Things Duolingo Says [Vol. 1]

Imagine this. You’ve travelled (pre/post-covid) across the world for an exciting summer vacation. You can’t wait to see the sights, eat local food, and be immersed in a different culture. At the bus stop, waiting for the bus, you meet a fellow passenger and begin to converse using the foreign language skills you specially acquired for this trip. After discussing the weather, confirming that you’re a visitor to this fair country, and getting a restaurant recommendation, your new friend gestures to your bulging backpack and casually asks what you’ve got in there. “Oh, that,” you say. “I packed my cat in my backpack.”¹ Thank goodness, you think, I learned how to say that on Duolingo.

Duolingo has a bit of a reputation for teaching you sentences that you absolutely do not need to know how to say. It may stem from its initial intent of teaching through translating sentences from the internet. There’s a lot of weird stuff on the internet. As they’ve moved toward developing a more comprehensive language learning platform and generating their own content, the bizarre sentences have stayed. To practice these extremely useful phrases, I decided to come up with hypothetical situations in which they would be valuable to know.

All Ears
Walking down the street in some big city full of strange people, you and your travelling buddy are taking in the sights. There’s a lovely Gothic church down the street. Quaint cafés and specialty cheese shops line the street. Suddenly, you stop in your tracks in the middle of the sidewalk and grab your friend’s arm. “Look,” you say, pointing out a man across the street, “that man has so many ears.”² (Does he have extra ears on his head? Is he carrying an armful of ears? Who knows.)

Wanted: Dead or Alive
To graduate, your high school requires you to perform community service hours. Unfortunately, you waited too long to sign up and the only opening left is at the nursing home. When you show up to fulfill your hours, you’re given a list of residents to spend some time with. You take the list and locate the first resident. You knock lightly on the door and enter the room. “Hey!” you say brightly. “Are you dead?”³

The Pen is Mightier
After the weekend, you and your coworker are catching up over cups of coffee while hiding from the boss in the kitchen. Your coworker, with whom you share the hobby of quill pen calligraphy, mentions a new stationary store that opened across town. You nod. You’ve heard about this store. “Ah, yes,” you say. “They have a good selection of feathers.”⁴

This concludes the first volume of Things Duolingo Says. If you enjoyed it, don’t worry, there’s plenty more where this came from.

¹En español, my Duolingo language of choice: Empaqué a mi gato en la mochila.
²Ese hombre tiene tantas orejas.
³¡Oye! ¿Está muerto?
⁴Tienen una buena selección de plumas.