrown a wrench in my German practice on Duolingo.
And Japanese finally became available on my birthday so I'm running that on the app too.
It shows another weakness in the app in that while progress on each course is separate, daily study goals are combined. It's already obvious that the highest daily study goal supported by the app is too low for making progress on a difficult language like German.. nvm 3. I could just work at my own pace knowing what it took to get to that 15 percent in German and apply that to Japanese. After a week I still don't even have 1 percent. And well frankly the app doesn't even care about reading the characters. This makes it a bit easier but means there's 3 word types, romaji hiragana and katakana all used at the same time. Leaving enough familiarity I'm just listening rather that reading.
I'm not considering French to be difficult since I'm supposedly fluent but the app only scored me at 55 percent fluent. I was almost offended but having retained 55 fluency over 20 something years isn't bad. I suppose I should have felt even more humbled by the first few sessions because there are so many details, exceptions, rules in French.. my direct from France highschool French teacher once said the language is like math. I laughed at her. But I mean in terms of learning the rules maybe. Once you know them it isn't so bad.. But that's the same thing for all languages. French isn't special.