27 ms·
That's fair, though I think in the case of wanting to be able to be a tourist in a place with a foreign language, you'd be better suited using phrasebooks and a
by least 5y ago
That's fair, though I think in the case of wanting to be able to be a tourist in a place with a foreign language, you'd be better suited using phrasebooks and a translation app. Duolingo isn't going to really prepare you to have those kinds of conversations and isn't really a reference book, so being able to look up the few phrases you need to get around isn't practical. It's designed to teach you the language in a structured way and while the ordering of it and most language courses does attempt to get people proficient at very basic touristy things, depending on what it is you're doing, you might not even get to the point where you can do that.
Reading a menu requires cultural context along with reading comprehension. Unless you're intimately familiar with the culture, being able to read it (as in sound it out by reading the characters) is pretty useless. نان (naan) is probably something you could understand because it's a loanword we use in English from Arabic but without cultural context could someone guess what قابلی پلاؤ (Kabuli Pilau) means? Probably not. If you're in Japan and China, learning to read a menu is in itself a huge barrier.
- ben_w 5y ago> قابلی پلاؤ I’ve spent most of the last year struggling to learn the Arabic alphabet with Duolingo, yet FWIW my guess for what sort of dish Kabuli Pilau might be was fairly close. I wonder if anyone outside the UK knows, or can guess, what sort of dish a “spotted dick” or a “toad in the hole” is?
- csa 5y agoAmerican here: 1. I have had some incredible Kabuli pilau. I hope everyone gets the chance to have some. There are quite a few restaurants in the Bay Area that serve it, but homemade is best in my experience. 2. Spotted dick is a cake (steamed?) with currants… at least the stuff I had. Delicious. 3. No idea about toad in the hole. It better be good with that name.
- Symbiote 5y agoI presumably made the same guess (spiced rice grains mixed with meat/veg), but British people have the cultural context to know what pilau means. They even a section in Tesco (not just a search, an actual section). From Denmark, I can suggest brændende kærlighed (burning love, which for Danes is mashed potatoes and bacon), dyrlægens natmad (vet's night snack, rye bread with pâté, beef and meat jelly etc), æbleskiver (apple slices, round pancakes with zero apple). https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/shop/food-cupboard/dried-pasta-rice-noodles-and-cous-cous/microwave-rice/pilau-microwave-rice https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/shop/food-cupboard/dri...
- ben_w 5y ago> æbleskiver (apple slices, round pancakes with zero apple) That reminds me that the regional name for deep fried rectangular potato prisms in Berlin is “Pommes”, which is the French for apple, because everything else was dropped from the bowed French “pommes de terre friets”. It’s a Picard and Dathon at El-Adrel situation ;)