Learning a foreign language was always a part of my awfully long to-do list, but one of those that never gets materialized. Apparently, that’s one of my problems with these unmonitored to-do lists. Actions and ideas get registered in them, but never find their way out, making me call them “Procrastination List”. And I always wanted to fix this by creating an app where my best friend (could be anybody who one is comfortable sharing his thoughts with — his better half, closest friend, could as well be his mom) monitors my to-do list and pushes me to act on the things inside it. But as you can imagine, that app idea, which I had christened “do-to-do” has well settled in my ‘Procrastination List’ so it will take a while to be acted upon.
Anyway, coming back to the core of this article… Well, that’s my second problem, I tend to divert too much from my original intention. I intended to write an article on my journey into learning a new language but started talking about procrastinating and apps. It’s like one of those innings where the batting side pre-plans to start aggressive, calm down during middle overs and pace-up at the end again but ends up losing three wickets in the first five overs. Damn, it happened again — diversion.
Ever since I moved to California, I’ve been awestruck by a huge Mexican community that speaks Spanish so fast Usain Bolt’s sprint might look slower. There entered one of my very few successful to-do list contents that has actually been “done” — “Learn Spanish” or as they say “Yo Hablo Espanol”. As an avid Wiki reader, my obvious approach was to research a bit about the Spanish language on Wikipedia. And wiki sort of doubled my motivation by giving a heads up saying “Spanish is a Romance Language” in the very first line of the article.
A few days later, I found that French is also a Romance Language. And so is Italian. :) Turns out they’re the languages derived from using “a Roman Vernacular”. Nevertheless, that didn’t quench my thirst to install the app Duolingo to endeavor on an exotic journey into the world of FC Barca, Carlos Slim Helu, Shakira, Penelope Cruz, Pablo Escobar, and many more.
Let me devote the rest of this article to Duolingo. It needs a lot of attention. ;) Basically, Duolingo is a crowdsourced platform where people translate sentences from across the web. In the process, they not only learn a new language but also translate the web. This revolutionary idea comes from the king of crowdsourcing, Luis von Ahn who’s also the creator of the reCaptcha project that helped digitize millions of books by crowdsourcing the digitization as part of captchas that are used all over the internet. The same idea was extended to translating the web to different languages to make it accessible to a wider audience. Here is a TED talk by the founder himself about his research.
Essentially, on Duolingo, one uses a language they know well and speak fluently to learn a new language. Here starts the fun. Since the words that form sentences that are given for translation are chosen randomly from a combination of different sentences, most of the times, they make ABSOLUTELY no sense. The hilarity ensues when people start trolling them. Granted, it’s still an effective way to learn a new language since you could use similar format of the sentences offered to you when you want to actually put it to use. And to be honest, it’s these kind of fun sentences that literally made me endure this three month long journey. I’ve collected screenshots of all such hilarious examples I was offered. Duolingo users have been enormously creative with their comments every time such a weird, funny sentence appears. I hate to accept this but they’re almost in par with Redditors when it comes to SFW comments (Of course, with NSFW comments, Reddit is still the unquestioned king). Below are a few gems. (Again, in my “Procrastination List” is an idea for an app that collects amusing and entertaining, or genius and creative comments from some of the comment-heavy portals of the web open to public, like Reddit, 4Chan, 9gag, Youtube, Duolingo, newspaper sites like TOI, NYTimes etc, and sometimes even Facebook).
Here are a few gems :-)
Somebody with a keen pair of eyes ;-)
Gets raunchy a bit
More so!
A LOT more so :-O
And well...
lol
Almost getting boring with this...
When the Duolingo robot starts to flirt ;-)
Becomes really sweet :)
But then the flirting gets complicated ;-)
Straight to the point :-) Like this bluntness.
Dang!
People start sensing when it gets creepy ;-)
Creepier!
Next level of creepiness
Duo also ventures into BDSM :-P
From BDSM to …
That’s the question.
Consequences of over-flirting ;-)
Honest Duo promptly acknowledges it
But it won’t stop :-(
Being brutally honest
Here starts the unavoidable irony comments
More irony
No irony here, seems legit.
Resurrection
Duo beings to show its dark side.
And soon it gets intimidating :-O
The intimidation escalates!
Almost there
It’s done :-(
Duo goes to depression mode :(
Maybe that’s because...
Could also be because…
Never fall in brozone, bro!
This is weird, though :-D
Thank you, made my day :)
Been my resolution from last three years.
And this habit, of course :)
There’s battle of sexes.
I’m speechless ;)
There’s more…
Liberal Duo ;)
Duo is both a social and cultural liberal ;)
Familial values ;)
Duo is an owl, FYI.
And then these absurd numbers ;)
What the…
Valid question ;)
Good contender for Reddit TIL frontpage
Coastal folks maybe, but still...
Kinda scary ;)
Another TIL candidate.
For sure
lol :-P
Hahaha.
PetRent ;) New startup idea.
Speaking of start-ups...
Careful ;)
Fair deal I’d say
Passed the Turing Test yet?
Some serious food suggestions
Lateral Thinking
Quite possible
Morality is overflowing here!
So many possibilities…
Much more comprehensive :-P
Rene Descartes should have been alive
Visuals to assist
So accurate ;)
What a splendid reasoning!
Yet another logical explanation!
Mother of all explanations (part 1)
Mother of all explanations (part 2)
When even Duo users are clueless
Governments ;)
I can vouce for this ;)
The US gets trolled ;)
International fun begins ;)
To Chinese and non-Chinese
This one though :-P
The most useful Venn diagram I've seen
Yes, she can ;)
And worse ;)
I totally needed this.
Another of such!
And hilariously,
And I took a test designed by myself to prove to myself that I in fact know decent enough Spanish. Basically, listened to a bunch of hits from popular native Spanish singers like Enrique, Shakira and Ricky Martin amongst others and made sure I understood their literal and metaphorical meanings. But just then, I realized we’ve our own tinge of Spanish in Zoya Akhtar’s ZNMD. “Senorita”, the Spanish-Hindi song from the movie was always in my Youtube playlist but never had I understood one bit of what that Spanish lady sang, pretty much like Farhan Akhtar who says “Na Main Jaana, Na Main Samjha, Jo Bhi Tumne Mujhse Kahaa Hain Senorita”. Decided to give it a shot. And what a lovely meaning does “Senorita” convey.
Here is the song, if anybody wishes to watch.
With that, the “learning a foreign language” aspiration has now taken a different route. Next in the mission is the language of the most populous community around where I live, and in fact, of the most populous community in the whole world. I can’t wait to be amused by Duo’s questions on Mandarin :-)"Quien eres tu?"
"Who are you?"
"Donde has estado?"
"Where have you been?"
"He removido cielo, y tierra, y no te encontre"
"Moved the sky and the earth, and didn't find you."
"Y llegas hoy"
"And you arrive today"
"Tan de repente"
"All of a sudden"
"Y a sentida a toda mi vida con tu querer"
"And I felt my whole life with your love."