How to Learn a Language in Lockdown

Don’t just download Duolingo.

Delaney Jaye
5 min readMar 10, 2021
Image created by the author (source: delaneyjaye.com)

Access to the internet is a great equalizer. More information than we could ever process is out there — just waiting to be discovered.

Something I’ve found a personal interest in is languages. I particularly enjoy the romance languages that roll off the tongue like velvety chocolate.

But as much as I’m an idealist and like to say things like “velvety chocolate,” I’m also a practical person. Ultimately, I’m not as interested in fancy classroom language as much as I’m interested in useful language. This is a lesson that came clear to me after 8 years of studying French in school on my first trip to France.

I could read books and write stories in French. I excelled in class and would have dreams completely in French. I could understand most of what was said to me. But I still found myself lost and struggling to put together sentences in person when put on the spot. I could conjugate a verb in nearly a dozen different tenses, but that matters very little when it’s not the word you need.

When it really mattered, the bottom of the 9th, bases fully loaded, I couldn’t communicate. And wasn’t that the entire point?

That’s what made me wonder if there had to be a better way.

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