I’m in the health and fitness section of practicing French on Duolingo.
Some of the exercises are close to home and others made me want to throw my phone across the room.
But then there were a slew of fatphobic statements that would never come out of my mouth in any language.
In the Maintenance Phase forum someone asks, “Any other Duolingo users felt a little offput by some of the very diet culture heavy phrases they’re being taught? I skipped ahead through a whole unit so I wouldn’t have to do those sentences everyday 🥴”
I did that unit and I was surprised at how strong my reaction was. I didn’t skip it. Instead, I whizzed through it at break neck pace and only later wished I’d screen captured some of the examples.
There was a lot of “maigrir” and “grossir” and “en forme.”
I’m not the only person to notice it,
Ugh. I have always laughed at the tendency of language classes – back in my time, anyway – to focus on “la plume de ma tante.” That now sounds like a nice, benign way to get a few words crossed off the to-learn list. Duolingo’s choices are worse than impractical. Next thing we know, they’ll be teaching their political party preferences.
When I got to that lesson on Duolingo I thought there has to be a better, less judgmental way to learn either these verbs or -ir verbs. I found a better French language app. It’s called Mauril and it’s from the CBC. Completely free! It’s less of a game but also way less tedious.