“Remoted – Hybrid” – Day 683 (Tuesday)

On Sunday, which was Day 559 of Duolingo Finnish lessons, a breakthrough was made. Sadly, not the dreamt of, wished for breakthrough where I am suddenly fluent in Finnish like a native speaker. It was more of a technology event.

One of the hardest things about doing the Duolingo online lessons has been not knowing why words were suddenly changing or what the grammar rules are. Duolingo lessons were being done since Day 1 in the mobile app, which is tops in convenience, but not so generous in dispensing the “whys.” Quick lessons have been knocked out while waiting for Winston during vet appointments or while sitting in the car waiting for it to be time for an appointment of my own. 

Sometimes, the translations from Finnish to English are successful not because I understand the Finnish provided, but because I know English, so it's easy to choose the correct multiple choice words. 

Laptop has "Tips."

Sunday, Duolingo was visited on the laptop. I still don’t know why I went to the website, but there I was. Once logged in, I clicked on Hobbies, the current lesson module, and there was a button labeled “Tips” just above the button for “Start.” 

The Tips button was clicked, and there it was, the critical key to the grammatical magic kingdom. But only available through the laptop portal. There is no fantastical, magical “Tips” button in the mobile app. And the key icon in both modules leads to an opportunity to test out and skip to the next level, not the keys to language learning and enlightenment. 

For 558 days it was a sometimes slow and usually painful process of slogging through lessons with no guidance on the rules of the language. Trying to memorize things with no way to understand the things is not so much fun. Make an error, lose a heart. Lose all five hearts, need to use points to buy more hearts. No points, no dice, so that means going back to practice old lessons and watch ads to earn hearts. So many struggles. At least some of the ads are good. The first time anyway. 

Mobile - no "Tips."

Apparently, the price for the convenience of having lessons in the palm of one's hand is wandering blindly in the woods. But that is history. 

Sure, some of the struggles will still be there, but now I know where to find the treasure nuggets and the golden rules. It was in my lap all along. The process of backtracking through 34 lesson modules to read about rules and gain cultural tidbits has begun. Enlightenment shall be mine. Better late than never.