Languages actually

Old school. Learning how to describe the cause of a stomach ache in Portuguese

The movie ‘Love Actually’ has a scene where people in a language lab (including Colin Firth) recite stomach ache symptoms in bad Portuguese. Luckily we can now save the embarrassment and learn a language online in the privacy of our own homes.

Years ago, I taught myself some travellers' German from a borrowed study book and cassette tapes. Yes, cassette tapes. I sat at the dining table after dinner most nights working away at it.

Most of my lesson time was spent getting to the right bit of the tape. I’d hit rewind and stop on the cassette player, play the tape and hope I'd found my place. If I went back too far, I’d have to fast forward. Then back again and forward again. You get the picture.

"Have you cake please?"

All those lessons must have worked though because I could order cake on a train to Berlin - and actually get cake. Now I'm learning Spanish, ready for a trip later this year. So I looked into learning travellers' Spanish. My goal? To order (and get) churros.

Thankfully, online courses are now a thing. Duolingo is among the best known. It gamifies the process by making you set goals, racing against the clock, earning points along the way. Cute icons and characters cheer you on.

At the more academic end are the MOOCs, massively open online courses, run through portals like FutureLearn or EdX. They're offered by universities around the world. The variety of languages is impressive. Beyond the usual European and Asian languages, Aboriginal languages are on offer for example. MOOCs run for 8-12 weeks with set start and finish dates. You can sometimes, on a limited basis, interact with lecturers and your fellow course participants, and you can get a certificate of completion when you’re done.

I finally settled on a Mango online language course for Spanish lessons, because my local library gives me free access and because friends recommended it.

Online language learning

I've been amazed at how much the internet has transformed the language learning experience. Beyond the ease and immediacy of Google Translate for those one-off 'what does that mean?' or 'how do you say that?' situations, a structured online course is much easier when you don't have cassette tapes and books to juggle.

UI from Mango course

Well-designed UIs (user interfaces) let you find and keep your place in the course. At the tap of a button, you can listen to words over and over and annoy your housemates by repeating them over and over. You can record yourself saying a word and see how accurate your pronunciation is. Grammar tips can be skipped or studied depending on your interest. And the progress bar moves in a satisfying way as you work your way through the content.

Downsides? Motivation can be tricky. Without a regular schedule or a finish date or fellow students, it's easy to do something else. The narrators' upbeat voices saying "Isn't this easy?" and "OK! Let's hear it!" get a bit annoying and repetitive. Minor issues really.

Besides, there is churros to order, so I'll definitely keep at it!