Whoo Hoo! I finished the Swedish Duolingo Tree!

By Kent Roper on 28 December 2020

With 4 days to spare, I did it. I completed all 5 levels of the Swedish Duolingo tree.

Now what do I do?

This past month I pushed hard

I started learning Swedish in the beginning of March 2019. By the beginning of December 2020, I had finished about two thirds of the Duolingo course in Swedish.

I made the decision to finish the Duolingo Swedish course before December 31. I'm not sure why I thought would be a good idea to finish the last 33% of something in one month, when it took 21 months to complete the first 66%. But I'm glad I did.

It's been a while since I spent so much time on one language. It has been both enjoyable and frustrating. I made a ton of progress this past month, and I feel a great sense of accomplishment for setting an ambitious goal and reaching it.

I'll write more about that in a future post. Hopefully next week.

Three years ago I wrote a blog post about what to do after you finish a Duolingo tree. I just re-read that a few minutes ago, and a lot of the advice still holds true. So I have a few decisions to make.

Keep going with Swedish?

I am really enjoying Swedish, but I don't feel like Duolingo has gotten me to the level I want to be at. I can understand over half of what I read, but less than half of what I hear.

I want to continue learning Swedish, but it's a pretty useless language here in California. In the past couple of months, I've met one Swedish learner, and one retired couple who spent 18 months in Sweden a couple years back, but don't speak it very well. If I want to practice Swedish with Swedish speakers, I have to go out of my way.

Pick a different language to focus on?

Spanish, on the other hand, is widely spoken in California. And while my Spanglish is near perfect, my Spanish isn't even close.

There are tons of other languages I'm interested in, as well. That's actually a problem for me. I'm constantly dabbling in languages, and I don't spend a lot of effort at becoming really good at the languages I study.

How am I going to decide?

I don't know yet. This week I am going to take a breather. I'll still continue my daily habit of learning languages, just not as intently as I have during December. I don't need to make the next decision right away.

I'll see you next week with some thoughts on goals, and what I learned from my December effort to finish the Swedish tree.