Duolingo Says What?

As I have mentioned in other  posts, learning German has been a gargantuan bit of a challenge since moving to Switzerland.

Joe, Maureen and I are all taking German classes, und wir lernen mehr und mehr.* In addition to our formal instruction, we have also been utilizing other strategies to survive get along in a country where we don't speak the language(s).

*and we are learning more and more.

One strategy we are utilizing is 'reading' children's books in German:

It IS normal to read kid's books.

Another strategy is to plan out what we want to say at the Post Office or at the grocery store and then looking up the phrases on Google Translate or LEO:

Close enough...

One tool that all three of us find very helpful for learning basic German is Duolingo. It is not lesson based, but it is a wonderful app for practicing speaking, sentence structure, and a ton of vocabulary.

And it can be quite humorous:

Is that all?

How do we know it's green?

Sometimes it is helpful:

Very true in Switzerland!

And sometimes it is not so helpful (if you want to keep your job):

Inappropriate in any context.

NSFW!

Some sentences are romantic...and unromantic:

Awww...

...and my warm feelings are gone.

But I think the funniest sentences I've gotten on Duolingo were these two in the same lesson:

How I feel sometimes.

My daily mantra as I learn German.

My poem is in appreciation for the happy *ding!* I get when I answer correctly on Duolingo:

each correct answer
brings me closer
to understan -ding

©2017, Bridget Magee. All Rights Reserved.