Wednesday, May 16, 2018


180512 About the title Dumb Hope  

Time to quit Spanish on Duolingo? 

For quite a long time I spent this part of the day – from about 5:50 AM to 6:20 – using Duolingo to practice learning Spanish. I cannot say, “learning Spanish” because I am evidently not learning it. I am only practicing how I might learn it in the absence of actual Spanish classes, a teacher, and living in a Spanish-speaking culture. I started this partly to see how online learning methods are designed – taking apart the results like I used to take apart a clock to see how it works.
Sometimes I was rewarded, such as the designers’ rewards systems, as Duolingo gives the user “Lingots” for levels achieved, daily reminders that you’re being consistent, and, at one time, a flash card approach.
Nine years ago, I began looking at digital games to see how others use computers and the Internet or media storage. The band REO Speedwagon, for example, tried to sell CD’s by adding a game to their productions.
By taking on Spanish-learning, I was using myself as a guinea pig. In my mind, I was seeing if Spanish can be taught using printmaking along the lines I thought of in a Saturday TV show, Hola! Hello Printmaking World! Japanese language, too, was part of my idea – three languages in one show, all based on prints, printmaking and printmakers. Of course, the Mini Halfwood Press was part of it. My press design gave it heart and soul, expressing my love of printmaking across language barriers.
Like a good developer, using myself as a Guinea pig, I kept up this process in the same way as how I tried to learn to play music on a keyboard. First I tried to learn how to read music; but I gave it up, and for several years I resorted to mere improvisation. By recording my improv sessions by connecting the keyboard to our computer, I developed a handy library of background music for my videos. It was fun; and my videos are better for it.
Publishing anything having content must be in numerous languages, I believe. I imagined that, someday, Spanish would be a major language in my internet work for all my dreams. Now, however, I notice that subtitles magically appear in my videos and I suppose if my computer were set up as if I were living in a Hispanic culture, my subtitles would be in Spanish. No matter that the translation is not spot-on sometimes, and even funny, the message comes through.
This morning, something was different however. I was struggling with Spanish form of present-perfect and I was getting most of the answers wrong. I got an icky feeling that I was going to have to give it up. Could I be using my time better? For a quarter or half-hour, a day, I could, for example, be writing someone a letter instead of Spanish phrases.
It’s another instance of the question, “On your deathbed, will you wish you had spent more time learning Spanish?” Knowing that I will never live in a Spanish-speaking culture, not even for a day, why bother? Knowing taht I will never work in a team charged with a TV series like Sesame Street for Printmaking, trying to figure out the best way to say, “Viscosity printing” for example, why bother?
In the words of Bob Dylan, “I believe it’s time for us to quit; When we meet again, introduced as friends, please don’t let on that you knew me when I was hungry and it was your world.”
Where does that stuff come from, anyway? “Dumb hope and curiosity” is a good title for my memoir.

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