361 days.   

That’s how long my streak on Duolingo is. This week, all going well, I will pass the 12-month mark on the world’s biggest language learning app. A year of consistent daily Español.  

Although of course, if you’ve ever used Duolingo, you might know that a 365-day-streak does not necessarily mean a full year without missing a lesson. The thing about Duolingo streaks is that if you happen to miss the occasional day for whatever reason, and you’ve racked up a bit of a streak already, it forgives you your absence. It freezes your progress for a day. I thought it was a cop-out feature until I flew across a time zone and faced the prospect of having my record thrown on the scrap heap.    

One of my great educational regrets is that I cannot fluently speak multiple languages. I’ve always loved the sound of languages. I’ve loved what they reveal about culture. I get such a thrill from being in a place and speaking something other than English, connecting with another person. I swear that when I dragged my family to Latin America last year, you could hear my wife rolling her eyes as I cleared my throat and began attempting to converse with the guy in the customs booth. But while I’ve ebbed and flowed with my Māori and Spanish over the years, I’ve never got to fluency.   

It’s one of those slightly embarrassing things about New Zealand. Roughly 20% of us can speak two languages – a figure that has been increasing as our population becomes more diverse. But when you travel, you quickly come to appreciate that not only can most Europeans breezily switch between at least two languages, many people in developing countries with limited formal education opportunities also have impressive language skills. Two thirds of Europeans are multilingual. Indonesia has roughly 200 million people who can switch between languages, let alone people in the sub-continent or sub-Saharan Africa. 

For many, multilingualism is a utility and English skills are vital for economic reasons. For those of us who’ve grown up in Anglophone countries, the case for learning can perhaps seem less urgent. 

I can see competing forces in language trends. While te reo Māori has recorded an incredible surge in interest over the last decade, new language tools make it easier for those of us who are also interest in foreign languages to opt out of doing the hard stuff. Real-time live translation tools are amazing (when they work) and they’re only going to get better. It’s not inconceivable to think that in a few years, live translation will become the default way of travelling. For many, it already is. No more blind pointing at a menu and hoping for the best. No more language barrier charades.  

I can see how those tools and that technology might make someone like me give up and throw in the towel. What’s the point in a Duolingo streak if you can open a different app on your phone and that’ll perfectly communicate on your behalf? 

But I hope not. I think the connections you form with another person when you communicate in their language are ultimately un-replicable by technology. And what’s more, there is something nourishing about forming a learning habit. It’s like you can feel the neural pathways trying to fire. There’s something humbling, too. It’s 25 years since I started learning Spanish, and here I am again confusing a verb conjugation.  

I think from time to time, being humbled isn’t such a bad thing.