Language Memes For People Yelling At Their Duolingo App

Emmy Pratt • Senior Editor

May 19, 2023 11:30 AM EDT

Learning languages is hard, especially if you're not getting the whole immersion experience. I feel your pain for those of us who have spent hours in a classroom trying desperately to understand what the teacher is saying in French or Spanish. Some lucky people have caught the language-learning bug, whether it be through traveling, Duolingo, or even growing up in a multilingual household, and I love that for them.

As a former college student with a linguistics minor, I loved how linguistics as an academic field was diametrically opposed to pedagogy about "grammar" and "proper language" drilled into most schooling. Linguistics is about studying language as it is, not how middle school English teachers wish it was. It's about breaking down the sounds and shapes your mouth makes to understand why language is what it is. It's about understanding the sociological reasons why people speak the way they do. Descriptive linguistics is not, nor should it ever be, about dictating what kind of speech is "good" and which is "bad." Linguistics and languages are fascinating topics, and the following memes show just how fun they can be.