Bots May Finally Teach Me French

I've been using Duolingo for over two years to learn Spanish and, more recently, French, and this app's capabilities are almost magical. But Duolingo is getting even better with the introduction of bots. And this changes everything.

I don't normally talk up self-up topics, but one of the things I'm really passionate about is learning. And while my focus has shifted over time, I make a point to set time aside each day to learn ... something. Part of this effort has been directed at maintaining my software development skills, and I've spent much time over the past several years learning the basics of iOS programming and, more recently, trying to complete an Android Basics Nanodegree at Udacity. (I'm 44 percent done as I write this.)

But in a less industry-focused sense, I've also spent a lot of time on language learning over the years. My wife and I travel internationally each year and have vague goals to spend more time outside the U.S. after the kids are out of the house. And we understand that at least a basic understanding of the local language is key to having a great experience in certain places. Especially France, which is almost certainly our favorite.

I took Spanish in high school, poorly, as it turns out, as I had to do so for all four years. My wife took French and, not surprisingly if you know both of us, was the better student. She also took French a bit in college, while I was happy at the time to walk away from any language learning.

I wish I could do this over again, obviously. But you don't know where life is going to take you, and whatever immaturity drove my disdain for language learning in high school was arguably not my fault either. Anyway, it happened.

On our first trip to Paris in 1993, we relied on my wife's rusty college-level French, and it didn't go well. She knew basic words---like cow, or meat---but not useful terms you'd see in restaurants. It is perhaps an indictment of how language learning was taught in U.S. public schools and in higher education in the 1980's, but whatever: She wasn't as prepared for France as she had hoped.

For my part, I didn't know a word of French. I recall walking out of a cafe on our first morning in Paris, nervously doing the math on the bill---France was still on the franc at the time---which amounted to an incredible $85, about half of the money we had for the trip. "We just paid $5 per cup of coffee," I told her, fresh off the boat from America, where refills are free. That was my first experience with espresso, and to be clear, it's been a whirlwind romance ever since.

Anyway. We didn't travel internationally again for ten years. Like many, we started a family, bought a home, and just sort of settled into life. But by the early 2000s, we were bit by the international travel bug again after I turned a Germany work trip into an extended vacation with my wife and two friends. My wife and I visited Paris twice on incredibly cheap tickets in late 2005 and then...